I'm planning a completely new PC because my roughly three-year-old midrange system has become slow and unreliable. My main priority is professional video editing, including YouTube content, music videos, and several short films I expect to work on within the next six months. I use DaVinci Resolve and Photoshop, with some Blender for 2D and 3D design. Gaming is secondary since I recently bought a PS5, although I may play some PC games later.
I'm not very experienced with choosing components, and hardware prices are especially high where I live. A friend suggested this configuration:
CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K
GPU: MSI Gaming Trio OC GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16GB
Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360
Storage: Kingston KC3000 1TB NVMe SSD
Memory: 64GB DDR5-5600 Kingston Fury Beast, 2x32GB
Motherboard: ASRock Z790 PG Lightning
I still need to choose a case and power supply. The estimated price is around $5,100 locally, so my absolute ceiling would be approximately $5,500–$6,000, though I'd rather spend less if possible. I've heard the 14900K may have reliability and power issues, so I'm open to Intel alternatives or an AMD platform. Is this a sensible workstation build for DaVinci Resolve and design work, and what would you change? I can add more storage later and currently have several terabytes of external drives available.
2 Answers
It’s also worth comparing an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X with an X870 motherboard. That platform could be a strong fit for sustained editing and 3D workloads, especially if reliability and long-term upgradeability matter more than gaming performance. Whichever CPU you choose, make sure the motherboard supports the processor properly and that the cooler and case have enough airflow.
Don’t overlook storage capacity. A 1TB SSD can fill up very quickly with source footage, cache files, proxies, and project libraries. It’s fine as a boot and applications drive if you add another fast SSD later, but ideally use separate high-speed storage for active projects and Resolve cache. Also choose a quality power supply with enough headroom for the 5070 Ti and the CPU, rather than trying to save money on that part.
I’ll compare that combination as well. The RTX 5080 is unfortunately outside my local budget, so I’ll probably stay with the 5070 Ti. I can add internal storage later because I already have several terabytes of external drives.