If you are shooting and editing videos, you need a good computer Cpu to perform editing tasks. In this article, we will tell you what principles can be followed when choosing components so that you can build the right PC Cpu yourself. When your PC is ready, there is little to do: start editing your footage. To do this, you need a video editor.
Which processor (Cpu) should you choose?
The processor [Cpu] is the backbone of the PC. The number and frequency of processor cores determine how quickly you can complete editing tasks. If your PC doesn’t have a powerful processor, it will be slow regardless of anything else. Modern editing software such as Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, and Final Cut Pro will take advantage of many processor cores and hyper-threading, so investing in a good CPU is critical when building an editing PC. (If you’re using DaVinci Resolve, the processor is still important, but comes second to the graphics card.)
Generally speaking, the processor is where you should invest the most of your budget. Serious developers should consider at least a 6-core processor.
For budget builds, we recommend the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 AF. While not technically the last generation, this 6-core processor has been crafted from better materials since Q4 2019 and delivers great video editing performance at an unbeatable price. The Ryzen 5 1600 AF will comfortably edit 1080p and handle 4K better than anything but the most expensive multi-thousand dollar laptops.
The newer AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with faster 6 cores and 12 threads delivers tremendous value for video editing. It can handle 1080p with ease, which is the standard definition for most modern screens and videos. It is capable of 4K editing, although not quite as smoothly.
The latest AMD Ryzen processors are the best mid to high end processors for video editing. The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is just a few percent of being the fastest single-threaded CPU, and with 8 cores and 16 threads, it also has excellent multi-threaded performance. The AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, with the same great single-threaded performance but with 12 cores and 24 threads, is only a few percent away from being the absolute best CPU for video editing. And since the price is still reasonable, this is the best processor for most people without unlimited budgets.
The i7-9700K and i9-9900K from Intel, with the same price, are also great processors, but with fewer cores and the same single-threaded performance, they lag behind the latest Ryzen 3000 series processors in most video editing tasks.
Currently, the most powerful video editing processors are AMD’s 16-core R9 3950X processor, Intel’s 16-core i9-9960X processor, and AMD’s 24-core TR 3960X processor. There are technically more powerful options (like the 18-core i9-9980XE from Intel and the 64-core TR 3990X from AMD), but these options have a very low price-performance ratio and sometimes sacrifice performance-related metrics. their tunnel vision in search of more cores.
The higher the resolution of the video you are editing, the more you will benefit from larger, faster processors.
What about a video card?
It may sound counterintuitive, but the graphics card (graphics card) is a less important component when it comes to video editing & creative work with most software. Compared to a central processing unit, it is generally okay to run your graphics card a little cheaper. exception to this rule is editing with DaVinci Resolve. If you plan on editing, you absolutely need a powerful graphics card, as this software runs primarily on the GPU, not the CPU. (See our section on video editing software for more information.)
In fact, with most video editing software, you don’t even need to have a graphics card on your computer to edit video. However, modern video editing software takes advantage of graphics cards through hardware acceleration for encoding and rendering, and having even a moderately powerful graphics card will go a long way. You will see a decrease in profit if you invest in a high quality graphics card.
When it came to graphics cards for video editing, NVIDIA had the edge in CUDA acceleration. Today, AMD’s OpenCL offers similar performance to software that supports it. Premiere Pro and Davinci Resolve work well with both AMD and NVIDIA, although Adobe is keen to optimize more for NVIDIA.
For an entry-level graphics editor, we recommend the RX 570 or GTX 1650 Super.
At 4K or higher, the GTX 1660 is a good choice. If you want to do your best, you’ll see more improvements from the RTX 2070.
If you’re doing GPU intensive tasks, you’ll get the best performance from the RTX 2080 Super. The fastest card, but too expensive for most of us, is the powerful RTX 2080 Ti. We don’t recommend using one of these unless you’re sure your workload will benefit, or you already have the fastest processor, lots of RAM, and a good SSD.
Choice of RAM
Having enough RAM is critical for simplified video editing. If you’re editing 1080p videos, we recommend 8GB as a minimum. For 4K, we recommend a minimum of 16GB. In both cases, better RAM is better, although the priority is lower than that a good processor and a decent graphics card. Video editing is one of the few apps that can make good use of large amounts of RAM, so invest as much as you like. 32GB, 64GB or even more is not crazy amounts of RAM for video editing.
How to store data
When it comes to data storage, you have two options: Solid State Drives (SSD) or Hard Drives (HDD). Ultimately, both of these options work for video editing systems, but SSDs provide many more benefits.
We recommend relying on SSDs over HDDs as much as possible. Puget Systems offers a fantastic comparison of possible storage configurations. The bottom line is that SSDs provide much better performance than hard drives if you find yourself in complex editing timelines that involve playing multiple simultaneous clips.