Great job here by Roberto Blake. He doesn't just put together a smoking fast DIY NLE Workstation for 4K editing, he goes into detail on why he picked the components he did. He used a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H motherboard. As our readers and customers know, we're partial to ASUS motherboards for our DIY machines, but this is a very solid choice. Roberto likes ASUS as well. My 4K Video Editing and 4K Gaming Build [WINDOWS PC] Building a 4K Video Editing Computer instead of buying a Mac is practical for me. Mac vs PC in Video Editing is a topic that comes up a lot. In fact, building a PC vs buying a Mac is debated among professionals in creative fields constantly. THE $1500 4K VIDEO EDITING BUILD (With Options)

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H LGA 1150 Z97 with Killer E2200 and Intel Gaming Networking SATA Express M.2 SSD ATX Motherboard $199
• Intel CPU Options: i7 6600K $349 or i7 4770K $430
• GPU Options: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB $304 or Wait for the GTX 1070 (which I'm now doing)
• Ram Corsair Vengeance Pro 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800)
• Case: Thermaltake Verasa N21 Snow Edition $59
• Optical Drive: Asus 24x DVD-RW Serial-ATA $22
• OS & Media Drives: 3X Samsung 850 EVO SSD 250GB $89 ea.
• Export Drive: 1X Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500GB $154
• Data/Storage Drives: 2X WD Blue HDD 1TB RAID 1
• Media Asset Storage: Seagate 4TB $109
• Expansion/Wireless Gigabyte GC-WB867D-I Wi-Fi/Bluetooth $42
• Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 B1 80+ BRONZE $64
• Case Fans: 2x Cosair 120mm LED Fans $18

As someone who owns both I understand people's arguments, but there is no denying that having full control, having exactly what you want, and no compromises on power is going to be practical from a business standpoint when enough money is involved. For me the cost of building a 4K Video Editing Computer is going to be covered by the paid client work I'll be using it for, fairly often. For most people 4K Video Editing is not what they are going to be doing and even if they are Mac offers high end solutions for them. The issue I have with 4K Video Editing on a Mac vs PC is how limiting it is. If you don't want to learn to build a PC that is one thing, and you could always have someone do it for you... but you'll always have exactly what you want and the options to upgrade. At $1500 this PC build has 4-6 Drives, with upgrade capacity for more, a true high end video card with the option of a secondary video card for even more power, and up to 32GB of ram. I couldn't even come close to that level of Video Editing Power on a Mac if I spent twice as much money. But you could do this once upon a time when Apple still made Mac Pro towers. If that option was still on the table, that is the route I may have gone... For high end 4K Video Editing, 3D Artwork, Motion Graphics, and Animation, a custom build Video Editing PC is just going to be more practical and cost effective long term. IMHO a 4K Video Editing PC is a good long term investment for anyone doing video production and video editing and making a profit on it, or intends to. Mac's are beautiful and impressive, but when it comes to video editing, raw power matters and having the top hardware at the proper specs is going to make a difference. Currently the Mac Pro and the iMac 5K retina and 4K retina options are just not competitive on value for price. They are convenient and have a better user experience, but that doesn't make them practical (though many people will work with what they are comfortable with). As someone who uses both Mac and PC everyday, I find that if I wanted to edit 4K Video on a the go I would probably choose a Macbook Pro 15" at this point for that task. But in the office in a Desktop environment, building what I want to get the job done just makes the most sense. In terms of a Gaming PC vs Mac argument it's a no-brainer. If you want a 4K Gaming PC that will play most games, Mac computers aren't even option. You can have a PC vs Mac debate when it comes to gaming rigs at this point.