Happy for you! What PC do you have.
It's a purpose-designed homebuilt I put together in early 2020, It received one upgrade (the system SSD) since then.
Parts:
- Intel i9-9900K processor, stock-clocked.
- Gigabyte Z390 M Gaming MicroATX motherboard.
- NVDIA 1660 6GB GPU.
- 64GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR4 3200 system RAM.
- Crucial P5 M.2 500GB NVMe system SSD.
- Crucial P1 M.2 500GB NVMe working videos SSD.
- Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SATA data SSD.
- Seagate 4TB external HDD. I forget whether it's an EXOS Enterprise or an IronWolf Pro NAS offhand. It's one of the two. Probably the EXOS.
- Corsair RM650 PSU.
- Thermaltake Core V21 case, chosen for its excellent cooling characteristics (and because I like cube cases).
- Noctua NH-U12A CPU cooler. Even during sustained renders, the core temps rarely reach 60C.
- Noctua NF-P14s Redux exhaust fan.
- Whatever 200mm intake fan Themaltake installs on the Core V21 case.
I also have an HDMI dummy plug in the Intel iGPU output to make the integrated video available to the system, mainly for Magix Video Pro X (which I still use from time to time and which requires an Intel iGPU for hardware encoding).
However, DaVinci Resolve also makes use of the iGPU, as well as about 40 percent of the NVIDIA 1660 and maxing out all the CPU cores, when rendering in Native Mode. That was a nice surprise. I
think it uses the iGPU to calculate the effects, but I never bothered tracing to find out for sure. I do know that it's fast.
Typical system RAM use during 4K rendering ranges from about 24GB to 40GB. The 64GB gives me plenty of elbow room. It also uses about half of the NVIDIA VRAM.
I'm happy with it. It was kind of expensive, but still a good value performance-wise because none of the parts were bleeding-edge when I bought them. But it still makes renders coffee-break time rather than overnights. So I'm pleased,
The i9-9900K processor in particular is a powerful processor that was less popular than it deserved to be because it also was the end of the LGA 1151 line. Intel went out with a bang on LGA 1151, but there's no further upgrade path for that socket.
I still recommend the i9-9900K, however, for high-end machines on a budget if you need Intel (for example, for Magix software) and can find a decent Z390 mobo for it. It's a workhorse and a thoroughbred at the same time.