Editing Computers
What’s Important?
Video editing computers are tricky, its all about the right balance between CPU, GPU, RAM and Storage to make sure video editing experience is as fast and streamlined as possible.
The CPU in a video editing rig is the most important component in the system. With one that is not suitable for your needs, playback and your editing experience will be choppy and slow. Before talking about my personal CPU recommendations, let's start off with what makes editing softwares so demanding on aCPU. Depending on your timeline and effects added in, the number of processes (cores and threads) the software uses increases dramatically. So it's very important to find a cpu with at least 6 cores for light video editing, if you have really complex timelines, a CPU with 12-16 cores should do the job.
The RAM is another make or break component of this type of computer. The main use for RAM in a video editing system is to cache preview files. When playing back footage, the RAM provides it to the rest of the system. 8 Gigabytes of RAM is the bare minimum and should only be used in super tight budgets as it only allows for projects smaller than 1080p as well as closing down background applications. 16Gb will work for 1080p or light 4k video editing with some background programs as well. 32Gb is the general recommendation for editors as it provides great performance as it can handle a heavy load of video editing while still having background applications open.
Many editing software nowadays utilize a feature called “GPU Acceleration.” Since many graphics processors have encoders and decoders that editing softwares use to speed up renders and process GPU accelerated effects. When shopping for a PC, make sure the GPU has an H.264/AVC encoder so rendering times speed up tremendously.
Many people believe to simply shove as much hard drive capacity into their custom editing computer as possible. In fact, there are ways to optimize the storage layout in an editing computer to make the process more streamlined and functional. My personal recommendation is to use a 4 drive system, a 1TB NVME SSD to store your operating system and main applications, a 500Gb - 1Tb NVME SSD to store current/recent project files and footage, a 500GB NVME or 2.5” Sata SSD as a cache/scratch disk to store cache footage. For your last drive I recommend having a massive 2-8Tb hard drive to store archive footage. The use of the scratch drive is to store media cache that can build up quickly over time. Storing media cache and your project files on one drive can cause unnecessary stress on your storage device which can lead to major slowdowns.