Is It Still Worth Building a PC for Video Editing in 2026?

Guest post by: Denis Ogorodov (contact info at the bottom of article)

The landscape of creative workstations has changed dramatically since I wrote my first PC-building guide in 2019. Nearly every part of the industry has shifted — from the economics of hardware manufacturing to the way editors and creatives actually work.

Before we dive in, it is worth acknowledging that there has never been a better time to be a video editor from a hardware perspective. Even relatively affordable systems can now handle workflows that would have required specialized workstations only a few years ago. The challenge in 2026 is not finding a computer capable of editing video — it is finding the right balance between performance, portability, reliability, software compatibility, and cost.

AI datacenter demand and enterprise computing have reshaped the hardware market, often pushing consumer components like RAM and SSD storage higher in price and lower in availability. At the same time, Apple’s M-series chips have transformed expectations around performance-per-watt, especially in laptops and compact desktops, forcing the traditional PC ecosystem to evolve faster than ever.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s ongoing Windows and security missteps have weakened consumer trust, while Linux continues its slow but undeniable rise among creative professionals thanks to improving software support and platform stability. AI acceleration is also changing the way we interact with our computers entirely — both inside and outside traditional editing workflows.

Outside of technology, the entertainment industry itself is in flux. Production slowdowns, budget tightening, remote work shifts, and return-to-office mandates are reshaping the realities of post-production careers and the kinds of systems professionals actually need.

In short, the question is no longer simply:

“What’s the fastest PC you can build?”

It’s:

“What kind of workstation still makes sense in 2026?”

The Biggest Surprise of 2026: You Probably Don’t Need a Desktop

For most video editing work in 2026, even a relatively inexpensive laptop can take you surprisingly far. Apple’s entry-level “Neo” laptop starting at $499 is no slouch for light editing tasks, especially short-form social content. Spend only a few hundred dollars more, and you can often find a refurbished M-series MacBook Air that, thanks to Apple’s dedicated media accelerators, is capable of intermediate to even advanced editing workloads when paired with a proper proxy workflow.

Modern laptops have become extraordinarily efficient and powerful, and thanks to dedicated media engines, neural processors, and hardware acceleration, video editing is no longer the brutally demanding task it once was. Even relatively thin and portable systems are now capable of handling workflows that would have required a high-end desktop only a few years ago.

For beginners, students, freelance editors, YouTubers, social creators, and even many working professionals, a laptop is honestly the most practical choice. You get portability, excellent battery life, lower power consumption, quieter operation, and an all-in-one system that simply works. More importantly, you avoid spending thousands of dollars on performance you may never fully utilize.
Proxy workflows have also matured dramatically. Editing highly compressed 4K or even 8K footage no longer requires brute-force hardware in the way it once did. Good media management and optimized workflows matter far more than chasing benchmark numbers.

That does not mean desktops are obsolete.

If you edit professionally for eight or more hours a day, the advantages of a desktop setup become much less about raw performance and much more about workflow efficiency, ergonomics, and long-term comfort.

A proper workstation allows for significantly better ergonomics: larger monitors positioned at eye level to reduce neck strain, improved keyboard and mouse placement to help avoid repetitive stress injuries, and a more comfortable environment for long editing sessions. Over time, these factors can have a measurable impact not only on comfort, but also on productivity and long-term health.

Desktop setups also allow you to build an ecosystem around your workflow. Control surfaces like the Blackmagic Speed Editor or Micro Color Panel, programmable keyboards and macro pads, audio interfaces, studio monitors, reference displays, and high-refresh secondary monitors can all dramatically improve efficiency and editing precision.

Expandability remains another major advantage. Desktops — especially custom-built Windows and Linux systems — provide far more flexibility when it comes to PCIe expansion, high-speed networking, large local storage arrays, capture cards, multi-monitor configurations, and centralized NAS systems for collaborative editing environments.

In other words, modern laptops are absolutely capable enough for professional editing. But desktops still excel at creating a workspace that is faster, more comfortable, more expandable, and ultimately more sustainable for full-time creative work.

Apple, Windows, and Linux in 2026

Based on everything discussed so far, my recommendation for most beginners, intermediate editors, and even many working professionals is probably not going to be very surprising: buy a laptop — ideally an Apple Silicon laptop.

For the overwhelming majority of modern editing workflows, an M-series MacBook Air or MacBook Pro provides more than enough performance in an efficient, portable, and relatively hassle-free package. The entry-level “Neo” systems are impressive for the price, but their mobile chips are still slightly underpowered for sustained professional editing workloads. Stepping up to an M-series machine gives you significantly more headroom, better thermals, and access to Apple’s extremely capable media acceleration hardware.

Perhaps more importantly, these systems allow creatives to focus on the actual work instead of constantly troubleshooting drivers, operating system instability, hardware compatibility, or upgrade paths. For many editors, the simplicity of opening a laptop and immediately getting to work is worth more than chasing theoretical maximum performance.

If Apple hardware is not appealing to you, my recommendation would honestly be to pick up a well-built business laptop such as a Lenovo ThinkPad and install Linux on it. Debian, Arch, Fedora, Pop!_OS, Omarchy and similar distributions have matured dramatically over the last few years and now provide an experience that is stable, lightweight, customizable, and refreshingly free from much of the friction that has increasingly defined modern Windows.

Speaking of Linux, the ecosystem for creative professionals is stronger than ever. DaVinci Resolve Studio support on Linux has matured significantly and, aside from a few longstanding caveats — such as H.264/H.265 licensing limitations, AAC audio considerations, and the recommendation of using an NVIDIA GPU for best compatibility — the experience can be remarkably good. On the right hardware, Linux can even outperform Windows in certain workflows due to lower system overhead and better resource efficiency.

Projects like Asahi Linux have also demonstrated just how capable Apple Silicon hardware can become outside of macOS, something that would have sounded almost absurd only a few years ago.
At this point, I personally find Windows increasingly difficult to recommend enthusiastically. Incidents such as the CrowdStrike outage that disrupted systems worldwide, ongoing privacy and telemetry concerns surrounding Copilot and Windows Recall, aggressive advertising built directly into the operating system, and the growing sense that the platform increasingly prioritizes corporate ecosystems over the user experience have significantly eroded trust among many power users and creative professionals.

That does not mean Windows is unusable — far from it. Many workflows, plugins, studios, and enterprise environments still depend on it. And if your work heavily involves Unreal Engine, Blender, GPU rendering, AI workloads, simulation, or other compute-intensive applications, a custom-built Windows or Linux workstation with one or multiple discrete GPUs will still dramatically outperform Apple’s integrated GPU architecture in raw rendering performance.

But for pure editing workflows, Apple Silicon currently offers one of the most refined and efficient experiences available.

And if your employer or workflow requires Windows, then having robust offline backups and a reliable data strategy is no longer optional — it is essential.

High-End Laptops: The Performance Gap Narrows

Once you move into the high-end laptop market, the conversation becomes much more interesting. Systems like a fully configured MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip compete directly against mobile workstations such as the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 8, Dell Precision series, HP ZBook Fury, Razer Blade 16, and increasingly modular offerings such as the Framework Laptop 16.

From a raw performance perspective, high-end Windows laptops equipped with NVIDIA RTX 5080 or 5090 mobile GPUs can absolutely outperform Apple Silicon in certain workloads, particularly 3D rendering, Unreal Engine development, machine learning, and GPU-accelerated compute tasks. If your livelihood revolves around Blender, Octane, V-Ray, Unreal Engine, or large AI models, these machines remain difficult to beat.

The tradeoff is that physics remains undefeated.

To feed those powerful NVIDIA GPUs, these systems require substantially more power and cooling. As a result, they tend to be thicker, heavier, louder, and significantly hotter than their Apple counterparts. Battery life is often measured in a few hours under creative workloads, compared to the all-day battery life that has become commonplace on Apple Silicon. More recently Intel and AMD have made significant progress when it comes to performance per watt in both their CPUs and APUs which has also helped close the gap even further.

When it comes to laptops with discreet GPUs like the Razer Blade line, for example, it delivers remarkable performance in an impressively compact chassis, but it has also developed a reputation for running extremely hot under sustained workloads. The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 offers a more workstation-focused approach with excellent build quality and serviceability, while the Framework Laptop 16 is perhaps the most exciting platform from a repairability and modularity perspective. Yet all of these systems face the same fundamental challenge: balancing desktop-class performance within the thermal and power constraints of a laptop.

Apple's approach is different. Rather than chasing peak benchmark numbers, Apple Silicon focuses on delivering exceptionally high performance per watt. The result is a laptop that often feels faster in real-world editing tasks because it spends less time throttling, less time plugged into a wall, and generates dramatically less heat and noise while doing the same work.

For editors who spend their days in Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, or Avid, that balance often matters more than winning a benchmark chart.

High-End Workstations: The Last Stronghold of the Custom PC

If there is one area where custom-built PCs still unquestionably dominate, it is the high-end workstation market.

Building one, however, requires deeper pockets than it did only a few years ago. Enterprise and AI demand have transformed the hardware market, driving up costs across much of the component ecosystem and making top-tier workstations increasingly expensive to assemble. The days of building a no-compromise editing machine on a reasonable budget are largely behind us.

A modern Puget Systems workstation equipped with a Threadripper Pro processor, 128–512GB of RAM, multiple RTX GPUs, and vast amounts of local NVMe storage is an absolute monster. Systems like Lenovo's ThinkStation P-series, Dell's Precision Tower lineup, and HP's Z-series workstations occupy a similar space, targeting studios, VFX artists, engineers, and other professionals whose workloads scale directly with additional CPU cores, memory capacity, and GPU horsepower.

For GPU rendering, simulation, machine learning, Unreal Engine, and other heavily parallelized workloads, Apple simply does not have a direct competitor. A multi-GPU workstation can outperform even the highest-end Apple systems by a substantial margin.

Video editing, however, is a slightly different story.

For editors working primarily in ProRes, H.264, H.265, and common finishing workflows, the Mac Studio continues to be one of the most impressive workstations ever built. Apple's dedicated media engines handle modern codecs with extraordinary efficiency, while the unified memory architecture eliminates many of the bottlenecks traditionally associated with moving data between CPU and GPU memory pools.

I personally use a Mac Studio M2 Ultra as my primary editing workstation, and what continues to impress me most is not its peak performance, but its consistency. It remains whisper quiet, draws surprisingly little power, generates very little heat, and yet effortlessly handles projects that would have required a much larger and louder workstation only a few years ago.

While a Puget workstation may win many benchmark comparisons, the Mac Studio often wins in day-to-day usability. It is difficult to overstate how pleasant it is to work on a machine that simply sits on your desk, makes almost no noise, consumes a fraction of the power, and remains stable for weeks or months at a time.

For pure editing work, I would argue that Apple's Mac Studio represents one of the best values in professional computing today.

However, there is one area where custom PCs and Linux-based systems still hold a significant advantage: storage and expandability.

Software Support and Codec Considerations

Hardware is only half the equation. Software support, codec compatibility, and platform-specific optimizations often have a larger impact on your workflow than benchmark results.

Windows remains the most universally supported platform. Virtually every professional application, plugin, hardware peripheral, and codec workflow is available on Windows. Adobe Creative Cloud, DaVinci Resolve, Avid Media Composer, Unreal Engine, Blender, and countless third-party utilities all receive first-class support.

macOS occupies a unique position because of Apple's hardware and software integration. While both Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve can now encode and decode ProRes on Windows, Apple Silicon's dedicated media engines provide a substantial performance advantage when working with ProRes-heavy workflows. This becomes particularly noticeable in multicam edits, documentary projects, and long-form timelines where hardware decoding and encoding can dramatically reduce system load.
Although Avid's DNx family of codecs remains the traditional industry standard for broadcast and collaborative workflows, ProRes has steadily become the dominant intermediate codec throughout much of the industry. Outside of organizations deeply invested in Avid's ecosystem, most editors today are far more likely to encounter ProRes than DNxHR or DNxHD.

Linux presents a more complicated picture.

DaVinci Resolve Studio runs remarkably well on Linux and, in some situations, may even outperform Windows due to reduced operating system overhead. However, getting there often requires more technical knowledge. NVIDIA GPUs remain the recommended choice for Resolve on Linux, and although distributions such as Omarchy, Pop!_OS, Fedora, and Ubuntu have significantly improved the installation experience, proprietary NVIDIA drivers continue to be one of Linux's more frustrating pain points.

Codec support also remains a challenge. H.264, H.265, and AAC compatibility can be limited depending on the distribution and workflow. Most experienced Linux editors solve this by transcoding footage with FFmpeg, but it introduces additional complexity and workflow friction that simply does not exist on macOS or Windows.

The largest limitation, however, is Adobe.

Adobe Creative Cloud remains completely unsupported on Linux. There are community workarounds and compatibility layers, but none are suitable for professional production environments. If your workflow depends on Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Audition, or the broader Adobe ecosystem, Linux is effectively a non-starter.

For editors fully committed to DaVinci Resolve, Linux can be an incredibly powerful and stable platform. For everyone else, macOS and Windows remain the practical choices.

Storage, Expandability, and the Secret Advantage of Custom Systems

One area where custom-built PCs and Linux-based systems continue to shine is storage. While CPUs and GPUs tend to dominate hardware discussions, storage is often the single biggest pain point for professional editors. As projects grow larger, camera formats become more demanding, and archives accumulate over years of work, reliable and expandable storage becomes every bit as important as the workstation itself.

This is where the flexibility of custom systems becomes incredibly attractive. Rather than relying solely on expensive proprietary storage solutions or off-the-shelf NAS appliances, you have the option of building a storage system tailored specifically to your workflow. Platforms such as TrueNAS, Unraid, and even custom Linux servers using BTRFS or ZFS provide enterprise-grade features like redundancy, snapshots, data integrity checks, and scalable storage pools at a fraction of the cost of many commercial solutions.

That said, I would not necessarily recommend this route for everyone. In fact, if I were recommending a NAS to a typical freelance editor today, I would probably recommend a Synology before building a custom storage server. The software is polished, setup is straightforward, and the learning curve is dramatically lower than managing your own storage infrastructure.

For those willing to invest the time, however, building your own storage system can be transformative. Beyond simple capacity increases, a well-designed NAS can improve collaboration, centralize backups, provide redundancy against drive failures, and eliminate the constant cycle of juggling external drives that so many editors struggle with. In my experience, storage reliability and organization often have a greater impact on day-to-day productivity than upgrading to a faster CPU or GPU.

I have personally gone down that rabbit hole. My editing environment is built around a custom TrueNAS server connected over high-speed networking, and over the years I have spent countless hours refining the system, tuning SMB performance for macOS clients, optimizing networking, experimenting with Linux workstations, and generally learning far more about storage than I ever expected to.

If that side of the industry interests you, I occasionally cover these topics on my YouTube channel, including how I built my NAS system, the lessons I learned along the way, and the optimizations that ultimately made it work reliably with macOS, Linux, SMB-based workflows, and modern editing applications. I also hope to produce more content in the future as the system continues to evolve and as I refine the workflow even further.

My Own Workflow and Why My Advice Might Surprise You

Ironically, I say all of this as someone who genuinely enjoys building and maintaining high-end systems.
My primary workstation setup includes both an Apple Silicon Mac Studio M2 Ultra and a fully custom-built TrueNAS server connected over high-speed networking. Over the years I have spent an unreasonable amount of time experimenting with macOS, Windows, and Linux workflows, testing everything from multi-gigabit networking and NVMe storage arrays to remote editing pipelines, Thunderbolt expansion, Linux deployments, and high-performance NAS systems.

I genuinely enjoy the technical side of this world. I love optimizing systems, benchmarking workflows, tuning storage arrays, and squeezing every bit of efficiency out of hardware.

But after years of chasing performance and endlessly tweaking systems, my biggest takeaway is actually fairly simple:

Most editors need far less hardware than they think.

Reliability, ergonomics, simplicity, and workflow efficiency matter far more than theoretical maximum performance. The fastest system in the world is not particularly useful if it creates friction, instability, noise, heat, or unnecessary complexity that gets in the way of actually creating work.

The goal should not be building the most powerful computer possible.

The goal should be building the system that best disappears into your creative process.

AI Is Changing Post-Production

Artificial intelligence has also fundamentally changed the way I approach editing and post-production work. Not in the sensationalized “AI will replace editors” way that dominates headlines, but in far more practical and genuinely useful ways that save time, reduce repetitive work, and allow me to focus more on the creative side of the process.

One of the biggest shifts has been using AI as an advanced research and troubleshooting tool. Whether I am diagnosing a networking issue on my TrueNAS server, debugging a DaVinci Resolve scripting problem, comparing codecs, optimizing a workflow, or simply trying to remember an obscure technical setting buried three menus deep, modern AI systems have become incredibly effective assistants.
They are not always correct, and blind trust is still dangerous, but when combined with existing technical knowledge they can dramatically accelerate problem solving and reduce the amount of time spent digging through outdated forum threads, Reddit posts, or documentation.

For creative work specifically, AI-powered tools built directly into professional software have quietly become indispensable. Automatic transcription in both Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve has completely transformed how I approach interviews, documentaries, and long-form content. Being able to instantly search spoken dialogue, generate captions, build rough assemblies from transcripts, or quickly identify sound bites saves enormous amounts of time compared to traditional manual logging workflows.

Audio cleanup has seen equally impressive improvements. AI-assisted voice isolation, dialogue enhancement, noise reduction, and automatic leveling tools can now salvage recordings that would have previously required extensive manual repair or even reshoots. These tools are especially valuable in documentary and run-and-gun production environments where perfect recording conditions are rarely possible.

There are also a growing number of AI-focused companies attempting to automate larger portions of the editing process. Products from companies such as Eddy AI, Descript, Runway, Wisecut, and others have introduced genuinely interesting ideas around transcript-based editing, automated rough cuts, generative media, and workflow acceleration. While many of these tools show tremendous promise, I have generally found them to be more useful for experimentation and niche workflows than for day-to-day professional editing. The technology is improving rapidly, but in my experience most of these platforms are not quite reliable enough to become central components of a professional post-production pipeline.

Ironically, some of the most useful AI tools today are also the least glamorous. Automatic transcription, dialogue cleanup, object isolation, content-aware fill, searchable footage, and metadata generation may not generate flashy headlines, but they save real time every single day and integrate seamlessly into existing workflows.

Generative AI deserves a separate conversation entirely. The progress has been remarkable, and these tools can be fantastic for brainstorming, concept development, storyboards, mood boards, pre-visualization, pitch decks, and creative exploration. However, much of the commercial work that editors handle revolves around real people, real products, real locations, and real experiences.

When a client hires a production company to film an interview, capture a testimonial, document an event, or showcase a product, they typically want authenticity. They want actual customers, actual employees, actual founders, and genuine human experiences. Generative AI can create impressive imagery, but it cannot replace the trust, credibility, and emotional connection that comes from documenting reality.

At the same time, I think it is important to approach AI realistically. Many marketing departments present AI as magic, but in practice it works best as an accelerator for existing skills rather than a replacement for them.

AI can help organize footage, remove background noise, generate transcripts, suggest edits, upscale footage, or automate repetitive tasks — but it still lacks taste, context, storytelling instinct, and human judgment. The creative decisions that make editing compelling are still deeply human.

In many ways, AI reminds me of the transition from tape-based editing to non-linear editing systems decades ago. The tools become faster, more automated, and more accessible, but the fundamentals of storytelling, pacing, rhythm, emotional intuition, and human connection remain the real differentiators between mediocre work and great work.

If there is one recurring theme throughout this article, it is that modern editing workflows have become increasingly holistic. Hardware still matters, but storage, networking, software support, AI-assisted tools, backups, ergonomics, and workflow design often have a greater impact on day-to-day productivity than another 10% of CPU or GPU performance.

Final Thoughts

In 2026, building a PC for video editing is no longer about chasing the absolute fastest hardware.
It is about understanding your workflow, your budget, and the type of creative work you actually do day to day.

For many creators, a laptop is now enough. For some, a desktop workstation still makes perfect sense. And for a smaller group of enthusiasts and professionals, building a custom system remains both practical and deeply rewarding.

After all the benchmarking, tweaking, upgrading, troubleshooting, and optimization, I've come to appreciate a simple truth: nobody watching the finished video knows what computer you edited it on.

And that's probably a good reminder of what actually matters.

About the Author

Denis Ogorodov is a professional video editor, colorist, and post-production workflow enthusiast with experience spanning commercial, documentary, and digital content production. Over the years he has worked across Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Avid Media Composer, and Linux/macOS-based creative pipelines, while also building custom storage servers, high-speed networking setups, and remote editing workflows for modern post-production environments.

His work ranges from short-form branded content and social campaigns to long-form documentary and feature workflows, with a particular interest in the intersection of creative storytelling and technical infrastructure.

When not editing, Denis can usually be found experimenting with creative workflows, high-speed storage systems, Linux distributions, and the ongoing challenge of making technology feel invisible enough to support creativity rather than interrupt it.

Main Website: denisogorodov.com
LinkedIn: Denis Ogorodov on LinkedIn
YouTube: @DenisOgorodov on YouTube
Color Portfolio: deniscolor.com | @denisogorodov on Instagram