Suggestion for new computer

[Brainiac]

A friend of mine is looking at buying a new Windows based computer for editing. His software of choice will be Pinnacle Studio for now. I suggested to him that he get a machine that would be beefy enough in the event he graduates to more sophisticated software. He will also be using the machine for more mundane tasks such as Microsoft Office, web surfing, etc. I also suggested he NOT use the primary (C) drive to store video.

Budget is $2000. He already has monitors.

Looking for suggestions on a system with a dedicated graphics card. Intel preferred.

Edit: Prebuilt highly preferred.

[DVDLover00]

My suggestions (from amazon);
RAM ; Corsair Vengeance rgb PRO 32gb (2x16) DDR4 (PC4-28800)
CPU ; Intel-i9 13900K (24cores up to 5.8Ghz)
Mobo ; MSI MPG Z790 Edge WiFi Gaming Motherboard (supports 12&13th gen intel cpu's)
SSD ; SAMSUNG 980 PRO 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 Gaming M.2

2000$ in your pocket is very good for starting. My pc is so old nowdays, and that build is a dream situation for me : (

[Brainiac]

My suggestions (from amazon);
RAM ; Corsair Vengeance rgb PRO 32gb (2x16) DDR4 (PC4-28800)
CPU ; Intel-i9 13900K (24cores up to 5.8Ghz)
Mobo ; MSI MPG Z790 Edge WiFi Gaming Motherboard (supports 12&13th gen intel cpu's)
SSD ; SAMSUNG 980 PRO 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 Gaming M.2

2000$ in your pocket is very good for starting. My pc is so old nowdays, and that build is a dream situation for me : (

Thanks for the suggestions. Would rather have a prebuilt system. Sorry I didn't mention that originally.

[usually_quiet]

You could look at these:
Dell Precision 3660
Lenovo ThinkStation P620 Tower Workstation
Apple Mac Studio - not a Windows machine but it is supposed to be wonderful for video encoding.

They probably don't offer every option someone might want, like a Blu-ray drive, room to add more storage drives, or a 1 TB NVMe boot drive.

[DVDLover00]

My suggestions (from amazon);
RAM ; Corsair Vengeance rgb PRO 32gb (2x16) DDR4 (PC4-28800)
CPU ; Intel-i9 13900K (24cores up to 5.8Ghz)
Mobo ; MSI MPG Z790 Edge WiFi Gaming Motherboard (supports 12&13th gen intel cpu's)
SSD ; SAMSUNG 980 PRO 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 Gaming M.2

2000$ in your pocket is very good for starting. My pc is so old nowdays, and that build is a dream situation for me : (

Thanks for the suggestions. Would rather have a prebuilt system. Sorry I didn't mention that originally.

sry, I cant help you, cuz Iam from Eu, here the prices and pre-built systems is different..

[usually_quiet]

Dell's XPS-8950 provides some higher-spec options that could make it a decent choice: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/xps-desktop/spd/xps-8950-desktop Unfortunately, the only option for an optical drive is a DVD drive or no drive.

[october262]

A friend of mine is looking at buying a new Windows based computer for editing. His software of choice will be Pinnacle Studio for now. I suggested to him that he get a machine that would be beefy enough in the event he graduates to more sophisticated software. He will also be using the machine for more mundane tasks such as Microsoft Office, web surfing, etc. I also suggested he NOT use the primary (C) drive to store video.

Budget is $2000. He already has monitors.

Looking for suggestions on a system with a dedicated graphics card. Intel preferred.

Edit: Prebuilt highly preferred.

see the bottom of the page for the system requirements for Pinnacle Studio to run correctly - https://www.pinnaclesys.com/en/products/studio/standard/

[DVDLover00]

Dell's XPS-8950 provides some higher-spec options that could make it a decent choice: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/xps-desktop/spd/xps-8950-desktop Unfortunately, the only option for an optical drive is a DVD drive or no drive.

Very beautiful and stylish PC ! I put it on the bottom in my mind whenever I start to searching for a new machine !

[_Al_]

But mentioned budget is a bit higher, I would make sure that some NVidia GPU is present like RTX3060 or 3070, so the price would be $1000 or slightly above. Nvidia GPU supports not only encoding but accelerated decoding/editing (for Adobe Premiere, recently I read something about decoding video in Magix Vegas, not sure?) . That might be quite important too for higher resolutions. Nowadays lots of sources is 4k.

edit:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/studio/software/
video software that work with Nvidia - Davinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere pro, Magix Vegas, Topaz ai ,.... to what degree, I don't know, it is important to read if specifically it is encoding or decoding also. But to accelerate editing for higher resolution might be quite an advantage ...

[Brainiac]

Thanks to all who commented. My top suggestions was the Dell's XPS-8950.