Photoshop PC to Premiere PC
Less then 8 months ago I wrote a series of blog posts about my DIY power PC build. If you missed it you can read it from the links below:
Building a Photoshop power PC – Part 1
Building a Photoshop power PC – Part 2
Building a Photoshop power PC – Part 3
For a Photoshop power PC the specification is excellent even for Photoshop CS6 and I’d still recommend the original component list to anyone who wishes to build there own PC today. The only change I’d make for Photoshop CS6.is to add a 1GB graphics card.
So if it’s such a great PC why am I updating it so soon? The short answer is Video Editing.
Over the past few months I’ve been shooting more and more videos on my DSLR and editing them in Premiere Pro CS6. Before you ask, yes some of those are new photography tutorials which you’ll be able to see later this year. If you think still images takes a lot of computing power you’d be right but that’s peanuts compared to 1080p HD video editing. So with that in mind I’ve upgraded some of the core parts of my computer to make it a video power PC.
First up this is an upgrade not a complete new build so I am able to recycle the case, card reader, DVD drive and hard drives. With that in mind lets go through what changed and why.
(All red text is a hyperlink to Scan computers who supplied many of the parts)
CPU
This is the brains of the machine so it makes sense to get one that’s smarter, bigger and faster then before. Mine is a 980 model which isn’t cutting edge but a solid performer with 6 cores and 12 threads. It’s also overclocked to 4.3GHZ
CPU Cooler
A big, fast processor is going to get hot and overheating is the biggest cause of system instability so CPU cooling is a priority. The Antec Kuhler H20 is a self contained water cooling system which should keep the heat away from the CPU.
Motherboard
A new CPU means a new motherboard for me. With a slightly older CPU I can also use a slightly older motherboard so it’s an Asus Rampage 3 black edition which ties in perfectly with the i7 980 cpu.
RAM
As with Photoshop, Adobe Premiere will happily take all the ram you can throw at it. Even if it doesn’t use all the ram having more gives the system plenty of breathing space. I took my existing 16GB and added another 8GB bringing the total to 24GB in 6 slots. A lot of ram means yet more heat so I also have a Corsair ram cooler sitting above the sticks.
SSD drive
The best decision I made in my Photoshop Power PC build was adding an SSD drive. This thing makes your PC fly. Unfortunately the original 120GB drive is just to small for my needs so I doubled it to a 240GB SSD from OCZ. Interestingly the new 240GB SSD cost the same as the 120GB SSD I bought 8 months ago.
Graphics GPU
Finally we come to the Graphics card. In Photoshop almost any graphics card will do but not so with Premiere. To truly unlock the power of Premiere you need to choose your graphics card wisely. Adobe Premiere Pro works great with a good graphics card but it preforms miracles when paired with a select bunch of Cuda enabled Nvidia cards. There’s a full list of supported cards here and I went with the Geforce GTX 580
Running some quick stress tests showed the new build to be roughly double the speed of the original build. However rending speeds in Premiere Pro were in the region of four times faster then before, which is all thanks to the cuda power in the GTX 580 graphics card.
Intel + Nvidia + Asus + Corsair = the best combination 🙂
Very good, awesome machine, congrats!
Could you tell us how much money did it cost you?
I just did a rough add up using prices from amazon – just the listed components come to over 2k.
Thats a lot of wedding shoots.
Like many things, if you shop around you can often save a bob or two. BTW this isn’t a Photoshop machine it’s a video editing (and Photoshop) machine, so yes you’d a few wedding shoots but not so many video shoots.
A very good upgrade! You now own QUITE a machine. I will be upgrading to an SSD, getting a Nvidia 560 or 580 and upgrading to an 8 core AMD CPU in my custom build sometime in the near future! I already have 16GB of RAM and I think that’s probably enough for what I do.
Ps. Would LOVE to see some more 15 minute photo challenges!
If anyone is thinking about upgrading their video card the GTX 580 is a good choice but pretty expensive. What I did is upgraded to the GTX 560 ti 448 which benchmarks almost exactly the same as the 580 at a fraction of the price. Make sure it is the ti 448 because it has 448 cores vs 336 in the 560. (quite a difference) The 580 has 512 cores.
All a great cards but for the price to power ratio I think the GTX 560 ti 448 takes it.
Just a note. You will see that the 560 and many other cuda enabled cards are not officially supported by Premiere Pro. You can force Premiere to recognize other Nvidia cards with a slight change in Premieres configuration files and they will run without a hitch. (Some are obviously better than others!)
That’s pretty similar to the system I built from scratch solely to run Premiere CS5.5. You got more ram than me (16GB) and and double the SSD capacity, (I was on a budget). Nice choices Mr. H. Can I just add that if anybody is thinking of building a similar system from scratch and need a box to put it all in the Corsair Carbide Series 500R Mid-Tower is an awesome bit of kit. I’m well pleased with mine.
I’ve been stewing over whether or not to upgrade my laptop for some time now. When I bought Elements 9, it didn’t cost a lot more to have Premier Elements too, so I bought them as a bundle but never used Premier Elements until now. 4GB of RAM and an Average Videocard grinds to a near-halt even with SD stuff….time for an upgrade I reckon…perfectly good for Lightroom which is what I mainly use.
One thing you need to know. Elements 9 was only 32bit for both Photoshop and Premiere. So upgrading your RAM will have no effect on speed. Elements 10 however moves Premiere into 64bit (Photoshop is still 32bit) so adding more RAM will give a big speed gain assuming you have a 64bit operating system.
Elements 10 does not have GPU acceleration. So Using a 32 bit system you are bottlenecked at 3.3 gigs of ram and software rendering only. When editing Canon DSLR MOV files you are going to be very frustrated. If you are serious about video then bite the bullet and build a proper workstation. Premiere Pro CS5/6 is an incredibly powerful program and you won’t be disappointed
Gavin, just wondered why you went I7 instead of the AMD bulldozer which is a fraction of the price??
Familiarity with the product I guess.
The only thing a would do different Gavin is I would go for the Intel i7-3960X CPU. It’s around the same price as the 980X but faster, newer socket (LGA 2011) and has a bigger cache (15MB as apposed to 12MB)
http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/Intel+Core+i7-3960X+3.30GHz+%28Sandy+Bridge-E%29+Socket+LGA2011+Processor+-+Retail+?productId=47179
Would you like to share which monitor you use for photo editing? I believe Monitor is also an important equipment for photo editing. Thanks 🙂
I have an HP monitor which is OK but not amazing. The most important thing to do with any monitor is use a screen calibrating tool.
Hi, Thanks for your reply. But even after calibration some monitors are not OK as they don’t have the ability to show correct color / tonal range in case of BW, well I am talking about general everyday use LCD/LED monitors from Samsung, LG etc. Also I find the difference between Mac monitors and other monitor is massive and any photo looks completely different. So I was just thinking in future if you could share your thought/suggestions on monitor then that would be very helpful !!
Finally like to say thanks again for your reply, all your tutorials helped me lot to understand/improve my work/photo processing, really thanks for sharing 🙂
When finances allow, I’ll be going for an Eizo monitor…that’ll be the next item on my list before a new PC. I can cope with a slightly slower workflow, but I have problems with colour casts on prints even when I use a colour calibrator.
I go to college in Canada and we just now are learning about this in class.
Thanks for helping me with the last part of my report.
It’s been a while since you built this pc Gav. Now a year plus down the road would you change anything..?
Good question. Not much I think, except I’d add a bigger SSD and use the current versions of the motherboard cpu etc.
I’ve recently added an Avermedia HDMI capture card for future live streaming to youtube.