Can't decide if I just need to build a new PC or if I can save some money by upgrading mine to be faster at video editing/rendering.

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Undercover_Man

[H]ard Surgeon
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Jan 17, 2010
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HI. I have recently gotten back into video editing. I've been playing games at 1440p with no problem for 90% of the games I've played at max or near max settings. Now, I'm video editing and WOW has it taken a toll on my computer. I am still using the same PC that you guys helped me build WAY back in the day. Specs are in my signature.

I need to be able to edit and render quickly at 1440p. My project started easily enough for a while, until I started adding effects. Then it really started to suffer. Is there a way I can upgrade my computer to better handle editing a video at 1440p preferably with Full or Half resolution when previewing it? I'm sure I could double memory and I need a bigger hard drive. Would a faster CPU and/or GPU be adequate enough for my needs or am I just stuck with building a new $4k+ computer?
 
For that task depending on the program, codec used, maybe the perf-dollar could be interesting on the M1-M2 apple side of things if you are open (and keep this one to play game).

The strongest cpu you can upgrade to on that motherboard is a 7700k I think:
https://www.asus.com/us/supportonly/maximus viii hero alpha/helpdesk_cpu/

for a 8% gain in MT passmark:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2874vs2565/Intel-i7-7700K-vs-Intel-i7-6700K

You can look if the performance is interesting at the cost and trouble:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=intel+7700k&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1

It does however upgrade the iGPU to an 630 if you use quicksync.

But to note a new intel 13100 has a 15k passmark score, an intel UHD 730 and cost $138 new.

You could look at your ram usage if you get close to 30 and see a lot of compression being used, ddr-4 should be cheap now and it is usually the easiest-quickest of all upgrades.
 
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Ok, the CPU upgrade while technically is an upgrade doesn't seem to provide a big boost to money ratio. Would this be an agreeable statement or would I see a visible increase with editing/rendering speeds?

I definitely want to get more ram. It's always nearly maxing out when Iedit. 64GB's should be a good start. Might be the max supported. I'll have to double check the MB specs. Should I increase the 3200MHz to something higher or would the likely increase in cost not be worth it?

What about the video card? Should I get a better video card? How high could I go before hitting a bottleneck? Suggestions?
 
I mean who knows your exact usage evelope? I'd just build a new high end system and be done with it. 13500? 7900x? Probably can go one step under the top end, save some cash and get decent performance.
 
Unless you can get a 7700k for free, you're on a dead end platform where any money input is a waste. The difference between the 6700k and 7700k is so small that you could make that up in overclocking.

If you want to save money by reusing some of your existing parts, you could go with another Intel system and get a DDR4 board. You'd be able to reuse your existing RAM if you only had two sticks. If you already have four sticks, that won't benefit you and you'd want to just get DDR5 instead.

There are always deals to be had in the FSFT section, I'd look there first and see if you can find something more modern. Beats dropping thousands of dollars on a new system.
 
Just a reminder to set up your disk usage within your program if you haven't already. Program drive, then scratch disk/preview drive/Export drive or what ever the program you use has options for. You don't want to be choking the hell out of one drive if your work flow causes it grief. Can I ask what NLE you are using?
 
For that, I would strongly recommend an entire new system build. You do not have to go with the absolute fastest CPU or GPU on the consumer (mainstream) market. Your current system is already obsolete or near-obsolete in terms of manufacturer support and security updates [in fact, all 6th-Gen Intel Core CPUs have already reached End Of Support Life (EOSL) at the end of 2022], and your current GPU is now on the brink of becoming depreciated to legacy support status. And Adobe is becoming more authoritarian about hardware support: The next major release of Premiere Pro, version 24.0, will no longer support Kepler GPUs such as most of the GeForce 700 series - and continuing to use such an older GPU will permanently lock Premiere Pro to software-only rendering (with absolutely no GPU acceleration support at all). That, in turn, will increase the burden on an already weakling (by current standards) CPU.

And forget about "upgrading" to an i7-7700K because it will cost you significantly more money than what little performance increase it produces.

And if you do buy a whole new build, don't just carry over your existing RAM to the new build as your existing memory is either incompatible with or too slow for a modern CPU's memory controller.

For a new CPU I would recommend an Intel i5-13600K on a lower-cost Z790 chipset motherboard with DDR5 RAM (whose prices have come down significantly from the early days of such RAM). 64 GB of DDR5-5600 RAM should cost you roughly $200-ish by the time you get to actually order your new parts. And I would recommend a GeForce RTX 4070 for the GPU since Premiere Pro is still better at CUDA than at OpenCL (which AMD GPUs use).
 
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