GH4 Recommendations on now 4k PC Editing System

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smoke23

Active member
I'm finally looking at building a new PC to edit 4K and was looking for some recommendations. I had a couple of questions:

CPU: Better to go with i7-4790k quad core or i7-5820K 6-core?
Video card: I keep reading about the 780Ti is great choice for Premiere Pro because it has the most CUDA cores Is it better choice to go 780Ti or get a 970/980 card? Any recommendations on brands for each?

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($279.99 @ Micro Center)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($104.99 @ B&H)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($125.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($90.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card ($334.99 @ B&H)
Case: Corsair 400R ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair RM 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-F12 PWM 55.0 CFM 120mm Fan ($20.95 @ Amazon)
Total: $1272.86

Or

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($299.99 @ Micro Center)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($104.99 @ B&H)
Motherboard: ASRock X99 Extreme4 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($154.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($124.99 @ B&H)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card ($319.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Corsair 400R ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair Professional 850W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Total: $1094.93
 
I think the cpu matters a lot
check the adobe premiere hardware forum, as far as I remember 6core outperforms 4core price/performance but my research included after effects perf.
 
I would question why you need to edit in 4K.

Edit in HD or less & after you've made the 3 million edit decisions & thrown 2.95 million onto the floor.... and once your happy with it . Then upgrade the timeline to 4K ......remember anything else before this and you are paying substantial render tax & time wasting.
 
Surf it Mike said:
I would question why you need to edit in 4K.

Edit in HD or less & after you've made the 3 million edit decisions & thrown 2.95 million onto the floor.... and once your happy with it . Then upgrade the timeline to 4K ......remember anything else before this and you are paying substantial render tax & time wasting.
Click to expand...
I've never heard of this process. How would you "upgrade the timeline" after editing. And is the 4k just pulled into a 1080 timeline for editing or transcoded to 1080 first?
 
Edit with proxy files (offline) then do whatever your editor needs to swap in the full resolution files and render everything over night (online). Some software makes this a simple process, some make this difficult.
 
For 4k/UHD you need to upgrade everything. Although this does depend on the software and video material type being used but for general purpose (what ever that means) go for: as much cores a possible, RAID or SSD disks, GPU with at least 6GB of RAM and as much cuda cores as possible.

None of your builds is really a worstation. They are both normal day to day, gaming PCs.

smoke23 said:
I'm finally looking at building a new PC to edit 4K and was looking for some recommendations. I had a couple of questions:
Click to expand...

Need more details: all the software that's going to be used, what meterial will you be working with, time frames/turnaround times, etc.

smoke23 said:
CPU: Better to go with i7-4790k quad core or i7-5820K 6-core?
Click to expand...

None. I think both have a small number of PCIE lanes. The least I would buy is an i7 5960x with a good cooler and then OC to 4Ghz. This will get you 40 pcie lanes and 8 cores.
This is the least I would buy. Ideally I would go for double xeons on a workstation board with double pcie lanes. Decoding raw, for instance, takes as much cores you can throw at it. Also depends on the software: if debayer is more GPU or CPU based. Also depends on codec: GH4s h.264 is more or less a CPU based codec, which means editing it requires lots of cores. Don't know exactly the ratio between GHz vs # cores.

Also (generally speaking):
- 1 GPU is nothing. Need more and better.
- You listed no I/O device.
- You listed no raid, sata, etc. cards.
- 16GB of RAM is nothing.
- mid tower is not enough.
- get better MOBO and a better CPU

Anyway, it's pointless writing anything without knowing your needs and uses. But just so you know, the build you created is not a workstation but a normal gaming PC. My advice is to make a list of your needs and uses and based on that create a workstation.
 
I've managed to "edit" quite efficiently using proxy files for the edit decisions - basically I put the 4k clips on one track, the 1080p proxy clips on another track, and turn off the 4k track during editing (I use a 4k timeline). As I edit I make sure that what happens on the proxy track also happens on the 4k track, which depending on how your software behaves need not be very hard to do at all. Then I turn the proxy track off and the 4K track on and export at about 7fps. And the PC is a quite old Windows XP quad core device (Q9300 @ 2.50GHz with 3GB ram). But - I'm not doing color grading, effects, hardly any transitions (just straight cuts with audio crossfades). So, what you need does depend on exactly what you're doing and how you're doing it (eg proxy or not), as noted in the preceding post.
 
For what it's worth I edit on a 4K timeline using a recently purchased Dell with 4th generation Intel Core i7 4790 CPU @ 3.60Ghz. It has 16GB of memory and the editing process is fairly smooth with fade and crossfade transitions as well as some color/density adjustments. The software I use is Corel's Pinnacle Studio Ultimate and I'm at version 18.5. Graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745 with 4GB.

Why edit on a 4K timeline? I don't have a 4K display device but a 4K edited timeline rendered to 1080p results in some of the nicest 1080p footage I've seen. Rendering takes place in a fairly quick manner (I've seen comments on other forums that with a 6 core processor rendering literally flies!).

Here is a short project that was shot in Cine4K, edited on a 4K timeline, and rendered to a 1080p file in the previous version of Pinnacle Studio 17.5. The computer was a 2nd gen Core i7 processor based with only 8GB RAM and I think the graphics card only had 1GB on board. Rendering was not sluggish, I only had time to go get a cup of coffee from the other end of the house and sat back down in time to see the render finish.

https://vimeo.com/98865311

Pinnacle Studio is not a lot of folks first choice, some previous versions had problems and one version was a disaster. But I've used it since a version previous to 7 and it generally only took a few updates to correct most problems. However the versions Corel has released have been problem free for me.
 
hearing pro and con on pro res on a PC...

The reason I ask is because I'm looking into building a pc for Resolve.... AE and Premiere... been Mac for the past 15 years or so...

Right now I'm mainly interested in 4k pro res... raw down the road a bit....
 
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