Recently I built a new PC for video editing,
and I couldn't be happier with the results.
And best of all, it's completely RGB-free.
Let's get undone!
[offbeat music] ♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody?! I'm Gerald Undone
and welcome to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
Alright, for some disclosure, some of the parts
I'm using for this build were supplied by Gigabyte AORUS,
in an effort to promote their new X570S motherboards,
which we'll be focusing on a bit in this video.
The other parts from other brands, I purchased myself.
I did not receive any money from Gigabyte AORUS
to make this video, and my thoughts are my own.
This video does have a sponsor though, and that's Storyblocks.
More about them a little later in the video.
The main purpose of this build for me was to see
how the 5000-series Ryzen processors compared
to my previous 3000-series build for video editing,
test out the new X570S motherboards,
and to gather some more data on my ongoing experiment
with the RTX 3090s for use with DaVinci Resolve.
But let's start by going over the hardware I chose
and I'll share some performance results along the way.
Okay, so as you can see, this sort of general theme
for this build was RGB-free,
which is gonna make it more difficult to shoot
because it's just sort of this black void of no light in there,
which is why I have this light suspended up here
using one of those new iFootage long arm things,
and I've got a little Aputure MC here.
So we're gonna do the best we can.
The idea here was I thought, personally, I'm not huge
on RGB inside of computers, and I thought I made it
look a little bit more professional, and it was kind
of fun to choose parts that don't have RGB.
And in previous builds, I was having issues where,
if you use studio monitors connected to a USB audio
interface, which is probably common for video editors,
then you can often get ground loops because the USB audio
interface doesn't actually-- doesn't have power
to ground to the same source of the studio monitors.
Instead, it's bus-powered through the computer, and then,
so if you're computer makes any kind of weird
EMF interference, that gets amplified
and goes through the ground loop issue.
[faint buzzing]
And for that, I actually recommend this product.
This'll be the first one. This is the iFi iDefender.
It's a USB dongle that you connect to the computer,
and then your audio interface goes in here,
and then out of the bottom you can plug another USB
that you can plug into the same power bar,
and it solves the ground loop issue.
Highly recommend these for any PC
that is-- you know, sound is important for.
Even an RGB-free build like this, this still made
a difference to reduce some of the noise a little bit.
The case, which I think looks great
and I think fits the theme, is the Phanteks P600S,
in grey. I love this case.
This is the first time I was actually able to build
fully in this one, and I'm a big fan.
The panels come off and they're sound dampening,
so if you want airflow, you can go airflow,
but if you want low noise like I prefer,
then you can get that option as well.
Building in it was a breeze, and one thing I liked
about this case, especially with this cooler that I'm using,
is that it's tall but shorter this way.
With the other case I have, which was a Fractal one,
they're a little bit shorter, but then longer this way,
and so the hoses have longer to reach,
especially if you orient it all Gamers Nexus style.
The last time I did a build on this, there were so many
comments about which way you orient your AIO,
and there's still so many people
that seem to be confused about that.
What's great is that with this cooler,
which'll be the next part that we talk about,
this is the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 280.
There's a few different versions of this in terms of size.
This one is their revision number 4, which is a little bit
easier to install than the previous ones that I've used,
and overall was a better experience.
What's interesting, though,
is that they don't give you the instruction manual.
You have to scan a QR code that brings up a manual.
It also brings up a bunch of Gamers Nexus videos
on how to install it, so he's made quite an impact that,
even when you buy a cooler, you see Steve's face there
telling you how to install your AIO.
Basically, they indicate the important part to be right
here between the two hoses. That's kind of your pump line.
And if you draw that line across the AIO,
you want some part of the reservoir
to be above that line.
And then, ideally, the hoses would be below that.
Now, there's been some other arguments since then
that maybe it's still okay to have the hoses on top
as long as there's still some tank above it.
But this way is good, but I've seen other people
be like, "Your thing's upside down!"
If you watched the Gamers Nexus video and understood it,
the idea was that you wanna have the air rise to the top,
which should be above the pump, which it is in this case.
Anyway, this cooler's great, it's RGB-free.
It's got a little fan here that is supposed to
help with the VRMs or something.
I don't know if it's really doing anything.
But the results are great for the money, the performance,
the coolant performance for the dollar is outstanding.
And I actually really like the aesthetics of it.
I like that it's just a simple good piece of hardware.
And like I said, this part I purchased myself,
because it's not Gigabyte AORUS.
Same with the iFi audio defender.
Okay, next up let's talk power supply.
So as you can see down here, we've got the EVGA 1000W G5.
Which-- I've always been a pretty big fan
of the EVGA power supplies.
But man, they are expensive right now.
This one was... I don't know, $400 or something Canadian,
which is a lot more than I expected to be paying
for power supplies. I bought this part myself.
It worked as great as all the other EVGA ones.
Fully modular, easy to install, performs well,
Eco Mode, all that stuff. Love it.
Okay, next up. We'll skip the processor
because that's the main thing. It's a Ryzen 9 5900X,
which I thought was the logical one to compare against,
because my previous computer's using the Ryzen 9 3900X,
so this is the 5000-comparable one.
We'll talk more about that, talk about overclocking
and all that. We'll talk about the drive.
This is one of the first things that was supplied by AORUS.
This is their new Gen4 7000 series SSD,
and you might be able to see it.
I'll have to do a pickup shot for this.
So you can kind of see it right there,
right above the GPU and below the pump.
It's their new 7000 series.
The previous one was gold,
and this one fits the theme perfectly.
So it just happened to work out that way.
I ran a CrystalDiskMark comparison between
the previous one and this one, and as the name--
I'm assuming the name is involved, the 7000 series,
but it also had a sequential read of 7000MB/s,
where the previous edition got 5000MB/s.
So, I mean, I don't know how important
that little uptick is for video editing.
Probably doesn't make that big of a difference
because I'm limited more by the drives and stuff
that I'm using anyway, you know, external drives
and direct-attached storage. But... it definitely--
I mean, if I'm to validate it,
it definitely measured 7000MB/s in the sequential reads.
So... and it looks great!
Installed easy. No complaints.
Next up for RAM, a little bit boring of a choice here,
but again, I just wanted conservative good-performing
RAM for a decent price, even though RAM really
isn't a decent price anymore either.
So I got a 64GB kit of Crucial Ballistix.
This is their DDR4, 3600 MHz at CL16,
which, that was the sweet spot I was targeting with the 3900X.
I tried to target it again here, and that way I was able
to easily get, uh, syncing with the fabric and the RAM
to both be running in parity,
rather than have the RAM clocked higher than the fabric.
And I don't think I'm even gonna bother showing you the RAM,
but it's these two completely black bars right here.
Again, probably have to do a pickup shot there.
But it worked really well, and you know, you never know
with RAM compatibility with different motherboards
and different processors and stuff, but I can say
that in this combination, this RAM was no problem.
XMP profile took, everything was just perfectly smooth.
So, this one I'm saying,
seems to work well for this combination.
Next up, let's talk about the graphics card.
We're going to talk a lot about the graphics card in this video.
So this is the RTX 3090. This is the Gigabyte Gaming OC.
Now, I went through a few different options of 3090's,
you know, testing different things.
This one's a good one, I think, for--
I'm not gonna say bang for buck, because we know
what's going on with the GPU market.
But in terms of managing heat,
to performance, to noise, just that whole sort of thing,
it doesn't perform quite as well.
Like, a few percent worse than the top of the line ones.
But it runs cooler and quieter,
so I feel like it's a worthy trade off.
And I also compared it to the Founders Edition as well.
I ran a couple benchmarks, and I'll put them
on the screen here. You can see that compared
to the Founders Edition-- by the way, thanks to Nvidia for--
I haven't made a video on it yet, but I think I made a story,
so follow me on Instagram or Twitter if you haven't already.
But Nvidia sent over Founders Edition 3090
a couple months ago, and I was comparing that against
my 2080 Ti that I ran before, and I've been really loving it.
It's made a huge impact on video editing performance.
So now just comparing this one to the Founders Edition,
it's a couple percent slower.
But I have noticed two degrees cooler in its temperature,
and overall much quieter, because the Founders Edition
still has that sort of... bit of blower
kind of sound when it speeds up.
And this one, not so much. So, I like this GPU.
I've been a fan of the Gigabyte Gaming OCs
for several versions now, of different GPUs they've used.
And best of all, it fits the theme.
I still want to do comparison between a 3090 and a 3080,
but I haven't been able to get my hands on a 3080 to compare.
I would say it just comes down to VRAM.
If whatever project you're working is, you know,
effects intensive, or you know, maybe you're using
really high resolution files and multiple versions
of that, you could bring up your task manager
and see how much VRAM you're using.
If the 10 gigs or whatever comes with 3080 is plenty, then
I think that's probably gonna be the better choice for you.
If you need more VRAM, though, then the 3090 is really--
that's the best option. It's sort of...
the question's over right then and there.
I haven't need as much VRAM as this provides.
But again, it was easier to get one of those than it was a 3080.
So I think that's what I would leave it up to,
but I'm gonna try and make a video on that in the future.
Also just want to take a minute to stress the reason why--
not trying to make this into a Windows vs Mac debate
or whatever-- but the reason why I like to build
custom PCs for video editing is so that I can use
Nvidia's NVENC encoder in DaVinci Resolve.
That exact combination. And I've been trying to stress
to people for a while just how powerful that combination is.
But obviously if someone is more comfortable using Mac OS,
or they prefer using Final Cut or something,
well then, there's nothing to say about that.
Use what you're more comfortable with.
I think that's more important
than the power of a particular combination.
But if you're open to trying different things,
a PC with DaVinci Resolve
and a powerful Nvidia graphics card,
it is unreal compared to anything else.
To give you an idea, these types of YouTube videos
that I make, you know, they're like 15, 20 minutes long?
I render them out in Resolve using NVENC
in, like, 2 & 1/2 minutes.
And that's a new benchmark, actually.
Okay, 2:55 was my last YouTube video that I rendered on here.
Compared to my previous computer, which also had
a 3090 in it, but with the 3900X, Ryzen?
That one, I did it in 3:24.
So switching from the 3900X to the 5900X,
I shaved about 30 seconds off my export time,
which is actually pretty huge when you consider
we're going from 3 1/2 minutes to 3 minutes.
That's a considerable difference.
It's like a 16% improvement.
But, what's most important about this is just how fast
those renders are in the first place.
When I was using Premiere Pro a few years ago,
and doing CPU renders, it would take me 45, 50 minutes
to render out a video. 2:55! It's incredible.
For comparison's sake, if you want, my 3900X
with the 2080 Ti... was 4:26.
So each sort of step, I trimmed 30 seconds off.
Upgrading to the 39 GPU trimmed 30 seconds off.
Switching to the new 5900X CPU, 30 more seconds off.
Down to sub-3 minute render now on a YouTube video.
And I'll share my exports. A lot of people ask
all the time, "What are your render settings?"
So if you happen to get DaVinci Resolve
and you have an Nvidia GPU, these are my render settings.
I'll put a screen grab or something somewhere.
I've been using CQP and I've dialed in the numbers
that I think give you the, you know, the quality
that's really hard to tell the difference
at the best file size balance, and I did probably
50 to 60 different exports and compared them all
and came up with these numbers. So, there you go.
Hopefully that's useful to you.
Alright, so that kind of covers my experience
with the 5900X: 30 seconds faster render.
General multitasking on the computer,
I didn't notice the difference between my 3900X and my 5900X.
The overclocking experience was different though,
and there is a little bit of difference
in gaming performance on the CPU.
So we're getting into the weeds here a little bit.
If you don't care about overclocking,
you can skip to the next section.
Basically with the 3900X,
I did a more typical overclocking.
I don't know why I touch this one.
With my previous computer, I did a more typical
overclocking where I just manually
overclocked and set the voltage and made it work
and I had an all-core 4.3 - 4.35GHz.
On this one, I've tried the new PBO 2 with Curve Optimizer,
which is a way of trying to get your single core performance
to clock higher than your multi-core performance
and try and find the balance of both worlds there,
the best of both worlds. And it was a little bit
different at first, learning how to do it.
But I was glad I was able to do that
because it was fun, I like tweaking with those things,
and I got better results. My all-core performance
was higher than on a 3900X.
I went from 4.3 - 4.35GHz up to 4.6GHz all-core.
I can get a little bit higher than that, but you know,
4.6GHz is probably the best sort of safe one.
And that allows me to go single core up to 5GHz,
which is a big difference 4.3 and 5GHz
if it came to gaming or something like that.
And I can share some numbers here.
I would say the biggest difference here, if we talk,
if we compare all these things now, the GPU
and the CPU by Resolve Benchmark through Puget
was-- it went from 1476, was the score, up to 1660.
That's a 12.5% improvement with this combination
from the previous combination,
and much bigger compared to my 2080 Ti.
And then on Cinebench R23, I had a 16% improvement
in multi-core going from about 20,000 up to about 23,000.
And in single core from 1300 up to 1630.
So that was like a 26% bump.
That's the biggest difference I've noticed,
overclocking this way with these new 5900X's.
But now they're presenting sort of the best of both worlds
for gaming single-core performance
as well as editing, multi-core performance,
or other editing tasks that require a single core.
This combination is really good. And again, I was actually
running two degrees cooler using the same cooler
on those two CPUs in those combinations.
So compared to the previous generation, this is definitely
a better overall performer and I'm happy with it.
And the overclocking experience in a sense is easier.
It's just, you have to think about it differently.
And I think once you have that mental attitude,
it kind of makes more sense to PBO 2 with Curve Optimizer
versus-- it's just, the conventional way
of overclocking is kinda ingrained in my head.
So there's a bit of a learning curve there.
And maybe I'll put up my BIOS settings
so you can see what I actually tweaked
on this motherboard to get that overclock.
So then the biggest question will be,
the X570 versus the X570S, and I have both of them here.
How does-- What's the difference?
The main difference is really just, I want to say
the S is for "silent." There is no fan.
You're not really going to be able to see it.
But under here, there's an active cooling solution
on the X570, and on the X570S,
it's passive. There's no fan.
Now, with a quiet case like this,
it's only really on post that you hear it.
You turn the computer on and it goes...
[high pitch whine] It's like a whining sound,
and then it kind of chills out. I think the earlier versions
didn't chill out so well, but now they do.
So it's not a huge deal.
But if having that fan removed is important to you,
this is now removed. So the question is,
does it overclock as well? You know, is there any issues?
I can say that with these two motherboards,
I've tested both the 3900X and the 5900X on both of them,
and I was able to get the same clocks.
So there's no disadvantage in going fanless with the new one.
So I probably just would.
There are a couple differences on the ports.
So, yeah, comparing them now in my hand here,
I have the original. These are both Masters by the way,
X570 Master, X570S Master from AORUS.
And I'm looking at it now, Wi-Fi's the same on the top.
You've still got your four USB 2.0s,
and then here on this row,
instead of just the two USB 3.1 Gen 1's
that one of them is also for the BIOS,
there's also you can see here, two more 3.2 Gen 2--
whatever, the 10GB--
I'm just gonna call them 5GB and 10GB from now on.
I'm sick of all these different Gen numbers.
On the original X570 Master, there was another Ethernet port.
There was one for 2.5GB and one for 1GB.
This one only has a single Ethernet port.
So if that's important to you, there's a difference there.
And then there's a fan on the non-S.
And slightly different cosmetics.
But again, performance in terms of actual VRMs
and overclocking, that kind of thing,
it was identical in my experience.
So, rest easy if you were worried about that.
By the way, I actually used the Wi-Fi.
I normally use the Ethernet ports, but I've actually been
using the Wi-Fi and the Wi-Fi antenna that it comes with.
And I was getting excellent results,
so I was actually quite impressed with that.
So the Wi-Fi in this, and the Wi-Fi antenna
are both, I give positive marks to.
[grunting] So I think that's pretty much it.
I was expecting to have a more of an involved situation
to share with you, but it was actually really, really easy.
I'm not sure if that's because I was switching
from Intel to AMD and dealing with everything originally,
or if maybe, you know, things are just more refined now,
that were a few more steps into this whole Ryzen X570.
Everything's a bit more, you know, matured.
But it was so painless.
All the parts were more compatible
than in previous generations. Everything just worked.
Everything worked well. The overclock was easy.
Very few quirks that had to be worked out.
It was just painless.
And the performance numbers were pretty good.
On average, here, I'm getting about 12% to 13%
improvement overall. So I wouldn't say
that it's worth rushing out to upgrade your 3900X
and your, you know, 2080 Ti to this.
But if you're somebody who, this is your job
and you're planning on doing this, you can expect probably,
like I said, a 12% to 15% percent improvement
across the board for most of your applications.
But if you're not using-- if this is gonna be
your first build and you're jumping in to one of these
Nvidia graphics cards, and also switching over
to a Ryzen 9 from something else,
and potentially, like I said,
jumping over to Resolve and using NVENC,
it's going to change the game completely for you.
I realize that for some people that's a non-starter because
of whatever platform they use, or software or whatever.
But if you're open to just trying video editing
a different way: 2:55 renders! It's craziness!
And the timeline is so smooth, it's--
I just could never go back. And in the spirit
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Thanks again to Gigabyte AORUS for sending over
the Gigabyte and AORUS components.
Couldn't have done the build without you,
and I'm really happy with how it turned out,
and I am loving the performance.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you find this video
entertaining or least helpful. And if you did, make sure
to leave the ol' thumbs up and consider subscribing
if you haven't already. But if you did not find
this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.