PC Tech Thread

I have no idea what I'm doing

I think this is worth taking into consideration.
And getting someone else to add SSD, add Ram, so windows install would cost almost the same as a newer laptop.

I did consider the SSD etc a couple of years ago.
I'd rather just buy something new with a warranty, no faff. Also I'm guessing the other bits like connection options, screen etc will be better on a 2021 laptop than her old one.
Thanks for all the info @aggi @acliff @spotter @hugo7 always appreciate the good advice on this forum I'd be lost without it.

I believe I actually offered to do this for @sacredhart myself in the past.
I understand the desire for warranty cover though

Finally got round to buying my pieces for my new PC last night. What I expected to be a pretty quick process (I'd already decided on general specs) degenerated into trying to work out stuff like whether a pcie4 ssd was worth it and what speed RAM I should get.

Now I just have to remember how to build a PC.

Looking forward to Alder Lake launch tomorrow. Review embargo put me off preordering, but I also want to see how DDR4 and 5 compare. Potentially tricky decision to make between more £££ now or somewhere down the line.

In my continual very slow paced quest to get a new video editing PC, can I get some advice from someone who understands all this better than me?

These alienware dell ones seem pretty good value? https://deals.dell.com/en-uk/productdetail/7dip Or am I missing something? Seems better spec than Pcspecialist or Scan offer for the money at moment. Might be willing to go for next model up which is approx £2500.

My alternative is to upgrade my current struggling system, which is a:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz 4.00 GHz
32gb ram and an AMD Radeon R9 200

But I don't have time to mess around doing anything complicated so would probably want to pay someone to do it for me if I was to upgrade. But am guessing I'd be better just selling existing PC second hand to recoup some costs? Am happy to transfer over hard drives and whatever, but don't want to do anything that risks leaving me unable to work for a while.

What do you edit on? NLEs vary as to what performs best on what - Resolve likes a beefy GPU, Premiere likes a zippy CPU. Resolve likes more CPU cores, Prem likes faster ones.

What are you trying to edit (type of file/format/length/process - are you just editing, doing graphics, heavy grades, multiple nodes/layers etc)?

What do you find is the problem?

I had a similarly specced imac to your current machine and found editing OK in Resolve assuming I used proxies, but renders were often overnight jobs depending on the length of timeline. I put this together in January:
3950x / vision b550 d / vision 3090 / 64gb 3600 corsair vengeance rgb (2x32gb) /
wd black sn850 2tb / noctua nh d15s / 4 x nf s12a / corsair 4000d airflow

I mostly edit native BRAW, R3D and ARRIRAW files. I don't convert much if ever to an edit friendly codec/wrapper whereas I had to before. Now if I receive some compressed files from a smaller camera that are h264/h265, I just churn through them. Before I was getting 10 frames a second timeline on quarter resolution playback. Do recommend. First link looks very solid for the money but depending what you edit on I'd def consider getting the 5950x rather than the 5900 for the extra cores.

Premiere + bits of After effects. Though just had to do some hi-res print stuff in Photoshop and computer was even struggling with that. Video is all social media type stuff, nothing at all high end, so my needs sound very different to yours, but I get all sorts of source material & then tend to plaster effects on it/add motion graphics, etc.
Current computer just gets very slow + some effects don't seem to work at all. It's got to the point where I just work round it and avoid things that I know will take ages , but I feel this is preventing me learning/doing new things, which can't be healthy. I recently had a project where I started doing some fairly basic After Effects 3d and by the end of it I was basically having to work blind because I couldn't preview anything.
t does seem like that Alienware might be a good bet, but I don't really understand enough about processors nowadays, so that's helpful.

If you can afford it, the 5950x is basically as good as it gets before you're into thread ripper territory, so should see you sorted for a while. I'm surprised the whole build is that cheap in honesty - I think I paid around 5k for mine in parts - I know my 3090 was around 2k alone so I guess that's where most of it went.

Alder Lake just out is faster, for similar prices. That said it eats power.

Try to find reviews for the model you want, from what remember Dell/Alienware/HP and similar manufacturers tend to have underpowered cooling solutions which might cause the system to be either insanely loud or throttle the speed of the CPU or GPU.
You will also have to check if you get the correct ram with the system and if things like the firmware actually support the hardware it comes with. I have a Lenovo desktop and the bios it came with didn't support the GPU properly so it would crash any program that put a bit of load on it after about 30min.

5950x is still faster for rendering.

That said, I'm having a 12900k as soon as all the bits are available.

The new Intel? Haven't read about it yet but presume fewer cores but faster ones? Again, varies by NLE but more cores seems to get better results than fewer faster ones on Resolve.

Thank you - the issues you suggest echo some of things in the reviews on the dell site - one of them said the standard cooling was rubbish but the liquid cooler was good. I need to do some proper research when I'm less tired. I guess if there was any major issue it would be possible to warranty it - would hope that's an advantage of buying from a big company. On the other hand that's not something I want to mess around with if it stops me working.

This is so much the opposite of bikes where i'd be wanting to build it up myself, etc. Whereas with a computer I just want something that works with a minimum of thought.

Intel have gone a bit mad and paired 8 'performance' cores with 8 'efficient' ones. The former have hyperthreading and are faster than anything else. The latter have no HT and are apparently around skylake performance.

To make the most of this the OS needs to know which cores should be doing what. Windows 10 can't do that, but 11 has a new task scheduler specifically for it.

Intel have gone a bit mad

That's one way of looking at it. For mixed office use where an "efficient" core is more than enough for most of the day, the 12th Gen hybrid probably cuts your power and AC bills enough to justify it's existence. If you want all the power all the time for demanding workstation loads, there's always Xeon

Please don’t buy Dell

For £2500 I’ll sell you my threadripper / 4 x 1080ti workstation with full custom waterloop.

I'm totally open to hearing reasons why I shouldn't... I would normally be inclined to avoid big companies, but as far as I understand with current graphics card shortages I'm likely to get better value buying from someone big.
I know this is lazy, but I just want a fast video editing PC with a minimum of disruption/fiddling... If someone can build/sell me one that's better value/more reliable/faster I'm open to it.

The 12900k is more.

That doesn't account for the relative value of the x and k.

Deliberate hyperbole, sorry.

While much has been made of the 240W the 12900k requires at full whack, I haven't seen a single mention of how little it uses at idle or when dicking about on lfgss. Strange.

Tbh, the i9 make is completely orthogonal in any case.

Built up my new PC on Friday night. Started at midnight, up and running with Windows by 2am. Definitely made easier by AWD delivering the motherboard with CPU, cooler and RAM already installed. Also the giant Fractal Design case with very easy cable routing.

Just trying to work out the case fans. I seem to have a 3 pin power connector for each fan and I connected these up and they are spinning away. I also have a 4 pin connector marked PWM which I believe is to give more control over fan speed. Do I plug this in too?

Also, any links to a good USB HDD unshucking guide? Need to get a few out from their cases and different guides seem to show different stuff.

12900k on the way. Overclockers were doing non-retail packaged for £560 which seemed like a good reason to grab one. Less than I paid for the 9900k three years ago.

Very unsure what to do about motherboard or RAM. This DDR4/5 thing is quite a dilemma.