CPU for 4k Video Editing

tylercheribini

Hi

Just looking for some advice on building a bare bones,cheap as possible pc solely for encoding and editing 4k mxf files from a Sony PXW Z150. The recording format is XAVC QFHD (3840 x 2160) 25p at 100Mbps. I was looking at a AMD FD8300WMHK which is eight core at seems good value at less than 100 euro as I dont want to spend that much. Would this suffice for editing in adobe premiere at the afore mentioned quality? Encoding input and output times are not an issue for me as i can leave pc process overnight if needs be,just want stable editing timeline. Once i have chosen CPU i think i can take it from there with supported motherboard, psu and ram(32gb). I dont need footage monitored in 4k so not bothered about fancy graphics card.Thanks

TerrorFirmer

It's an older-tech based CPU and while it's still OK at productivity, it's not really worth buying now (and edit - the single core performance is terrible so if your software is primarily leaning on the speed of a few cores, it's a terrible option).

Get something like a Ryzen 1600, about €150 new and a much faster processor, six core and twelve threads so good for these types of tasks as well as being a far more modern platform and a lot more up-gradable in future.

32GB of ram would be astronomically expensive at the moment so hardly much point cheaping out on a low-end CPU with no upgrade path.

K.O.Kiki

Avoid the AMD FX-8300.

It's nearly 6 years old & several generations behind, and wasn't great in the first place.

Since DDR4 prices are still through the roof, the only way you'll get a 32Gb RAM system on the cheap is by sticking to DDR3; in which case look for a used system with Intel i7 or Xeon quad-core with hyperthreading (e.g. i7-3770, Xeon 1230/1231)

smacl

OSI wrote: »

Core count is pretty irrelevant to Premiere, you really want to get as modern a CPU with as high a clock frequency as you can get.

Not so sure, according to this post on the Adobe forum, Premiere only starts maxing out after 14 cores, so the Ryzen 1600 suggested seems like a good choice.

tylercheribini

Thank you all for the advice, yeah ill go with the suggested CPU choice Ryzen 1600 thanks. Might just go with 16gb ram then instead if I cam get away with it.

smacl

tylercheribini wrote: »

Thank you all for the advice, yeah ill go with the suggested CPU choice Ryzen 1600 thanks. Might just go with 16gb ram then instead if I cam get away with it.

Go with the 16GB but make sure the MOBO supports 32gb or even 64gb in the size of memory stick you're getting. Once you're up and running, use task manager and/or perfmon to see if memory is becoming a bottleneck and then consider the upgrade if it is. FWIW, on most software, more threads commonly involves more memory usage as each thread has thread local storage requirements.

tylercheribini

smacl wrote: »

Go with the 16GB but make sure the MOBO supports 32gb or even 64gb in the size of memory stick you're getting. Once you're up and running, use task manager and/or perfmon to see if memory is becoming a bottleneck and then consider the upgrade if it is. FWIW, on most software, more threads commonly involves more memory usage as each thread has thread local storage requirements.

Cheers,will do,if system really cant cope I can edit in proxy mode anyway, my projects arent that time sensitive, just with my current old PC is really useless for everything.

ED E

€3000 camera but sure feck it, lets edit on a potato lads.

Using a 16C/32T box and yes, Premiere pro can leverage a lot of it. SCP matters for warp stabilising etc as thats serially processed. Throw some horses at it if you can, nothing worse than watching spinners.

tylercheribini

If im getting 16gb of ram is it best to buy one 16gb stick or two 8gb's or does it matter? Thanks. I went with the ryzen 2600 in the end but my head is melting which ram to choose with all the options, 32gb ia just too expensive for me.

TerrorFirmer

Two 8GB sticks is better, but if the board only has 2 ram banks then you don't have much choice other than 1 x 16GB. Obviously, 16GB of ram in one stick is still much better than 8GB in 2x4GB if you actually need 16GB.

tylercheribini

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Two 8GB sticks is better, but if the board only has 2 ram banks then you don't have much choice other than 1 x 16GB. Obviously, 16GB of ram in one stick is still much better than 8GB in 2x4GB if you actually need 16GB.

Cheers, yea board only has two banks but i read if i bought one 16gb now and tried to match it with a diff branded one down the line, even with the same spec, then it may cause issues? Im wondering would I even get away with 8gb (2 x 4gbs) for the moment for Adobe Premiere..i know its not getting the full potential of the cpu but i just want a stable editing timeline, i can always upgrade to 32gb in future if prices ever become anyway sane.

smacl

tylercheribini wrote: »

Cheers, yea board only has two banks but i read if i bought one 16gb now and tried to match it with a diff branded one down the line, even with the same spec, then it may cause issues? Im wondering would I even get away with 8gb (2 x 4gbs) for the moment for Adobe Premiere..i know its not getting the full potential of the cpu but i just want a stable editing timeline, i can always upgrade to 32gb in future if prices ever become anyway sane.

Try the following;

- Fire up Premiere and get it working under a typical workload
- Press Alt+R, type in taskmgr and press ok.
- Go to the performance tab on task manager and see how much memory you currently use
- Go to processes and see how much of that is being used by Premiere

If your total memory use is a good bit less than 8gb you might continue to get away with 8gb. Note that programs often use more memory when multi-threading, often quite a lot more. I've 32gb on my current set-up and run out of RAM often enough.

tylercheribini

smacl wrote: »

Try the following;

- Fire up Premiere and get it working under a typical workload
- Press Alt+R, type in taskmgr and press ok.
- Go to the performance tab on task manager and see how much memory you currently use
- Go to processes and see how much of that is being used by Premiere

If your total memory use is a good bit less than 8gb you might continue to get away with 8gb. Note that programs often use more memory when multi-threading, often quite a lot more. I've 32gb on my current set-up and run out of RAM often enough.

The proposed system is a brand new build so not together yet to test anything, my old desktop at 4gb cant handle anything but windows doesnt like the ancient graphics card at all so not an accurate barometer and only dual core cpu too. was able to run proxied footage grand on premiere on a 4gb netbook, ill prob just bite the bullet with a 16gb corsair for around 170 euro or cheaper Ballistix Sport LT BLS8G4D26BFSE 8 GB. Haha i know i must be drawing much tuts and moans from viewers of this thread by trying to cheap out on ram but I dont need it for gaming etc

tylercheribini

Everything worked just fine in the end for editing a 4k shoot i did:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 6-Core 19 MB Cache 65 W CPU with Wraith Stealth Cooler - Black

Ram:Kingston 8GB PC4-19200 DDR4-2400MHz 288-Pin Desktop Dimm Memory Module Mfr P/N KM0VW4-MIDS17314V5J6

SSD: KingDian S200 60GB 128M Cache SATAIII

HDD:Toshiba P300 3TB Desktop PC Internal Hard Drive 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64 MB Cache 3.5 inch - HDWD130XZSTA

Graphics Card: Not even worth mentioning so old!

All in all pretty happy with it so far, Im sure if i got into multiple timelines and heavy after effects it would struggle but I generally dont. Thanks again for all yere help.

K.O.Kiki

You might want to invest in a 500Gb SSD to use as a scratch disk next; e.g. Samsung 860 Evo is below €90 now.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-After-Effects-CC-2017-Disk-Cache-Performance-Analysis-874/

Use at least an SSD for your After Effects Disk Cache. Not only will you be able to finish writing to the disk cache 2-3 times faster than if you were to use a platter drive, but you will also be able to play both cached and uncached compositions significantly faster (anywhere from 15-30% on average)

tylercheribini

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

You might want to invest in a 500Gb SSD to use as a scratch disk next; e.g. Samsung 860 Evo is below €90 now.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-After-Effects-CC-2017-Disk-Cache-Performance-Analysis-874/

cool yeah somethin ill look into in the future along with a decent graphics card, kind of flying blind as it is with current one and monitor.