Advice on selling a 2019 iMac and building an editing rig for DaVinci Resolve?

[ChillFuture]

Posted this on Reddit, but figured I should also ask here:

I'm sorry in advance if this information is readily available (I did do my own Googling before coming here though.)

Some background

About a month ago I needed to update my editing rig to handle 4K editing better. I was currently editing in a mixture of Premiere and Resolve. I made the decision to buy a refurbished 2019 27" iMac with a 3.0 GHz 6 core i5, Radeon Pro 570X, a 2TB fusion drive, and I added in more RAM to bring it to 24GB. I did this so I could have the option of using Final Cut for editing occasionally and because I enjoy producing music in Logic Pro. It's about the most expensive mac hardware I can currently afford (almost $2k.) Well surprise, surprise my machine is struggling with some of my bigger projects for clients. (Currently sitting at about 4TB of footage on a RAID array and yes, I have it backed up. I film 4k in mostly ProRes HQ, but occasionally H.265 if I throw my Fuji XT3 on a gimbal without my Atomos recorder.) Editing clips with just a light color grade is fine, but performance is especially bad on any timeline with Neat Video Denoiser applied. It will drop to about 4 frames a second or less until it renders that part of the timeline. Overall, It's not unusable with proxies, but it's definitely a productivity hindrance and not the kind of performance I hope to see from a machine I spent $2K on and plan to use for the next 4-6 years. So I bought a Razer Core and Vega 56 used on eBay for pretty cheap hoping it would speed up FCPX and it helps a bit, but not much. I exported the project to Davinci Resolve via XML and Resolve seems to utilize it better. If I had to I could call it good there. It's usable. But I can't believe this is the kind of performance $2K gets me.

I think I'm going to try to sell my iMac on eBay or Craigslist for $1,550 (bought it for $1,700) and I would transfer my AppleCare+ and if they want the Razer Core included (without the GPU), I would consider it. I would make Resolve my main editor and would occasionally use Premiere.

Keep in mind with your answers to my following questions that I'm not a gamer and this potential PC build doesn't need to be good gaming PC.

The real questions

1. Will I be able to buy a complete package for $1,500 USD (a good editing monitor included) that will perform better enough than my 2019 iMac to be worth the hassle of selling the iMac?

2. What if I increase my budget to $2k (my max), will that be a significant jump in performance?

3. If so, can you give me a general idea what you'd recommend for components? I am thinking a Ryzen CPU would be the best for my budget and performance goals? Are the pcpartpicker "enthusiast" or "magnificent" AMD gaming build guides a good reference for good editing hardware at those price brackets? I watched the budget 4K editing build video LTT did recently for about $1k. Is that a better build for video editing?

4. And what about GPU options? I still have the Vega 56, so should I plan a build around that or should I sell it on eBay and go for something from NVIDIA's lineup? If so, what would be the best performance/price ratio option from NVIDIA? The addition of their Super line has made their lineup Super hard for me to follow. (Sorry for the pun.)

5. If I do use the Vega 56 in the build should I buy a newer AMD GPU to pair with it? Maybe the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT? Would Resolve utilize 2 different GPUs well or would it be better to buy a second Vega 56 off eBay and run them in SLI? It sounds like Resolve does fine with two different GPUs as long as they're from the same manufacturer. Is that true? And how would Premiere and After Effects handle it?

6. How long do you think it would take me to build this editing PC? I could set aside 3 fulls days, would that be enough? Keep in mind my only experience is watching Linus build stuff and setting up a few RAID arrays. Oh and once I diagnosed and replaced a bad PSU on an old pre-built HP computer like 7 years ago. So, yeah, I'm pretty much a newbie to building PCs.

7. I'm assuming Windows is the OS for this build and I should avoid any Hackintosh build? I have used Windows 10 and don't mind it but I do prefer macOS. However, I'm much less concerned about my iPhone's text syncing or having Final Cut (though I'll miss having the option) and much more interested in stability and performance. Or are Hackintosh's more stable than I've been led to believe? There is the dark horse option dual booting Windows (for Premiere) and a linux distro since Resolve can run on Linux, but I can't really see any benefit to it.

8. My 6 TB RAID array is formatted in APFS. Will Paragon's APFS for Windows software be stable enough to use for a few months until I finish my current projects and can reformat to NTFS or would I need to find a way to temporarily move my footage off and format my array immediately?

To anyone who bothers to take the time to help me out: thank you so much!

[Guiltyxz]

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor	$499.00 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	Corsair H100x 57.2 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$82.62 @ OutletPC
Motherboard	MSI MPG X570 GAMING EDGE WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard	$199.89 @ OutletPC
Memory	OLOy 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	$109.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$89.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 8 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive	$149.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB MECH OC Video Card	$389.99 @ Newegg
Case	NZXT H500 ATX Mid Tower Case	$89.98 @ NZXT
Power Supply	Corsair RMx (2018) 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$94.89 @ OutletPC
Monitor	LG 27UD58-B 27.0" 3840x2160 60 Hz Monitor	$279.00 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$2070.34
	Mail-in rebates	-$85.00
	Total	$1985.34
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-04 13:57 EST-0500

Should suit all your needs

Keep in mind this is obviously maxing out your budget although I think this would be best performance, its not best PTP but its best performance for your budget

[ChillFuture]

Just now, josbeph83 said:

Should suit all your needs

Thank you so much for your help! I've got 2 questions if I can bother you just a bit more:

1) Do you think this will be noticeably better than my iMac. Seems like it should since it benchmarks better?

2) What about the Vega 56 I own? Should I sell it and use the money to help finance my build or put it in with the Radeon VII? Would the case and motherboard you recommended fit 2 graphics cards?

[Guiltyxz]

12 minutes ago, ChillFuture said:

Thank you so much for your help! I've got 2 questions if I can bother you just a bit more:

1) Do you think this will be noticeably better than my iMac. Seems like it should since it benchmarks better?

2) What about the Vega 56 I own? Should I sell it and use the money to help finance my build or put it in with the Radeon VII? Would the case and motherboard you recommended fit 2 graphics cards?

The case and motherboard will fit 2 GPUs, although the Radeon VII dosent support multi GPU and neither does the Radeon 5700 XT I picked. I would sell the Vega 56 and if you want 2 GPUs, I would get 2 Vega 64s and if you dont mind only having 1 GPU then I would get the Radeon VII or Radeon 5700 XT which ever you can afford.

It will be noticeably better then your iMac, the benchmarks will defeat the iMac by tons.

[Xiee]

If Nvidia is your thing, there are X570 boards that support SLI. It's gonna be more expensive though.

[ChillFuture]

17 minutes ago, Xiee said:

If Nvidia is your thing, there are X570 boards that support SLI. It's gonna be more expensive though.

I've heard that Resolve likes multiple GPUs which is why I was asking but from what I've heard it also sounds like Resolve will be happy with 1 powerful GPU. I don't have any issue with NVIDIA if they have the best price to performance for my budget of 1,500 to 2,000, I guess I was just focused more on AMD since I already own a Vega 56.

Thanks!