Updated 2026-08-20: the figures in this scenario have been re-derived from Sephora's live catalogue and itemised. The previous version priced the Resolve stations at ₦4.8 million each and the motion station at ₦3.9 million, against real figures of ₦12,613,838 and ₦9,110,994 — out by roughly two and a half times, with no component breakdown to check them against.
The Scenario
Consider a full-service video production company operating out of Lekki, Lagos — grown from wedding videos and corporate shoots into a mid-size house producing brand campaigns, documentary shorts, and YouTube content. A team of eight: three editors, two motion designers, and supporting staff, all sharing two aging workstations and a network-attached storage unit that struggles under load.
The pain point in a setup like this is rarely creative. It is turnaround time. When a client asks for a 48-hour revision, the house cannot deliver. A 10-minute 4K timeline with color grading and motion overlays can take 14 hours to export on hardware of that generation.
The Challenge
A typical version of this setup: a pair of second-hand Dell Precision towers running Intel Core i7-8700K processors and 32GB of DDR4 RAM each, with NVIDIA GTX 1080 GPUs bought during a foreign-exchange-favorable window in 2020. At the time, excellent machines. By 2026 standards, they bottleneck every stage of production.
The problems compound. Editors working in Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve on different machines pass project files back and forth over WhatsApp because the NAS is too slow for simultaneous access. Motion designers in After Effects render compositions locally and drop them into shared folders manually. Every render handoff introduces version-control risk. And the machines run hot — a Lagos office is not always on generator-cooled air conditioning, and thermal throttling can silently add 20–30% to render times without anyone realising it.
The Assessment
The work that matters here happens before a spec sheet: watching the actual workflow rather than asking about specs — where editors wait, where handoffs happen, where files get lost. A house like this has three distinct workload profiles: heavy Resolve editing with DaVinci Fusion compositing, After Effects motion design with heavy plugin usage (Trapcode, Element 3D), and a lighter role for the producer who needs a fast machine for Premiere scrubbing, client calls, and export monitoring.
The existing machines are worth stress-testing under a real Resolve render before anything is replaced. Coolers clogged with dust and never serviced since purchase are extremely common. A CPU hitting the mid-90s°C within minutes of sustained load is throttling — the machine is not just old, it is operating at a fraction of its rated performance.
What this scenario calls for: three dedicated workstations, each purpose-profiled, plus a proper 10GbE switch and NAS upgrade. The three machines come to ₦34,338,670 at current catalogue prices, itemised below; the switch and NAS are network equipment we don't stock and are quoted separately by the supplier. An earlier version of this page gave a single indicative ₦18.5 million for the full suite with nothing itemised behind it.
The Build
Three machines from the Creator Series, each tuned differently, suit this case:
Resolve Editing Station (×2) — ₦12,613,838 each
- CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K (₦1,171,108) — 24 cores
- Motherboard: Z790 ATX DDR5 (₦757,634)
- RAM: 128GB DDR5-4800 (₦3,120,011) — our capacity ceiling; DDR5-4800 is the speed we carry at 128GB
- GPU: RTX 4090 24GB (₦5,405,068) — Resolve is heavily GPU-accelerated
- Storage: 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe cache (₦409,995), plus a 10GbE NIC for NAS access, specified per deployment
- Cooling: 360mm AIO (₦300,002); case: ATX tower (₦350,010)
- PSU: 1200W 80+ Platinum (₦1,100,010)
- UPS: a 2200VA unit is above the 2000VA our range carries (₦472,320); budget from market pricing at that size
After Effects / Motion Station — ₦9,110,994
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (₦1,488,541) — 16 cores; AE benefits from multicore for multiframe rendering
- Motherboard: X670E ATX DDR5 (₦914,703)
- RAM: 128GB DDR5-4800 (₦3,120,011) — the 96GB this scenario previously specified is not a capacity we carry; 64GB (₦1,560,006) or 128GB are the real choices
- GPU: RTX 4080 Super 16GB (₦2,127,736)
- Storage: 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe (₦409,995) plus a 10GbE NIC
- Cooling: 360mm AIO (₦300,002); case: ATX tower (₦350,010); PSU: 850W 80+ Gold modular (₦399,996)
What the Three Machines Cost
Two Resolve stations at ₦12,613,838 come to ₦25,227,676, and the motion station adds ₦9,110,994 — ₦34,338,670 for the three machines, before the replacement NAS, the 10GbE switch, UPS units, or installation.
An earlier version of this page priced the same three machines at ₦13.5 million between them. The real figure is roughly two and a half times that, and the concentration is worth naming: the two RTX 4090s and three 128GB RAM kits account for ₦20,170,169 — 59% of the hardware. A media house deciding whether this upgrade is affordable is really deciding about those five line items.
If it is not affordable as specified, the sequencing that actually works is one Resolve station first rather than three machines at a reduced specification: the bottleneck this scenario describes is a single editor waiting on exports, and one machine that solves it beats three that half-solve it.
The old NAS also has to go, replaced with a proper 10GbE-capable unit configured with RAID-6 — giving the team simultaneous read/write access to project files without the WhatsApp-file-sharing workaround.
What Changes
DaVinci Resolve is heavily GPU-accelerated, so export times scale with GPU capability — moving from a GTX 1080 to an RTX 4090 cuts render time substantially. After Effects benefits from core count for multiframe rendering, which is why the motion station is specced around a 16-core CPU rather than a faster-clocked one. And a 10GbE NAS lets editors work simultaneously on the same project files without conflicts, which removes the handoff risk entirely rather than just making it faster.
The UPS and AVR units matter for a different reason. In a Lekki office, a power event without protection is data loss or hardware damage. With protection, it is nothing.
Key Takeaway
The biggest mistake production companies make is treating hardware as a cost rather than a revenue lever. Old machines aren't just slow — they cost the business pitches, client relationships, and creative capacity. The right infrastructure doesn't just make work faster; it expands what work you can take on. A well-specced render machine pays for itself in billable hours, not in years.
If your render times are measured in hours, that's not a software problem. It's a hardware conversation waiting to happen.
Ready to talk about what a production-grade build looks like for your team? Speak with our team or explore the Creator Series to see what we build for media professionals.