Build for Video Editing and encoding - €2000

cgifts

Hi - looking to build a PC for video editing and encoding. Thinking the more RAM I have the better as a few of the programs (Adobe CC Suite) will be operating at the same time as they interact dynamically with each other - no experience in this myself so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

1. What is your budget? [€2,000]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? [Video editing - Premiere Pro/Speed Grade/ After Effects / Photoshop - possibly all open at same time - Video encoding]

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [Yes -Windows 8.1]

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? [PSU - Corsair AX850]

5. Do you need a monitor? [No]

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [No]

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? [No]

8. How can you pay? [Bank Transfer/Credit Card/Laser]

9. When are you purchasing? [ASAP]

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? [Cork]

multimate

Probably something like this. 150 Left over for changes and additions. Loads of different options for graphics card.

HV20I93XDE Intel Core i7-4930K, 6x 3.40GHz, bx, ohne Kühler 506,03 €
HV1132RCDE ASRock X79 Extreme4, Sockel LGA2011, ATX 169,04 €
HV0656978601DE Special item: Corsair Hydro Series H100i 94,41 €
HV20MI53DE 32GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series VLP DDR3-1600, CL9 242,15 €
HV203FDDDE FRACTAL DESIGN Define R4 Black Pearl 87,67 €
HV1027XPDE Palit GeForce GTX 780 Jetstream 6GB mit GeForce Experience 474,22 €
HV13SB47DE Seagate Desktop 4 TB, SATA 6Gb/s 135,67 €
HV12SEV2DE Samsung SSD 840 EVO Basic 250GB SATA 6Gb/s 109,99 €
HVZPCDE Rechner - Zusammenbau 29,99 €

Total value: 1.849,17 €

BloodBath

Above build is a good start but you don't need a high end graphics card for video editing, the mid range will perform almost identical, putting that extra money into RAM would be far better.

You're better off with more HDD's as well instead of a single large one.

You can get a board that supports 64gb of RAM as well.

The processor is a good choice though. It's identical to the extreme edition 6 core processors that cost a grand and can outperform them with an overclock on a good cooler for half the price. If you're after performance you should do this. There's lots of guides online or you could get someone to do it for you.

Item|Price
Intel Core i7-4930K, 6x 3.40GHz, bx, ohne Kühler|€484.23
ASRock X79 Extreme6, Sockel LGA2011, ATX|€176.22
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 OC Windforce 2X, 2GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, Displayport|€198.41
2 x 32GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series VLP DDR3-1600, CL9|€484.30
Crucial M500 480GB SATA 6GB/s 6,4CM (2,5") 7mm|€183.89
2 x WD Red RD1000S 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB|€204.86
FRACTAL DESIGN Define R4 Black Pearl|€83.85
Windows 8.1 64Bit Eng Intl (SB-Version) DVD|€82.12
Corsair Hydro Series H100i|€97.16
Shipping|€11.99
Total|€2008.03

alwayssideways

BloodBath wrote: »

Above build is a good start but you don't need a high end graphics card for video editing, the mid range will perform almost identical, putting that extra money into RAM would be far better.

You're better off with more HDD's as well instead of a single large one.

You can get a board that supports 64gb of RAM as well.

The processor is a good choice though. It's identical to the extreme edition 6 core processors that cost a grand and can outperform them with an overclock on a good cooler for half the price. If you're after performance you should do this. There's lots of guides online or you could get someone to do it for you.

Item|Price
Intel Core i7-4930K, 6x 3.40GHz, bx, ohne Kühler|€484.23
ASRock X79 Extreme6, Sockel LGA2011, ATX|€176.22
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 OC Windforce 2X, 2GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, Displayport|€198.41
2 x 32GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series VLP DDR3-1600, CL9|€484.30
Crucial M500 480GB SATA 6GB/s 6,4CM (2,5") 7mm|€183.89
2 x WD Red RD1000S 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB|€204.86
FRACTAL DESIGN Define R4 Black Pearl|€83.85
Windows 8.1 64Bit Eng Intl (SB-Version) DVD|€82.12
Corsair Hydro Series H100i|€97.16
Shipping|€11.99
Total|€2008.03

That is not true, Premiere Pro and After Effects work best with CUDA supported cards. This allows rendering to be handled by the GPU and really makes a huge difference to the user experience. List of supported cards here:

http://www.adobe.com/ie/products/premiere/tech-specs.html

Having built a machine for a similar purpose I would highly recommend choosing a card from the list provided, the GTX780 originally listed would be an excellent choice.

Serephucus

Bloodbath's build is the better one. The only change I'd make is to swap the drive for a 512GB MX100. As it's cheaper, and will perform a little better too. It's out of stock though at the moment, so ignore this if you will be ordering the machine in the next week.

BloodBath

alwayssideways wrote: »

That is not true, Premiere Pro and After Effects work best with CUDA supported cards. This allows rendering to be handled by the GPU and really makes a huge difference to the user experience. List of supported cards here:

http://www.adobe.com/ie/products/premiere/tech-specs.html

Having built a machine for a similar purpose I would highly recommend choosing a card from the list provided, the GTX780 originally listed would be an excellent choice.

It is true, the gains fall off massively past mid range cards like the 760gtx. You're paying 200-300 extra for 10% more performance at most.

If he's not gaming it's a waste of money.

alwayssideways

BloodBath wrote: »

It is true, the gains fall off massively past mid range cards like the 760gtx. You're paying 200-300 extra for 10% more performance at most.

If he's not gaming it's a waste of money.

Agreed, the price is a bit much considering the OP won't be gaming, but I still wouldn't recommend to someone that is building a rig for video editing using Adobe software to buy any card other than on the list. The GTX770 would be a good alternative, €100 more expensive than Bloodbaths option but worth it IMO.

Serephucus

That list doesn't mean anything. The GTX 285 is still on it for god's sake.

indough

It depends on which kind of video you are editing. Multiple tracks of raw video at high resolution and with a few effects is going to run significantly better on an r9 290 than on a 760. I wouldn't worry about cuda unless ray tracing is a significant concern.

frozenfrozen

Can you wait off for X99 and DDR4?


Do all your work on the ssds and just back up everything else, so maybe go with a couple of ssds. Storage will be your biggest bottleneck most of the time, especially with socket 2011

I've got a gtx 580 and use it with premiere and after effects. It's good enough for 2k footage, haven't tried much higher res than that, bar 2.7k bmcc footage which cuts fine, and 4k red footage is native in premiere so you'd be able to cut that on a laptop. The 780 would probably be overkill but I wouldn't skimp too much on the gpu as CC really grinds to a halt without acceleration turned on.

Also buy your windows 8 key from reddit software swap for $10 and save 75 quid to spend on more hdds.


Get 32gb of ram in 4 dimms, and you can later go to 64 if you feel the need. You won't though because you need to be actively trying to saturate all 32gb of ram. Unless you're looking at a ramdisk, in that case you should stop looking at ram disks as they're not as good as you'd imagine.

BloodBath

Maybe put the extra ram money into a second 500GB SSD and a 770 gtx or R9 290 then.

Set the ssd's up in RAID for a super fast scratch disk.

alwayssideways

BloodBath wrote: »

Maybe put the extra ram money into a second 500GB SSD and a 770 gtx or R9 290 then.

Set the ssd's up in RAID for a super fast scratch disk.

This would be ideal.

frozenfrozen

Realistically it could all be done with one ssd, and a large spinning disk raid for moving not currently active project files to.

Scratch disk won't really be utilized enough because there's enough ram, so raid 0 ssds would be overkill. It would probably be better to use the ssds to split the load of your footage. You won't likely be limited by 500mB/s working in 2k, and you'll be able to render out to the second ssd and not have a bottleneck of reading and writing to the same disk at the one time. Also you're getting twice as much space rather than raid 0, so that would negate any performance increase since you wouldn't constantly be trying to keep the one volume near empty, because ssd performance goes quite bad when the disk is nearly full. So much so that my 120gb ssds have to be emptied before starting a new project.

What about just doing it in a modular way that the build is originally 32gb ram, 1 500gb ssd and a raid storage, and more ssds can be added if needs-be? The saved money if its not needed for ssds could then be spent on colour accurate monitors or low latency audio interface and audio monitors etc etc, stuff that would also be really beneficial when editing, rather than having overkill IO performance

smacl

BloodBath wrote: »

Maybe put the extra ram money into a second 500GB SSD and a 770 gtx or R9 290 then.

Set the ssd's up in RAID for a super fast scratch disk.

Alternatively, for a blazing fast scratch disk, get an extra 16gb of RAM and set it up as a RAM disk. To be fair, decent 64 bit software should use available memory in favour of a scratch disk in the first place, but for 32 bit software it works a treat.