CPU Recs for Photo/Video Editing & Light Gaming

[Berkley Todd]

Hello all - about 5 years ago, I built my first PC. It was a thrilling experience, and very successful, but I made a lot of assumptions. I'm looking to begin another build in the coming months, and just starting out on some research. I want to be smarter about both my needs and money, leading me to a few questions. Today, I'm looking at CPUs.

I used to assume that Intel was best, and now am seeing that perhaps AMD's new line of Ryzen & Threadripper CPUs might be worth taking a closer look at. The primary purpose of this build will be for heavy photo editing using both lightroom and photoshop, as well as occasional video editing with Premiere Pro and After Effects. Secondarily, I do a bit of gaming, but I'm not necessarily needing to squeeze out every bit of FPS. Just need a CPU that can keep up. My original thought was to go with an Intel i7-8700K (I do plan to overclock), but am curious if perhaps I should be considering AMD instead. My budget is right around that $350 mark, with a bit of flexibility if there's a truly compelling reason to pay a few more bucks. Right now, considering the i7-8700K, the Ryzen 7 2700X, and the possibility of a Threadripper if it's better suited to my needs. I'm slightly nervous about AMD as I have heard accounts of errors and instability, but of course that was 5 years ago before the Ryzen, so I could be totally off.

What are everyone's thoughts, and why?

 

[Obakasama]

Have you come across Puget Systems' articles or blogs? https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Lightroom-Classic-CC-141/Hardware-Recommendations

As far as I'm aware (not very), some content creation software is better optimised for Intel CPUs, and I believe Photoshop is (but not sure). So depending on the level of seriousness of the editing you'll be doing this may mean an Intel system. AMD's Ryzen and Threadripper are good on a price-to-performance consideration, so it may depend how you feel about your expenditure.

From the article I linked above it would seem the i7-8700k would be a solid choice.

 

[cwli1_]

At $350 your choices are limited. Good prices for Ryzen 1600/1500x on http://www.ebay.com Also for AMD RX480/580 and nvidia 1060 6Gb. I use an older AMD 4-core (I do photo editing too), which is much slower than an 8-core fx8350 but people who used that were really impressed with the Ryzen 1400/1500x when they upgraded. One person wrote that the 1600 can fully use a GTX 1080ti.

There were no problems with AMD's older processors. Intel and AMD provide cheap stock fans, which sometimes provide enough cooling. But people who build PCs didn't bother replacing them with quality coolers.

Any Ryzen or older AMD 4-core will do what all you need right now. The fans for the Ryzens are good but if you want something better get the Be Quiet pure rock slim on www.ebay.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBB2rChWxmE showing how they're made. You won't believe how much work goes into making them.