Can I heavy upgrade my 2017 video workstation around its 1151 socket, or should I rebuy anew the whole thing ?

[Elyss]

Budget (including currency): 1000$ / 1000€

Country: France

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Premiere Pro, After Effects, Indesign, Photoshop, Da Vinci Resolve, Illustrator...

 

Hello,

I work as a graphist and video editor. Back in 2017, my company gave me a limited budget to build my workstation and I could put together the following configuration :

- intel i5-7400 CPU @ 3Ghz

- GTX 1050 Ti GPU with 4Go video RAM

- 8Go DDR4 RAM @ 2400Mhz (2 x 4Go) Ballistix Sport (PC4-19200) CL16

- MSI B250M BAZOOKA Socket 1151 - Chipset B250 Kabylake motherboard

(The PSU is an unreliable piece of crap relic, doomed to be changed urgently whatever else I do. But I never know how much power to get, so any recommandation would be very welcome.)

 

It was fine for years, but now, rendering complex videos takes me literal hours with very limited real-time rendering possibilities to work whenever I throw in some effects layers and After Effets compositions. I cannot even have Premiere Pro an After Effect opened at the same time. The task manager performance tab kinda confirms everything is a bottleneck at this point, not one thing isn't maxxed out when I render.

 

My boss agrees to an upgrade or a complete overhaul, I suspect the budget won't go over 1000 $ but I don't know which way to go about it.

- Would you upgrade some of the components or change it all ? I feel 1151 socket will make me pay overpriced last-gen PCU if I upgrade, but a new MB isn't cheap either. Also, I don't know if the RAM is crap now or I can just complete it with another 8Go kit. As for the GPU, is there good options these days for video editing that would make my life easier ?

 

Or should I go the Shadow route ? I hear good things about their virtualized machines, would that be a good auto-upgraded solution ?

 

Thank you very much for any input or help !

[Robchil]

on that mainboard max cpu is i7 7700k,. your ram is already max speed and size. to generaly get better you'll need to swap everything inside. 

 

i'm sure you'll find better setups for 1000$ today than back then even with funky prices atm. 

 

If you want to reuse anything it would be disks and case.. since you say your PSU is crap too. 

 

shadow.. well it realy depend on what you want to do if you work localy or you could work on a cloud pc. 

the big difference will be direct response time, i've worked on a lot of virtual servers, on local infrastructure (vmware and hyperv) and azure cloud. 

 

It will never be a local pc, but you can change your computer specs faster to your needs in the cloud. 

 

good news is you can use your pc to connect to shadow pc.. all storage will be in the cloud... or should for faster access, 

since most you use are adobe applications anyway, look into creative cloud too. 

 

[Eigenvektor]

You could increment the amount of memory you have to 16 or even 32 GB and also get a faster GPU (which should be the primary component needed for rendering). If you want to switch to a faster CPU, it's likely not really worthwhile (i.e. perf/$ wise), so you'd need a new motherboard as well.

 

22 minutes ago, Elyss said:

Or should I go the Shadow route ? I hear good things about their virtualized machines, would that be a good auto-upgraded solution?

The really depends on whether processing your stuff in the cloud is acceptable for the company you work for. You would be moving proprietary data to some other company's storage, after all. It would also likely require a very fast internet connection, depending on how large the files are you're working with.

[Robchil]

ah forget creative cloud.. i thought it was a virtual app.. and it's not. atleast directly. 

 

 

[AndreiArgeanu]

You will need a new motherboard if you were to upgrade this system since even the best CPU you can get for the motherboard you have won't be that much better than what you already have.

 

Currently a pretty good deal is a Ryzen 5 5600 paired with a decent b450/b550 motherboard which should set you back about 250$.

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://fr.pcpartpicker.com/list/yFMbQ6

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor  (€157.19 @ Amazon France)
Motherboard: ASRock B450 Steel Legend ATX AM4 Motherboard  (€104.90 @ Amazon France)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (€68.88 @ Alternate)
Video Card: Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 6700 10 GB Video Card  (€375.94 @ TopAchat)
Power Supply: Corsair TX650M 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  (€82.90 @ Amazon France)
Total: €789.81
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-12-23 12:00 CET+0100

 

 

Something like this would be a pretty good upgrade over what you currently have and fits under the budget. This assumes you will reuse the storage and case that you already have, although you could fit that in this budget if you wanted to get new one. You can also save money if you want to buying a used GPU like an RX5700XT or RTX2070/Super card.

 

Edit: Added french pricing instead of US and realised that GPU pricing in france is still F'ed up from the shortages so you'll save even more money going used.

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Best cpu you can get is a 9900k via bios mod and padmod (connect sktocc to vss with copper tape or similar), still not very good and a 5600 will problably trounce it in performance

 

 

Yea basically everything needs to be upgraded, 9900(k) is usually not worth it unless you get one <150$

 

Why new boards when used boards exist? Ive heard europe may have a crappy used market but maybe you can snag a decent used b450 (ex pro4, a pro, aorus elite, etc.) for like 80€ and get a 5700x

 

For a psu reccomendation look for basically any decent 750/850w gold unit, look for cheaper ones dont get ripped off and get an overpriced one (looking at you rmx), if you arent familiar with a psu then look for reviews on it, the only qualities that you definitely want to avoid are unreliable, explosive and bad at transient loads, anything else is just a minor nitpick that wont noticably affect anything

[Elyss]

18 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

You will need a new motherboard if you were to upgrade this system since even the best CPU you can get for the motherboard you have won't be that much better than what you already have.

 

Currently a pretty good deal is a Ryzen 5 5600 paired with a decent b450/b550 motherboard which should set you back about 250$.

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://fr.pcpartpicker.com/list/yFMbQ6

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor  (€157.19 @ Amazon France)
Motherboard: ASRock B450 Steel Legend ATX AM4 Motherboard  (€104.90 @ Amazon France)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (€68.88 @ Alternate)
Video Card: Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 6700 10 GB Video Card  (€375.94 @ TopAchat)
Power Supply: Corsair TX650M 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  (€82.90 @ Amazon France)
Total: €789.81
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-12-23 12:00 CET+0100

 

 

Something like this would be a pretty good upgrade over what you currently have and fits under the budget. This assumes you will reuse the storage and case that you already have, although you could fit that in this budget if you wanted to get new one. You can also save money if you want to buying a used GPU like an RX5700XT or RTX2070/Super card.

 

Edit: Added french pricing instead of US and realised that GPU pricing in france is still F'ed up from the shortages so you'll save even more money going used.

 

Wow, thanks ! IT's really nice of you to have put together the whole build reco for me ! And it sounds like a power/budget balance I could get away with, thank you so much, it's a very good strating point, I'm gonna try and build something along this.

Yeah GPU are still crazy expensive here, but I might grab a second hand 70 class at a reasonable price, you're right, I might try that. Thank you again !

[Elyss]

1 minute ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Best cpu you can get is a 9900k via bios mod and padmod (connect sktocc to vss with copper tape or similar), still not very good and a 5600 will problably trounce it in performance

 

 

Yea basically everything needs to be upgraded, 9900(k) is usually not worth it unless you get one <150$

 

Why new boards when used boards exist? Ive heard europe may have a crappy used market but maybe you can snag a decent used b450 (ex pro4, a pro, aorus elite, etc.) for like 80€ and get a 5700x

 

For a psu reccomendation look for basically any decent 750/850w gold unit, look for cheaper ones dont get ripped off and get an overpriced one (looking at you rmx), if you arent familiar with a psu then look for reviews on it, the only qualities that you definitely want to avoid are unreliable, explosive and bad at transient loads, anything else is just a minor nitpick that wont noticably affect anything

Thank you ! Especially about the power, I didn't know what to aim for... and yeah, you're right, I may be better served to look at second hand components, I dind't think of it but that might give me some room to up the perfs within budget !

[Elyss]

53 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

You could increment the amount of memory you have to 16 or even 32 GB and also get a faster GPU (which should be the primary component needed for rendering). If you want to switch to a faster CPU, it's likely not really worthwhile (i.e. perf/$ wise), so you'd need a new motherboard as well.

 

The really depends on whether processing your stuff in the cloud is acceptable for the company you work for. You would be moving proprietary data to some other company's storage, after all. It would also likely require a very fast internet connection, depending on how large the files are you're working with.

Yeah, I looked at Shadow perfs and it's still quite overpriced for 10Gb of RAM, a 1080 and overall not that powerfull hardware. And you make a very good point about moving proprietary datas to offsite facilities, my boss won't like that...

[Elyss]

50 minutes ago, Robchil said:

ah forget creative cloud.. i thought it was a virtual app.. and it's not. atleast directly. 

 

 

Yeah, unfortunately it's only cloud in the name =p otherwise I would have tried that because that's indeed pretty much all I need power for...