PC for 4k editing in Premiere and grading in DaVinci

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diegocervo

Well-known member
Hello,

After 10 years using macs, I'm seriously considering to buy a PC for 4k editing (Premiere) and color correction (DaVinci). I've been staying away from Windows for all these years and I'm not a PC tech either.

That's why I would like to hear your opinion on this configuration. Any advice will be very welcome.

I already have an external raid, so that is not on my buy list.

Antec Ninehundred Ultimate Gaming Case
Thermaltake Smart 1000W Power Supply
Asus Intel X79 Deluxe Series Quad CrossFireX & 3-Way SLI/ SATA3&USB3.0/ WiFi
16GB (4X4GB) DDR3-1333/1600 PC3-10666/12800
Intel Core i7 4820K 3.7GHz 10MB LGA 2011
Corsair H55 High Performance Hydro Water Cooler
Samsung 840 EVO Series 500GB Solid State Drive
2TB Western Digital Black 7200RPM SATA-3 6Gb/s 64MB Cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X 12Gb PCI-Express
12X LiteOn SATA Internal Blu-Ray Combo Drive
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Channel Sound Card
10/100/1000 Gigabit Network Card (onboard)
Wireless-N USB Adapter 300Mbps
Card Reader Internal Black
MS Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit
Assembled and tested, 3 years parts and 3 Year labor warranty

Price $ 3499.00
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...liid=I3PSHM87KGXBV9&ref_=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl

Of course I will add more RAM, either 32GB or 64GB total.

Also, I'm open to suggestions on where to buy PCs. Amazon is the first place I looked at. It could be the worst, I really have no clue. As I said I have been leaving on Apple land for too long and I never cared about other options until now.


Talking about DaVinci, I read that Windows 7 pro is supported. How is your experience with it? Should I upgrade to Win 8 pro?

Thanks as usual for any input.
Cheers,
Diego


p.s. I hope not to start the usual fight between PC and MAC users...I'm just looking for suggestions on prices and components, please.
 
One Titan is fine for the Adobe apps. More than a few nodes in Resolve in 4k, however, and you will want two of them.
 
diegocervo said:
...I'm seriously considering to buy a PC for 4k editing (Premiere) and color correction (DaVinci). I've been staying away from Windows for all these years and I'm not a PC tech either.

That's why I would like to hear your opinion on this configuration. Any advice will be very welcome.
Click to expand...

Adobe apps like PPro and AE want three physical spindles. One for OS and applications, one for your video and audio sources, and one for rendering output. I tend to put my scratch disks on both render and source drives, but never on my system drive.

At this point in time, I'd seriously look at doing as much work as possible in DaVinci Resolve. Their new editing tools look to match well with Adobe. Why go with Resolve? The DaVinci tools present to you in the same interface. The Adobe tools aren't really a suite, more like a loose collection, each with different interfaces and different workflows. IOW, just because you know PPro doesn't help you work with AE (and yes, I did learn that the hard way). They are two completely different beasts with a lot of overlap. Also, if you do your editing in Resolve, you eliminate the round-trip problem of getting footage out of Adobe, into Resolve, out of Resolve, and back into Adobe. Ugly, that.

Finally, I'd drop the sound card. If you're actually going to try to do audio mixing, far better to have an outboard DAC / monitor controller. USB 2 or 3 will work fine for that. But to do the audio mixing with any hope of accuracy, you're going to need a well treated room (no, bass traps are not enough) with decent (active) monitors. Active monitors are going to need a quality of DAC that your sound card can't deliver, and probably want pro line level input (+4 dB) over balanced XLR cables, which your sound card doesn't likely provide. Maybe it does; I haven't looked at sound cards in years because the outboard worked so much better when I switched over. Never looked back.

Then again, if all you really want is audio for dialog editing, a pair of decent headphones and an outboard headphone amplifier will give you better results for less than a sound card. There are plenty of tiny little headphone amps out there than sound great, and plug into a USB slot.

Either way, I don't see a need for a sound card any more. But maybe that's just me.
 
You should let go of the idea of separate physical disks if you can afford it.

I just hae this built and works like a charm

- i7 5930k 6-core 3.5
- 32GB ram
- 512gb ssd for os and apps
- 1TB ssd for work files and scratch
- 4tb physical storage only
- 6gb nvidia gtx 980ti ( is as goos as the titan but cheaper)

Also.... Didnt calculate your voltage but thats a mighty large psu. Are you sure you need it?

And that cpu does not require a water cooler unless you plan to clock it... Heck even my 5930k doesnt require one.
You should get by with a noctua or similar.
Oh and last thing... x79 is old tech, so if you are trying to build a setup that will last a bit into the future, then you might meet some challenges there.
 
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thanks for your tips.
I looked into something with the x79 board because it was recommended on the davinci config guide, but I will look for something else.
 
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