Budget Dilemma: Get 2 PCs or one strong one for Office Work + Video Editing

[tobypsl]

I have 2 needs and ultimately will need 2 computers anyway, as follows:

1. Day to day office tasks where I typically have multiple programs running (outlook, word, excel, a 2nd desktop email client, whatsapp, 2 Brave windows one with 10 tabs one with 4 - yes, most need to be open). I currently run off an old refubished laptop with 4GB RAM and a core 2 duo processor (yes). I do a bit of photoshop but it doesn't handle actions well. It just about copes with the day to day stuff. But only just.

2. A videography editing PC - currently use an iMac but it a few years old now and sluggish.

(3. for working in front of TV I have a macbook pro which handles the tasks - but have thought about a higher end windows laptop)

I want to buy a good video editing PC and was thinking of a budget around £2k. I've got the budget but it would still definitely be kind of a luxury right now as the work is not there with Covid shutdowns etc and it'll probably be 6 months to a year before that business picks up.

So I'm wondering should I buy a cheaper build to fly through task set 1. But because I will be using it for high pressure project work I would want a fast spec. So maybe it's better to just stump up for the video editing build now and use that for tasks 1 and 2. I will be playing with some of the adobe products to get practice anyway. (can you tell I'm thinking out loud.)

So if I thought I could get a good enough spec to deal with task set 1 and do some creative work for less than £500 or £600 at a push I'd go for that for now. Maybe even a laptop. And then hand that off to an administrator in 6 months time when I upgrade to a high spec machine. If it's any more to get good speed then I guess I may as well go for the high end build now.

For the high end I wont be editing complex videos or very hi res - but I would want a spec that was slightly overkill for what I need. eg. If I could just about get good enough for £1600 I'd rather spend £2k and know I had more than I needed rather than just enough. But I don't know, for my editing needs, what a really solid budget is.

So I guess at this point I'm wondering what would be a budget for just task set 1?
And what would be a budget for a good video editing PC that I hadn't compromised on (I like fast eg. I like the idea of pcie4 as it's faster etc.)?

Any experienced thoughts welcome.

 

[Alex Glawion]

Task set 1 is not demanding at all so you can easily get away with a £500 PC without any problems.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($171.89 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: *MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($99.91 @ Amazon)
Memory: *Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($57.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: *Team GX1 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($43.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: *XFX Radeon RX 570 4 GB RS XXX Video Card ($129.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cougar MX330 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ B&H)
Power Supply: *Corsair CXM (2015) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Walmart)
Total: $623.75

In fact, those specs aren't all that bad for low-end video editing too, to be honest. A Ryzen 3600 6-core cpu and 16gb of RAM can perform extremely well in many video editing projects.

Now, I don't know the complexity of your video projects, but I'd almost say, get the cheapish task 1 PC and also do some editing tests on it to see if it performs up to your expectations, and if not you can get one that is a bit more expensive?

 

[tobypsl]

Thanks Alex, this is interesting - maybe I can go cheaper than I thought on the video editing. The type of video's we shoot are either:

• Interviews for companies where I use two Sony A7 iii's one mounted on a slider and stitch footage together into a clip of a few minutes. Does not need 4k as used principally on internet. Can't imagine it ever being more than 15 to 30 mins (usually 5 or less). But all standard footage.
• My wife photographs weddings and wants to offer videography. Again standard footage (maybe addding in some drone footage) but longer duration finished product. Not sure if they need to be 4k.

In both cases no fancy effects beyond adding some kind of logo intro. So this is fairly basic video editing right?

If I knew I could build something that would cope (extremely well - not just OK) with that for a lower budget say £800 - £1200 I'd probably just do that.

Interested in your thoughts?

 

[tobypsl]

This is a spec I saw in a local PC shop today - it's a preowned PC:



Obviously it doesn't give details of hard drive models or motherboard, but was wondering if this is potentially a reasonable price if that detail checked out OK.?

 

[Alex Glawion]

You'd definitely get more performance for a budget of 1200, but it won't be double the performance of a pc at 600. I wouldn't recommend the offer in your screenshot, as it has a really small ssd and just 16gb of ram. At that price point you should get better parts.

Here's a build that would get you a good performance uplift over the low budget pc, and also be a good bit faster than the offer in your screenshot above:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3800X 8-Core Processor ($299.00)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 ($67.43)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi ($209)
GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070 8GB - Asus Turbo ($419.99)
Memory: 32GB (2 x 16GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 C16 ($119.99)
Storage PCIe-SSD: ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB NVME M.2 Solid State Drive ($139.99)
Power Supply: Corsair CX Series CX550M 550W ATX 2.4 Power Supply ($99.25)
Case: Corsair Carbide Series 275Q ATX Mid Tower Case ($106.39)
Total: $1400

 

[tobypsl]

Looks good. Few general questions:

• On the OS front in the past when I've installed a new SSD I've just used the software to clone the existing drive. To save on OS fee is it possible to do this from one PC to next if scrapping the old one?
• And on that note could I format the old SATA ssd and use as additional storage? Will that motherboard take a SATA SSD?
• I see the SSD in spec is pcie3 is it worth paying the extra for pcie 4?

Thanks.

 

[Alex Glawion]

As far as I know you can use your Windows license on your new pc as long as you don't use your old one anymore. Just contact Microsoft support and tell them you're upgrading hardware and you will be good to go (It's an automated call I think)

You'll be able to use your old sata ssds in the new pc without any issues.

Going with pcie4 nvme ssds is only worth it if you need extreme performance in sequential read and write. I don't think it'll be worth the investement unless you are doing high end video editing.

 

[tobypsl]

OK.

On your spec. you put CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3800X 8-Core Processor ($299.00) that's presumably the Ryzen 7 3800? Is the cooler it ships with no good?

Do you have a video to follow to put a PC together?

 

[Alex Glawion]

The Cooler it comes with is OK. You can definitely use that though will have slightly better performance with the dark rock pro 4

Here's a beginners guide to building a pc (https://www.cgdirector.com/how-to-build-a-pc/) or you can follow along this video:

 

[tobypsl]

Just priced it up, it comes in at £1500, which will be £1250 net... slightly more than I'd thought. I see I cold shave the cost by dropping down on the GPU, 500GB SSD and stick with shipped fan which would get me close to £1200 = £1,000 net.

Or alternatively say, I'm close to the top end of my budget, would it be worth spending the extra for the Ryzen 9 processor? Or is this spec top end for my needs?

 

[Alex Glawion]

The Ryzen 9 does bring a bit more oompf, more cores and higher clock speeds so you should notice a difference in more complex video editing projects, yes.

 

[tobypsl]

Right, decision made, I'm going for the lower cost model. Final questions, you recommended:

Memory: *Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($57.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: *Team GX1 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($43.99 @ Newegg)

Is it worth putting in this SSD: Corsair Force Series MP510 480 GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 x 4 M.2 Solid State
And 32GB RAM

As it wouldn't up the price much.

 

[Alex Glawion]

Yes it would! The Corsair Force Series MP510 is a good bit faster than the Team GX SSD, and double the RAM never hurts! If you have the means for it, I'd say go for it