Help me find a new computer on Amazon

[Flack]

I am looking for a new computer. I think I want a tower this time.

What is important to me more than anything is the ability to edit videos. The software I use (Magix Vegas) crashes non-stop and after months of troubleshooting I have found reports that it "just doesn't work well with AMD processors." So here's what I'm kind of thinking:

- i7 something or other Intel processor
- 32gb of RAM
- 1TB SSD. Flexible. I can always add hard drives.
- USB ports (plenty - I have lots of USB devices. Too many.)
- NVIDIA video card. I'm not a super huge modern gamer but I do game, and it helps with editing processing
- 4 video ports. Don't care if they're display port or HDMI. I have lots of cables. I currently run 4 in 1080p

I'm currently using a laptop with a USB-C dock running four monitors and a bunch of USB ports and I think that might be the source of some of my problems. That's why I'm thinking desktop this time.

Ideally I'd like to spend $1,000 or less. I am not opposed to refurbished machines on Amazon because you can return them if they're brokey.

I don't care about monitors or keyboard or mouse or speakers. I have all that stuff.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Okay, the biggest thing to familiarize yourself with is the Intel scandal that affected certain generations of their CPUs. You know that I despise corporations. I was not born that way. They did it to me, at me.

So we want to make sure that whatever you get, you are:

1. Aware of what generations of Intel CPUs are affected
2. You have some way to protect yourself if something goes bad.

I am on a 12th gen Intel processor, i7-12700K. No issues here, I will be on this processor until games no longer work on it. Like you said, you are avoiding AMD so we won't go into detail there.

I can recommend the nVidia 4080 card. It's amazing. The new Resident Evil game popped right up, it's incredible and fantastic and I stand behind what nVidia is doing there. You know everything I know about RAM. I'd go 128 GB if my motherboard could support it.

So. CPUs. How do we fix this?

Intel's 13th and 14th Gen desktop CPUs (Raptor Lake) are experiencing widespread instability and crashes due to a microcode error causing elevated operating voltages, which can lead to permanent, irreversible physical damage. Affected users face, at minimum, random application crashes, and in severe cases,, total CPU failure.

What I am seeing is that there are BIOS updates for these chips that are supposed to fix the issues. Man.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Okay, this is the starting point for new.

1. It's too much
2. It's new
3. It is not what you asked for

We want to see how much of this we can get under a grand. The memory is killing us. Well, the video card, too.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/zekepabsk ... iew=hfwK23

[AArdvark]

I looked up the sysreq for Vegas and it might be tough to come in under a grand. Maybe in the neighborhood of a grand.

GeForce Founders Express

14700K Desktop Processor

I posted Amazon links above but I can't see them. On further review they are pretty close to Jonsey's

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

EDITED!!!!!

[Jizaboz]

I think I mentioned before that my current PC uses a 14th generation i7 which IS affected by the issue ICJ brought up. However, I knew this as I purchased it, and it was easy for me to just make a couple of BIOS adjustments to avoid potential CPU damage. Basically, you just slightly under-volt it.

I've had this setup for almost 2 years now. Air cooled in a big ass NZXT case to ensure air flow.

I also strongly recommend the 4x RTX series from Nvidia for you card as ICJ said. I think mine is a 4090ti and has way more video ports than I will ever use. The only time I even used 2 was for VR.

Going ahead and getting 64 GB of RAM would be cool if your motherboard supports it, but as you know RAM prices are insane lately. Last I checked, the exactly same DDR5 LED 64 GB kit I bought for around 220$ now goes for over 900 fucking dollars.

[Flack]

Thanks for all the info so far, guys! I'll post some of the models I'm looking at tomorrow and see if we can narrow it down to one.

My daily driver (this laptop) currently has a 1TB and a 2TB drive. On C: I'm currently using 390GB which is why I'd like to go with a 1TB drive. I can always add a second drive later on down the line.

My current laptop has an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H processor with 32GB of RAM. I don't know how that processor compares to Intel's. I also have a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti w/8 GB of RAM.

One potential bottleneck is I use a USB-C dock to connect everything to my laptop. Connected to the dock I have two 7 port USB hubs. To that I have capture devices, hard drives, webcams, just all sorts of nonsense.

I currently have 3 27" monitors running at 1080p and a fourth (55" television) also running at 1080p.

If I have YouTube open on one monitor and do too much video editing, Vegas crashes. Sometimes if I drop/drag windows between monitors, it locks up and crashes. The worst part is when rendering video I used to get 30fps but after the latest NVIDIA driver updates I'm now only getting 10, so videos are taking 3x as long to render now. I have done everything under the sun to try and remediate these problems and after chasing dozens and dozens of leads the last two I have remaining are "Vegas is not steable on AMD processors" and "you're pushing too much bandwidth through that USB dock."

The minimum baseline for Vegas 18 is "6th-gen Intel Core i5 (or AMD equivalent), 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended), and a GPU with at least 4 GB VRAM supporting OpenCL 1.0 (NVIDIA GTX 970 or better)." It really should run on this system fine, but it doesn't. If it were a tower I could start throwing different hardware at the problem but being a laptop, I'm kind of stuck.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I would recommend something like this on your new PC if it has ports open:

https://www.newegg.com/p/3C6-079C-00045 ... 1DRKM94846

That should be a USB-C card that goes straight into PCI. Disappointing that there are just two ports for it - I may get one myself and see if I can find one with more ports - but something like that *should* help.

Are you thinking of just using this as a standalone Vegas machine? It seems like the multiple monitor thing blows, I wonder if people have made a switch where you can just flip it and turn extra monitors off while engaging in Vegas.

eBay may be a better place to get the RAM, sadly.

Wait. You know what? What are we doing. If I had to start over with a new PC I would do something like this:

https://www.newegg.com/p/3D5-002D-000J7 ... ZBDKDH7582

Not enough RAM, but everything else is in there. I have a buddy who may be selling more DD4 RAM, he used to mine bitcoin and is trying to get rid of stuff.

Flack, I'd absolutely take a look at Newegg and see if they can get you into an Intel processor with a 4xxx nVidia card for about a grand. I suppose Amazon could have similar things.

Hmmm

Amazon Link

[Flack]

The Nvidia card is more for rendering/gpu power than actual video output. I was just looking on Amazon and found a GeForce GT 730 for under $100 which has four HDMI outputs. I could slap that into a machine along with the Nvidia 4060, too. If there was some super game I wanted to play I guess I could set things up there my main middle monitor ran off the 4060 and everything else ran off that other card.

That USB-C card is a good idea. I hit the limit of USB hubs you can connect pretty quickly on this machine (my laptop) but it was my only option. With a PC I could grab a capture card instead of a USB one, for example, and offload a lot of those ports. I also have three USB hard drives connected to this thing which would all be replaced by one big spinning drive. I tend to ignore a lot of the "this won't be the fastest solution" when it comes to things like hard drives and stuff. I just finished playing Karateka for the Apple II over here. I ain't pushing a lot of pixels.

That gaming PC isn't a bad solution, and the grand limit isn't a hard ceiling it's just a ballpark total. If I have to spend a little bit to upgrade the RAM or something it's not the end of the world. What would be the end of the world is spending all this money and having the same problems with Vegas.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Did you end up getting a new PC, Flack?

[Flack]

Not yet. I do still need one. What I think I've figured out is that if I have other video sources open like DirecTV or YouTube on my computer at the same time I have Vegas open, it'll crash uncontrollably. Closing those things only makes it crash occasionally. It's still a problem but not an unmanageable problem at the moment. I've been setting some money aside so maybe I can increase my original budget for a new one.