What computer / rig do YOU use for editing and rendering?

XtremeConditioning

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AMD FX-8350
8GB DDR3 RAM

And then I've got 2x R9 270's, a nice BluRay drive, etc, etc, but of course it's mostly your processor that matters, unless you accelerate with your GPU, and most don't anyway...

This gives me approx a 1:1 render time, suppose I'm going from 1080p, and simply rendering in 1080p, it's about a minute of render time per minute of video, depending on bit rate, what I'm doing, etc.

If downscaling or upscaling, it's more like 1.5-2 minutes of rendering per minute of video. Again, it also matters if you resample (I almost never do) as well as how much you're compressing the source video, etc.

But you don't need this just to edit video, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. A decent i3 laptop will be fine for 1080p editing, just make sure it has at least 4GB of RAM, preferably 8GB.

You'll have to render more like 3 minutes/min of video, maybe more, but if you upload even a video a day, but more likely a video or three a week, that setup will be fine, and you can get a laptop like that for less than $200. Such as an i3 3130m, or the like.

Don't get hardware you don't need, unless you're going to either be gaming as well, or if you are going to be making several videos a day. If you are, a better machine makes sense. For me, it's mostly gaming, so for video editing, I just happen to have this bulked up rig.
 

XtremeConditioning

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I went from 8 gigs to 32 gigs of ram. Made a major difference in performance. May be considered over kill but I look at it as future proofing. But even today I use all that ram when I have after effects, premiere and multiple tabs open at the same time. It's something I never have to worry about.
After 16GB, very little performance increase is gained. You didn't see an increase from 8 to 32. You saw an increase from 8 to 16, and then the jump from 16 to 31 only gave you a much smaller bump.

Honestly, anyone going for above 16-32GB of RAM is either being overkill or just wanting bragging rights. Which is fine, I can totally respect that. But just know that after 16GB, your price/performance increase is absolutely horrible.

RAM - How Much Do You Need? (Type this into YouTube for LinusTechTips' video)

However, the biggest jump is from 4 to 8, so for the average person, 8 is overkill. For gamers, you won't need 16 for a long time, and for video editors, even 32GB is overkill. Right now, the best number for a decent "future-proofing" for the forseeable future is gonna be 16GB, but 8GB is just fine for all but serious techies.
 

BoozeandBS

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After 16GB, very little performance increase is gained. You didn't see an increase from 8 to 32. You saw an increase from 8 to 16, and then the jump from 16 to 31 only gave you a much smaller bump.

Honestly, anyone going for above 16-32GB of RAM is either being overkill or just wanting bragging rights. Which is fine, I can totally respect that. But just know that after 16GB, your price/performance increase is absolutely horrible.

RAM - How Much Do You Need? (Type this into YouTube for LinusTechTips' video)

However, the biggest jump is from 4 to 8, so for the average person, 8 is overkill. For gamers, you won't need 16 for a long time, and for video editors, even 32GB is overkill. Right now, the best number for a decent "future-proofing" for the forseeable future is gonna be 16GB, but 8GB is just fine for all but serious techies.


In after effects you ram preview which loads all the rendered frames into ram. When dedicating ram to the application you benefit from having more. It's true you won't need more than 16 for traditional editing software... But doing that while having 32 tabs open and premiere. There is noticeable difference. I look at my ram usage. I use way more that 16 gigs on a regular basis.
 

XtremeConditioning

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In after effects you ram preview which loads all the rendered frames into ram. When dedicating ram to the application you benefit from having more. It's true you won't need more than 16 for traditional editing software... But doing that while having 32 tabs open and premiere. There is noticeable difference. I look at my ram usage. I use way more that 16 gigs on a regular basis.
Ah, that's actually a good point. I forgot how much RAM my 10 tabs in Chrome eats up. Probably about 2GB, plus whatever other junk is running... Realistically, I'm probably only using 4GB at most, so my rig would probably perform better if I jumped up another 8GB...

Good tip, man.
 

BoozeandBS

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Ah, that's actually a good point. I forgot how much RAM my 10 tabs in Chrome eats up. Probably about 2GB, plus whatever other junk is running... Realistically, I'm probably only using 4GB at most, so my rig would probably perform better if I jumped up another 8GB...

Good tip, man.
Yeah, I'm subscribed to linustechtips too. If I remember correctly they did the tests while exclusively running an individual program. Most people when they have a dedicated work station for editing, they don't have a ton of tabs open. Most edit stations I've been to have been LAN only, so there wouldn't even be many things added to the computer besides editing software. So if it was a computer made for just cutting, yeah 16 gigs would be plenty, as a lot of the rendering is done on the fly through the GPU.

But for a multi purpose machine that does a lot at once, (after effects, premiere, photoshop, plus 30+ tabs in chrome) I've found the more ram the better. No point in risking a bottleneck when you want to do a lot at the same time.
 
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James Azurin

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I went from 8 gigs to 32 gigs of ram. Made a major difference in performance. May be considered over kill but I look at it as future proofing. But even today I use all that ram when I have after effects, premiere and multiple tabs open at the same time. It's something I never have to worry about.
Sounds like overkill! But that peace of mind must be priceless[DOUBLEPOST=1445831065,1445830696][/DOUBLEPOST]
I went from 8 gigs to 32 gigs of ram. Made a major difference in performance. May be considered over kill but I look at it as future proofing. But even today I use all that ram when I have after effects, premiere and multiple tabs open at the same time. It's something I never have to worry about.
Sounds like overkill! But that peace of mind must be priceless
 

The Tech Chap

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I enjoy gaming on the desktop I use to edit videos for my tech channel so I convince myself buying high-end components is a 'business investment' :p

Anyway - I have a 980 TI, i7-4790k, 32GB RAM.

Eagerly awaiting my new Dell XPS 13 for travel/commute though!
 
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WolfWraith

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My 1 is a few years old now but I've made some minor recent upgrades:
Corsair H80 liquid cooler
FX-8150 cpu
Sabertooth 990FX R2 mobo
16GB corsair vengeance pro ram
500GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD which is my OS & main software drive + Scratch disk for Premiere Pro
1TB WD Black purely for games & extra software
4TB WD Black for recording & storage
4TB Seagate Barracuda which acts as a backup for the other 4TB (I use secondCopy to run auto backups between my SSD and drives then between the drives when changes are made to files)
Pioneer DVD drive that barely gets used
GTX 980ti Strix which I bought 2 months after buying a GTX 980 on the day The Witcher 3 came out because I didn't want to run The Witcher 3 on a 660ti lol
1000W Antec platinum forgot the model
Corsair 650D case
Windows 8.1 Pro
Benq XL2720Z for my monitor I'm tempted to get more so I can edit with multiple screens

I then have a media server which has a Pentium G3258 in it with 8GB RAM (originally in my main machine) and a RAID 5 with 4x 2TB drives for storage, which I also use for video conversion now, allows me to multitask tonnes better cause I have that converting videos throughout the day while I game on my main machine. I plan on upgrading to an X99 based chipset 1 day (1 day when I actually make money off video editing) but for now this system holds its ground well and will continue to for a little while longer.
 

James Azurin

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I enjoy gaming on the desktop I use to edit videos for my tech channel so I convince myself buying high-end components is a 'business investment' :p

Anyway - I have a 980 TI, i7-4790k, 32GB RAM.

Eagerly awaiting my new Dell XPS 13 for travel/commute though!
Hahaha that's a great way to convince one to buy better stuff. It's justified if it's for work too, right? (plus the gaming will be SWEET) but mostly work, right?

I love the 980ti. I think it's probably the best nvidia card (money/performance) out there right now. Completely smashing everything up to 4k. Love it.

That's exciting! The Dell XPS 13 is a beautiful machine[DOUBLEPOST=1445872507,1445872428][/DOUBLEPOST]
My 1 is a few years old now but I've made some minor recent upgrades:
Corsair H80 liquid cooler
FX-8150 cpu
Sabertooth 990FX R2 mobo
16GB corsair vengeance pro ram
500GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD which is my OS & main software drive + Scratch disk for Premiere Pro
1TB WD Black purely for games & extra software
4TB WD Black for recording & storage
4TB Seagate Barracuda which acts as a backup for the other 4TB (I use secondCopy to run auto backups between my SSD and drives then between the drives when changes are made to files)
Pioneer DVD drive that barely gets used
GTX 980ti Strix which I bought 2 months after buying a GTX 980 on the day The Witcher 3 came out because I didn't want to run The Witcher 3 on a 660ti lol
1000W Antec platinum forgot the model
Corsair 650D case
Windows 8.1 Pro
Benq XL2720Z for my monitor I'm tempted to get more so I can edit with multiple screens

I then have a media server which has a Pentium G3258 in it with 8GB RAM (originally in my main machine) and a RAID 5 with 4x 2TB drives for storage, which I also use for video conversion now, allows me to multitask tonnes better cause I have that converting videos throughout the day while I game on my main machine. I plan on upgrading to an X99 based chipset 1 day (1 day when I actually make money off video editing) but for now this system holds its ground well and will continue to for a little while longer.
I'm impressed by the upgrades, particularly with your storage allocation. You aren't going to be running out any time soon haha. Seems like you're well equipped, then!