What's the most important component for heavy software ?

jo86

Member
I've been trying to get a clear answer reading up online, but if anything it gets confusing. :s

'heavy software' in the title refers to all of the Photoshop, video editing, music recording/production...(not so much video games, where the graphics card counts a lot).

What's most important for the smoothest performance ? RAM's, is it the numbers of cores (and the processor)... is it clock speed...?? Would love to read specific opinions on the matter.
 

ssal

Active Member
In the past month, I came around of building my own computer for my video editing. I have learned a lot in the process. And I am still learning. But I think I know a lot more than a month ago.

First of all, what you use the computer for, and the format of your media are just as important. For example, I am editing 4K video in H.264/Mp4 codec/format (not that I have a choice because my camera doesn't give me the option). I am using Premiere Pro as my preferred tool. Even in less taxing proxy codec of Cineform, it is still very demanding.

In the ideal world, I would have the highest power CPU, like the i9-series, with a lot of cores and threads and high clock speed. That may require very efficient liquid cooler. Then I would want to have the most powerful GPU like the GTX 2080 with the tons of vRam. Then I would want to a large high speed (1tb) PCle SSD which would alleviate any congestion issue between the reading of the media, caching, scratch disk and the PPCC. Last but not least, I want to have 32gb or even 64gb of DDR4. Then a 2TB or more of HHD for storage.

But since in reality, I have to work with a constrained budget. So this built will be good enough. After all, this is my hobby, not my profession.

BTW, Photoshop isn't really a "heavy" software. A 10 year old basic machine (e.g. i5; 8K) is quite sufficient. Compared to video editing, still photo editing is pretty static.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
It really comes down to the individual software but for editing and the like, CPU and RAM will be your biggest constraints.
 

ssal

Active Member
It really comes down to the individual software but for editing and the like, CPU and RAM will be your biggest constraints.
In editing, depending on the codec of the footages, there is a lot of decoding (reading of the disk where the media is stored) in scrubbing and playback. A high speed "drive" can help a lot. The NvMe drive is about 5x faster than SATA SSD, which is about 4x faster than HHD. And the price of the NvMe drive is really affordable this day.

There are also speed variation in different makes of NvMe drives too. They can range from 1750 Mbps to 3300 Mbps.
 

jo86

Member
In the past month, I came around of building my own computer for my video editing. I have learned a lot in the process. And I am still learning. But I think I know a lot more than a month ago.

First of all, what you use the computer for, and the format of your media are just as important. For example, I am editing 4K video in H.264/Mp4 codec/format (not that I have a choice because my camera doesn't give me the option). I am using Premiere Pro as my preferred tool. Even in less taxing proxy codec of Cineform, it is still very demanding.

In the ideal world, I would have the highest power CPU, like the i9-series, with a lot of cores and threads and high clock speed. That may require very efficient liquid cooler. Then I would want to have the most powerful GPU like the GTX 2080 with the tons of vRam. Then I would want to a large high speed (1tb) PCle SSD which would alleviate any congestion issue between the reading of the media, caching, scratch disk and the PPCC. Last but not least, I want to have 32gb or even 64gb of DDR4. Then a 2TB or more of HHD for storage.

But since in reality, I have to work with a constrained budget. So this built will be good enough. After all, this is my hobby, not my profession.

BTW, Photoshop isn't really a "heavy" software. A 10 year old basic machine (e.g. i5; 8K) is quite sufficient. Compared to video editing, still photo editing is pretty static.
those bastards cost a fortune. The i9's. I just ain't ready to spend 2500€ on a computer. Wouldn't be reasonable at all. I would loooooooooooooooooove 64GB RAM oh man, but it's just not even a rational decision imo to put that kind of money into that stuff lol.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
those bastards cost a fortune. The i9's. I just ain't ready to spend 2500€ on a computer. Wouldn't be reasonable at all. I would loooooooooooooooooove 64GB RAM oh man, but it's just not even a rational decision imo to put that kind of money into that stuff lol.
I bought a $600 video card and its usage since I bought it has been like 90 percent web browsing, video streaming, and 2D games.

Worth. Computer hardware is not a place for rational monetary choices. :D
 

jo86

Member
I bought a $600 video card and its usage since I bought it has been like 90 percent web browsing, video streaming, and 2D games.

Worth. Computer hardware is not a place for rational monetary choices. :D
2D games ??...
good man. Worth.
 

ssal

Active Member
What you need is very different from what you want. What you want has everything to do with money burning holes in your pocket.

I have an acquaintance, while going thru a divorce and the soon-to-be ex-husband still paying for everything, spent $3000 on a gaming laptop, just to browse the web and check emails.

For my application, the 4K with Premiere Pro, the RAM usage never excited 9gb. So spec'ing 16gb of DDR4 seems a sensible decision.
 
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jo86

Member
What you need is very different from what you want. What you want has everything to do with money burning holes in your pocket.

I have an acquaintance, while going thru a divorce and the soon-to-be ex-husband still paying for everything, spent $3000 on a gaming laptop, just to browse the web and check emails.

For my application, the 4K with Premiere Pro, the RAM usage never excited 9gb. So spec'ing 16gb of DDR4 seems a sensible decision.
that's just pure indecency though. Pure, utter indecency. I like to think I'm putting in good money to really further my work. If my PC responds and loads up stuff faster, I'm that much more motivated and productive and inclined to go on (rather than just give up out of exasperation for a while, then pick it up 2 months later). What I WANT is one of those ridiculous laptops. Never seen one of these. I mean, 64gb of ram lol, what the heck does that even feel like. Must be magnificent.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
that's just pure indecency though. Pure, utter indecency. I like to think I'm putting in good money to really further my work. If my PC responds and loads up stuff faster, I'm that much more motivated and productive and inclined to go on (rather than just give up out of exasperation for a while, then pick it up 2 months later). What I WANT is one of those ridiculous laptops. Never seen one of these. I mean, 64gb of ram lol, what the heck does that even feel like. Must be magnificent.

I look at it more that technology is my passion (and my career). Even if I'm not cranking thru the newest AAA games or encoding with my 16 threads I've got a nice fast workstation that can handle anything I toss at it. It's a project of passion anymore and interest in the technology itself. When I got my Ryzen 1700 I spent my first month or two just playing with it, overclocking, benchmarking, seeing what it was capable of and comparing it to my older CPU. I found it legitimately fun and learned a lot about how it handles workload and overall architecture compared to other chips. My 1080 is honestly just a bit boring as it'll max anything I've played without even trying. Was a bit more fun to play and tweak with my previous weaker cards to make them run the best they could.

There is a line though and a lot of people that don't know what they're buying are especially prone to crossing it. 64GB of RAM is almost laughable on a laptop, if you're doing enough to use it then your CPU is going to bottleneck you for instance.
 

ssal

Active Member
I look at it more that technology is my passion (and my career). Even if I'm not cranking thru the newest AAA games or encoding with my 16 threads I've got a nice fast workstation that can handle anything I toss at it. It's a project of passion anymore and interest in the technology itself. When I got my Ryzen 1700 I spent my first month or two just playing with it, overclocking, benchmarking, seeing what it was capable of and comparing it to my older CPU. I found it legitimately fun and learned a lot about how it handles workload and overall architecture compared to other chips. My 1080 is honestly just a bit boring as it'll max anything I've played without even trying. Was a bit more fun to play and tweak with my previous weaker cards to make them run the best they could.

There is a line though and a lot of people that don't know what they're buying are especially prone to crossing it. 64GB of RAM is almost laughable on a laptop, if you're doing enough to use it then your CPU is going to bottleneck you for instance.
What kind of work you do that is directly related to a computer running "faster"?
 

jo86

Member
I look at it more that technology is my passion (and my career). Even if I'm not cranking thru the newest AAA games or encoding with my 16 threads I've got a nice fast workstation that can handle anything I toss at it. It's a project of passion anymore and interest in the technology itself. When I got my Ryzen 1700 I spent my first month or two just playing with it, overclocking, benchmarking, seeing what it was capable of and comparing it to my older CPU. I found it legitimately fun and learned a lot about how it handles workload and overall architecture compared to other chips. My 1080 is honestly just a bit boring as it'll max anything I've played without even trying. Was a bit more fun to play and tweak with my previous weaker cards to make them run the best they could.

There is a line though and a lot of people that don't know what they're buying are especially prone to crossing it. 64GB of RAM is almost laughable on a laptop, if you're doing enough to use it then your CPU is going to bottleneck you for instance.
you poor thing.

Yeah I mean the 64gigs of Ram thing, it's just... almost atavistic if I'm going to be a bit lyrical about it. It's basically unlimited, infinite RAM just like we'd dreamt of it during our years playing and working on computers. It must be like, all the things you've learned patiently to do methodically, in successive steps... you can just more or less open all the pages, load all the software at the same time. Perhaps it isn't a great idea on a laptop though, and a desktop would be a sturdier platform to try that.
 

ssal

Active Member
Are you talking like my employment or what I do to test it?
If your job is graphic related, or you're a scientist involving millions of calculation per second, I can understand how a super faster computer can benefit you. But if you're an average computer user like using it to browse for information or answering emails, or downloading some report or forms from the main frame, I don't see how a computer is going slow you down.

So I am just curious.
 
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