Build Gallery

My Video Editing Rig - Built April 7, 2021

This was a great case to build in. Everything went in pretty easy and there was plenty of room to fit everything. I have never built in a better case. The motherboard looks gorgeous and makes for an ultra clean build, but more importantly it has all the features I need including dual 2.5 Gb Ethernet ports, Thunderbolt 3, Support for Ryzen 5000 series (with bios update), Flash back BIOS (update BIOS without CPU or memory installed), Debug code readout, 7.1 Surround audio, USB 3.1 Gen 2x2 (Type C), WiFi 6 & Bluetooth 5. It also supports Smart Access Memory (Resizeable Bar) and overclocking. I was able to get a stable overclock of the CPU running at 4.4 GHz all cores. The Ryzen 3900 XT at stock settings out performs a 5800X so I am very pleased with the performance. With the GPU overclocked I was able to get some pretty amazing benchmarks. Cinebench R23 All core: 19,353, Time Spy combined score: 13,269. I currently hold the top score for this combination of hardware for single GPU. This system is a video editing BEAST using DaVinci Resolve Studio 17.4.1. This was a huge step up from my 2016 MacBook Pro 15" with an i7 quad core 2.9 GHz and 16GB Ram. The only thing I would have done differently is to spring for an NVME M.2 drive but after paying 250% above MSRP for the GPU it just wasn't in the budget. One thing to note; I had to upgrade from my 500VA UPS with a new battery because it couldn't provide enough power to run the system at load. It maxed out at 315 Watts before it starts draining the battery. After doing some research I got a 1,200 VA UPS that handles up to 900 Watts which gives me a 50 Watt safety margin. It does a great job and has saved me more than once when the power went out while I was working. I absolutely love that 34" Ultra Wide monitor. Although I am not much into gaming these days  I tried it out with Call of Duty: Warzone and it looks and runs fantastic and the colour accuracy is great for the type of video editing and graphics work I do. I highly recommend all the parts I used on this build. The only thing that gave any concern was the ram not having heat spreaders but that was an easy fix, I installed after market heat spreaders and now the memory stays nice and cool. The temperatures in this system are great as well. I have done tons of stress testing and temps remain well below thermal throttle limits. I made sure to get lots of high quality fans to take advantage of the great airflow offered by the Corsair case. Cable management was a breeze in this case with plenty of grommets, pass through areas, lots of cable management channels and tie down points for zip ties and Velcro cable ties. I also made use of an old (2005) 4:3 LCD monitor for use as a sensor panel and sometimes some extra screen real estate.

Update: Jan 5, 2022:
I have been using this system for 9 months now and I am super happy with it. It just flies through video edits and the 64GB Ram definitely come in handy. Just the other day I was rendering a very intense fusion project that was using 42GB of RAM and 8.4GB Video Ram.

Due to ongoing parts availability issues I was not able to get all the parts I would have liked & it cost about 35% more than it should have. That said, I wound up putting together a system I am very pleased with and it works very well.