Considering a new laptop (Clevo based). Wanted to know what you guys think.

[sidvjn]

I've been lurking through these forums and I'm really glad it exists.

I've been window shopping for a laptop to edit on and after reading a lot I've closed in on a clevo laptop with the following configuration. My budget is $1300 and this is what I could come up with. I can maybe go another $100 or $200 if absolutely required.

Processor: Intel® Core i7-7700HQ Quad Core (2.8-3.8GHz TurboBoost, 6MB L3 Cache)

RAM: 32GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM (2 Dimm)

Graphics: 4GB GDDR5 VRAM NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

Primary Drive: 512GB Eluktro Pro-X Ultra Performance PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

Internal Expandability: One 7mm SATA III 2.5" SSD/HDD bay

What do you guys think of this spec for running Premiere (intermediate. music videos, corporate films, shortfilms@@) and After Effects (beginner. mainly working with purchased templates)?

Is the 512 GB PCIe NVMe SSD an over kill for this configuration? Many (not video editing specific) reviews I looked at, did not have the PCIe perform better than a SATA SSD. How different would it be from a SATA 3 SSD?

There are options with 6GB graphics cards that is slightly more expensive than I can afford. But will Pr and Ae use more GPU or can I get away with the 4?

Thank you..

[Eternal Warrior]

Sounds good enough... You could always utilise more of the CPU rather than a dedicated GPU if needed.

As with everything in life... the answer is it depends...

Are you going to be doing a lot of 4K video resolution editing? If yes then this should be still very good but maybe you could spend a little more if you felt it was the CORE of what you would be doing.

If not... this is pretty good spec.. and for the money you probably don't need to spend much more... but I would get an additional drive all the same.. 512 GB will go pretty quickly.

Use the SSD to run your OS and main programmes... then store (virtually) EVERYTHING else on the other drive... doesn't need to be particularly fancy...

You just want to avoid putting stuff that is very big (like OS and the actual programmes) on a HDD where you can hit a bottleneck to all your speeds and performance because the drive can't process multiple read and write commands...

Anyway, that's my two cents...

Best,

EW

[Eternal Warrior]

Oh... and no...I wouldn't say it was Overkill...

Crappy CPU's, and Cheap Hard drives are the bane of anyone serious about: Gaming, Design, Editing, etc...

Good RAM is always helpful as well as some decent GPU if you want to game on a PC rig...

But nothing kills a PC like CPU and "cheap" hard drives!! SSD is the way forward.

Don't forget... RAM is only really useful in getting stuff from somewhere to somewhere else faster...

I.e. If the door is narrow/small on one end or blocked by stuff at the other end... It doesn't matter how much of an Olympic Athlete you may be... You still gotta duck or move the stuff out of the way...

[Bill_Gehrke · Accepted solution]

Sounds great (and I would love one) but if I were to buy it, I would instantly clone the OS/Applications to an inexpensive SATA III SSD like an ~$100 850 EVO and just use the M.2 drive for all your current project files and when that project is complete move it to an external device.  You do not want to waste the super speed M.2 SSD on running the OS.  A great new external device like a Samsung T3 portable USB3 SSD (like I use several of) can be invaluable and really can actually also be used directly for medium complex editing.

I actually have run Premiere Pro with two Samsung 960 Pro M.2 drives and it did not improve performance on my Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) over using just a SATA III SSD for the OS/Applications.  And it does pay off having the project files on a good separate M.2 drive like I have the Samsung 960 Pro M.2 PCIe Gen 3 x4.

Sure would like to know what that 512GB Eluktro Pro-X Ultra Performance PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD really is Eluktro generally is a rebranded Samsung drive.  But googling did not show anything with that "Ultra" in the name.  Did they quote any read/write speeds on it.?

[Horshack]

The benefit of NVMe is higher sequential throughput and faster IOPs. Most Premiere operations aren't very I/O intensive relative to how CPU intensive they are, thus you wont see any performance improvement with NVMe relative to SATA SSDs in that workload. That said, NVMe is emerging as the standard interconnect for SSDs and the price difference is quickly becoming inconsequential.

[Bill_Gehrke]

I have a slight disagreement with your statement.

Horshack  wrote

The benefit of NVMe is higher sequential throughput and faster IOPs.

The prime goal of NVME is faster IOP's, but not higher sequential throughput.

I had a very early Samsung 950 Pro that was not NVME, later I got a NVME version Samsung 950.  So I tried both with my Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) and found no difference between the two.  Since Premiere editing is about handling large sequential files NVME it is no advantage for Premiere Pro.

I also found that using the generally more expensive NVME M.2 SSD's for the OS and Applications did not improve the performance of Premiere Pro over using a standard SATA III SSD

[Horshack]

Bill, there are NVMe's that can exceed 3GB/s in sustained throughput vs SATA III's theoretical limit of 600 MB/s. As I mentioned in my post this difference wont be noticed in Premiere due to its ratio of CPU workload to disk workload - Premiere simply can't process 600 MB/s worth of video data for its operations.

[Bill_Gehrke]

How well I know. I have several, but it is not because you are using NVME protocol that you can get that performance it is the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface that provides that capability.  If you will look at my Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) you will see that yes Premiere can take advantage of the higher speed during export operations and can actually approach 2GB/second write rate directly from Premiere Pro on the 960 Pro.  Here is the CrystallDiskMark test showing a 2+GB/second sequential write rate

[Horshack]

The "e" in NVMe is "express", ie PCI Express, so the protocol and transport are inextricably tied together.

What type of export are you doing that achieves 2GB/s? Is it one of the few video formats for which Premiere supports smart rendering (copy demuxing),  which are mostly mezannine formats that aren't used for final delivery, and on a timeline with no effects?

[Bill_Gehrke]

The test is a AVI export the most native Premiere format.  That timeline was specifically designed to test how fast Premiere can feed your export hardware.  PPBM tests various hardware elements (CPU, GPU, and Disk I/O) using the ​pure Premiere Pro environment.

[MyerPj]

Bill Gehrke​, is there any preference to running the MS or Samsung drivers for the m.2's?

[Bill_Gehrke]

I have primarily been running Windows 10 on my M.2 computer and have just been using the builtin Microsoft driver so I have not tried the Samsung one because I have not seen any better results.  Guess I should install my Windows 8.1 bot drive and see what i have there.  Just went and did it and it is also the Microsoft driver

Also here is my typical PCIe layout (remember this is an uncased desktop which can readily change configuration at a moments notice

PCIe 3.0 x16_1  GTX 1060 6GB

PCIe 3.0 x16_3  960 Pro 512GB

PCIe 3.0 x16_5  960 EVO 500GB

PCIe 3.0 x16_7  950 Pro 512 GB

M.2 Motherboard 960 Pro 1TB

If I want my 2 GPU configuration I pull the #3 card and put the second GTX 1060 6GB there of course

[sidvjn]

Thanks a ton for the responses guys. Made me confident about my purchase after you guys approved.