Building a new photo and video PC
Way back in 2015, I built my last computer and while it was pretty good for the time, I’ve become frustrated by Premiere in particular when working with 4K videos. The playback within the app seems to have been getting worse and I started using proxies for editing and color correction, but of course it takes minutes sometimes to create the proxies from the 4K video in the first place. So with expectations of a tax refund from the IRS (my earnings were down in 2019 so I paid too much tax) and a bonus check coming from the government, I decided to splash out on a new PC build. I pulled the trigger now partly because I was unsure how long the various companies selling the components would be able to continue to get new products and I am sure the price of these components has gone up recently. I’m writing this not because I think you will be fantastically interested, but I have found I often look back at my earlier post just to remember what I included in that build – so this is a bit like a notepad for me!
I decided to keep just three components from the old build – the case, which was massive, the 850W power supply and the old C Drive, which was a Samsung SM951 512GB M2 drive. Everything else is a new build. I found a great site called Puget Systems where they create custom builds for enthusiasts, but in doing so, they test and report on which components are the best for different sorts of creative activities. I chose a mix of their 4K and 6K video editing system. The full 6K one was just too expensive, so a nice mix between the two seemed to make a bit of sense!
I decided on the Intel platform (although there seemed to be a fantastic system using a $1700 AMD processor!) and went for the Intel i9-10920X 12 core processor which needed a socket 2066 motherboard. Puget was recommending the Gigabyte X299 Designare EX and so I bought that as the base of the system. I wanted to take full advantage of the M2 storage capabilities and so I got a 1TB Samsung 970 Pro M2 SSD which would act as both the storage for my main personal files (documents, scanned documents etc.) as well as a scratch pad for Premiere to work on video files. I partitioned it into two 500GB drives so I could keep things clean in my file explorer. I have an SSD and 3 traditional hard drives in the box which are used for current year images, historical images, original videos and stock Jpegs/videos respectively, and so they transferred to the new PC as they are. I do automatically back up most files to an external hard drive every 2 hours so I have that as a fallback as well. I also use Amazon Photos to back up all my stock jpegs to their cloud server and Google Drive to keep copies of my personal files.
I decided on the Nvidia RTX2070 Super graphics card, which was another Puget recommendation, and finally chose 2 x 32GB ram boards to give me 64GB in total. Windows 10 has improved so much that the new configuration automatically booted into Windows when I turned on the new rig, but as my installation is pretty old I decided to totally rebuild Windows and reinstall all the applications, which will take me several days to complete, I’m sure!
Just in case there are any real technical wizards out there, there is one issue I am still grappling with. The motherboard (the Gigabyte X299) has two 8 pin 12v power sockets for the CPU. When I plug cables into both of them, the board won’t start at all – no boot, no fan motion, nothing. When I use just one normal 12V cable it starts fine. I also tried to put this plus a 4 pin 12V cable, but again, nothing. I moved the power cable from one socket to the other and it works in both. So it doesn’t seem to be a motherboard issue but I’m not sure I’m confident enough that it is the power supply to replace that. I checked the voltages coming out of the CPU socket on the PSU – those are fine as well. I got a response from Gigabyte technical support today. They didn’t explain why it behaves like this, but they did confirm that the system only needs one 12V connector to be in place. So problem solved (I guess…)
I normally buy my stuff from Amazon, but they are delaying shipping of many items until sometime later in April so I got half these components from NewEgg and half from B&H. I forgot that the CPU needed a heatsink so there was a last minute order from Amazon for a Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 cooling system. It is massive, but does seem very quiet and efficient!
One tip if you use Microstockr Pro to track your sales. That app has been downloading sales stats and thumbnails for a long time and the developers told me that all this was stored in a folder in the User\AppData\Roaming area of the C Drive. Copying that before I finally turned off the old system allowed me to just copy the files back to the same place in my new configuration and the new installation of the App automatically picked up all my old sales and configuration details. I’m hoping that my original plus backup copies of Stock Submitter will similarly allow me to restart that system where I left off. Time will tell!
I also kept a copy of all the contents of the Users folder from my old C Drive. I copied the various App related things back to the new C Drive so that (hopefully) things like preferences and various actions I have created will be magically restored. It will take some time for me to see if all that is true, but it appears to have worked for Lightroom.
As you can see, I took some editorial stock photos of the various components as I was building the computer. I guess I’m always looking for something to sell!
So far, things seem to be running pretty smoothly, and my first import into Lightroom was completed very quickly. I’m sure I need to go through each major application and make sure the preferences are appropriate for the new configuration, but I can take my time with that. As you can see with this post, the top priorities are already up and running!
Stay safe!
