I wonder if you can help me. I am finally moving my entire operation to windows. I have an old mac that I am tired of fighting with. I have done a price comparison and I feel like I can get way more bang fort my buck if I go windows.
Does anyone’s have any recommendations for the best workstation to run video editing (Adobe Primere) the Adobe creative suite, and fusion 360?
Don’t be afraid of used workstations. I scored a 20 core dual Xeon machine(Dell precision t7810) with a Quadro m4000 gpu(new, $800) for about $2600. The workstation was about half of MSRP.
It’s a pretty serious machine optimized for 3d rendering and is a good balance of GPU and CPU power.
Amazon and ebay both have extensive used workstation resellers.
I think that’s probably going to be fine for you, depending on how much video (and what quality) you’re processing, but if you don’t need a mini, you should go with a full-size desktop. You’ll get a better graphics card for the same amount of money. I would give preference to the video card as you can typically upgrade the RAM on your own. That said, if people who are doing the same type of work like the mini, go for it. This something mac folks aren’t prepared for… so many choices.
FWIW, I use a gaming laptop. In part because I enjoy gaming, although nothing hardcore, but in part because it can handle all the graphics and video work I throw at it.
For fusion pretty much any decent CPU with enough RAM and a halfway decent GPU will do, but for AP you just can’t have enough RAM and GPU. I don’t know what kind of video you process but if you’re doing anything serious the render times can be ridiculous, and RAM helps a lot (I never do serious video in less than 64gb) and a beefy GPU (like a 1080ti) really helps rip video. Also having a SSD as the scratch drive is huge for performance. I would avoid a mini case just from a cooling standpoint. Machines get super hot rendering long videos (let’s forget 4K video that allows you to cook dinner on your GPU!) and so unless you like GF level fan noise
If you know any PC gamer folks you may be able to get some help building a machine from scratch. You can get more for your money that way, though you don’t have a single phone number to call in case of a warranty issue.
Stick to name-brand parts and you should be able to have a very reliable machine that way.
Either way I very much agree with the advice to not get something too small unless you really need small. Small is cool, but the bigger you get, the less you have to worry about how much you can stuff inside, and it also becomes easier to cool the machine quietly.
I have a “normal” mini-tower case, and it has a giant CPU heat sink inside… The fan runs so slowly that I can’t hear it. The same is true for my giant video card, for the same reason. It’s nice. To get that level of silence in a compact case would probably take liquid cooling.
Like @ChristyM my “daily driver” is a gaming laptop, though. I love it.
