How much RAM and power should a video post processing computer have?

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

If I put a giant file in my computer to post process (+/-100GB ProRes for 14 min of video) the post software spins forever saying it is optimizing the import. Then when it eventually settles down, I make an adjustment like changing aspect ratio and the optimizing starts all over. In short, I can never do much with the original file and have to convert it to a 4K MP4 at about 10% of the size of the original scan. Also, when I do get it to work the cooling fan in the computer starts running like a blow dryer, which it seldom does.

Is this a software problem (Movavi software) or a computer problem? How much RAM and power should a video post processing computer have?

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

Do you have a budget in mind?

Nowadays you can use ten thousand different things to do that sort of thing. 

My favourite small-ish computers outside the DIY PC arena are the minisforum ones:

https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-s1-max-mini-pc

But if you're a Mac person there's a plenty of things that work assuming you got the storage oomph and network/interface speed. 

This movavi software you're using is not really meant for what you are trying to do I didn't even know such a thing exists.

Do yourself a favour and work with this:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/event/davinciresolvedownload

It's free

 

[Robin Phillips]

if you're dealing with really large files, you should probably be working with Davinci Resolve studio. $300 one time fee, so far unlimited updates. its meant for online work, and manages resources well. the 1080p version is free. 

a proxy workflow will also allow you to run a heavier project with lower system specs.

my work machines have at least 128gb ram, but thats overkill unless you're really working them. I'd think the minimum specs these days you'd want is 32gb ram + a gpu with at least 12gb vram (really 16). things get different if you go mac, since macs have on board encoder/decoders to take workload off the main CPU and shares ram dynamically between CPU and GPU cores as needed. 

 

[Tyler Purcell]

Sounds like you need an actual computer and real software. Movavi is not a real tool, it's a toy for consumers to edit cat videos, hence the "optimizing" aspect. 

For reference, on my Apple MacBook 16" M4 Max 40 core gpu and 128GB of ram laptop with Resolve 20, I can edit multiple layers of 3:1 compression 12k BRAW from my URSA Cine in a 4k timeline as smooth as butter. We do Multicam shoots and I can have 4 streams running at 1/2 res in the preview window. Heck, I just did an entire timeline with an 8k output and it was totally fine, ran smooth with all the de-noise and effects, total butter just slower on export than 4k. Pro Res is even easier to work with because it uses the built in hardware encoder/decoder which means you can have around 40 video tracks playing at once all in 4k before it starts to dog, that's insane. Mind you, we use 3000MB/s thunderbolt storage, so that's a critical aspect as well, nothing is "local" to the system. 

I would give the above computer a "B" grade for performance, it's ok. Nothing to write home about, but as a laptop, it's ok. The M5 Max will solve a lot of problems the M4 has especially with thermal issues and the GPU performance. I have a feeling the M5 Max will be Apple's first "A" grade Apple Silicon computer, followed closely by the M5 Ultra due out in June, which could be the fastest consumer desktop system ever made. 

So yea, my guess is your computer specs are just not there. 

 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 1/18/2026 at 10:32 AM, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

Do you have a budget in mind?

Nowadays you can use ten thousand different things to do that sort of thing. 

My favourite small-ish computers outside the DIY PC arena are the minisforum ones:

https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-s1-max-mini-pc

But if you're a Mac person there's a plenty of things that work assuming you got the storage oomph and network/interface speed. 

This movavi software you're using is not really meant for what you are trying to do I didn't even know such a thing exists.

Do yourself a favour and work with this:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/event/davinciresolvedownload

It's free

 

 

Not really. The lowest I can get away with.  I am hesitant of buying $$ computers. My last $2,000 custom was wrecked from one of Bill Gates forced updates within a week after I got it. I hate nanny-state Windows. 

Thanks for the link, will try out the software.

 

 

 

Edited January 24 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Tyler Purcell]

4 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Not really. The lowest I can get away with.  I am hesitant of buying $$ computers. My last $2,000 custom was wrecked from one of Bill Gates forced updates within a week after I got it. I hate nanny-state Windows. 

Thanks for the link, will try out the software.

 

Windows is dead yep, 100% never coming back. We have had to restore our brand new custom build $5k windows PC 4 times since purchasing mid 2025. 

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

I don't know what you guys are doing with your Windows PC's, but seriously...

I've used and still use all kinds of operating systems daily and professionally for different purposes - I've seen zero difference in reliability and that includes for media work.

Apple used to have a great thing going especially during the Final Cut era but they ceded everything to Avid and Protools after the X fiasco, so for the rest of the people, they are platforms for Resolve nowadays.

Yes they have a good integrated and optimized system, but it's in practice no better than a windows equivalent on Resolve with an RTX 4090, the apple laptops are mostly better for media though.

I've seen Sun Solaris fail which is rock hard stable (old timer) and it was mostly because of inattentiveness or mistakes, and I've seen similar in Linux, MacOs and Windows of course, but never because of the OS.

Ubuntu is also excellent and you can run Resolve on it.

But, let's leave exaggeration and anecdotal experiences aside.

[Robin Phillips]

I will say for any work machine that has very high up time, its always best to keep a known stable disc image handy so you can re-image the machine once it starts acting funky. 

for less heavy use, I've found macs to just be easier to deal with. generally more stable. but sometimes that doesnt fly because you need to rock an nvidia pro card to accelerate the work you're doing. 

it just comes down to finding the tool that doesnt get in your way for the sort of work you're doing. 

[Joerg Polzfusz]

There’s so much more when it comes to speed, e.g. whether your hardware supports de- and encoding (and whether the software is using these techniques or not):

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/onevpl/developer-reference-media-intel-hardware/1-1/overview.html

E.g. when it comes to 4K, you should take a look at the minimum requirements recommended by the software, especially when it comes to GPU (yes, these days it’s more important than the CPU):

https://help.magix-hub.com/video/ps/de/content/topics/systemrequirements.htm?TocPath=Bevor Sie starten|_____3

https://www.miracamp.com/learn/davinci-resolve/system-requirements

And keep this hint from miracamp in mind: „Integrated graphics (like Intel UHD) are not recommended for serious work.“

(And that sentence is true - the final export with fades, titles, credits of 95min of full hd footage at 50fps into a MPEG2 file (19GB) took nearly seven hours on my laptop with Intel UHD. That’s because the GPU isn’t supported.)

Then you will to have think about storage etc. - SSD is a must when you want to have speed, switching from USB 3.0 to USB 3.2 Gen 2 for external drives (including cables and hubs!) really makes a difference.

Of course, there’s now also USB4.0 which is even faster. But my laptop doesn’t support it.

You will also have to think about whether you want to use a laptop or not. With a desktop computer, you can more easily later upgrade your graphics card, add more RAM, add more internal drives, …

 

[Chris Burke]

I said a very similar thing in another post of your's Daniel and I will say it again. I think your Archive, which seems really cool, and you would be best served with even an entry level Mac Studio. Get 64gigs of ram. Use Davinci Resolve. Very easy to set up and use. 

[Hannes Famira]

53 minutes ago, Chris Burke said:

I said a very similar thing in another post of your's Daniel and I will say it again. I think your Archive, which seems really cool, and you would be best served with even an entry level Mac Studio. Get 64gigs of ram. Use Davinci Resolve. Very easy to set up and use. 

Seconded

[Tyler Purcell]

11 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

There’s so much more when it comes to speed, e.g. whether your hardware supports de- and encoding (and whether the software is using these techniques or not):

Nobody has hardware Pro Res encoding or decoding in the X86 world. Apple is the only company who does that. Plus all of the other codecs like AV1, .h265/.h264 and of course Pro Res Raw, all done without the CPU/GPU being touched. Intel does this through the iGPU, so you are using GPU resources no matter what, only Nvidia GPU's have actual hardware based encoders/decoders but they do not support professional codecs. 

[Perry Paolantonio]

On 1/24/2026 at 7:11 PM, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

I don't know what you guys are doing with your Windows PC's, but seriously...

I wonder this too.

We have a dozen Windows machines in operation currently, and none of them have ever bricked themselves. It's not my favorite OS by a long shot, but it's also not the complete disaster some around here make it out to be. I would much prefer to be using Macs for most of what we do, but the inability to use PCIe cards without getting a second mortgage for the MacPro kills that possibility. We're moving more stuff to Windows these days because they're relatively easy to set up, hardware is cheap, and you can build a very powerful machine for half the cost of what you'd pay HP or Dell for the equivalent, if you have any idea how these things go together (it's not that complicated). 

There are well documented ways to turn off Windows Updates if that's what's bugging people. It's a google search away and takes 2 minutes to do. 

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

22 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Nobody has hardware Pro Res encoding or decoding in the X86 world. Apple is the only company who does that

On resolve on my (now old but nice on VRAM) RTX 3090 and (even older) Ryzen 5900x, I get buttery smooth ProRes 4K 4444XQ no sweat and multiple streams and effects, my only limitation would be (it isn't) my network speed to my NAS.

Apple has a nice ecosystem but for hardware enthusiasts, a custom PC with changeable parts you get to choose is never going to be matched by any Apple hardware in versatility if you know about computers.

Mac can be blazing fast and in some segments, especially in the laptop arena they are unbeatable, the studio is a nice offering especially for the ProTools / Resolve people, but I can't justify the cost/performance ratio unless I am running a shop or running ProTools, but on that front you can't believe how many post shops I've seen running essentially gamer rigs with Ryzen's and 4090's 5080's etc. - they don't really break.

The reliability topic is at best an urban myth, there are entire industrial installations running the world on Windows - it's all a matter of applicability and taste, such as who wants which operating system, same on Linux, etc, with the only difference being that Linux being actually the most versatile (let's not forget open too) and powerful of all.

To be fair, you can still run a Windows app made in 1993 today, natively, try that anywhere else without emulation or abstraction layers that break stuff.

Use what you like, but all work equally fine.

50 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

We're moving more stuff to Windows these days because they're relatively easy to set up, hardware is cheap, and you can build a very powerful machine for half the cost of what you'd pay HP or Dell for the equivalent, if you have any idea how these things go together (it's not that complicated). 

There are well documented ways to turn off Windows Updates if that's what's bugging people. It's a google search away and takes 2 minutes to do. 

Exactly, I think it's probably maybe more than ten years ago that a windows update actually broke something and I run ten thousand things. I've never seen either Avid, Premiere, Resolve or Reaper break anywhere in particular all this time. I wish that adobe products were not such a bloated mess, which is why I cheer for Resolve which has broken zero times three-four years now.

Edited January 26 by Aristeidis Tyropolis

[Tyler Purcell]

1 hour ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

On resolve on my (now old but nice on VRAM) RTX 3090 and (even older) Ryzen 5900x, I get buttery smooth ProRes 4K 4444XQ no sweat and multiple streams and effects, my only limitation would be (it isn't) my network speed to my NAS.

Yep, but no hardware encoding, it's using the CPU to do all the work. This limits the amount of streams you can playback. Where not applicable to the OP's comment, you mentioned hardware encoding and I wanted to correct you that there is no such thing as "industry standard codec" hardware decoding or encoding on any X86 system. Apple owns that market and the difference may not effect you if you're just sending video directly through your system, but absolutely does when you have a 8 camera shoot doing Multicam workflows. 

Our old backup system is a 5950X3D with 3080TI, with DPX to Pro Res 4444 conversion in 4k, it's around 20fps and maxes out the GPU. It's around 40fps on our new 9950X3D 5080 system. On the M4 Max (16 core CPU, 40 core GPU), it's around 60fps. Same drive, same cable, same application, same timeline.  The difference is how the programs are written to utilize the hardware and of course the integrated hardware encoders. 

1 hour ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

 

Apple has a nice ecosystem but for hardware enthusiasts, a custom PC with changeable parts you get to choose is never going to be matched by any Apple hardware in versatility if you know about computers.

The interchangeable part aspect doesn't have merit anymore because CPU socket's are changing rapidly, so is the bus architecture. So today, if you buy a DDR5 system, you are stuck there. Yes, when chips get cheaper, you can upgrade to a better chip, but I'm sorry these chips are not expensive. If you're doing post production work and can't afford the highest capable AMD or Intel chip (both under $1k for consumer desktops) then that's kinda problem one. 

Having built dozens over the years, I would never do it again. Our current build (2025 released parts) has needed several complete drive wipes due to windows 11 problems conflicting with the drivers for the ASUS motherboard. It force over-writes the driver package from the windows software update, which breaks the required ASUS driver pack and causes the system to not function any longer. This issue is well documented on all the forums and there is no fix. So we basically have a system that at any time, will update and never work again. Oh and it won't run Windows 10 or Linux, because the driver support for the high speed bus doesn't exist, so it's relegated to USB3.0 under both OS's. Only under Windows 11 can you unlock the 3.2 2x2 bus, which is required for any serious post production, amongst all of the other things like Wifi/Bluetooth and internal NVME drivers. 

Where I would agree, Apple has not yet released a comparable professional desktop focused for 3D workflows yet (coming this year BTW), but Apple has a huge upper hand with their laptops and support. Nobody makes a better laptop and now that Apple is forced to sell parts to consumers, you can easily do things like swap bad connectors, batteries and even displays at home. Apple uses encrypted raid's for storage, hence the 9,000MB/s internal drives on the MacBook M4's, so it's not really removable for that reason. If they did do a socketed drive, they would be stuck to the same thermal issues every single windows system suffers with. You HAVE to spread the data onto at least 8 NAND's to avoid thermal issues. Plus taking the controller and putting it with the caches onto the motherboard, vastly increases raw throughput on the internal drive, same goes for the memory, vastly exceeding the performance of ANY X86 laptop today. My last generation M4 Max for instance has 128GB of LPDDR5X 8533 memory with a 512 bit bus, 8 channels and 546GB/s throughput. Compare that to the latest AMD offering, our 9950X3D which is 89.6GB/s per channel and it has 2 channels, so you can see what we're talking about. Nobody has anything like what Apple is doing, it literally does not exist anywhere on the market.  

1 hour ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

The reliability topic is at best an urban myth, there are entire industrial installations running the world on Windows - it's all a matter of applicability and taste, such as who wants which operating system, same on Linux, etc, with the only difference being that Linux being actually the most versatile (let's not forget open too) and powerful of all.

I supported the film industry for a long time, including setting up a lot of huge post houses with 30+ edit bays. There would be 50 mac's with NO Mac tech and 10 Windows servers and they needed a full time Windows tech to keep them running. In fact, one post house that I worked at for a year, we had 3 windows/networking techs and I was the only Mac guy, but the computers ran so well without any issues ever, they laid me off. Yet to this day, they still have a team of 2 windows/networking guys who deal with windows issues all day long in a company that is 80% Mac. So the reliability isn't an urban myth, the NEW Apple Silicon mac's are bulletproof if you don't put them in horribly humid conditions and get them wet. Mind you, AppleCare now covers like an insurance plan, so it will cover physical damage AND they're expanding it to a single lifetime loss as well. That's insane, get ANY PC maker to do that, they'll laugh you right out of the building as you pay them $20k a year for support. Bro, my 2019 Mac Pro has been sitting on doing tasks for 6 years now, with the only reboots being software updates and a few hardware change outs. It doesn't sleep, it chews on renders all day/all night for me and it's been bullet proof. We have two windows systems, one is 10 and one is 11, we can't keep them running. I've paid for professionals, I've paid for warranty and insurance, none of it works. The warranty is BS because it doesn't cover Microsoft defects and the insurance is BS because the board has to be dead. Got a bad BlueTooth hardware? No coverage. Apple will replace the motherboard for you, for free, FOREVER if you pay $149 a year. That's insane. 

Linux is a total joke, anyone who actually uses computers, needs to be on Windows or Mac OS. 

1 hour ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

To be fair, you can still run a Windows app made in 1993 today, natively, try that anywhere else without emulation or abstraction layers that break stuff.

You do need emulation mode to run most apps that were developed for Windows 7 or below on Windows 11. Now that Windows 10 is depreciated, you can't even have it on the internet without the risk of viruses, which they're for sure developing in hordes. 

There is also no Secure Enclave with Windows 10 like Apple has. Currently Microsoft can give away any keys you have on the cloud if the government request them. So that's umm, not good. 

Honestly, I don't mind buying new Apps, they are WAY better for the most part. I re-buy things all the time just to get the fresher update and more stability with better workflows. 

[Tyler Purcell]

3 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

We have a dozen Windows machines in operation currently, and none of them have ever bricked themselves. It's not my favorite OS by a long shot, but it's also not the complete disaster some around here make it out to be.

That's because they most likely do a single task and they're older hardware. 

This has changed as of the current hardware. 

3 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

I would much prefer to be using Macs for most of what we do, but the inability to use PCIe cards without getting a second mortgage for the MacPro kills that possibility.

This is sorta fixed with the Sonnet Echo III TB5 enclosure for Mac Studio's. The M5 Ultra will be the system to get and the Echo III gives you 3 PCI slots for $2k. 

3 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

We're moving more stuff to Windows these days because they're relatively easy to set up, hardware is cheap, and you can build a very powerful machine for half the cost of what you'd pay HP or Dell for the equivalent, if you have any idea how these things go together (it's not that complicated). 

Not when DDR5 memory is $1500 for 128GB and Threadrippers/Xeon are 2 generations old. 

3 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

There are well documented ways to turn off Windows Updates if that's what's bugging people. It's a google search away and takes 2 minutes to do. 

Yes, you can turn it off, but with all the viruses and malware floating around, even the best tools to protect yourself, still won't protect everything. You also don't need to have your system online at all, but that''s hard if you use it for multiple things and not singular tasks. We sandbox a lot, but can't afford a 3rd Windows system for sandboxing. 

[Perry Paolantonio]

18 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

ASUS motherboard

There's your problem.

11 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

That's because they most likely do a single task and they're older hardware. 

Single task, yes. older, not in all cases. It's bad practice in a busy studio to try to use one machine for multiple purposes. it's more efficient, more reliable, and less problematic to have hardware that does one thing primarily than to have a machine loaded down with drivers. If it goes down you can't do the other stuff you rely on that hardware to do, so you're dead in the water until you get things fixed. 

14 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

This has changed as of the current hardware. 

That's ridiculous.

15 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

This is sorta fixed with the Sonnet Echo III TB5 enclosure for Mac Studio's. The M5 Ultra will be the system to get and the Echo III gives you 3 PCI slots for $2k. 

I don't like expansion chassis. It's a lot of extra crap hanging off of the machine. Apple's decision to move away from standard expansion cards in the name of minimalism is dumb. Even more so when you consider that the overriding design decision with much of their recent hardware is to make things thinner and "simpler". In the end you wind up with a cuttered desk full of cables connecting things via Thunderbolt - an overpriced, largely apple-specific interconnect. 

 

17 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yes, you can turn it off, but with all the viruses and malware floating around, even the best tools to protect yourself, still won't protect everything

Yeah, no. I haven't run anti-virus software ...ever. Most professional software tells you not to, so if you are, that may be contributing to your reported performance issues. If you're reading your email and browsing the web on your color correction system, you're asking for trouble. Don't do that. Keep your hardware airlocked and you really don't need to be concerned about malware. 

[Tyler Purcell]

3 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

There's your problem.

At the time of purchase, the ASUS 870E Pro Creator was the only board with multiple PCI Gen 5 NVME slots, a second usable 16X PCI slot, multiple USB C Gen 3.2 2x2 slots and capable of running 192GB of ram, which is a big deal. 

I wasn't going to buy a Xeon or Threadripper. We already have a few older Xeon systems collecting dust because the modern desktop systems are plenty fast enough for the kind of work we do. 

3 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Single task, yes. older, not in all cases. It's bad practice in a busy studio to try to use one machine for multiple purposes. it's more efficient, more reliable, and less problematic to have hardware that does one thing primarily than to have a machine loaded down with drivers. If it goes down you can't do the other stuff you rely on that hardware to do, so you're dead in the water until you get things fixed. 

Yea, but we have no choice but to deal with DPX files, there is no other workflow. Converting them to Pro Res up front before any other post work happens, is the easiest workflow and it's very problematic when the scanner software and the post processing software can't play nicely together. We are working on that, but the solution may take even longer. If we could solve that one problem, we'd still probably have to re-install every few months, like we did with our last PC and the one before that. Seems like every once in a while, they just brick themselves when they're online. Sadly we have no choice but to keep the systems online at all times. 

We do have backups, so restoring stuff doesn't take long, but yea it sucks. 
 

3 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

That's ridiculous.

No it has the pricing is way up today for everything and it's going vertical shortly as the precious metal costs will inadvertently increase production costs of basically everything tech related. TSMC has already said N2 and A18/A16/A14 nodes, will be double maybe triple the cost of N4E and N4X which is what pretty much everyone is currently on outside of Apple and Intel's soon to be released chips due out later this year. So the days of putting down $8k on a threadripper system are behind us, especially with GPU's, unless you just buy old tech. 

3 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

I don't like expansion chassis. It's a lot of extra crap hanging off of the machine.

The ECHO III is a 19" rack mount box, which the Mac Studio sits into. It's 3RU and it has 3 PCI slots. The whole thing is self contained, it's basically the same size as a rack mount Mac Pro. Has fans, power supply, lots of IO and even a little button on the front which triggers the power button on the Mac Studio. I've installed dozens of them, it's currently the post houses's favorite little kit. Mac Pro would be nice, but the added cost makes no sense when it's the same tech. Apple has yet to release an SOC with 128 lanes like the prior Xeon system. You can get 16x performance out of a few lanes, but nowhere near what you can do on the Xeons. So it's a pretty useless upgrade for a NVME raid, 25G networking and Blackmagic Decklink, the only things ya really need in picture post edit bay. If you're using Protools and need I/O, that's different. 

FYI our entire business is thunderbolt, all of our raids, all of our shuttle drives, everything. The shuttle drives are also USB-C, so we can use Paragon on the Windows machine(s) and still get decent throughput on them. There isn't any other interconnect that comes close performance wise and since ALL clients use shuttle drives, it's just part of our workflow as well. 

3 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Yeah, no. I haven't run anti-virus software ...ever. Most professional software tells you not to, so if you are, that may be contributing to your reported performance issues. If you're reading your email and browsing the web on your color correction system, you're asking for trouble. Don't do that. Keep your hardware airlocked and you really don't need to be concerned about malware. 

No we don't run any virus software, it's all turned off always. 

But if you aren't getting any security or windows defender updates, you're liable to have issues down the road if that system is online. We get A LOT of data from clients through Aspera, Google Drive, Dropbox and Frame IO, it would be easy for a virus to move onto our systems if we didn't have anything updated. The mac's don't have problems, which is why our Resolve bay and ALL of our personal systems are mac's. I wish we could virtualize the scanner software in Mac OS, but it's garbage. 

Yes if we got a Scan Station or something like that, we'd have less problems. 

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

M4 Max

Ok so at least $3.2k of non upgradable landfill-friendly resource that does 20fps extra on a very specific use case that would affect a very low percentage of some professional environments and exactly zero of semi-professionnal ones.

 

6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

No we don't run any virus software, it's all turned off always. 

But if you aren't getting any security or windows defender updates, you're liable to have issues down the road if that system is online.

I think you have issues understanding how the windows update system works.

No environnement in the world should have vulnerability scanning disabled, this is not 2005 and defender is not McAfee. I can guarantee you it does not affect I/O throughput.

10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

There is also no Secure Enclave with Windows 10 like Apple has. Currently Microsoft can give away any keys you have on the cloud if the government request them. So that's umm, not good. 

There's alot of secure technology under the good of windows that you are not updated on. Windows has security rings, memory isolation, secure boot and plenty of enclaves similar to MacOs. 

As for the "keys", which keys? Bitlocker? UEFI?

You are referencing a lot of half-truths here and conflating cloud principles with desktop ones.

10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

You do need emulation mode to run most apps that were developed for Windows 7 or below on Windows 11.

Absolutely not, that's 100% incorrect.

10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

My last generation M4 Max for instance has 128GB of LPDDR5X 8533 memory with a 512 bit bus, 8 channels and 546GB/s throughput. Compare that to the latest AMD offering, our 9950X3D which is 89.6GB/s per channel and it has 2 channels, so you can see what we're talking about. Nobody has anything like what Apple is doing, it literally does not exist anywhere on the market.  

These differences affect a very small subset of use-cases, and you're reading too much into the spec, we know Apple had good integration and a solid OS to support it, but it now has zero killer apps outside maybe Logic, all of them exist elsewhere too.

 

10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

There would be 50 mac's with NO Mac tech and 10 Windows servers and they needed a full time Windows tech to keep them running.

50 Macs doing what? Editing?Windows Servers doing what? Active directory? Exchange? What exactly?

As for Linux being a joke I will only say this:

Autodesk Flame.

Linux is where most of the technology is going to be moving probably including Wndows in the end.

You had a few bad experiences with some hardware and are extrapolating as universal truths, I assure you it's not the case.

[Perry Paolantonio]

13 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

At the time of purchase, the ASUS 870E Pro Creator was the only board with multiple PCI Gen 5 NVME slots, a second usable 16X PCI slot, multiple USB C Gen 3.2 2x2 slots and capable of running 192GB of ram, which is a big deal. 

The Supermicro H13SRA-TF was out months before the ASUS board you're using. While it doesn't have Gen5 NVME slots, it does have PCIe Gen 4 NVME, which, except in some very unusual circumstances, is more than you'd need.

That motherboard has 2 x8 Gen5 PCIe 5.0 slots and 2 x16 PCIe 5.0 slots, dual 10GbE LAN, space for 1TB DDR5 RAM, multiple USB 3.2 A and C ports, etc. And most importantly, it's not an ASUS, it's a Supermicro, so it's going to be solid, reliable and basically bulletproof. We have a Windows NT 4.0 machine here that we fire up occasionally, built on a Supermicro motherboard. It was built in 1999.  it will never die and it's rock solid. All of our custom-built workstations are built on Supermicro motherboards. The only ones that aren't (including a couple ASUS machines) are ones that don't do heavy lifting - like database servers.

The only thing the Supermicro doesn't do that your ASUS does is PCIe 5.0 NVME. Support for that is more of a flex than a practical reality. Even the ASUS site for that motherboard has an asterisk next to that spec telling you you're not going to see those speeds. 

Edited January 27 by Perry Paolantonio
typos

[Tyler Purcell]

4 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

The Supermicro H13SRA-TF was out months before the ASUS board you're using. While it doesn't have Gen5 NVME slots, it does have PCIe Gen 4 NVME, which, except in some very unusual circumstances, is more than you'd need.

That's a TRX50 motherboard for threadrippers, so a $8k build. The current 9xxx series Threadrippers are the only one's on the newer nodes and they are basically twice the price for the motherboard and twice the price for the CPU. Plus, the 9950X using the AM5 socket, is less complex and can ramp up for single core tasks WAY faster. So programs like Phoenix which do not have any multi-threading support, work WAY better on high clock count single core systems (for the price). Obviously if you add a lot more cores like 32 or 64, then yea duhh the threadripper will win, but for a $10k computer what do you expect? I for sure wouldn't pay $10k for a computer unless I was daily driving it and unfortunately, the scanning and phoenix systems are both most of the time unaccompanied as they scan and render. 

4 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

We have a Windows NT 4.0 machine here that we fire up occasionally, built on a Supermicro motherboard. It was built in 1999.  it will never die and it's rock solid. All of our custom-built workstations are built on Supermicro motherboards. The only ones that aren't (including a couple ASUS machines) are ones that don't do heavy lifting - like database servers.

Comparing products made in the 90's to ones made in 2025 and beyond is not even worth the discussion. All of this tech has gotten way worse in recent years and trying to say that Windows NT, one of the most stable operating systems ever made, has any comparison to Windows 11, is also hilarious. 

Yes we could have bought an older threadripper, we thought about it, but it didn't seem logical at the time. Now hindsight is 20/20, it's clear that's what we should have bought. It seems new X86 systems simply don't work. 

4 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

The only thing the Supermicro doesn't do that your ASUS does is PCIe 5.0 NVME. Support for that is more of a flex than a practical reality. Even the ASUS site for that motherboard has an asterisk next to that spec telling you you're not going to see those speeds. 

Well, 14,000MB/s throughput does help. 

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

19 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Windows NT, one of the most stable operating systems ever made, has any comparison to Windows 11, is also hilarious. 

Tyler, there's zero evidence to place a modern operating system like Windows 11 in any kind of instability scope, it can do what all modern systems do and has zero issues in performance or stability. If you don't like it, fine.

Further, and in my opinion comparisons and nostalgia on Windows NT 4.0 is at best problematic, and reductive from the pain one had to go to place that system in the right order in the first place, I don't think anyone sane would want to live through the setup of a HP Pentium III cluster of those nowadays, but it was nice when done correctly., Try to do a tape restore from a crash though and call me after.

Apple has its own stupid stories with MacBook Pro's from 2012 with the Nvidia GPU's, the iPhone 4, and the ridiculously bad butterfly keyboard, the regression in minimum storage space...and the list goes on, that don't mean they are characterized by those.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 27 by Aristeidis Tyropolis

[Perry Paolantonio]

 

29 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

That's a TRX50 motherboard for threadrippers, so a $8k build.

Then I'm very confused. What is the spec of the machine you built? Above you mentioned the ASUS motherboard so I looked for an equivalent for the same CPU (Threadripper 9000). What is in your system?

Phoenix is very much multi-threaded. Here are all 32 cores on our machine running dryclean right now: 

This machine was built about 3 years ago and cost under $5000 at the time. It was roughly half the price of an equivalent HP or Dell workstation. We only run Phoenix on that machine, and we are able to do most tasks at just under real time, which is more than fast enough. Most Phoenix DVO plugins have been multi-threaded for years. Some are not but one of the things they've been consistently improving, since about 2022, is multi-threading. They recommended we get a CPU with as many cores as possible, in fact. 

 

29 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Comparing products made in the 90's to ones made in 2025 and beyond is not even worth the discussion.

I wasn't comparing anything to modern hardware. My point is that Supermicro makes motherboards so well that one from 27 years ago still fires up and works perfectly. ASUS's build quality is not the same and I wouldn't expect a machine they make to last. If you're having as many problems as you're having, I would tend to blame the motherboard, RAM, or driver issues for the fault. But that's a process of elimination that takes time to figure out. 

 

Edited January 27 by Perry Paolantonio

[Joerg Polzfusz]

9 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

19 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

There is also no Secure Enclave with Windows 10 like Apple has. Currently Microsoft can give away any keys you have on the cloud if the government request them. So that's umm, not good. 

…

As for the "keys", which keys? Bitlocker? UEFI?

He‘s talking about Azure: https://infosecwriteups.com/the-god-mode-vulnerability-that-should-kill-trust-microsoft-forever-f83b8fe6e909

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

25 minutes ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

He‘s talking about Azure: https://infosecwriteups.com/the-god-mode-vulnerability-that-should-kill-trust-microsoft-forever-f83b8fe6e909

Yeah I know that story quite well, has nothing to do with anything remotely discussed here. Do you know the story about Google deleting an entire financial organization in Australia? What about AWS? 

Do you know that Apple uses services from almost all major Hyperscalers?

There's failure in systems across the board, Information Technology on any scale beyond a mom and pop space, is really hard to do right and consistently.

So, my hats off to all the people trying to do their job in a complex environment.

Edited January 27 by Aristeidis Tyropolis