Hi all

I need a new PC or Laptop. I want to buy a powerful one, good for gaming and video editing. Any suggestions, please. What about CybertronPC Hellion?

Well, I’m a 25-year PC user who made a total migration to Apple, and with things like BootCamp and Parallels, you can run either Windows itself on the Mac (which is weird to see, honestly), or you can run Windows in a Virtual Machine (which is even weirder).

But if you want the best bang for your buck, you’ll need to build your own PC, or have someone like me build it for you.

Here are a few questions you need to answer, though:

1). How much are you willing to spend?
2). What kind of GPU specs do you ABSOLUTELY require?
3). What kind of CPU specs do you ABSOLUTELY require? And Intel or AMD?
4). What kind of lifespan are you looking to get from this computer?

If you can answer those questions, at the very least, I can give you a good ‘shopping list’ for a place like Newegg for the parts.

If you have the monitors, keyboard, mouse, speakers…you know, the little incidental stuff, you can get a very powerful computer for about $1600, and not have to upgrade for five years. And when you do, you won’t need to buy a case (you’ll have it already), probably won’t need a new Power Supply Unit, almost definitely won’t need a CPU, and absolutely won’t need a new motherboard, so you’ll probably just have to upgrade the RAM (if you didn’t max it out before) and the GPU, which, unless you get bleeding-edge-of-technology, won’t cost more than maybe $600 or so, and will extend the lifespan of your machine another five years or so. So $2200 for ten years of solid use? $220 a year, or about $18.33/month.

If you build from parts, you’ll save a ton of money over buying a complete system from a vendor, plus you won’t be bogged down with all the bloatware they try to make you use. The only real drawback to building is that if you want to run Windows or OS X, you’re gonna have to put down some healthy dough to purchase a copy.

The system I built a couple years back is still out-performing my needs, and I do gaming and video editing myself. The whole thing cost me about $750, which is kinda remarkable for the specs I got. I apparently have different ideas for what constitutes a “powerful” machine than RetroDan, since my price point is less than half of his. (-:

If you’re going to invest in a machine, I’d recommend going for nothing less than an Intel Core i7 for the CPU. I got an i5 myself, which works for my needs, but a lot of fancy peripherals out there (video encoders/streamers especially) really benefit from the features of the i7 that aren’t available on the i5. AMD aren’t the beast they used to be–they seem to have gotten stuck in the “faster = better” rut and never pulled themselves out of it.

How are SSDs performing these days? A few years back I’d advise against using them for video editing because of the above-average write behaviors, but maybe these days the technology is better than it used to be and you won’t wear out an SSD so quickly that way.

If I were you I’d get a computer with the following specs:
An intel i7 CPU
8-16 GB of RAM
A graphics card such as a GeForce GTX 960
A Solid State Drive (SSD) of whatever capacity (250 GB, 500 GB, etc). The SSD for the operating system, and all the software programs that you can fit onto it.
An extra HDD of 2TB or 4TB. The HDD for storing music, video, pictures, games, etc.

It’s important that you get a computer that has ample upgrade capabilities. Cheap computers will lack necessary PCI slots, power sources, and etc. to be able to upgrade. Look into alienware, cyberpowerpc, etc.

Of course these are just basic guidelines, it really depends on how much money you want to spend.

Guy Perfect wrote:
How are SSDs performing these days? A few years back I’d advise against using them for video editing because of the above-average write behaviors, but maybe these days the technology is better than it used to be and you won’t wear out an SSD so quickly that way.

I would never have a computer without a SSD in today’s world. A HDD may require a few minutes to boot up, but a SSD will boot up a computer in 7 seconds.

I would absolutely have a SSD for the operating system, and all your programs (especially video editing, music editing, photo editing, etc.) If you have a lot of adobe programs, I would ABSOLUTELY have a SSD. They take so much less time to load up that way.

What I do is I have a SSD, and a HDD, and whenever I do video editing I just save the files to the HDD. Of course the software is on the SSD though.

Guy Perfect wrote:
I apparently have different ideas for what constitutes a “powerful” machine than RetroDan, since my price point is less than half of his. (-:

I was very particular when I wrote very powerful, Guy Perfect.

For me, that ‘very’ encompasses high-end parts, like a dual-CPU motherboard, a pair of CPUs to stick in it, about 48-64Gb of RAM (which for a dual-CPU board should be just about half its capacity), and a 6Gb GeForce GPU or better. Plus an excellent PSU, at least two SSDs, aftermarket CPU fans (because I never do water-cooling – fucking gimmicky nonsense with too much risk for too little return!), and a very large, very cool tower to put it all in.

It may just be me, but I’ll drop extra cash for really solid stuff over components that come from less reputable companies. I went ASRock once…never again.

Thank you very much for your quick replies. So, my budget is no more than $2000. Taking into account your advice I chose MSI Aegis 3 VR7RE-012US/
CPU Intel Core i7
A graphics card GeForce GTX 1080
512GB SSD
Does it worth the money?
Here is another one: CPU Solutions Express Video
4 GHz Intel Core i7
Nvidia Quadro K2200 w/4GB
What can you say about the gr.card Quadro?
Maybe I can choose the other cheaper model with good characteristics
https://cloodjo.com/best-computers-video-editing-top-10-reviews

What can you say about the gr.card Quadro?

A Quadro is a heavy lifting card, but gamers won’t get any more out of it from an equivalent consumer card, because Quadro is geared more towards professional usage – things like CAD or design software. Quadros are very, very expensive because they aren’t meant to tackle the stuff an average user deals with. I would recommend you avoid like the plague.

As far as your computer choices go, I would say no to them. Overpriced, underpowered, and useful for maybe three years at the longest. Do you really want to spend $2000 on something that will last you three years? That’s like $667/year, or $55.55/month.

Don’t do that, man, just don’t.

The first one you listed isn’t bad. It’s a little on the pricy side, but it looks to be a pretty good computer.

As far as your computer choices go, I would say no to them. Overpriced, underpowered, and useful for maybe three years at the longest

Why do you say useful for three years? What bottleneck would you perceive? Just curious.

It depends on what type of stuff you want to do with it OP, but I don’t think the proccessor will hold you down AT ALL with that computer for a LONG time. RAM is basically a non-factor, you can upgrade RAM very easily. That video card is very good, and you can upgrade that as well, if you feel like it in the future.

OP for me, that first computer you listed looks to be a pretty good computer that would be able to play any game. If you shop around, maybe you could find something with similar specs for a little cheaper, but performance-wise, that is a very good computer.

Reel Big Fish wrote:
The first one you listed isn’t bad. It’s a little on the pricy side, but it looks to be a pretty good computer.

As far as your computer choices go, I would say no to them. Overpriced, underpowered, and useful for maybe three years at the longest

Why do you say useful for three years? What bottleneck would you perceive? Just curious.

It depends on what type of stuff you want to do with it OP, but I don’t think the proccessor will hold you down AT ALL with that computer for a LONG time. RAM is basically a non-factor, you can upgrade RAM very easily. That video card is very good, and you can upgrade that as well, if you feel like it in the future.

OP for me, that first computer you listed looks to be a pretty good computer that would be able to play any game. If you shop around, maybe you could find something with similar specs for a little cheaper, but performance-wise, that is a very good computer.

Neither the processor nor the RAM are the true bottleneck, its the entire configuration.

Three years is the average length of time a company-assembled computer will stay relevant. Quite frankly, with only 32GB of RAM (even if it’s the newer DDR4) and a mere Quad-core Intel i7, hyper threading or no, the bang for buck simply isn’t there. The only two things of any true note are the Pascal-architecture GTX 1080 and the PCIe SSD. I’m curious as to whether the SSD is NVMe or simply a PCIe adapted SATAIII connection, because that would make a tremendous difference in speed.

All told, I would casually estimate the value of this machine as around $1300 – $1500 at the uppermost, and I would be furious at wasting $500+ on a computer. Maybe I’m more critical since I am a system builder and, up until I bought my Mac Pro, I haven’t bought a computer built by someone other than myself since I was 16.

Alright, I can see where you are coming from. Well OP, if you can get someone like RetroDan to build you a computer for around $1300 then that’s probably your best bet 😀 haha.

I guess it just depends on how you define useful, because I don’t do a lot of heavy gaming. For me that computer would be useful for a long time, because what I do that demands the most resources is emulation and video processing. For both of those things, that computer would serve me well for a long time. So yeah I guess it just depends on what types of games you are interested in, OP.