Can I Has Video Editing PC Build Advice? :) & are you selling what I need?

[thatlucidguy]

Hi forum, and happy easter if you're reading this on Sunday.

Overview
I need to a build a new machine, primarily for video editing, this is what I do, and my ideal budget is approximately R30k which will include using parts from my current machine, but I can't go over R45k. I specifically need the machine to handle multicam edits, which means it will be reading multiple 1080p video files (AVCHD/H.264/GoPro formats) at the same time, sometimes 6 at the most. I also need it to handle some colour grading in resolve which means I need a decent GPU. Linus tech tips nailed it with a similar build to mine that I need help on, based on what parts are accessible in SA etc.

My current setup that I can use in the new setup
Intel Core i7 930 2.4ghz
Asus P6TSE Mobo
Inno 3D GeForce GTX 570
20GB of cheapo DDR3 ram, unsure what the mhz is
USB 3 PCI-e card
500GB 5400rpm
3tb 7200rpm
3tb 7200rpm
128GB SSD OCZ Vector
256GB SSD Samsung Evo 830

My proposed build that I'm considering, but need advice

Intel 4930K CPU (Need a CPU that is powerful to process edits/renders/adobe after effects work)

ASUS P9 X79-E WS (This mobo is rock solid with enough ram slots and PCI ports which I intend to use later for PCI based SSDs when I do 4K/6K raw editing)

G.Skill F3-2400C10D-16GTX Trident X 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-2400MHz 1.65V CL10 Dual Channel Desktop Memory (I will use the rest of my cheap ram to fill slots for now)

Samsung EVO 840 256GB SSD (Will use this as the OS boot drive)

4x4tb 7200rpm drives in RAID10 (Since some edits come to over 600GB in HD footage, I am unable to edit off SSDs, as I may even be editing projects that total 3tb in a month)

ASUS DirectCU 2 gtx780 3GB (I just need the CUDA performance for this, don't need a Quadro as I am not 3D rendering or outputting 10bit colour space)

I also need to find a good heat sink, Thermal Compound, +800watt PSU, & case.

So:
I first need advise on the above mentioned parts, should I up or downgrade something? Should I use a different brand?

Lastly I need help sourcing the above parts, does anyone reading this have them? Please let me know. For the rest, what is the best place to buy it from? I'm busy creating a cart on prophecy and wootware. Much appreciated. Thanks everyone.

 

[Oj0]

Sell what you have for around R11k, add the maximum R45k and refer to my sig. It makes fun of After Effects, Premier Pro, 3ds Max, Maya, etc.

By the way, which version are you issuing? I'm thinking of upgrading to CC, as an existing Adobe customer, the price isn't too bad, but will I appreciate the difference at all?

 

[Oj0]

Let's see what we can do with R55,000...

Intel Xeon E5-2630 V2 2.6GHz 6 Core Processor - Link - R 9,183
Intel Xeon E5-2630 V2 2.6GHz 6 Core Processor - Link - R 9,183
Asus Z9 PE-D8 Motherboard - Link - R 7,733
Corsair Value Select CMV8GX3M1A1333C9 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 - Link - R 1,093
Corsair Value Select CMV8GX3M1A1333C9 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 - Link - R 1,093
Corsair Value Select CMV8GX3M1A1333C9 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 - Link - R 1,093
Corsair Value Select CMV8GX3M1A1333C9 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 - Link - R 1,093
MSI GeForce GTX 780 GAMING TF OC 3 GB - Link - R 7,102
Samsung 840 EVO Series 256 GB SSD - Link - R 2,149
Western Digital Green 4 TB Hard Drive - Link - R 2,256
Western Digital Green 4 TB Hard Drive - Link - R 2,256
Western Digital Green 4 TB Hard Drive - Link - R 2,256
Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 1200w PSU - Link - R 2,698
Corsair 900D Chassis - Link - R 4,374
Cooler Master TPC-612 CPU Cooler - Link - R 634
Cooler Master TPC-612 CPU Cooler - Link - R 634

That comes to R 54,830 (damn I'm good, I only added up the prices after compiling the list ). Let me explain the reasoning for each component here:

• CPUs - After Effects scales very nicely with cores, the more cores and speed you throw at it the happier it is. With the two CPUs I've selected, you've got 2.6 GHz * 12 cores for an effective total of 31.2 GHz (3.1 GHz * 12 for 37.2 GHz with Turbo), vs a 4930K which weighs in at 3.4 GHz * 6 cores for an effective total of 20.4 GHz (3.9 GHz * 6 for 23.4 GHz with Turbo). After Effects has near linear scaling with cores, so the two Xeons are going to beat the pants off the single Core i7.
• Motherboard - You're fairly limited for choice when it comes to dual CPU motherboards, but this ASUS has it all.
• RAM - RAM speed hardly makes an iota of difference. Unless you're benchmarking, anything above DDR3-1333 is throwing money away. This is one of those times where quantity > speed. I selected 8 GB modules and gave you 32 GB, leaving half the slots free for you to potentially upgrade to 64 GB in the future.
• Graphics card - personally, I would have saved a bit here and gone for the GTX 770, but if you want a GTX 780 then why the hell not?
• SSD - My SSD of choice, you could easily have gotten away with a 128 GB SSD but you can give After Effects some high speed cache on the SSD.
• Hard drives - Rather go for three drives in RAID 5 than four in RAID 10. Remember, RAID is not a backup. You should have some external storage for backups, RAID is just there to maximize uptime.
• PSU - This is my PSU of choice, the build quality is second to none. I'm using one - 'nuff said
• Case - Seems overkill, but once you've got one you've used one you'll understand why I recommended it. Note that with the motherboard I selected you can't use standard ATX cases due to the board's large form factor.
• Coolers - Way overkill considering the CPUs have a TDP of 80w, you can choose something a lot cheaper if you'd like. My reasoning is on a R 55,000 build, what's R 600 extra for some nice coolers?

If you have any questions, shoot. My PC is spec'd with the programs you're using in mind.

 

[thatlucidguy]

[MENTION=275]Oj0[/MENTION] - You are legend. Thanks for helping me out! I use CS6 and I have not seen many benefits from getting CC but I may upgrade sooner or later.

I never considered selling my old machine because I figure it will be too hard to sell. I also never considered Xeons because I always heard that i7's in the same price range deliver the same/better performance. I'll do some research on Xeons, with i7s I am aware of Haswell and Broadwell and the tick tock cycle but Xeons are foreign to me. Thanks!

I'm still open to more suggestions and now I'm intrigued by the Xeon vs i7 thing so if anybody can weigh in, please do!

 

[Oj0]

Clock for clock, a Xeon and Core i7 from the same generation will offer the same performance. The advantage of the Xeon is the extra QPI link which allows for multiprocessor setups, something not possible with the Core i7 CPUs. Your old rig should be very easy to sell if you split the components, here's a rough guide:

Intel Core i7 930 2.4ghz - R 850
Asus P6TSE Mobo - R 750
Inno 3D GeForce GTX 570 - R 1,200
20GB of cheapo DDR3 ram, unsure what the mhz is - R 350 per 4 GB (not unreasonable considering current RAM pricing), so R 1,750
USB 3 PCI-e card - R 100
500GB 5400rpm - R 300
3tb 7200rpm - R 1,000
3tb 7200rpm - R 1,000
128GB SSD OCZ Vector - R 750
256GB SSD Samsung Evo 830 - R 1,750

That's R 9,450 excluding CPU cooler, PSU and case, a bit shy of the R 11,000 I guestimated earlier. However, there's nothing wrong with that 256 GB SSD and it might be worth reusing to save a few hundred bob. Hell, to save even more I'd reuse those two 3 TB hard drives and maybe just add a third 3 TB for a 6 TB RAID 5 partition. If we do that, you're looking at:

Intel Xeon E5-2630 V2 2.6GHz 6 Core Processor - R 9,183
Intel Xeon E5-2630 V2 2.6GHz 6 Core Processor - R 9,183
Asus Z9 PE-D8 Motherboard - R 7,733
Corsair Value Select CMV8GX3M1A1333C9 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 - R 1,093
Corsair Value Select CMV8GX3M1A1333C9 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 - R 1,093
Corsair Value Select CMV8GX3M1A1333C9 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 - R 1,093
Corsair Value Select CMV8GX3M1A1333C9 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 - R 1,093
MSI GeForce GTX 780 GAMING TF OC 3 GB - R 7,102
Samsung Evo 830 256 GB SSD - free
Unknown 3 TB Hard Drive - free
Unknown 3 TB Hard Drive - free
Western Digital Green 3 TB Hard Drive - Link - R 1,591
Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 1200w PSU - R 2,698
Corsair 900D Chassis - R 4,374
Cooler Master TPC-612 CPU Cooler - R 634
Cooler Master TPC-612 CPU Cooler - R 634

That's R 47,504 and you have R 5,700 worth of stuff to sell plus the old case, PSU and cooler. Put that towards a few external HDDs for backup/archival purposes or just save the money.

The great thing with that setup is should you at a later stage feel like doing something insane, the 2.2 GHz (3 GHz Turbo) ten core Xeons will fit straight in

Oh, if you DO go ahead with this setup, I'd like an invite to your house with a bit of alone time with the PC and a box of tissues...

 

[thatlucidguy]

Hmm I'm not sure about the alone time, best I can do is send some photos taken with lights dimmed about down with some lit candles in the background. Ha. This thread has officially gone to the weird side.

Ok but seriously, thanks again for the detailed reply and price breakdown. It really helps. Just waiting on 2 clients to pay me and then we go shopping!

 

[ThatGuy_ZA]

I've seem boards that get bent slightly when you put big CPU coolers onto them, would two single (120mm) rad closed loop coolers not be a safer and better option?
Apart from that I think the second PC will suit your needs very well.

 

[Kuga]

Definitely run 32GB of RAM and 2 x SSD's.

I do a bit of video editing myself, not a pro but I do some gaming videos. www.youtube.com/kug4 - My PC specs in my sig.

Best thing I did was get a second SSD for my After Effects cache. It works like a bomb. I also put my pagefile and windows temp files on the second ssd. Saves my main SSD from dying quicker. 32GB of RAM is a must. I've noticed when I enable multi-processing and allocate 1gb of RAM per core, I get Windows messages saying I'm running out of RAM space. Sometimes AE uses up to 12GB of RAM. So at the moment I have to disable multi-core processing. I suppose it doesn't help that I run Premier Pro and AE simultaneously. But meh, more RAM in the future.

 

[thatlucidguy]

Hi guys, I'm going to have to reconsider my initial option of the 4930K as the Xeon option doesn't seem viable, unless I spend a minimum of R75000. Anything under 75k will get better bang for buck with the 4930K. One source: What kind of PC to use?.

* Due to the lacking overclock-ability of Xeon CPU's, only the E5-2687W @ 3.1 GHz or better makes sense in such a Monster.
Any Xeon with lower clock speed is no better than an overclocked i7 hexa core, only way more expensive.
In fact dual Xeon E5-2630 are clearly slower than a single i7-4930K overclocked to 4.4 GHz, despite the price.

Once I refine the components with the help above and research, I'll update

 

[thatlucidguy]

(accidental repost of last reply)

 

[BLoOdRiCuTeD]

I have no experience with video editing, but as far as I can fathom from 0jo's posts it seems that you will be running programs that will utilise multiple cores. With this I can give some input with regards to the i7 vs Xeon debate.

At work we run finite element analysis which is also multiple core intensive. We have some Dell workstations running xeons and some running i7 3770K's. According to the basic specs the i7's should be at least 20% faster, but the Xeon's outperform them on basically any program that utilises more than 2 cores. And these aren't 8 core monster Xeon's either, they are old quad core Xeon's (about 5 years old now) versus the relatively new 3770K's.

Sent from my C6603