In this article, you can find all the specs, parts and reasoning behind the components needed to put together a killer Video Editing PC in 2021. The component choices featured in this article were made at the time of conception and it’s possible there may be newer hardware at the time of reading.
You can get the computer already assembled here: AMD RYZEN powered Scan Pro Video 3XS PC
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16C/32T
This is a 16 core, 32 thread CPU with more than enough power for most modern workflows. CPU power in video workflows is mainly used for encoding and decoding video. This means that when you are playing back video files, compressed codecs (like ProRes or DNxHD) are decompressed by the CPU and then passed to the video software. When it comes to rendering, the CPU will do all the math to compress the video file down and write it to whatever codec you are rendering. Most applications require at minimum a quad-core CPU. However, more cores will improve performance by splitting the workload. Though it’s worth noting that Premiere Pro and other video editing programs, don’t scale up performance linearly with the number of cores available. As such having big dual CPU workstations with 24 cores per CPU might not actually give better performance than a more affordable 16 core CPU.
Motherboard: ASUS RoG Strix B550-E Gaming
This is a solid motherboard with support for a Thunderbolt 3 PCIe card which is hugely important in video workflows, as many professionals use Thunderbolt 3 external drives or I/O devices for external monitoring.
RAM: 64GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 3200MHz
When it comes to working with video, a bare minimum of 16GB of RAM for HD content is recommended. Although it’s still advised to have 32GB for longer HD timelines with more complexity. When you start working with 4K content the bare minimum would be 32GB, but it’s recommended you make the step up to 64GB. It’s worth noting that this is only if you are solely editing video, if at any point you are simultaneously jumping into a compositing application like After Effects to create motion graphics then you will require more memory. After Effects and other compositing applications cache frames in memory for smooth playback. As you can imagine a single 4K frame can be quite cumbersome, so when you are caching compositions that are a few seconds to a few minutes long you can start to run out of memory very quickly.
GPU: 8GB Asus GeForce RTX 3070 Dual OC
The GPU is arguably the most important bit of a video-oriented workstation. As with RAM, the GPU has a general rule for requirements based on the resolution of your project & timeline. 4GB is really the bare minimum for HD video workflows as the GPU will be processing every pixel in each frame as well as any additional effects you may apply over the image. When you start adding more effects you might want to go up to 6GB or 8GB for HD work. When you start moving to 4K it’s recommended to have 8GB of GPU memory, with that scaling up depending on effects etc. NVIDIA has made massive leaps with their latest generation of GPU, especially in the creative fields. To accompany their incredibly powerful new hardware they have also been working very heavily on a new driver environment called RTX Studio. This RTX Studio driver is aimed at content creators to give them the best performance in creative applications. These drivers are thoroughly tested with video editing applications to ensure compatibility. To accompany this NVIDIA have been working very closely with Adobe to develop RTX Studio.
The final thing to note on the GPU front is that most, especially those from NVIDIA, now support hardware-accelerated H.264/265 encoding and decoding. This means that the GPU actually does the encoding & decoding process for these codecs so that the CPU doesn’t have to. This is super handy as they tend to be quicker at it. For those uploading their content to the web, H.265 is generally the required codec so you will spend less time waiting on your CPU to render the project allowing you to spend more time being creative
You can get the computer already assembled here: AMD RYZEN powered Scan Pro Video 3XS PC
Or view the individual parts here:
| CPU | LN111444 | AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16C/32T |
| Motherboard | LN108168 | Asus RoG Strix B550-E Gaming |
| RAM | LN113492 | 64GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 3200MHz |
| GPU | LN110656 | 8GB Asus GeForce RTX 3070 Dual OC |
| Storage | LN110771 | 1TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2 PCIe SSD |
