case study · custom build
A long-form video creator had been editing 4K footage on a five-year-old iMac that was choking on every project. They needed a rig that could scrub 8K timelines, render at speed, and never get in the way of a deadline. We built a Pixel Pusher, ran a 48-hour burn-in, and delivered with a documented driver-update plan.
video creator · Madison · 2025
01
The iMac couldn't keep up with the 4K timeline. Render queues were taking longer than the source footage runtime. The creator was losing a half-day per project to renders, and DaVinci was crashing whenever a timeline got past 90 minutes.
02
Ryzen 9 7950X for the core count (Premiere loves cores; DaVinci loves clock speed; 7950X is the compromise that doesn't apologize). RTX 4090 for the VRAM (24 GB is the floor for 8K with effects). 128 GB DDR5 because timeline cache thrashes RAM. Storage: 4 TB Gen4 NVMe for active projects, 16 TB HDD for archive. AIO 360 mm for thermals — this thing runs hot under sustained load.
03
48-hour stress test: Prime95 small-FFT for 8 hours, FurMark for 8 hours, then a combined CPU+GPU load for 16, then a real-world DaVinci 8K render loop for the remaining 16. Nothing failed. Temps stayed under 80°C on the CPU, 75°C on the GPU. Memory passed two MemTest86 passes with zero errors.
04
Delivered in person, set up at the creator's desk. We installed Premiere, DaVinci, and the plugins they use; benchmarked an 8K timeline (it scrubs); demoed a render queue that finishes in real-time-ish; and left a one-page driver-update protocol so they know which Nvidia driver tier is safe and which to avoid. We text them on quarterly driver updates.
05 / outcomes
The numbers we held ourselves to. Reviewed quarterly with the client.
06 / next
if it shipped, we owned it. start to finish.
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