So, you’ve got a couple thousand dollars burning a hole in your pocket, and you don’t know what to do with it. You’re also interested in video editing.

Suddenly, the thought occurs to you. You’re going to build a high powered video editing machine to help you churn out the greatest videos that the Internet has ever seen.

However, you’ve got a problem. You have no idea what to look for in an editing computer. Thank God, you’ve come to the right place. In this article you will learn what to look for when choosing a processor for your computer.

The processor is easily the most important component of a computer that you’re going to use for editing.

If you’ve been around any advanced editors like Final Cut or Adobe After Effects, you’ve seen the dreaded word: RENDER. If you have a slow processor, rendering your edits can take hours or days even depending on what you’re trying to do. A fast processor will minimize your render time. You can literally cut that time from hours to seconds.

There are two things to look for when choosing a processor, the number of cores and speed. The more cores a processor has and the higher the speed, the better the processor.  When looking at processors, you will be able to tell how many cores it has because they will tell you outright.  If not, do a quick Google search to find out.  Determining speed is equally as easy.  Just look for the number that is followed by GHz, which stand for Gigahertz.  Once again, the higher the number, the better.

Processors are pretty expensive, but as a general rule you get what you pay for. Buy the most expensive processor that you can afford, and you will be rewarded later.

There are a couple major processor brands, but the big two are Intel and AMD. I would recommend Intel, but that is really just personal preference. To be honest, you probably can’t go wrong with either.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Get the most cores with the highest speed that your budget will allow.