Building a video editing PC usually means sourcing a lot of powerful components – just like the kind you might want for gaming. Gaming = lots of RGB. Flashy PCs are sometimes fun and nice, but for video editing where you might do something that comes across as a little more professional while you do actual work for clients, it may turn you away from a ton of options.
Enter Gerald Undone with his own RGB-free PC build for video editing. Everyone likes matte black electronics and you should have the option of ignoring RGB when you want to build a computer. Let’s find out what pieces he was able to find and put together.
Among the things you might not think about is how electronics sometimes have weird hiccups. Gerald points out one of these things is a ground loop which can cause feedback that you can actually hear as you work. Using audio interfaces is a common thing for video production, so for clean audio, you should consider something like the iFi AUDIO Defender+ Ground Loop Breaker.
With that tidbit out of the way, it’s time for the main build. You have to start with a case. Gerald chose the Phanteks Eclipse P600S. It’s a clean-looking case. Plus, it has options on configuration between maximizing airflow or adding sound dampening. Depending on your studio or sensitivity to noise you might prefer a quieter box.
Image Credit: Phanteks
The case works well with the chosen all-in-one water cooler – the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 280. It’s easy to install and even makes it easy to find the tutorial videos to make sure you are installed properly. Orientation and positioning is important for water cooling to be most effective.
Another simple part of the build is the power supply. Not much to talk about here, you just want something reliable and with enough power. In this case it is the EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G5.
Internal storage usually asks for something nice and fast. Today that means going with an NVMe SSD. Here it is a Gigabyte AORUS PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. This boasts impressive speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s read. That’s plenty for today.
Image Credit: Gygabite
RAM is next, and for this, the recommendation is to go with 64GB. The Crucial Ballistix kit comes with two 32GB sticks rated at 3600 MHz. You can add more later too.
As for CPU, Gerald upgraded to an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X which is a powerful 12-core processor.
A lot of the power is coming from the graphics cards. This can be tough to find today, but if you can and want outstanding power the GeForce RTX 3090 is the one to get. Gigabyte has a GAMING OC 24G model which is nice and performs well. There are slight differences between the different models, but all should probably do just fine with only minor changes to performance.
Image Credit: Gygabite
One benefit of a custom build with NVIDIA GPUs is that NVENC encoding works incredibly well with DaVinci Resolve. Gerald talks about shaving off minutes from his export time as he has moved to the most recent graphics cards. That’s a serious gain. Recommend export settings for this configuration are the following:
- Format: QuickTime
- Codec: H.264
- Encoder: NVIDIA
- Quality: Automatic (Best)
- Rate Control: Constant QP
- Constant QP I: 19
- Constant QP P: 22
- Constant QP B: 25
- Lookahead: 16 frames
- AQ Strength: 8
If you are looking to maximize performance for the whole system then you can explore overclocking with the CPU, which does have good results.
Image Credit: Gigabyte
Finally, the last component is an important one – the motherboard. Gerald went with the Gigabyte X570S AORUS MASTER. There is a non-“S” version that had some active cooling that was actually noticeably and annoyingly loud. In some cases there might not be any noticeable noises, but if it matters and you can go with a passive cooling setup you can pick up the “S” version.
Things are a lot easier today than they have been if you are not experienced with building a computer. It really is something that you can do yourself by just following some basic instructions.
[source: Gerald Undone]
Order Links:
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 3.7GHz 12-Core AM4 Processor (B&H, Amazon)
- Gigabyte X570S AORUS MASTER AM4 ATX Motherboard (B&H, Amazon)
- Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC 24G Graphics Card (B&H, Amazon)
- Gigabyte AORUS 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD (Amazon)
- Crucial 64GB Ballistix DDR4 3600MHz Memory Kit (B&H, Amazon)
- Phanteks Eclipse P600S ATX Case (Amazon)
- EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G5 1000W Modular Power Supply (Amazon)
- ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 280 AIO Water Cooler (Amazon)
- iFi AUDIO Defender+ USB Type-A Ground Loop Breaker (B&H, Amazon)
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate partner and participant in B&H and Adorama Affiliate programmes, we earn a small comission from each purchase made through the affiliate links listed above at no additional cost to you.
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