There were a lot of technical things here that I've got no clue about.
We are not here to confuse or tell you how to work so whatever confusing parts in your blind spot need to be considered. Take your time.
At the same time, I'm a guy that thinks too much telling you that you're probably overthinking this by a lot.
Being in the market for a new workstation is unusual. Those of us that build will retire the old PC as a server or editor workstation.
I will certainly not be having anything "industrial" stuff, meaning that I will not require a server etc. to be happy with what I will be doing.
This part is fine. Hardware is hardware is hardware...But there's a bit to consider with human elements and it's difficult to explain.
OS drive
Work/Storage drive
This part right here, super important. How you arrange disks/volumes is up to you but keep this line of separation between work and personal.
I'm sure neither one of you need to hear it but somebody in here does. It's not as simple as inbox/outbox if you're juggling sensitive information.
It's also important to consider what that means. If you're just entering the digital work space it won't seem important but you will need to deal with it.
A server is a major security luxury. On a normal gaming computer, it's usually just games and some personal stuff.
On a professional/special purpose system, the risk assessment is much lower thanks to role separation.
On an editor/developer/production machine, the configuration is
permanent. No updates, instability or weirdness.
Not everybody needs the server and in your case that's great but keep in mind that can impact price and workflow.
The point of this post was to see which CPU type I should go for, AMD or Intel, how much RAM I would need, which mobo that will "survive" for a while, appropriate PSU and how much storage I would need.
If you're making 1080p videos in Vegas, Premiere or whatever toolkit and your workflow is just one screen, any old gaming PC loadout can work.
8 years ago I was doing that on an AMD Phenom II X4 955 with 8GB. It's not great today but back then, this was my main VR kit. Think about that.
If you're editing 4K videos with a proper multi-display workflow, literally any old 8c or modern 6c CPU will carry but a modern 12-16c will shine.
Go to the
mid-range page on CPUBenchmark and pick anything that clocks above 9K pts. A lot of these are core heavy and super cheap.
My production box is an AMD FX-8370 that clocks in at 6300pts. Not only is this okay for my needs but the workflow is great.
You are spoiled for choice and then there's the
high end page.
My Ryzen 5 3600 is a 6c/12t part still listed on there and clocks in ~18100pts, which might be a reasonable performance bar.
The average Ryzen 9 9950X is more than double the cores+threads and clocks in at 67200pts. It is pointless to worry about this.
You might notice I lean heavily AMD and that's just my preference. I usually compete with Intel gaming builds and they have issues.
RAM: I will have no less than 32GB, for sure. 32GB seems to be sufficient enough for my purposes. Maybe 64GB if I can fit it within my budget.
My Ryzen box started as a 32GB system and this was the jump I made from 16GB on the FX.
Both were VR systems and the jump to 64GB made sense because of apps with horrific memory leaks.
You will not need 64GB until you have a VERY memory hungry workflow.
Could be Premiere, DaVinci, OBS, maybe Unity or Blender all running together.
Realistically the most I've ever used was 48GB and that was after 12hrs of steady memory leak.
This was long before I was looking into anything live production. 1080p editing was perfectly fine.
It seems though that 12GB is preferred memory for a GPU for my purposes. A silent one would also be very preferable, but I can sacrifice a bit quietness vs. more power and efficiency.
A low-pro 3060 would make my situation easier but I would gain nothing from it other than vram and display outs (that I don't need). It might be ideal for you.
If you're really clever and pick an Intel CPU or modern AMD with an iGPU, you could pick up a cheap Tesla P100 or newer and run that as your video accelerator.
Again, options plentiful for your very specific use case.
I see that for the you lot suggest 2TB M.2 storages, so I assume that 1 is a Windows-dedicated one, while the other is for the content storage, yes? How many M.2 storages can I fit onto 1 mobo?
Volume arrangement is up to you but M.2 needs PCI-E lanes, which are a precious resource on consumer CPU+board combos.
I can run a pair of gen4 M.2 drives on my Ryzen box with a GPU and network accelerator before I've maxxed out all lanes.
There are more lanes available on workstation CPU+board combos but most of those loadouts are cost prohibitive.
When I install a pair of M.2 drives in this system, it will be a 500GB pair of Crucial P310s running RAID0.
PSU: I should got for 750-850W it seems, according to what you guys have suggested. Any more seems to be overkill.
It's probably fine but if you ever need to change to something much more power hungry that suggests "750W" minimums, go higher.
I have a 750W box from 2009 with a 25A power rail and a much more recent 1KW box that can deliver upwards of 83A.
It doesn't matter on low power draw cards but the moment you switch to anything high power, there could be issues just reaching POST.
The power supply thing is a gigantic autistic rabbit hole that probably got me twice this past year.
You'll figure it out.
And thanks for setting up PC parts as well!