Need Help Upgrading My PC For Daily Use In Premiere Pro

James288 · September 13, 2019

Hey,

I've tried asking this question on the Adobe forums twice but my posts keep getting deleted before I get a response (I assume it was because I was a first-time poster there). Anyway, I watch Linus a lot on YT so I thought I'd see if some of his viewers who know a thing or two about video editing setups could help me find the best strategy as to what I should do about upgrading my PC for DAILY use in Premiere Pro for paid, freelance work. I've actually been racking my brain over the options available for a month now.

Here's what I use Premiere Pro for:

I only edit and export footage in 1080p resolution. Nothing larger. Additionally, no timelines exceed a 10 minute run-time.
Effect-wise in projects, I typically only use basic color correcting Lumetri effects, chroma-keying for the one or two green screen layers I overlay on top of the base footage, and basic time-line animations for text fly-ins and intros. Add in a few dozen audio clips, and call it a day.

Here is my current rig:

i5 7600K 3.8ghz (not overclocked) 4 cores/threads
GTX 1060 3GB (EVGA)
16 GB RAM Corsair LPX 2400
850 EVO 250GB SSD (OS and project files)
2TB WD Black HDD (Finished projects storage)

WHAT I UPGRADED SO FAR (THIS WEEK):

I ordered a 500GB Samsung EVO to replace my current OS drive.
I ordered an M.2 drive (970 EVO 500GB) to store the project files, cache and scratch files on for all of my Premiere pro work.
Finally, I purchased an additional 16GB of RAM (32GB total now)

MY QUESTIONS ARE (I want fast, smooth and efficient workflow with reasonable ~1:1 export times);

Are these recent upgrades enough for the work that I do, considering it's WORK, and daily work at that?

Is a single M.2 drive suitable/fast enough to store the project files, cache and scratch, or would keeping these 3 things on seperate 860 EVOS be better? Not sure if the M.2's speed advantage makes the need to separate these things necessary and can't seem to find that particular information in a Google search

Would doing a "FULL" upgrade to my PC, new MOBO and OS disk to move up to a 9700K/9900K be warranted considering I only work with 1080p footage? (Intel only, please)

Would moving up from a 1060 3GB to a 1660 ti be beneficial for smoothing out playback?

What benefits would I see moving from a 7600K/GTX 1060 3GB to a 9900K/1660 ti, realistically, editing 1080p footage? $1K work of benefits? :?

As a cheaper alternative, what about swapping my 7600K for a 7700K to get hyperthreading (so I could keep my current MOBO and OS, saving $200)? Would that be worth the hassle? Would I see a noticeable difference?

Eventually, I'll be working on larger projects (15-20 minutes), with several green screen layers, but the same effects, just to throw that out there.

Anyway, basically, I could either keep the 7600K and current MOBO and just run with my RAM and M2 upgrade, OR drop another ~ $1,000 and double my cores and threads by getting a 9700K or a 9900K. At which point I feel I might as well upgrade my GPU to the latest version as well to get twice the VRAM.

What do you guys think? (Sorry for the lengthy read, but I know details help!)

James

Streetguru · September 13, 2019

59 minutes ago, James288 said:

Just grab a Ryzen 7 CPU + Motherboard?

You very likely did not need 32GBs of RAM for basic 1080p video editing. Your SSDs are fine, though for around the same price you probably could have gotten one of the 3K read/write models.

And rendering and stuff depends on what codecs you're rendering out to.

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/sX4MbX

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 3.2 GHz 8-Core Processor ($179.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI X470 GAMING PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.88 @ Amazon)
Total: $294.77