My second DS PC

I'm a gamer, so I have no experience doing the kind of work you want to be able perform reasonably well. But I also have been here awhile, and I've done a bit of research for varied uses. Generally speaking, for your use, the more cores and threads you can bring to bear will help you considerably more than speed.

The two most significant departures from what I would think of as a base system for rendering and editing is the paltry 16GB of RAM, and the total whiff on an NVMe M.2 SSD for primary drive. I absolutely know that the more RAM the merrier for much faster and cleaner rendering. There is a 512 GB Seagate M.2 NVMe SSD available for a mere $21 that is up to 5 times faster than the DS SATA SSD. That overlook is baffling.

It looks like your DS guy deliberately took you to $3000+ so you'd get an extra $100 discount, but he accomplished that by throwing in the appearance item of the purty fans instead of enhancing performance.

In shouting distance of that price point, you could actually get the upgrades I know would help, and base it on an AMD 3950X with 6 more cores, and 12 more threads. User Benchmark (website) says that proc is up to 39% faster in multi-core processing than the Intel part, and that's compared to a 10900X.

The config # of a possible other way to go is    3252906   . Cut and paste that into the "Load Config" window to have a look. $2784 after discount vs $2703. (Note it's a Lumos to save $. You can save more and get purty lites with a Lynx case!)

Edited by Cretae - 16 Jul 2020 at 4:34am

Go to Windows 10 Pro for an additional $45.00 and that puts you over $3,000 so you get an extra $100.00 off. It's like getting the upgrade and getting a bonus $55.00 off the real price you will pay.

Important to know that about software.

@big bossman:

The Seagate Firecuda is the same one mentioned. The Seagates are new and don't have the track record the Samsungs have, but they are PCIe gen 4 parts, which are not supported on Intel yet, but AMD supports. That fact helps the Seagates' performance rise very near the excellent Samsungs' to where the difference is negligible.

You won't need upgraded fans IMO. Are you okay with the Lumos case? It has the best airflow here. I am very convinced that you will appreciate the improvement from a 3950X. Rendering benefits greatly from more cores, as every core gets a piece of the job, as I understand things. I think if you have that part as the heart of your rig, you can easily fine tune a thing or two as needed, and end up with a killer taskmaster.

It's so cool we have met before!