Posts by wanderingbison9

Timothy Kim60 said:I don't think an RX 580 8GB has ever sold for less than $150 when buying new, so this looks like a fantastic deal for $333. Of course, the retailers will probably just settle things amongst themselves behind closed doors. Both units 😁

If anyone happens to stumble upon this chance, wouldn't it be wise to ask about the warranty? It might be a bit slim, similar to how those "bulk" GTX 1060 cards used to come with only a six-month guarantee)

Man, my mouth is watering just thinking about it—running DaVinci Resolve with two RX 580s would give you performance close to a GTX 1080Ti for $833 total... though I'd have to swap out my power supply too, and who knows if I'll end up tripping a circuit breaker 😁

It would actually be pretty helpful to know exactly which EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 we're dealing with here... and honestly, have you thought about whether it might just need a good cleaning, maybe some compressed air through the fans and the heatsink?

Timothy Kim60 said:Dell UltraSharp Monitor - $215, though we'd still have to factor in our local sales tax and some shipping costs

Even with shipping included, it ends up being more expensive than what we can find right here at home...

Is there an extra fan mounted at the back? I'm wondering if hot air is just getting trapped where it exits the power supply unit—right by the power cord input and the switch—or if maybe the PSU itself is underpowered and overheating, or perhaps it's just choked with dust and needs a good blast of compressed air (or maybe it's a combination of all those things 😬).

Also, you should probably check what the CPU usage looks like while you're playing something, though honestly, this whole situation feels pretty bizarre; audio playback really shouldn't be putting that much strain on your system...

Timothy Kim60 said:I’ve been spending some time lately looking over the specs for the ASUS Radeon Strix RX 56, and I can't help but wonder if we are truly seeing the peak of what this architecture can offer? It’s one of those cards that always sparks a bit of a conversation when you see it pop up in a build, isn't it? - $708 What would the final price look like for shipping to the States using standard delivery?

I really hope you don't end up stuck with that standard Amazon shipping service that constantly drops packages off at Eurodis; once those parts are out of your hands, who knows whose computer they actually end up inside? Honestly, I wouldn't recommend going that route if I were you.

So, I see you're looking into picking up an internal bare HDD. If you're leaning toward a Toshiba, you really can't go wrong there; they've always been pretty reliable drives in my book.

Seagate Backup Plus Hub 😉

I’ve got this Gigabyte GT1030 in my setup, and I noticed the top of the cooler sits maybe a millimeter away from the slot right beneath it; I haven't actually tested it out yet, but I do wonder if it might brush against another card if I were to plug one in there. That being said, it performs beautifully for HT—handling 4K HDR without breaking a sweat—and it comes factory overclocked to 1750 MHz by default. It’s honestly one of those rare Nvidia cards that I’ve grown quite fond of.

George Collins37 said:So, it really comes down to choosing between the GTX 1060 or the GTX 1070, right?

Isn't it pretty straightforward, though, if the GTX 1070 ends up being priced the same as or even lower than the GTX 1060...

Adam Moore3 said:$1600 is pretty much the standard price point, and honestly, I don't think there's much reason to go higher unless you're planning to move past 1080p resolution, especially since that would be a massive jump in cost compared to what you'd pay for a GTX 1060 or even a 4GB GTX 1070.
In about 90% of scenarios, you aren't going to notice any meaningful difference between the 4GB and 8GB models when you're sticking to 1080p.

Well, fair enough; I just realized that some GTX 1070 4GB cards are actually selling for less than that $400 :eek...no brainer

It might be worth grabbing the version with 8 GB of RAM; the difference isn't massive, but you can sometimes find a GTX 1070 with 8 GB for around $517 bucks if you know where to look... it really pays to keep an eye out on those marketplaces...

Peter Green said:What's the deal here? Why does the price look $333 lower than what I'm seeing at other retailers, especially since there isn't any mention of it being used? 😁

https://www.bestbuy.com/graphics-cards/m_medium=click

Actually, the price seems pretty much in line with the rest of the market:

https://www.google.com/shopping?q=GeForce+RTX+2070

Honestly, picking up a 2070 just doesn't make much sense when you look at the value of the 2060 Super; wouldn't it be a smarter move to $167 take those extra savings and put them toward an X470 motherboard with solid VRMs instead?

And really, why on earth would anyone need a 750W unit? It feels like overkill to suggest that kind of wattage for a single high-end CPU, unless you were planning on running two graphics cards simultaneously...

It’s honestly such a headache trying to wrap your head around all these technical trade-offs... sure, you could technically scale up the UI elements, but then Premiere wouldn't feel right because scaling everything up would make the video itself look huge and blurry, which is just a mess... though, I suppose if I were working on a massive 40" 4K screen, I might actually have some breathing room there...

In that case, my plan would be to set up a smaller ultrawide Samsung as my primary workstation monitor for color accuracy, while using the Samsung for a pixel-perfect 4K preview; after all, with the current discounts, it ends up costing about the same as that other monitor I mentioned earlier...

frozencrane10 said:He’s asking if this monitor would be a good fit since there's a $167 discount on it right now.

It's fine if you just want to play games in 4K, but honestly, don't touch it if you're doing any photo editing...

Even if we decide to follow Saguar's advice and stick to a really tight budget, does it even make sense to grab this monitor? An RX 580 usually can't handle pushing 4K at 60 Hz during gameplay, and when it comes to color accuracy and contrast, it's just a complete miss...

The only logical move would be to pick up a separate IPS FHD monitor for reliable color grading for maybe $533 plus this Samsung for working with and previewing UHD resolution from Premiere, and then we'd just have to keep bumping up the budget, which means upgrading the graphics card too.

Let's all chip in and lend this guy a hand. For those of you who actually know the market, have access to the best deals, or just have a knack for crunching numbers on the fly, why don't you throw out some concrete pricing?

Ryzen 3700X
A cooler that won't sound like a jet engine under load
An X470 motherboard with solid VRMs for around $400—maybe the Asus Prime X470 Pro? (though I think the cheapest X570 would run about $567, right?)
32 GB of RAM at 3200MHz or faster
RTX 2070 Super
A 500 GB NVMe M.2 SSD (for that sweet spot of price versus speed)
Another 256 or 500 GB SSD
A quiet power supply, up to 650W
A case with three front fans and at least one in the back
A mouse and a backlit keyboard😬

The LG 34WK650-W monitor (factory calibrated)—roughly $833
Some headphones (like the Samson SR850) or speakers

So, let's see what kind of total we end up with... I did a rough mental calculation and landed somewhere around $4833

Timothy Kim60 said:Regarding the GPU, perhaps the smartest move would be opting for an RTX 2060 Super—specifically those models equipped with 8GB of VRAM? I just can't be entirely certain how much GPU power he actually requires given his specific workload.

Since we don't actually know what his workload looks like—we haven't seen any input or output details yet—there isn't much to go on. But maybe that's exactly why I’d agree with your logic regarding the Ryzen chips? After all, there is a free plugin available that utilizes GPU-based H.264/H.265 encoding via ffmpeg for both Nvidia and AMD hardware.

A GPU is always going to help when you're dealing with effects, scaling, motion graphics, or color grading, as the GPU handles those tasks unless you intentionally set the Mercury Playback Engine to "Software Only."

wiredotter14 said:Wouldn't a standard RTX 2060 be enough for rendering, or is there actually a massive gap when compared to the 2070?

Not really, since 6GB of VRAM is right on the edge when you're working with Ultra High Definition, so you'll likely hit a performance wall sooner rather than later. That said, the actual difference isn't huge; you'd really only see a significant drop if you stepped down to a 1660 Ti...

Take the Radeon VII, for instance, which performs about as well as—or maybe even faster than—an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti inside DaVinci Resolve, yet somehow ends up being slower when you switch over to Adobe Premiere.

crimsonstag84 said:AMD has the edge when it comes to IPC, and honestly, an RTX 2070 is probably one of the worst GPU choices you could make right now 🕺 whereas having QuickSync can be a massive advantage if you find yourself using it frequently.

Since this Computer isn't being built for gaming but specifically for video work, we really have to look at things through a different lens, don't we? I actually included a link earlier showing how these parts handle real-world performance within Adobe Premiere...

One thing to keep in mind is that QuickSync can drastically speed up your encoding to the final codec; while you might not need that every five minutes, isn't it crucial when you're looking for those smooth, fast previews during the edit?

The same logic applies to the GPU. You might hear people claim that a 2080ti is significantly faster than an RTX 2070, but when you're working inside Adobe Premiere, does that difference actually manifest? Not really! And when you look at the prices, it's even more obvious. Though, my mistake—I was looking at the specs slightly wrong—an RTX 2070 $1333 might be okay, but it would honestly be much smarter to aim for an RTX 2060 Super or perhaps a 2070 Super if the budget allows.

Of course, before making any big moves, shouldn't we first clarify whether the cost of the Computer and the Adobe Premiere Pro subscription are already factored into the total budget? ☕

Timothy Kim60 said:Given that budget and what you're actually doing with the software, you should definitely aim for the Ryzen 7 3700X. My only hesitation is figuring out how much we should sink into the GPU...

An NVMe SSD for the OS, plus a 500GB SATA SSD might work, but I wonder if there's a better way?

If I were in your shoes, I’d probably grab an NVMe SSD to act as your primary workspace for things like render cache, while leaving a standard SSD for Windows, your software, and everything else—loading times will still be plenty fast enough for daily tasks, don't you think?

It really is tricky trying to hunt down specific parts these days because everyone is running such different software suites...

For instance, when looking at Adobe Premiere, Intel often holds the edge because they can leverage QuickSync for H. 264 and H. 265 encoding, and honestly, isn't higher IPC usually more critical than just having a massive number of cores? It’s a delicate balancing act you have to perform.

You really ought to dig into this resource:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/ar...X-series-1535/

Once you look through that, you can see which Intel chip sits close to the Ryzen 7 3700X in terms of both price and actual performance in Adobe Premiere; for example, it turns out an i7-9700 is roughly equivalent to $933.

When it comes to the graphics card, Nvidia tends to play nicer with Adobe Premiere, so the RTX 2070 is likely your best bet for finding that sweet spot between cost and capability. Is it worth going for something like a $333 that costs significantly more without providing a massive leap in speed?

That high-end option would run about $2100... whereas you could find a motherboard for around $333, then pair it with a case that has solid airflow—maybe something with three front fans—and a power supply that stays as quiet as possible.

As for the monitor, it all depends on your workflow—would you prefer one single ultra-wide setup or perhaps two 16:9 screens? Either way, make sure you go with an IPS panel with decent calibration. It’s probably worth comparing professional reviews against what’s currently available in local US retailers; typically, LG models tend to be quite reliable for this kind of work...

Maybe someone here could try putting together a mock build using some specific products to see how it shakes out?