Getting a new editing computer can be a confusing process. How do you know when to upgrade? What kind of computer do you get for different kinds of editing? Do you build one or buy one? Well, I hope to answer those questions here in this article in a way that will match your specific situation.
When to Buy a New PC
I recently upgraded my computer here at the Fstoppers office. Over the last couple of years, I started to notice increasing delays in various editing tasks. When editing photos in Lightroom, especially when the files were large, there would be fractions of a second every time I moved from image to image. When editing video, I also started experiencing a lot of delays. Specfically, when working on our most recent tutorial release Photographing the World Japan with Elia Locardi, I had an immense amount of frustration with project exports failing over and over again. These combined issues added up to hours and hours over the course of my month that was literally just lost time. If you're a casual editor, a little wait doesn't really affect you're life. However, if you have a business and a large portion of time is spent editing, you're literally losing money from any time lost to computer lag. If that's you, it's time for an upgrade.
Should You Buy or Build?
Over the years, Lee has chosen to build a lot of our computers at the Fstoppers office, assuming it's the cheaper and better way to go. Building a computer actually isn't that difficult a process, and if you want to learn more, you can check out these videos.
As a test, when I was browsing around for a new computer, I did a price match between this $3,000 computer from VRLA tech, which lists all the main components that go into the build, and all those parts purchased separately. The price of buying all the parts separately was cheaper, but only by $189, assuming no shipping costs were included.
Is $189 worth it? That's up to you. I chose not to for the following reasons. Between finding all the right parts, making sure they're all compatible, spending the time to learn how to build the computer correctly, and then actually building it, that's a lot of time invested. Not only that, but if anything goes wrong or if a part fails while building the computer myself, that cost falls on me. It is far more valuable to me to have a professional team like VRLA Tech ensure their build quality, shipping, and have a one-year warranty on on their computers. To me, having all that is worth way more than $189.
How to Choose a New Editing Computer
Whether you buy or build, what kind of computer do you get? Since everyone's editing workload is different and some people focus on photos while others shoot video, there's no one excellent value computer that's a good fit for everyone. If you only edit pictures occasionally, you'll be wasting money if you buy a beast of a machine, but if editing is part of your livelihood and you skimp out on a machine, you're costing yourself money with wait time. So, let's talk about the base computer parts that will need to go into any build, and then, I'll make some specific computer recommendations that will likely match your needs.
CPU
There are four main computer components that will affect your editing speed. Let's talk about the first, your CPU. Your CPU is basically the brain of your computer and determines how fast it can think through any task. To be honest, almost any new computer these days has a CPU built in that has plenty of power to run Lightroom, Photoshop, or Premiere, but some do handle Adobe products better than others. If you're an occasional photo editor in Lightroom or Photoshop, AMD CPUs tend to be a little more cost effective and can typically handle those programs fine. But, if you start ramping up your photo editing or start editing video in Premiere, Intel CPUs tend to handle those programs a little better, so you might want to consider spending a little more on one.
RAM
The next PC part you'll want to pay attention to is how much RAM you have. RAM is basically the short-term memory of a computer and plays into editing when you start adding lots of edits, layers, or effects on top of each other. The more you add, the more memory is used. You'll want at least 16 GB for basic photo editing and 32 GB for anything more. If you get 64 GB, you should be set for a while.
GPU
The next big component we'll discuss is the GPU, or graphics card. A GPU is kind of like a single core of a CPU but focuses a lot of energy on a single task. It's responsible for almost anything visual happening on your computer, so it's especially important to have a decent graphics card for rendering video edits. If you're a basic video editor, you're probably going to want at least a NVIDIA 3060 Ti or something equivalent. If you're a hardcore video editor or use After Effects 3D programs, it would probably benefit you to have something in the NVIDIA 4000 series or something equivalent. If you just edit photos, you really don't need a fancy graphics card but you probably shouldn't completely overlook it in a computer. Some of the most recent updates to Lightroom and Photoshop have included options for GPU accelerated tasks, which might make a difference to heavy photo editors.
Storage
The final component to discuss is the most common but can be the biggest snag to editors, and that is your storage device. Whatever you do, don't get a hard drive. Hard drives, or hard disk drives, are the old school way of doing things and have a physically spinning component that's used to access files, which severely limits how fast it is. Hard drives are still a good, cost-effective solution for storing files off your computer as a backup, but if you're going to be working on files from your computer, it will be the hold up point in your workflow. It doesn't matter how good your other components are, if you're accessing your files slowly, that'll be as fast as you can work. Instead, make sure you have a solid state drive, or SSD. I've found at least 1 TB built into my computer is a good sweet spot, but that could change depending on how much you have going on your computer at once.
What Specific Computer Is Good for You?
I'm guessing the vast majority of people reading this article will fall into one of three profiles, and for each profile, I have a specific PC recommendation. I'll be referencing prebuilt machines from VRLA Tech, which I've had an excellent experience with, but if you follow the general spec guidelines, you'll be able to find a similar machine in other places as well. The main benefit I found from using VRLA tech is the ease they offer in customizing a machine, their customer service, and their one-year warranty on everything they build. Although many of their PCs are labeled as “gaming PCs,” they'll also work great for an editing workflow as well.
The Casual Editor
The first profile I'll talk about is the casual amateur photographer. You shoot for fun and run through a few edits per week using a basic editing program like Lightroom and maybe some Photoshop here and there. If you don't plan on ramping up your workload, you do not need a high-end computer. The Spark Gaming PC would be a good fit for you and you don't need much modification to what's available on VRLA Tech's website. The AMD Ryzen 5000 series works well for running Lightroom and Photoshop. 16 GB is enough RAM for basic photo edits. Depending on how much storage you need, you may want to add in an extra HDD, though make sure the primary drive you work off of is an SSD, which can also be upgraded in size. The graphics card for this computer is built into the motherboard. This PC is only $650, but you probably don't need to be spending more than that unless you plan to ramp up your editing workload.
The Serious Amateur
The next profile of person probably is running a small business or takes photography or video a lot more seriously. You're spending more than a few hours a week editing in Lightroom or Photoshop. You're probably going to want a computer like the Titan Gaming PC. Since Adobe products tend to perform slightly better on Intel CPUs, I would personally modify the CPU to the Intel Core i5. The base model comes with an NVIDIA GeForce 4070 graphics card, but unless you plan on doing a lot of serious video editing, you can probably downgrade that option to the 3070 graphics card. If you just plan on editing photos, you can stick with the 16 GB of built-in RAM, but it only costs a little more for 32 GB and is probably worth the upgrade. You'll definitely want at least 32 GB if you plan to edit basic video. The built-in 1 TB SSD should be a good fit for anyone who fits this profile.
The Heavy Editor
The final profile is the heavy editor. Editing is a significant portion of your business workflow and you're probably spending over 15 hours a week editing either photos or video. Any time wasted due to computer lag time quickly adds up and is costing you money. When you're in a heavy editing situation, I highly suggest keeping things as fast and efficient as possible and getting a really solid machine.
I went with the Helios Gaming PC, but you should also consider the AMD Ryzen Workstation, as they have pretty similar specs, except for the graphics card, which can be customized. Similar to the previous editing profile, you could downgrade your graphics card if you just plan to edit photos, but I'd keep the preselected GeForce 4080 for any serious video editor. You may also want to upgrade to 64 GB of RAM for 4K video editing as well.
If you go with the AMD Ryzen Workstation, I'd recommend upgrading the graphics card to at least an NVIDIA GeForce 3070 or go with the NVIDIA GeForce 4080 for serious video editing.
Conclusion
No matter what type of editor you are, there's an optimal machine for you. If you stick to the above guidelines based on how much and what type of editing you do, you wont spend to much on a computer you won't use and also won't suffer too much with time lost to computer delays.
Generally I suggest staying away from Intel, especially if you are thinking of an AMD system as with you will be upgrade to a Zen 5 without going the whole hog, and next gen Intel is shaping up to be a mediocre to poor performance given early leaks. For AMD the Zen 5 will be a straight drop-in replacement. Not sure with Intel given their past history.
There is also issues with Intel's P-core strategy given the recent problems on Windows scheduling, this also affects AMD's X3D cache chips to a lesser degree.
As to performance, programs like Premiere and DaVinci are more optimised for GPGPU tasks and you will not see much different with CPUs as most CPUs on the market today is more than powerful for most day-to-day tasks. As to GPUs I'll give you nVidia with CUDA but realistically AMD is a better choice with their RDNA3 chips as you usually get more VRAM and AV1 encode/decode just like nVidia latest 4000 series (which are horrifically overpriced for the specs a, AMD will gain more performance benefits as developers start to take advantage of Windows ROCm/HIPS libraries that dropped in May. AMD is also gouging in this market but generally considered better value for money. Arguably the only nVidia card that is actually worth it's cost is the 4090.
For reference I use a Rzyen 7900X and either a P4000 or a Radeon 7900XT for my work, and it is more than performant enough to rip through images and 4k video. If you do tutorials with recording your desktop AMD's tools blows nVidia's out of the water with both ease of use, and configurability.
If you edit videos intel K series CPU and nvidia is way better. You can take advantage of intel iGPU hardware encoders and decoders. iGPU can work together with nvidia card.
Also I don't know what you use for recording your screen but OBS Studio was the golden standard for years.