PC Build Log 01 — Matt Christensen

We get lots of questions from editors and studios about what workstations are best for video editing. You can see our general System Recommendations here. And we've compiled a quick look at a 3 part PC Build Log below put together by a video editing pro - thoughtful, thorough and totally DIY. We know many of our customers would appreciate the details he's documented on his switch from Macs to PC and so forth. From MattChristensen.net

Part I

....At some point in 2016 I decided to build my own PC for my next machine. However, I was recently engaged and most of my time and spare money went into pulling off what ultimately was a fantastic wedding. What I did do during that time was find YouTube channels to subscribe to that catered to PC building. A lot of the content out there is gaming related but generally what makes games play better also helps video work go faster, too. So for the last year and a half I’ve been reading and watching up on everything there is to know about PC components and building, and with the wedding over and enough side color work coming in I’ve been able to put together a part list and order it. What about the iMac Pro or future Mac Pro? Great question. While I actually find the press conference thing Apple did regarding pro hardware last year to be an excellent sign of Apple starting to move in the right direction, it is quite frankly too little to late. I don’t mean that to sound disparaging. The iMac Pro is beautiful and very powerful; I was impressed after the day and a half or so I’ve spent with one for work purposes. However, two things are keeping me from using it: The seed of this idea has already been planted and like I said, I love computers enough that the idea of building my own system is too exciting to give up. I’m building a 12-core machine with a better GPU than the iMac Pro for a few thousand dollars less....read more

Part II

Part List ...I’m going to go over what parts I chose and how they stack up to what I might have purchased if I stayed with Apple hardware. A Note on Software Most all post production software runs on both macOS and Windows. The obvious exception is Final Cut Pro X. For my use case I primarily rely on Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve for the freelance color work I do. Both run on Windows and therefore I have no desire to try and build a Hackintosh PC that will boot macOS. I may at some point in the future try and hack macOS to run just for fun, but three main things pushed me to go with Windows for my PC’s operating system: I didn’t want macOS compatibility to be a limiting factor in the parts I chose. The Hackintosh community maintains records of known compatible hardware and that is a great resource. However, I am building my PC for reasons besides price alone and therefore I didn’t want to make part decisions based on what would more easily run macOS....read more

Part III

The Build Process The aforementioned YouTubers had a great piece of advice – build your system outside of the case first to make sure you can at least get into the BIOS and everything seems to be working okay. In the off chance you have a bad component or some kind of incompatibility it is much better to discover that before you spend an hour meticulously tightening every screw and hiding all the cables...read more