# What makes a good image or video editing machine vs gaming or general PC?



## NotSoGeeky (Oct 9, 2008)

Processor? Graphics card? Power supply? All of the above?

Whenever I get around to building a machine (someday), if I ever need real power it would be for image and video editing, not for gaming. But what makes up a budget video editor anyway? Is there a certain brand of graphics card I should always use or one that I should always avoid? Is one processor better than the other specifically dealing with editing? Is there a point where you have all of the RAM you will logically need?

I'm not so much asking for exact suggestions with newegg links. I just want to understand the good verses bad options. As my benchmark, it seems like everyone else recodes hour-long videos in Handbrake in only a few minutes where the same may take me two hours on my dinosaur machine.


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## bassfisher6522 (Jul 22, 2012)

NotSoGeeky said:


> Processor? Graphics card? Power supply? All of the above?


Yes....They all have to work together.



NotSoGeeky said:


> Is there a certain brand of graphics card


Yes....The Quadro GPU's. While a high end GPU for gaming will do the job the Quadro GPU's are specifically designed to do that kind of work. They are twice as expensive as a regular GPU.


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## NotSoGeeky (Oct 9, 2008)

So is that saying Nvidia is generally better than AMD for editing, or just that particular model? Again, I am speaking about this for a budget standpoint. I can't afford to buy a $4,000 GPU just for casual editing.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

NotSoGeeky said:


> So is that saying Nvidia is generally better than AMD for editing, or just that particular model? Again, I am speaking about this for a budget standpoint. I can't afford to buy a $4,000 GPU just for casual editing.


I am unaware of any video editing application which uses a GPU. A fast CPU and a lot of RAM is a good option. Higher amounts of RAM will decrease hard drive thrashing. A SSD would not last long being used in this way.


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## SpareChange (Mar 7, 2019)

Casual editing you will need a decent HT CPU (threaded I would say at least 8c/16t) and about 32GB of memory (64 if you're a pro) and a nice GPU with a lot of memory doesn't need to be a quadro for casual editing but you'll want at least 6-8GB of VRAM preferably 8GB+. Very obviously now isn't the time to build an AMD CPU rig (even the last gen AMD CPU's have gone up) and GPU's are way out of touch for a normal consumer. The only choice right now is a pre-built but you need to know what you're looking at. You could get away with a 6c/12t CPU and a nice GPU for casual editing but again you would need to know what you're looking at and the only 6c/12t CPU's that are reasonable are 2600/2600x/ 3600 (not 3600x) and Intel I5 9400/10400/10600k and Intel I7 10700/10700k (8c/16t). Intel I9 10850k isn't a bad buy. Pretty much everything AMD is a bad buy right now other than the R5 3600.


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