Video Editing Rig Spec

Indeed. Thanks to both of you

I'm hoping to just go to evetech or wootware and spec it. Don't have time to build it.

Currently in lectures :(
 
OK using an older platform (Haswell) is out of the question as the Core i7-4790K is actually more expensive than the i7-6700K. I'm going to list three builds here, one without a monitor, one with a 1080p monitor and one with a 4K monitor. Needing to factor in a 4K monitor on a R 15,000 budget is extremely unrealistic and means the computer is going to be entry level by any standards.

Core i7-6700, 16 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD, 2x 2 TB HDD, no monitor, no OS
Core i7-6700 3.40 GHz Quad Core with HyperThreading R 5,923
Cooler Master Hyper 212X Cooler R 600
Asus Trooper B150 Motherboard R 1,514
ADATA 16 GB Kit DDR4-2133 RAM R 1,455
Crucial BX200 240 GB SSD R 1,317
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Gigabyte X1 Case R 480
Corsair CS450M 450w PSU R 1,058
Total R 15,085

Core i5-6500, 16 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD, 2x2 TB HDD, 1080p monitor, no OS
Core i5-6500 3.30 GHz Quad Core R 3,834
Cooler Master Hyper 212X Cooler R 600
Asus Trooper B150 Motherboard R 1,514
ADATA 16 GB Kit DDR4-2133 RAM R 1,455
Crucial BX200 240 GB SSD R 1,317
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Gigabyte X1 Case R 480
Corsair CS450M 450w PSU R 1,058
LG 23MP57HQ 23" IPS Monitor R 2,399
Total R 15,395

Core i3-6100, 8 GB RAM, no SSD, 2 TB HDD, 4K non-IPS monitor, no OS
Core i3-6100 3.70 GHz Dual Core with HyperThreading R 2,219
Cooler Master Hyper 212X Cooler R 600
ASROCK H110M-DGS/D3 Motherboard R 959
Patriot Signature Line 8 GB DDR3-1600 R 599
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Thermaltake V2S Case with 350w PSU R 511
Samsung U28E590D 28" 4K TN Monitor R 9,529
Total R 15,786
 
nadimm said:
Its not a hard and fast budget. If I need to spend a little more than so be it. I just need to consider buying the displays in the budget.

She was going to spend 29k on an iMac i5
Click to expand...

If that is even remotely an option, consider the first system I spec'd out with the monitor from the third option and add another 16 GB RAM and 240 GB SSD as a scratch drive. That brings you up to R 27,386 - from there, add two ADATA 2 TB external hard drives (R 1,176 each) for backup and you're at R 29,738. I know you're thinking you don't need two copies, but your first copy should not even be considered a backup, it's simply your first copy. Remember, part of being a professional is having a solid backup in place! Backup to both drives, alternating between the two each week and keep one in a different part of the house or even offsite if possible.
 
Arthur said:
CPU, RAM, and disk are most important. Then i/o for getting video into and off the system, though your source is probably the slowest device.

If I was still seriously into video editing I'd build an overclocked liquid-cooled dual Xeon with 4TB of SSD, 24GB RAM, and another 10-20TB of fast external storage.
Click to expand...

^^^ This...

I've been editing for about 16 years on the Adobe CS suite and with HD, 4K and the new rumored 6k, even i7 is entry level. i7 would handle FullHD adequately but would struggle with larger formats. Adobe CS Suites use Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration and in the past compatibility was a huge issue. I had a GEforce GTX580 that eventually went faulty so I bought a GTX760. I had a little moment of panic when the new card didn't work on Premiere, but after some Googling found a little txt file that you can edit and add your card.
Whatever you do make sure you can cool that beast down.....mine is liquid cooled but with long renders I struggle to keep it below 60 degrees without an open case.
Dual screens are a "nice to have".....I used to run this way but have since gone back to one 32".......for me it works.
 
Last edited:
[XC] Oj101;17183035 said:
If that is even remotely an option, consider the first system I spec'd out with the monitor from the third option and add another 16 GB RAM and 240 GB SSD as a scratch drive. That brings you up to R 27,386 - from there, add two ADATA 2 TB external hard drives (R 1,176 each) for backup and you're at R 29,738. I know you're thinking you don't need two copies, but your first copy should not even be considered a backup, it's simply your first copy. Remember, part of being a professional is having a solid backup in place! Backup to both drives, alternating between the two each week and keep one in a different part of the house or even offsite if possible.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I have a server for backups. So will do 1TB in the tower and the rest on a push to the server basis.
 
[XC] Oj101;17183013 said:
OK using an older platform (Haswell) is out of the question as the Core i7-4790K is actually more expensive than the i7-6700K. I'm going to list three builds here, one without a monitor, one with a 1080p monitor and one with a 4K monitor. Needing to factor in a 4K monitor on a R 15,000 budget is extremely unrealistic and means the computer is going to be entry level by any standards.

Core i7-6700, 16 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD, 2x 2 TB HDD, no monitor, no OS
Core i7-6700 3.40 GHz Quad Core with HyperThreading R 5,923
Cooler Master Hyper 212X Cooler R 600
Asus Trooper B150 Motherboard R 1,514
ADATA 16 GB Kit DDR4-2133 RAM R 1,455
Crucial BX200 240 GB SSD R 1,317
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Gigabyte X1 Case R 480
Corsair CS450M 450w PSU R 1,058
Total R 15,085

Core i5-6500, 16 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD, 2x2 TB HDD, 1080p monitor, no OS
Core i5-6500 3.30 GHz Quad Core R 3,834
Cooler Master Hyper 212X Cooler R 600
Asus Trooper B150 Motherboard R 1,514
ADATA 16 GB Kit DDR4-2133 RAM R 1,455
Crucial BX200 240 GB SSD R 1,317
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Gigabyte X1 Case R 480
Corsair CS450M 450w PSU R 1,058
LG 23MP57HQ 23" IPS Monitor R 2,399
Total R 15,395

Core i3-6100, 8 GB RAM, no SSD, 2 TB HDD, 4K non-IPS monitor, no OS
Core i3-6100 3.70 GHz Dual Core with HyperThreading R 2,219
Cooler Master Hyper 212X Cooler R 600
ASROCK H110M-DGS/D3 Motherboard R 959
Patriot Signature Line 8 GB DDR3-1600 R 599
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Thermaltake V2S Case with 350w PSU R 511
Samsung U28E590D 28" 4K TN Monitor R 9,529
Total R 15,786
Click to expand...
BTW are you a retailer coz i think you've earned the sale.
 
nadimm said:
Thanks. I have a server for backups. So will do 1TB in the tower and the rest on a push to the server basis.
Click to expand...

Alright, then what I suggest doing is taking the money from the two 2 TB HDDs and adding one of these Crucial BX200 480 GB SSDs at R 2,761 on top of the two 240 GB SSDs I've already added. Alternatively, another 240 GB SSD and another 16 GB RAM could be a better option. If you could do the 480 GB SSD and another 16 GB RAM it would be a win.

You may think I'm going overboard with the SSDs, but there's a method to the madness. One of your biggest bottlenecks is going to be storage throughput, and the idea I have in mind for this particular build is one 240 GB SSD for the boot drive - this will have Windows, the Adobe suite and any other programs you may have. The second 240 GB SSD is for your scratch drive, the place the Adobe suite will store temporary files while working on projects. The 480 GB SSD or third 240 GB SSD will be the storage drive, where projects/content are stored while they're being worked on.

nadimm said:
BTW are you a retailer coz i think you've earned the sale.
Click to expand...

Nope, I'm just a guy that likes to help out, and I enjoy the challenge of speccing a balanced PC for a certain requirement within a set budget. I'm not affiliated with Rebeltech in any way, I haven't even made a purchase from them before. What I have done is seen how they go out of their way to help people, even people who aren't clients of theirs. That is enough for me to use them for the builds I spec; sometimes you will see me using Wootware links as well as I have had personal experience with them.
 
The latest adobe software is mostly all GPU accelerated, and will be more so over the next few years. I wouldn't skimp out on graphics.
 
nadimm said:
Thanks. I'll have a look at rebeltech.

Any merit in running the extra ssd in raid 0 ie going for speed over space?
Click to expand...

Not really. I've done everything from single drives to RAID6 arrays with a dozen drives, the setups have been fun but now I avoid RAID wherever possible.

Firstly, you don't want to be running RAID across your boot drive and your scratch drive, or your boot drive and your work drive. That only leaves your scratch drive and your work drive. RAID0 isn't perfectly linear, and accessing files on both drives simultaneously will give speeds to each of slightly less than half. For example, if reading one file at a time nets a speed of 500 MB/s, two at the same time might be around 230 MB/s each. Add to that the slightly less than perfect scaling of RAID0 and you'll find that keeping the two drives separate gives slightly better performance - I find it measurably (albeit not noticeably) faster keeping the two separate.

Secondly, when running RAID the array has to be initialized during the POST sequence. This can add a significant delay to your boot time, which is just annoying.

Lastly, RAID0 on a work machine? Oh hell no.

crysis said:
The latest adobe software is mostly all GPU accelerated, and will be more so over the next few years. I wouldn't skimp out on graphics.
Click to expand...

To an extent, yes, and if you have a powerful graphics card. On a budget of R 15,000 including a monitor do you really think spending R 4,300 on a GeForce GTX 960 is worthwhile, considering that once you add in R 2,400 for a monitor you're left with only R 8,300 for the rest of the computer? That means you're sitting with a Core i3 - a Core i5 will probably break the budget quite badly.

The graphics card will have an effect in limited scenarios and to a limited extent. As an example, that GTX 960 I mentioned will bring export times down by about 33 %, around the same difference you'll see by spending half the price of the card on getting the Core i7-6700 instead of the Core i5-6500.

Until you're at a high end system, the money spent on a graphics card will almost always be better used elsewhere. Look at my sig - I would swap both of those Titans for a GeForce G210 sooner than drop down to one CPU.
 
Wow. Thanks for the expert advice. I've gone for the 6700 without dedicated graphics. I've made provision for a adding it later i.t.o. power and space.
 
[video=youtube;RS2dEEn9-dI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS2dEEn9-dI[/video]
 
Dual E5-2670s - Build The BEST USED Workstation for the Money

[video=youtube;tony8dGupKA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tony8dGupKA[/video]
 
[XC] Oj101;17183013 said:
OK using an older platform (Haswell) is out of the question as the Core i7-4790K is actually more expensive than the i7-6700K. I'm going to list three builds here, one without a monitor, one with a 1080p monitor and one with a 4K monitor. Needing to factor in a 4K monitor on a R 15,000 budget is extremely unrealistic and means the computer is going to be entry level by any standards.

Core i7-6700, 16 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD, 2x 2 TB HDD, no monitor, no OS
Core i7-6700 3.40 GHz Quad Core with HyperThreading R 5,923
Cooler Master Hyper 212X Cooler R 600
Asus Trooper B150 Motherboard R 1,514
ADATA 16 GB Kit DDR4-2133 RAM R 1,455
Crucial BX200 240 GB SSD R 1,317
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Gigabyte X1 Case R 480
Corsair CS450M 450w PSU R 1,058
Total R 15,085

Core i5-6500, 16 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD, 2x2 TB HDD, 1080p monitor, no OS
Core i5-6500 3.30 GHz Quad Core R 3,834
Cooler Master Hyper 212X Cooler R 600
Asus Trooper B150 Motherboard R 1,514
ADATA 16 GB Kit DDR4-2133 RAM R 1,455
Crucial BX200 240 GB SSD R 1,317
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Gigabyte X1 Case R 480
Corsair CS450M 450w PSU R 1,058
LG 23MP57HQ 23" IPS Monitor R 2,399
Total R 15,395

Core i3-6100, 8 GB RAM, no SSD, 2 TB HDD, 4K non-IPS monitor, no OS
Core i3-6100 3.70 GHz Dual Core with HyperThreading R 2,219
Cooler Master Hyper 212X Cooler R 600
ASROCK H110M-DGS/D3 Motherboard R 959
Patriot Signature Line 8 GB DDR3-1600 R 599
Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive R 1,369
Thermaltake V2S Case with 350w PSU R 511
Samsung U28E590D 28" 4K TN Monitor R 9,529
Total R 15,786
Click to expand...

Went with option 1. Doubled the ram. Took out one hdd. Larger power supply for possible graphics card edition.

Only issue is that I've bought a 4k display (2nd hand) and on board won't output at 60hz. But I guess we're not doing much 4k so should be fine for now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X