new build advice needed

GoProGaming

I dropped my laptop the other day and its beyond saving, I think its a pretty decent excuse to get a desktop again. If you guys could help me out with some advice that would be cool

1. What is your budget? 600-650

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming (minecraft) hopefully more games as i progress /Video editing (mostly rendering gopro videos and timelapses for youtube)

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? yes please, win 7 64 bit if possible

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? no

5. Do you need a monitor? no will use hd tv for a few months

5a. If yes, what size do you need.

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? 1920x1080 Yes

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? just a sd card reader

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? no

8. How can you pay? paypal/ visa/ bank transfere

9. When are you purchasing? within two weeks hopefully

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? dublin, but think i'd prefare to have it built and shipped to me complete.

if you guys could throw something together i'd be eternally greatfull.


If possible id like most of the budget to go on the processor, motherboard, graphics card and ram. im happy enough with having a cheap disk drive and hdd etc...

i know this may sound real stupid to some, but when buying custom built pc's from the likes of hardweareversand does all the wiring and usb ports etc come included or do you need to order every part seperatly

thanks

Monotype

Item|Price
Rechner - Zusammenbau|€20.00
8GB G.Skill RipJaws-X PC3-12800U CL10|€58.79
Sharkoon VS3-Value Chrom, ohne Netzteil|€24.84
LogiLink USB 2.0 all-in-one Card Reader, für 3,5" Einbauchschacht|€3.32
LiteOn iHAS124-04 schwarz SATA|€16.36
2 x ARCTIC COOLING ARCTIC F12|€6.38
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€45.97
AMD FX-6300 Prozessor, Boxed, Sockel AM3+|€101.96
ASRock 970 Pro3 R2.0, AM3+, ATX|€62.51
WD Caviar Blue 1TB 6Gb's|€56.12
XFX DD RADEON 7770 1000M 1GB D5 mDP HDMI DVI|€91.93
LG 22EA53VQ-P|€125.83
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€633.00

Windows 7 for €45 including shipping.

Damn, thought you needed a new monitor for some reason. Well that gives you an extra €100 to use. You could get a nice SSD? Otherwise, if you want more graphics power, get a 7870 instead or you can buy yourself a nicer case or whatever.

BloodBath

Drop the better cpu cooler if you want to get it back down to €650. Add another sata cable as well.

Item|Price
AMD FX-6300 Prozessor, Boxed, Sockel AM3+|€101.96
Alpenföhn Sella - 92mm, AMD/Intel|€17.85
MSI 760GA-P43 (FX), Sockel AM3+, ATX, PCIe|€51.58
8GB G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€55.47
WD Caviar Blue 1TB 6Gb's|€56.12
SanDisk SSD 64GB 6,4cm S-ATA 600|€50.68
Zalman Z9 Plus Midi Tower - black, ohne Netzteil|€46.70
Samsung SH-118AB schwarz|€12.45
LogiLink USB 2.0 all-in-one Card Reader, für 3,5" Einbauchschacht|€3.32
Rechner - Zusammenbau|€20.00
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€45.97
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€481.09

Graphics Card €160

Windows 7 €45

Total €686

Monotype

Yeah, that's probably better allocation of funds, though I'd still get the 970 board if it's in stock when you're ordering for the sake of the newer chipset (better overclocking, native and more SATA 6Gbps ports, faster hypertransport, more RAID options), but they're not essential for the build.

GoProGaming

thanks guys, 686 euro seems pretty good. a good bit cheaper then all the other online stores which seem to rob you. would there much much advantage in upgrading the ram to 16gig? is the term more is better applicable here?

would i be able to run two screens off this build?
im hoping to order it by the end of the week.

BloodBath

No need for more ram. There's no games using over 4gb at the moment.

You can run 2 screens no problem yes. Ideally 1 for gaming and the oter for your desktop. You don't want the game split between 2 screens.

GoProGaming

BloodBath wrote: »

No need for more ram. There's no games using over 4gb at the moment.

You can run 2 screens no problem yes. Ideally 1 for gaming and the oter for your desktop. You don't want the game split between 2 screens.

thats what hoping having the game.
on one screen and the desktop on another would be cool.

i get pretty confused with hardware. i understand how all the parts work on their own(i think), but put them all together and it just boggles my brain.

thanks for the help, i cant wait to order it now and turn it on for the first time

Monotype

Having more RAM isn't really beneficial, but having slightly faster RAM could be a little. The RAM in my build is slightly faster, I think €2 is fair enough and you get some heatspreaders. Or this for slightly faster again (though not worth it if you're trying to save):
http://www.hardwareversand.de/1600+Low+Voltage/44314/8GB-Kit+G-Skill+RipJaws+PC3-12800U+CL9.article

This 970 MSI board looks like a good alternative to the Asrock. It's in stock in 2 days.
http://www.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/72465/MSI+970A-G43%2C+AMD+Sockel+AM3%2B%2C+ATX%2C+DDR3.article

GoProGaming

just double checking, ive added those parts into the basket to order when they are all in stock on the 15th. the graphics card says it needs 500w to run, the psu is only 450, will it still run ok or will i need to swap it out for a more powerful unit?
thanks

GoProGaming

just double checking, ive added those parts into the basket to order when they are all in stock on the 15th. the graphics card says it needs 500w to run, the psu is only 450, will it still run ok or will i need to swap it out for a more powerful unit?
thanks

BloodBath

It will be fine. The system will use 250-300w tops. They give those ratings to account for poor quality power supplies that can't achieve their stated ratings at all. There are cheap 500-600w power supplies that would really only be able to output 300w properly. The super flower is a good quality psu.

Slutmonkey57b

Given that one of the uses is video editing/transcoding, surely the op is better off with an Intel system to take advantage of quicksync?

Even the lowliest Intel processor with quicksync is going to embarrass gpu transcode, never mind an amd setup...

GoProGaming

cool, thanks. i decided to order all the parts and give it a go assembling it myself. it cant be to hard

BloodBath

Even the lowliest Intel processor with quicksync is going to embarrass gpu transcode, never mind an amd setup...

Let's see you build an i5 system with that budget then.

His main use is gaming not video editing.

Monotype

You'd be competing against the last generation bottom end i3s in that price range. I think the 6300 would serve better overall, especially with games moving into multiple cores. If s/he becomes more invested in the video editing realm, then yes, it would be well worthwhile. You'd really want to have a quad core though and that's not going to happen on that budget unless you buy a rubbish board and a pathetic graphics card.

BloodBath

What video editing suite will you be using? CS6 is supposed to support ati cards for gpu acceleration but the last time I checked there were still issues. You could be better off with a 660 gtx if you are doing a lot of video editing as more programs seem to support it.

Slutmonkey57b

BloodBath wrote: »

Let's see you build an i5 system with that budget then.

His main use is gaming not video editing.

no it isn't, read the op again. his current gaming usage is minecraft! He *may* start gaming further down the line. But right now, he is going to be video editing, not gaming. So the sensible thing to do is build for his current requirements, ditch the external gpu and leave it as an upgrade for a few months down the line. A gpu is a drop in upgrade to any system, but abandoning quicksync isn't.

Hawaii is due out in October, that means small price cuts in amd's current lineup and probably significant cuts from nvidia as they've nothing in the pipeline to compete.

By getting rid of the gpu (90) and the unnecessary monitor (125) you've got another 215 quid to spend on processor/mobo, so that's 315 total. As he's not overclocking, a decent asrock board can be had for ~75, that leaves over 200 for processor. There's your i5 for encoding, and minecraft runs on a phone.

BloodBath

Well I'm not a video editor and I haven't heard quicksync being mentioned on the like of adobe forums. I've heard it reduces quality for the speed increase.

Would gpu acceleration not be far superior? I don't see how their igp's would be superior to a 2gb gddr5 graphics card with far more parallel processing power.

Slutmonkey57b

Monotype wrote: »

You'd be competing against the last generation bottom end i3s in that price range. I think the 6300 would serve better overall, especially with games moving into multiple cores. If s/he becomes more invested in the video editing realm, then yes, it would be well worthwhile. You'd really want to have a quad core though and that's not going to happen on that budget unless you buy a rubbish board and a pathetic graphics card.

Multi core processor salesmen have been saying that since they came out, games are still very heavily single threaded for the most part. This may change with the new generation of consoles but I wouldn't bet my hat on it...

GoProGaming

im using power director 11 at the moment. just to edit the odd gopro video, maybe sony vegas in the future, i wouldnt be editing and rendering videos that often. the file size of the gopro vids do be large enough, would there be a massive difference between the amd and intel? ive no clue when it comes to this stuff.

id say no matter what system i end up with it will be a million times better then what i have at the moment.

with the amd processor is 6 cores better then 4?

Monotype

Only minecraft was mentioned but if gaming was listed first and they even have gaming in their name, I would suspect that that's what they're interested in! The 7870 is great for games and would last a long time for that purpose.
It probably could be done if you went closer to my build with the very cheap case and no heatsink and got the 7770. We'll see what the OP has to say about it to clarify.

Slutmonkey57b

BloodBath wrote: »

Well I'm not a video editor and I haven't heard quicksync being mentioned on the like of adobe forums. I've heard it reduces quality for the speed increase.

Would gpu acceleration not be far superior? I don't see how their igp's would be superior to a 2gb gddr5 graphics card with far more parallel processing power.

Good question. The reason quicksync is much faster is the nature of the architecture and the coding. A gpu has a wide execution pipeline but the hardware is generalised compute units. While you wouldn't use it for . professional grade editing in final cut pro, for what the op describes, it's pretty much perfect. Don't have the link here but Anandtech did a couple of very good articles on it one when it came out and one after haswell was launched.

I doubt if the end product is going on youtube the transcoding losses from one architecture over another would be relevant.

edit: The stumbling block for quicksync seems to be software support, as you alluded to above. I'd still be inclined to go for a processor that has it and is waiting for software over a less efficient platform that will never get it, but it's up to the op in the end.

BloodBath

I find it hard to believe and have not come across it in my research at all. Do you have links of intels discrete graphics using quick sync vs an nvidia 2gb graphics card using cuda.


Does all of the software support quicksync? Most of it supports cuda acceleration.

GoProGaming

Monotype wrote: »

Only minecraft was mentioned but if gaming was listed first and they even have gaming in their name, I would suspect that that's what they're interested in! The 7870 is great for games and would last a long time for that purpose.
It probably could be done if you went closer to my build with the very cheap case and no heatsink and got the 7770. We'll see what the OP has to say about it to clarify.

To expand a little, at the moment minecraft is the only pc game i play (i play ps3 and xbox alot more then i game on the pc) i want to start playing bf3 and some mmorpgs on the pc. i use my gopro camera quite a bit and when i catch something good i like to give it a quick edit and upload to youtube, mostly the file sizes are big enough with a high bit rate.

id like a system that is fast/powerful overall. id say 70% gaming 30% video editing, maybe 65%-35% on a busy week at best.

thanks for the replies so far lads.

BloodBath

I would say change the card to this then as most software including vegas supports gpu acceleration with Nvidia cards.

Slutmonkey57b

BloodBath wrote: »

I find it hard to believe and have not come across it in my research at all. Do you have links of intels discrete graphics using quick sync vs an nvidia 2gb graphics card using cuda.


Does all of the software support quicksync? Most of it supports cuda acceleration.

Got the link for the original article:
www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/9

Bearing in mind this is 2 generations ago for both cpu and gpu, the numbers are still impressive.

Again, regarding software support, it depends what type of work the op is doing. Previous versions of Adobe were cuda only, but as we know from their other marketing campaigns that locking out the competition with embedded engineers and "marketing support" may lead to exclusives but doesn't necessarily result in the best option for end customers. Future versions of cs are going to support other standards and move away from exclusivity.

BloodBath

That article is a bit old in fairness. I'd sooner see up to date comparisons in software that is widely used. I'd like to know the info though as quicksync is not something I take into account at all when recommending video editing builds to people.

If the story is similar to those graphs then maybe I should.

Slutmonkey57b

BloodBath wrote: »

That article is a bit old in fairness. I'd sooner see up to date comparisons in software that is widely used. I'd like to know the info though as quicksync is not something I take into account at all when recommending video editing builds to people.

If the story is similar to those graphs then maybe I should.

True, I've been looking for benchmarks and haven't got anything recent either. From what I've gathered, it breaks down as follows:

(in terms of speed) quicksync > cuda gpu > amd gpu > non-qs integrated > software.

However, quality wise software is often the top option because it compensates constantly, whereas hardware forces things through fixed definition hardware (particularly true for qs) which can introduce unexpected artifacts or side effects.

Furthermore, the fracturing of formats, codecs, algorithms, and containers in video editing is terrifying and makes Linux distributions look sensible and organised. Download ffdshow and have a quick look, it's stupefying. There's no such thing as a defined "editing suite" because editing software ends up being a front end for bewildering arrays of options and implementations. Equally, there's no set answer to what "video editing" is. The op's example is straightforward transcoding: take an existing video and put it in a different format. That's a complete different scenario to someone using avid or final cut pro to do full scale editing, or compositing. Also not the same is putting effects or manipulations into the video.

I'd say the vast majority of home users talking about "video editing" generally mean "putting something on the internet or a DVD after doing some minor trimming" though. From the benchmarks I have seen, quicksync is in a class of its own for that stuff, assuming your software supports it.

BloodBath

Thanks for the info.

Monotype

It's an interesting topic. There was one site showing a big difference in a 3770K over the previous generation and GPUs. If I have time tomorrow evening I'll run a few tests and see how my own CPUs compare.
Can AMD GPUs actually be used for encoding? I was under the impression that they had kind of dumped support for that functionality. Or maybe it's that it's just a few programs making use of the cards as best as they can through the limited support and hence the results being fairly poor.

marco_polo

Monotype wrote: »

It's an interesting topic. There was one site showing a big difference in a 3770K over the previous generation and GPUs. If I have time tomorrow evening I'll run a few tests and see how my own CPUs compare.
Can AMD GPUs actually be used for encoding? I was under the impression that they had kind of dumped support for that functionality. Or maybe it's that it's just a few programs making use of the cards as best as they can through the limited support and hence the results being fairly poor.

NVidia (NVENC) and AMD (VCE) both added specialist hardware encoders to the HD7XXX & GT6XX series, as a first cut at it for both companies though they still some distance off Quicksync in terms of performance.

EDIT: And as with quicksync you can write the number of programs that support using those dedicated hardware units on the back of a stamp

EDIT 2: More recent review of the state of transcoding

http://techreport.com/review/23324/a-look-at-hardware-video-transcoding-on-the-pc

Lu Tze

Handbrake has released quicksync and open cl beta versions so they can be used for transcoding - though this was only in may and these technologies have been around for a few years so i wouldnt get too excited. Might see a stable final release in 2015!

Monotype

marco_polo wrote: »

http://techreport.com/review/23324/a-look-at-hardware-video-transcoding-on-the-pc

Great article. I also came across this other one in my searches, very detailed in their testing but some of it it probably out of date now with new GPUs and drivers.
http://www.behardware.com/articles/828-1/h-264-encoding-cpu-vs-gpu-nvidia-cuda-amd-stream-intel-mediasdk-and-x264.html

Lu Tze wrote: »

Handbrake has released quicksync and open cl beta versions so they can be used for transcoding - though this was only in may and these technologies have been around for a few years so i wouldnt get too excited. Might see a stable final release in 2015!

I tried the quicksync version of handbrake myself just on a test last night with DVD vob to see how it compares with the 264 software encoding. Speed is impressive, no doubt. There is some blockiness at the edges to be noticed and colours seem to get darker, when comparing side by side. You're not going to notice this much 10 feet from a tv or on a small screen, especially without an alternative to compare it to. I think it's a great thing for someone constantly converting for their phone/tablet for personal use and I'll start using it a bit more myself. For professional work and archiving, I think that software conversion is really the only option - for quality and customisation. In terms of software encoding, the FX6300 is comparable to an average unoverclocked Sandy/Ivy Bridge i5, thanks to the additional cores, so it's still a fair choice.

Slutmonkey57b

Good stuff monotype, thanks for the confirmation.

That tech report article is very good, and throws up that perrenial question: how much of our hardware's raw performance is being thrown away by software, either because it's not up to date, isn't aware of the capabilities, or is just badly coded?

It's criminal that open cl still isn't in widespread use, years after its creation. Modern pc's really do operate at a tiny fraction of their capabilities due to the limitations of software devs and legacy support considerations.

BloodBath

You can thank Nvidia for that. It's criminal that gpu based physics aren't standard either but again you can thank Nvidia for that.

Using proprietary hardware/software always holds the industry back.

GoProGaming

just ordered the parts there, hopefully it wont take to long to arrive. looking forward to building it now.

just noticed this copy of windows is only 30 euro now??
http://www.pcfritz.de/software/betriebssystem/windows-7-professional/10264/windows-7-professional-64-bit

GoProGaming

well ups arrived today finially, now to get building

GoProGaming

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