$1500 Video Editing PC Build Guide | Edits 4K, 6K, RAW Video in 2021!

Powerful and genuinely affordable 6K cameras exist now. The Blackmagic Pocket 6K, the RED Komodo, the Panasonic S1H. Which is great, right up until you drop that footage on a timeline and your computer starts making noises like it’s in pain.

So here are the exact parts to build a machine that edits it fast, for around $1500. Whether you’re shooting 4K, 6K, or raw, this build will handle it in Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or basically anything else, and it’s great for photo editing, mixing music, gaming and livestreaming too.

Everything is linked below and organized together on my parts list for this build.

This is what to buy, not how to assemble it. For that, my step by step build guide walks from opening boxes to pressing the power button, and all of it still applies here. It’s not hard. It’s kind of like building Legos.

If this is the wrong budget for you, I also have a $750 budget build and a $2000 monster build.

CPU, The Brain Of The Computer

The most important part here, because the more cores and threads you have, the faster your videos edit and render.

Get the Ryzen 7 3700X. Eight cores, sixteen threads, around $320. In my opinion that’s the sweet spot of power to price in 2021.

But I hear you. Matt, the sweet spot is great and all, what else you got? Okay: for about $230 more, the Ryzen 9 5900X takes you to twelve cores and twenty-four threads. It’s a stellar chip and it will handle 4K, 6K, 8K. No matter the Ks, this thing should handle it.

CPU Cooler

Good news on the 3700X: it comes with a stock air cooler in the box, and from everything I can find it’s a good one, so save your money and skip the aftermarket option.

The 5900X does not come with a cooler, so if you go that route, budget for the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, which is a much loved cooler and does the job. If you’d rather water cool, here’s the option I’d point you at.

Motherboard

The MSI MPG B550 Gaming Edge Wifi. Feature packed, and it has wifi built in, which is genuinely nice not to have to think about.

One thing you need to know: if you go with the upgraded 5900X, there’s a chance you’ll need to update the motherboard BIOS to make it work. If that sounds like a foreign language, don’t worry. All you need is a USB flash drive and access to a second computer to download a file on, and you can borrow a friend’s. This tutorial walks through every step.

Memory

Not goats. RAM.

A minimum of 32GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX at 3200MHz. I ran 32GB in my editing desktop for years and it handled 4K fine, but I’ll be honest about where it started to hurt: rendering footage above 4K, and rendering long 4K videos, think twenty minutes and up. That’s whenever I’d watch it run out.

So if you’re regularly rendering long videos or anything higher than 4K, go straight to 64GB instead and stop thinking about it.

SSD And Storage

Best mix of price, size and speed is the 1TB Samsung 970 EVO at around $140, or the 2TB version if you have the budget. Extra space is always a good thing.

Same rule as always though: this SSD is for your operating system and programs only. For the fastest editing you want one drive holding your software and a separate drive holding your footage. If you travel a lot like I do, that means an external SSD or a large external hard drive. This case will also take an internal SSD or a big internal hard drive if you’d rather keep it inside.

Graphics Cards, And The Mess That Is Buying One

A ton of great cards have come out recently and you cannot buy any of them at a sane price. Perfect storm: a shortage of workers building cards because of the pandemic, everybody home wanting to game because of the pandemic, cryptocurrency mining, which is always an issue, and scalpers buying up stock the moment it lands and flipping it on eBay at double or triple MSRP.

So rather than name one card like I normally would, here are several, to give you the best chance of finding something in stock.

On brands: ASUS, MSI, EVGA, Gigabyte, ZOTAC, PNY. For video editing it genuinely doesn’t make much difference which one you buy, and right now we care far more about availability. If it’s one of those and it doesn’t have a pile of horrible reviews, go.

Cheaper options, MSRP roughly $400 to $500: the NVIDIA RTX 3070, and AMD’s RX 5700 and 5700 XT. All three perform very well for editing, and if you can find one new and not at an outrageous markup, they’re great.

More expensive, roughly $580 to $700: the AMD 6800, the 6800 XT, and the NVIDIA RTX 3080. Because who doesn’t want more power. Same advice, wait until you can get one near those prices.

Here are the ones I found in stock as I made this, and I cannot promise they stay that way, because this changes hour to hour: the main pick, then option two, three, four, five, and six.

Set up stock alerts at Amazon, Newegg and B&H. And if you’re near a Micro Center or a Best Buy, walking in gives you a far better shot than refreshing a page. If you do find a store with stock, go leave a comment on the video so other people can sort by newest and grab one too.

Case

Same case as the budget build: the NZXT H510. It’s beautiful without being flashy, and here’s my honest reasoning. Whenever I build a computer I’d rather buy a cheaper case with good airflow and put the savings into the components inside it. You can absolutely go crazy here and there are much cooler looking options, but they don’t make your renders faster. Grab a case fan adapter while you’re at it.

If you want a 5.25 inch bay for an internal Blu-ray or DVD burner, I’d personally just buy an external USB Blu-ray drive or a cheap USB DVD drive. But if you really want it internal, get the Phanteks Enthoo Pro M TG. It costs a bit more than the H510 and it looks professional.

Power Supply

Building the base version with none of the upgrades? The EVGA BQ 500 watt has you covered.

Buying any of the upgrades, or the alternative case with the optical drive? Go with the EVGA BQ 650 watt instead.

Both of those are semi-modular, meaning some cables are permanently attached, which affects how tidy your cable routing can be. If you want to spend a bit more and be fancier about it, the fully modular EVGA G3 750 watt is the one.

Everything Else

Mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers, operating system, all mostly down to preference. What I use and recommend: a keyboard with macro keys, the best mouse I’ve ever used, some affordable speakers, and a quick USB wifi adapter if you need one.

For a monitor there’s a good affordable 1080p option, but you’re building a 4K editing machine, so I’d definitely go with the 27 inch 4K to match it.

Windows 10 for the operating system, and this Tom’s Hardware article covers getting a copy free or very cheap.

And if after all this you’d rather not build anything, that’s completely fine. Here’s my prebuilt video editing PC guide instead.