Adobe CC Premier Pro & Aftereffects Workstation – Replace or upgrade Dell XPS 8300

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Mark Porter

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Oct 8, 2013
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Everyone, thanks for all the great current, unique, valuable, and relevant information! You Rock!

I have up to $4,000 to spend on an Adobe CC Premier Pro & Aftereffects video editing/rendering workstation with a new primary monitor and secondary portrait monitor

My first inkling is to upgrade the existing computer:
Which is a Dell XPS 8300
http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/19/Servicetag/BQ87BP1
i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB SATA II 7200
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB Graphics
8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333 4x2GB
It is original except for a Pioneer 12X SATA BDR-206DBK 1.56 1.5GB/S
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Professional/Computer-Drives/BDR-206DBK
and a Tripp-Lite U239-UE1 Hard Drive Docking Station http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1416270

Give it my old Notebook SSD: Samsung 256gb MMDOE56G5MXP-OVBD7 http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-flash-ssd-charts/Desktop-Performance,938.html & Use like this http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

And purchase:
Western Digital WD3001FAEX 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare
Dell U3014 Monitor
Dell P2214H Monitor
CORSAIR XMS3 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
Radeon HD 7990? Maybe this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131493&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=6146996&SID=1cb8rh7fuxx6d
PSU?
Something to add USB 3.0?

My second Inkling: a new computer, likely prebuilt to save the time and hassle – No idea what

It’s been 15 years since I regularly built workstations. Any good advice is greatly appreciated. Every penny is tight, I don’t necessarily want to spend all $4,000. I am buying for 12 months of high productivity.
 
Solution
kenrivers
Do you plan on using the SSD for storage or as the OS drive? I would use the SSD as the OS drive, one hard drive as the scratch disk and the other hard drive for render files (a place to store rendered/encoded files). 16GB of RAM should be fine. As for the graphics card you might want to check the list of supported cards: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html Of course if the 7990 is new enough it might not be on the list but still work. With the new graphics card you should definitely upgrade your PSU. USB 3.0 is nice to have especially if you are transferring large files to external storage or are using a USB 3.0 drive or drives for backup.

As far as pre-built goes I know it will same some time and hassle but...
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kenrivers

kenrivers

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Dec 29, 2010
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Do you plan on using the SSD for storage or as the OS drive? I would use the SSD as the OS drive, one hard drive as the scratch disk and the other hard drive for render files (a place to store rendered/encoded files). 16GB of RAM should be fine. As for the graphics card you might want to check the list of supported cards: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/tech-specs.html Of course if the 7990 is new enough it might not be on the list but still work. With the new graphics card you should definitely upgrade your PSU. USB 3.0 is nice to have especially if you are transferring large files to external storage or are using a USB 3.0 drive or drives for backup.

As far as pre-built goes I know it will same some time and hassle but in the end, if you decide on a new computer, I think you'd be happier with a custom build. If you do go with a pre-built I would check out the case to make sure there is room for future upgrades/changes.
 
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M

Mark Porter

Honorable
Oct 8, 2013
3
0
10,510
Thanks Ken. Yes, I was thinking the SSD drive would be dedicated to the Windows 7 OS. Now that I read more at the Adobe link you provided, it seems I should keep the original 1.5TB in the system and proactively assign all three drives. The CUDA & OpenCL concepts seem to very important for Premier so I'm even less sure about which video card. Keep that advice rolling in folks.
 
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popatim

popatim

Titan
Moderator
Dec 2, 2009
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You'll probably want a 3gb graphics card, 2gb minimum.

pre-built vs build your own: with the prebuilt it sounds like you'll still be installing the old HDD and SSD forcing you to reinstall windows so how much more work is it to install a motherbd and an optical drive?

If you want to upgrade what you have, how heavily will you be hitting the system? Would a new i7-4930K make sense for you? you would need to research further as I've seen anything from 15% to 35% improvements over ivy-e quad cores, depends on who's doing the review.

Lastly, how will you be backing up your work?
 
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