How to Create the Best PC Build for Editing?

Editing videos and images is an intensive task, and you need good-quality PCs to manage it.

However, when you build such a PC that can support it, you have to look at the components mainly.

These determine how the PC would function, and you can adequately edit files without lagging the system.

Some of the main points you have to look into are the RAM, CPU, etc.

It would help if you made sure to select one that would configure well with the software. In terms of building an excellent editing-friendly PC, the following are what you have to focus on the most.

Motherboards

Without a doubt, the motherboard of a computer is the most important part to focus on.

Mainly because without it, none of the features mentioned earlier would work well.

You can change the other components, but the motherboards can only work with specific models. To emphasize, if you buy a motherboard with an AMD CPU socket, you cannot use an Intel processor with it.

These are not cheap but affordable. When you build a PC for editing, you would have to consider what kind of upgrades you want later.

You should not buy mediocre motherboards even if you’re going to save money. This is because it would limit the type of upgrades you can make.

For the best experience, chose a motherboard that has M.2 NVMe SSD. It can support NVMe PCIe 3.0 drives.

Motherboard sizes

There are three sizes you can choose between; Micro-ITX, Mini-ATX, or ATX. There are other options, but these are the best options. Some points regarding these are:

Micro-ITX- These are small motherboards, but there are not many sockets. However, a more pricey Micro-ITX motherboard can customize the limited space better.
ATX- These are the larger motherboards and hold many features for the consumers. However, you would need a more significant case for this.

Choosing the right kind of motherboard is essential, depending on how many features you need for editing. Smaller ones are lesser priced but do contain the essential connections.

Before choosing the CPU, you’ll have to choose the cabinet aka the ATX case. There are ton of options for smallest compact ATX cases in the market like the Cooler Master, Thermaltake and Corsair to choose from.

Power supply

The Power Supply Unit or the PSU would provide life to the computer, so that is crucial. If you are buying a used PSU for building the PC, you need to make sure that it is not an off-brand product. This can harm the entire system when you create it, so you should buy a pricey PSU. They are capable, and they manage to perform their prescribed duty.

There are three types you can select between; modular, semi-modular, or non-modular PSU.

Modular PSUs do not come with attached cables, and you can customize better with it. The only con is that these are costly.
The semi-modular PSU has cables that you cannot remove. However, you still enjoy some free movement. These are not too expensive.
It is best to avoid non-modular PSUs as they would not give you satisfactory performance.

Overall, you would have the best outcome with a modular PSU, so give it some serious thought.

Graphics Card

Indeed, how much you need a graphics card depends on what you would do on your PC. Despite its name and the primary function, this is a more necessary gaming component than video editing. So, you can make do with a cheaper option.

Yet, if you are working with DaVinci Resolve, you should buy a more powerful card. After all, it runs entirely on the GPU system.

Most software for editing does not require a graphics card. Yet, there is some modern software for video editing that can use the help of graphics cards. They use this hardware for rendering and encoding; thus, you should buy a medium-powered graphics card. It would give your skills some good support.

You can try some notable examples are AMD’s Open CL, DaVinci Resolve, and Adobe Premiere Pro. The last two work with both NVIDIA and AMD. However, Adobe works better with NVIDIA.

Storage

Programs like Photoshop use the SSD (Solid State Drives) as scratch disks. Thus, it is crucial to consider this for more than storing applications and OS. Overall though, you can use the RAID configuration too, so you should check which you prefer.

You can utilize the medium-priced SSD alongside a disk drive for storing the OS as well as applications. The latter is okay for storing photos and videos, so this combination is essential to add to the build.

There are two different requirements for RAM (memory) in the question of video and photo editing.

Video editing– Inexperienced video editors can work with 16GB RAM for editing HD quality videos. In contrast, professionals should use 32GB RAM and then upgrade if more is necessary. For overclocking, you need to focus on the motherboard and choose one that would work with higher speed and RAM. If you have sets of 16GB RAM, DDR4 will work well enough for you.
Photo editing– It is not necessary to use over 32GB of RAM power here. In case you are editing photos one at a time, you can even work well with a simple 8GB RAM. On the other hand, you would need a minimum of 16GB RAM for editing multiple photos simultaneously.

Coming to the central processing unit or the CPU is possibly the most important thing you should consider. It helps make the system more powerful, and video editing software does need good options highly. There are two options you can choose for the processing chipset- AMD and Intel.

Intel- Most professional video editors choose this as it works well with reliable products. And it operates single-core workloads well. Yet, these chips work best with higher-priced CPUs, and itself is very costly too.
AMD- This operates well with lesser-priced CPUs and has useful features. It is affordable as well, especially for the AMD Ryzen CPUs. These are also unlocked, which allows it to overclock easily, ensuring a faster CPU speed. Few of the AMD Ryzen chipsets are overclocked in the factory setting. And you can push for higher overclocking if necessary.

Overall, when you build a PC for editing, you must focus on its parts to create a suitable system.