New system for Adobe Premiere

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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Hey guys, this is a different build compared to what I normally do. My brother is starting to make videos for clients and more youtube stuff for himself. He's recently gotten a bunch of new cameras, lens, etc, and needs to now replace his 5 year old gaming laptop.

- Videos will be 1080p
- Most videos will be 15-20m final cut
- Software will be Adobe Premiere (he also uses light room and photoshop currently)

I know his old laptop even though an i7 it's extremely dated, first gen i7 and I believe only 2 cores since it's mobile, old and hot!

I'm not familiar with Premiere so I don't know if he's better with a better video card or more cores, or less cores and higher frequency cores... HELP!? :confused:

What do you guys think of the following:
- 2x 12C E5-2683 V3 ES (2 cores disabled per CPU thus 12 not 14 - I have had this for a couple years)
- SuperMicro Motherboard for above CPUs (have this too)
- 8x 4GB DDR4 RDIMM (have these too)
- Intel or Samsung SATA SSD OS drive
- Intel or Samsung SATA SSD Active Project drive
- WD HDD for storage

Would a $150 video card suffice or something like the 1070 6GB be better?
Would a NVME improve performance at all or is it CPU or GPU bound anyway?
Are those CPUs going to be awesome or better to go with a single 6 or 8 core at 3Ghz?

The system is primarily used for his photo editing he does now, minor internet browsing, and within a month he'll be doing video editing a lot.

The idea is to keep the system as cheap as possible, and I'm pretty sure the 2x CPU + Motherboard I have will cost him as much as 1 retail higher frequency, lower core CPU...

Thanks guys!
 

amalurk

Active Member
Dec 16, 2016
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Wife uses premiere on a newer i5 laptop but the videos are 2 mins or less final cut so maybe CPU not an issue since videos are short. She has never complained about render time. The footage however did take long to load and some operations to manipulate it were slow. That all changed when she got an SSD. I got a new 1TB Samsung PM961 on ebay for $300. No complaints now. I doubt the nvme is really needed though because my thoughts are the reads are probably mostly sequential from the video files and even at 1080 the bit rate even of multiple streams is still so much less than a good regular sata ssd.. The only way I justified the nvme was I got it for about the same as lower brand 1TB sata's are selling.

I think your core count is total overkill and the program won't use that many of them and you would be better off with few high freq cores but, I don't really know that so look into it.
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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Premiere will do most tasks better with fewer/faster cores. Those CPUs won't be too bad, but E5-2643 v3 might be a better choice for the application (6x 3.4ghz/socket) - or even single-socket with E5-1680 v4.

Premiere will do GPU acceleration on rendering but I don't think you have to go high-end to get good results. Current market is putting quite a premium on high-end cards due to mining activity. Drop back one generation and look for a deal on a GTX 960/970.

32GB ram for Premiere is fine. More would just be idle.

Video work is somewhat IO sensitive, but I don't think a high-end NVMe drive will help much. Better to get some solid performance SSDs large enough to hold all of the components of his project. Get a good small Samsung/Intel SSD for boot and 1.6TB S3510s can be found for $600-800 and work really well the project files.

Frankly, for the application and the user you describe, and unless you really want latest/greatest, I might go single-socket/X99 workstation board with an E5-1650/1680, 32GB, GTX960/970. Get an M.2 Enterprise Samsung for OS/Apps (SM961) and a couple of 1.6TB S3510s (or 4-6 800gb S3510s). You'll be running Windows to support Premiere so the motherboard "fake raid" can be used to group them together. By going with the "workstation" board design you'll get better audio support and S3 sleep will work (Supermicro servers boards don't sleep normally).
 

NSKA

Active Member
Nov 17, 2015
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Lucky brother! If I were you I would sell one of those two CPUs, he won't even max a single full potential and invest that money into a nicer graphics card, you will see more use out of that then a second CPU.
 
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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Thanks @PigLover that's exactly what I was looking for.


Time to re-examine the plan and maybe look at using my existing/old x99 1620 v3 desktop that he can upgrade in the future to a v4.
 

rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
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I would echo what @PigLover said above. I do a fair amount of video work in Premiere at my day job. I have almost the exact build he mentioned at the end: a 5820k @4.2Ghz (instead of the 1650), 32GB of RAM, GTX 970, a Samsung 961 512GB, but I just have (2) 800GB Intel S3510's. This setup has worked great for me without breaking the bank.
 
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