By Brady Betzel

With the influx of end users searching for alternatives to Mac Pros, as well as new ways to purchase workstation-level computing solutions, there is no shortage of opinions on what brands to buy and who might build it. Everyone has a cousin or neighbor that builds systems, right?

I’ve often heard people say, “I’ve never built a system or used (insert brand name here), but I know they aren’t good.” We’ve all run into people who are dubious by nature. I’m not so cynical, and when it comes to operating and computer systems, I consider myself Switzerland.

When looking for the right computer system, the main question you should ask is, “What do you need to accomplish?” Followed by, “What might you want to accomplish in the future?” I’m a video editor and colorist, so I need the system I build to work fluidly with Avid Media Composer, Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve and Adobe’s Premiere and After Effects. I also want my system to work with Maxon Cinema 4D in case I want to go a little further than Video Copilot’s Element 3D and start modeling in Cinema 4D. My main focus is video editing and color correction but I also need flexibility for other tools.

Lately, I’ve been reaching out to companies in the hopes of testing as many custom-built Windows -based PCs as possible. There have been many Mac OS-to-Windows transplants over the past few years, so I know pros are eager for options. One of the latest seismic shifts have come from the guys over at Greyscalegorilla moving away from Mac to PCs. In particular, I saw that one of the main head honchos over there, Nick Campbell (@nickvegas), went for a build complete with the Ryzen Threadripper 32-core workhorse. You can see the lineup of systems here. This really made me reassess my thoughts on AMD being a workstation-level processor, and while not everyone can afford the latest Intel i9 or AMD Threadripper processors, there are lower-end processors that will do most people just fine. This is where the custom-built PC makers like CyberPower PC, who equip machines with AMD processors, come into play.

So why go with a company like CyberPowerPC? The prices for parts are usually competitive, and the entire build isn’t much more than if you purchased the parts by themselves. Also, you deal with CyberPower PC for Warranty issues and not individual companies for different parts.

My CustomBuild
In my testing of an AMD Ryzen 7 1700x-based system with a Samsung NVMe hard drive and 16GB of RAM, I was able to run all of the software I mentioned before. The best part was the price; the total was around, $1,000! Not bad for someone editing and color correcting. Typically those machines can run anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000. Although the parts in those more expensive systems are more complex and have double to triple the amount of cores, some of that is wasted. And when on a budget you will be hard-pressed to find a better deal than CyberPower PC. If you build a system yourself, you might get close but not far off.

While this particular build isn’t going to beat out the AMD Threadripper’s or Intel i9-based systems, the AMD Ryzen-based systems offer a decent bang for the buck. As I mentioned, I focus on video editing and color correcting so I tested a simple one-minute UHD (3840×2160) 23.98 H.264 export. Using Premiere along with Adobe’s Media Encoder, I used about :30 seconds of Red UHD footage as well as some UHD S-log3/s-gamut3 footage I shot on the Sony a7 III creating a one-minute long sequence.

I then exported it as an H.264 at a bitrate around 10Mb/s. With only a 1D LUT on the Sony a7iii footage, the one-minute sequence took one minute 13 seconds. With added 10% resizes and a “simple” Gaussian blur over all the clips, the sequence exported in one minute and four seconds. This is proof that the AMD GPU is working inside of Premiere and Media Encoder. Inside Premiere, I was able to playback the full-quality sequence on a second monitor without any discernible frames dropping.

So when people tell you AMD isn’t Intel, technically they are right, but overall the AMD systems are performing at a high enough level that for the money you are saving, it might be worth it. In the end, with the right expectations and dollars, an AMD-based system like this one is amazing.

Whether you like to build your own computer or just don’t want to buy a big-brand system, custom-built PCs are a definite way to go. I might be a little partial since I am comfortable opening up my system and changing parts around, but the newer cases allow for pretty easy adjustments. For instance, I installed a Blackmagic DeckLink and four SSD drives for a RAID-0 setup inside the box. Besides wishing for some more internal drive cages, I felt it was easy to find the cables and get into the wiring that CyberPowerPC had put together. And because CyberPowerPC is more in the market for gaming, there are plenty of RGB light options, including the memory!

I was kind of against the lighting since any color casts could throw off color correction, but it was actually kind of cool and made my setup look a little more modern. It actually kind of got my creativity going.

Check out the latest AMD Ryzen processors and exciting improvements to the Radeon line of graphics cards on www.cyberpowerpc.com and www.amd.com. And, hopefully, I can get my hands on a sweet AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX with 32 cores and 64 threads to really burn a hole in my render power.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on Life Below Zero and Cutthroat Kitchen. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.