DaVinci Resolve Export Speed Test

Source Domain: tbreak.com

We built a custom Small Form Factor PC with an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and an Nvidia RTX 5090. This machine is a beast, and we expected it to eat every benchmark we’d throw at it. After all, we used the fastest consumer GPU you can buy, and a top-end CPU, crammed into an NCASE M2 that actually fits on a desk. The cost of this PC was close to AED 26,000 (about US$ 7,100) all in.

Then we compared it to a Mac Studio M3 Ultra with 256GB unified memory — Apple’s quietest flex of a workstation, that costs around AED 30,000. We ran them both through DaVinci Resolve 20 (Free), exporting H.264 with hardware encoding on.

The SFF build won a sprint. The Mac won everything else.

The machines

The SFF RTX 5090 build

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
GPU: ASUS TUF GeForce RTX 5090 (32GB)
Case: NCASE M2
Cooling: Corsair 280mm AIO
PSU: ASUS ROG Loki 1200W SFX-L
Windows 25H2, Nvidia Game Ready 591.86

Mac Studio M3 Ultra (256GB)

Chip: Apple M3 Ultra (32 cores: 24P + 8E)
Unified memory: 256GB
macOS 26.1

Worth noting: the SFF build is the cheaper machine here.

What actually happened in Resolve

Fusion-heavy comps

This is the stress test — motion graphics, compositing, heavy timelines. The kind of work that exposes a machine quickly.

Mac Studio: real-time preview. SFF PC: mostly smooth.

We used three real exports of videos we’ve produced and published on YouTube and Instagram, with the same settings on both machines (H.264, hardware encoding on).

Export 1: Aion Hyptec SSR — 1-minute HD clip

Mac Studio: 00:11
SFF PC: 00:10

SFF wins. One second. Exactly what you’d expect from this hardware on a short clip.

Export 2: Dreame Wet + Dry Vacuum — 11m:29s HD clip

Mac Studio: 01:40
SFF PC: 02:05

Here’s where it starts getting interesting. Twenty-five seconds is a real gap on an 11-minute export. The Mac just… sustained its pace.

Export 3: GWM Tank 300 Review — 47-minute 4K export

Mac Studio: 07:45
SFF PC: 09:49

The last export took me by surprise. While the…

Source

DaVinci Resolve Export Speed Test