Hi all,
I am new here, but long time LTT Youtube follower.
The thread title may not be totally accurate, but anyway. It has been a terrible week for me on the computer front. I will see if a bit of typing calms the soul like it used to in my vBulletin days!
I am an audio engineer who now has to do a fair chunk of video editing and exporting. By that I mean, there could be 6 to 10 major video based events at my place of work each year and I am the only one who "knows how" to edit video; and by that, I am the only one who is up for having a go and learning Premiere Pro purely from having a go.
Anyway, my old studio computer was a HP Omen 870-214na. This was originally purchased to quickly replace a studio machine that died a number of years back in the middle of a project. It was a fine machine, but limited. I converted it to passive cooling, but couldn't get the BIOS to stop throwing up no CPU fan errors. I put up with it for a few years anyway; I record and mix music, rather than use software instruments so my CPU and RAM needs are fairly modest. Once I started doing video editing, the CPU was hitting 85 degrees with the Nofan CR-80EH passive cooler, so I got a BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4 and then it was max 44 degrees during the same 4k renders. It also idles at around 12 degrees C.
So, to the terrible week. I noticed that my 16GB of memory was being maxed out by Premiere. Given the interesting times we live in now, I took a boredom based risk and got 32GB of Crucial Ballistix RAM, I only went for that due to a good deal they had compared to "stock" RAM. I took the RAM out of the Omen, and one of the slots broke and the Omen motherboard died a short while later. The machine was bought used originally, so perhaps this was damage from that user.
I have loads of work to do from home and I could not afford to have much downtime; my poor Surface Laptop 2 cant be kept in the fridge during video exports!!! So I had to cram how to build a PC from scratch. I know enough to put a computer together, but I am not saying I made great choices as I only learned what ATX is because of this, but I am typing this on the "new" machine and getting project work done with no issues so I am fairly happy, if not over stressed!!!
I went for a Corsair 275 quiet model and an ASUS z270p motherboard. My lack of research resulted in me having to get bluetooth and wifi USB adapters separate, which arrive next week (whoops) but the thing works!! Though, I didn't get a chance to switch BitLocker off on the OS drive before the Omen died, and I only just found the recovery key. It really piled on this week!
Here are my specs:
i7-7700
Palit KalmX GTX1050 TI
16GB of RAM
ASUS z270p motherboard
BeQuiet Pure Power 10 400watt PSU
Since I now have a motherboard that can accomodate overclocking, would I be wasting my time to get a used 7700k and see how I get on? It would seem I have the cooling capacity to push the CPU.
I find myself almost frustrated that I didn't have more time to figure this out; since I had to get a new motherboard, and if I do end up getting a 7700k, would I have been better off getting that 5th gen i7 unlocked six core that apparently runs rings around 7th gens in Premiere. Or even the newer AMD options with loads more cores.
The amount of video projects I do probably would negate the need for having a super speced machine for rendertimes, but I do not do enough of it either to have potential system stability issues be a big deal. It could be a case of boredom vs what is worthwhile.
Lets say a new 7700k is around 500 euro in Europe, would jumping ship to used AMD parts be a better bet? Would even a used 7700k be dead money if that could pay for, lets say, an AMD motherboard and then see what they have to offer.
Anyway, at least I have a computer, and it was kind of fun to build. Downside, both Crucial RAM sticks are duds.
By the way, that Nofan CR-80EH was really fantastic for years before I had to do the video editing. The lighting in the studio bothered me more than the computer, the only fan was the PSU.
Thanks for the read, I am almost relaxed now!!!