New computer build questions.

[Diocide]

So I built what was going to be a Hackintosh almost 6 years ago now.

The whole Hackintosh thing didn’t work out, so I made the switch over to Windows 10 and the machine still works great for everyday stuff and music recording.

My issue is I’ve slowly started to do more video editing with Davinci and even the very simple projects really bog down. It functions, but It really is pushing me to make up a new machine.

My question is two fold;

Since my HDs, case and PSU are all still working fine (I bought above average stuff) would it make sense to just buy a new MOBO, CPU and RAM, and just install them into my existing setup? Are there any negatives to going that route?

What do you guys recommend for a decent mobo and CPU that’s out right now? Like I said, my demands aren’t huge. Mostly eagle CAD, Studio One, GIMP and some light davinci stuff. I only use one monitor and never play games.

Suggestions?

 

[TedEH]

What's in the current PC? The PC I use right now is from 2013 (Haswell based) and still works just fine for most things, with a couple of upgrades here and there. If you can figure out what the current bottleneck is, it'll be easier to decide if it's worth a whole new build or not. If you're still running everything off of mechanical drives - the difference there is night and day, and much cheaper than a whole new PC. If you're already maxed on out RAM for your current platform, everything on SSDs, etc., then I imagine the recommendations are going to be for Ryzen.

I normally would prefer Intel, but they're getting destroyed in everything except for games right now. I'm waiting to see how 10th gen goes, and might be building something new soon, but even with a PC so old, it's more a want than a need.

 

[Diocide]

What's in the current PC? The PC I use right now is from 2013 (Haswell based) and still works just fine for most things, with a couple of upgrades here and there. If you can figure out what the current bottleneck is, it'll be easier to decide if it's worth a whole new build or not. If you're still running everything off of mechanical drives - the difference there is night and day, and much cheaper than a whole new PC. If you're already maxed on out RAM for your current platform, everything on SSDs, etc., then I imagine the recommendations are going to be for Ryzen.

I normally would prefer Intel, but they're getting destroyed in everything except for games right now. I'm waiting to see how 10th gen goes, and might be building something new soon, but even with a PC so old, it's more a want than a need.

I have an SSD for my main drive, so that’s all set. For RAM, I’m not maxed, but I have 16gb if I remember properly.

I’ll have to get the exact specs for true processor and mobo. It’s been so long that I genuinely do not remember at all.

 

[TedEH]

Is the work you're doing also on the SSD? Something like video editing is probably going to do a lot of streaming off of the disk, so if that's on the spinning drive, that's a potential slowdown. A quick/easy way to see what's happening might just be to look at the Task Managers performance info while you see the slowdown- Is disk usage at 100%? CPU usage at 100% (total or just one one or two threads maybe)? You should be able to see some basic numbers for memory use as well. It's not a super in-depth way to troubleshoot, but should give you a vague picture anyway.

 

[Diocide]

Is the work you're doing also on the SSD? Something like video editing is probably going to do a lot of streaming off of the disk, so if that's on the spinning drive, that's a potential slowdown. A quick/easy way to see what's happening might just be to look at the Task Managers performance info while you see the slowdown- Is disk usage at 100%? CPU usage at 100% (total or just one one or two threads maybe)? You should be able to see some basic numbers for memory use as well. It's not a super in-depth way to troubleshoot, but should give you a vague picture anyway.

OS runs off the SSD and the everything is always stored on regular HDs.

 

[ferret]

OS runs off the SSD and the everything is always stored on regular HDs.

Then the single biggest upgrade you can do is to replace the regular HDs with bigger SSDs, as prices have come down drastically over the years. I upgraded this year just because I wanted to nerd out and treat myself, but the honest truth was my 2012 Sandy Bridge was doing just fine. New CPU/MB isn't going to help all the I/O you're doing on those platter drives.

Do you have a dedicated GPU? Video encoding can take advantage of them as well, if you do what Ted said and see capped out CPU.

 

[Diocide]

Then the single biggest upgrade you can do is to replace the regular HDs with bigger SSDs, as prices have come down drastically over the years. I upgraded this year just because I wanted to nerd out and treat myself, but the honest truth was my 2012 Sandy Bridge was doing just fine. New CPU/MB isn't going to help all the I/O you're doing on those platter drives.

Do you have a dedicated GPU? Video encoding can take advantage of them as well, if you do what Ted said and see capped out CPU.

I thought that video and audio tend to work better on platter drives than SSD? I remember everyone saying that saving and using the disk drives was better for some reason.
And I am using the on board GPU. Like I said, since I don’t play games I never added a separate graphics card.

 

[TedEH]

The general rule of only using SSD for your OS and keeping storage to HDD made sense for things like gaming where you weren't hitting the disk constantly while gaming, but wanted the PC to start quickly, at a time when SSDs were too expensive to use for everything. Even for games, that's not really true anymore -> some games run terribly off of HDD now, and it's going to get worse now that consoles are standardizing the use of SSD.

I ended up swapping out the disk in my laptop to an SSD because of projects taking forever to build from it. Trying to build a C++ project of almost any size on a spinning disk is a bad time. A spinning drive can definitely be your performance bottleneck.

GPUs are not specifically for gaming -> lots of general purpose workloads can use them. Video editing is definitely going to benefit from a GPU.

Sounds like your best case scenario is to grab an SSD and a used video card, and you'll save tons of money over a whole new build.

 

[Diocide]

The general rule of only using SSD for your OS and keeping storage to HDD made sense for things like gaming where you weren't hitting the disk constantly while gaming, but wanted the PC to start quickly, at a time when SSDs were too expensive to use for everything. Even for games, that's not really true anymore -> some games run terribly off of HDD now, and it's going to get worse now that consoles are standardizing the use of SSD.

I ended up swapping out the disk in my laptop to an SSD because of projects taking forever to build from it. Trying to build a C++ project of almost any size on a spinning disk is a bad time. A spinning drive can definitely be your performance bottleneck.

GPUs are not specifically for gaming -> lots of general purpose workloads can use them. Video editing is definitely going to benefit from a GPU.

Sounds like your best case scenario is to grab an SSD and a used video card, and you'll save tons of money over a whole new build.

interesting. I hadn’t really considered that. A 1tb SSD is 150$ which is more than fair. I guess I’ll check out a graphic card as well.

Would maxing our my RAM be worth it on my older system? Would that be better put towards a new build?

 

[TedEH]

I wouldn't add more RAM unless you've got a good reason to suspect you need it. If opening your project and trying to work eats up all your ram, then you could use more - otherwise more isn't going to do anything for you. I've only ever needed more than 16gb once, and it was a very unusual/unlikely scenario.

 

[Diocide]

I actually found the Newegg order with all my stuff lol.

GIGABYTE GA-Z87M-D3H 1.0 LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s 1x nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0 3-Bit MLC NAND Flash Memory (400Mbps) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 88W BX80646I54690K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600

Ballistix Sport XT 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model BLS2K8G3D169DS3

don’t know if that helps.

 

[TedEH]

I'm replying to you on a mildly overclocked 4670k + 16GB + Z87-Pro, so not far of from what you've got. But I've got everything except backups on SSD, and a gtx1080.

Honestly, if you're doing a lot of video editing, at this point I think you'll see legitimate gains from an update at this point - based on how these CPUs are limited to 4 threads on top of being a bit on the old side. That's why I mentioned Ryzen - from what I understand they've been killing it with threaded jobs.

Whether or not that difference is worth it, I can't say 'cause I've not tried it, and I've got no numbers to back it up. I've been in a similar boat of wondering if it's worth upgrading at this point, and I very might do so soon - but I'm doing it as a want moreso than a need.

 

[ferret]

My rebuild is a Ryzen 7 3700X. Not the top of the line, but the best one before you jump to the higher wattages that will require beefier cooling and heat/noise generation. It's a beast even so, capable of running 16 threads to your 4.

Getting another SSD (1TB range) you can still keep your platter drive too. Just use it more as cold storage. Pull active projects to the SSD, and if it's full or you never touch the project anymore, move it back to platter.

The best part is you can piece meal this. Get the SSD. If that solves your problem enough, you can wait on the rest.

Caveat: The best and fastest SSDs need an M.2 slot on the motherboard. If you're going for top of the line, a new motherboard may be needed.

 

[TedEH]

Honestly, even an older sata SSD is going to be a huge improvement over an HDD though, so I wouldn't stress about getting "the fastest SSD".

 

[Diocide]

Alrighty. So another 16gb of ram and a 1tb SSD will be around 250$. I guess I’ll do that for now and see what happens.

Any recommendations for an GPU to look for? Do people sell their old ones normally?

 

[TedEH]

I'd honestly save the money on the RAM and try the GPU first. Lots of people sell older cards - GPUs I think are one of the healthier markets for used parts. I'm more familiar with the NVidia side of things - if you can find a good deal on something like a 980, I'd jump on that. A used 980 is going to perform pretty close to a brand new entry level card, so that could be a benchmark for value of used vs. new maybe. I'm not sure what part of the GPU gets used by video editors, so you might need to do some research into whether or not you want to prioritize a newer cards features vs. speed vs. more VRAM.

 

[ferret]

16GB is a fair amount of memory even now. Unless you're in a rush I'd do this bit by bit. Get that SSD rolling first. Then monitor your memory usage while doing video stuff... if it's not using all of it, more won't help.