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$3500 budget PC Desktop - what would you buy?

Kalani Prince

Kalani Prince

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Been thinking of building another rig from scratch for upcoming Scarlet R3Ds ; )

Was thinking of :
i7 980
Gigabyte's assassin mobo
240gb Revo drive for OS
Already have- 2 600gb Velociraptors RAID 0 for editing
some GTX 580 for Mercury
Lacie 4 or 6TB USB 3.0 for storage/backup
Liquid cooling stuffs
850 watt power

Anyhow, just interested what you might do different and why? also toting with the idea of dual processor motherboard but then might have to rethink the Revo drive as it's pretty hit or miss with what boards it will work with.

Thanks in advance : )
 
i7 980 > Second Generation Intel CPU; Sandy Bridge i7 2600K

Gigabyte's assassin mobo > If you are in a hurry; P67 mobo when they are re-released in the next weeks. If you you can wait for april/may get the new mobo with the Z68 Chipset, both possibility for overclocking (automatic turbo boost) and unlocked CPU graphics + SSD Caching.

240gb Revo drive for OS > RevoDrive X2?. Or just one of the new "regular" SSD's released soon if you want to save some?
 
Iannis Holwech said:
i7 980 > Second Generation Intel CPU; Sandy Bridge i7 2600K

Gigabyte's assassin mobo > If you are in a hurry; P67 mobo when they are re-released in the next weeks. If you you can wait for april/may get the new mobo with the Z68 Chipset, both possibility for overclocking (automatic turbo boost) and unlocked CPU graphics + SSD Caching.

240gb Revo drive for OS > RevoDrive X2?. Or just one of the new "regular" SSD's released soon if you want to save some?
Click to expand...

Wow, that 2nd gen seems worth the wait..

Do you think the Revo drive would be overkill for an OS only or would there be a lot of benefit while editing?

I was either thinking the REVO or some new SSD that allowed for something similar to TRIM in regular drives, I forget what it was called but it was some kind of garbage collection that was new to the SSD world..
 
$3500 Budget PC?

How about a Mac Pro? Or one of the HP Dual Xeon systems?

8 Core Xeon is much nicer than 4-6 core i7.

Are you building a system for editing or gaming?

Why choose that PCIe SSD drive? You'll be radically accelerating the system boot time and application loading. Those are occasional tasks. To technobabble at you, you are profiling for an edge case. Are you trying to accelerate the pagefile? Better to install more RAM.

Also, what format are you using where you want 2 Velociraptor's for editing bandwidth, but only need 1.2TB of storage? They are only marginally faster than 2TB 7200 RPM drives- which you can also set up in RAID-0 for editing uncompressed 10 bit YUV video pretty readily.

If you really need more speed, then you almost certainly need more storage as well, so why not RAID-5? You can get a 4 drive RAID 5 eSATA enclosure. That will be much faster than two velociraptors, and have very much more capacity. You also gain a measure of protection against drive failure.

I suggest rethinking the whole system with an eye towards your application, post production, rather than towards peak benchmark/gaming performance which is what your system looks optimized for right now.

That means you need lots of storage with sustained bandwidth, and lots of processing with fast throughput with tons of storage.
 
Alexander Ibrahim said:
$3500 Budget PC?

How about a Mac Pro? Or one of the HP Dual Xeon systems?

8 Core Xeon is much nicer than 4-6 core i7.

Are you building a system for editing or gaming?

Why choose that PCIe SSD drive? You'll be radically accelerating the system boot time and application loading. Those are occasional tasks. To technobabble at you, you are profiling for an edge case. Are you trying to accelerate the pagefile? Better to install more RAM.

Also, what format are you using where you want 2 Velociraptor's for editing bandwidth, but only need 1.2TB of storage? They are only marginally faster than 2TB 7200 RPM drives- which you can also set up in RAID-0 for editing uncompressed 10 bit YUV video pretty readily.

If you really need more speed, then you almost certainly need more storage as well, so why not RAID-5? You can get a 4 drive RAID 5 eSATA enclosure. That will be much faster than two velociraptors, and have very much more capacity. You also gain a measure of protection against drive failure.

I suggest rethinking the whole system with an eye towards your application, post production, rather than towards peak benchmark/gaming performance which is what your system looks optimized for right now.

That means you need lots of storage with sustained bandwidth, and lots of processing with fast throughput with tons of storage.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm definitely open to idea's, I guess I just figured that rigs gamers were building would be good for editing as well..

What about USB 3.0?, Isn't it much faster than eSata?

Thanks for the comments, I'll check out some external drive solutions as well..
 
PS : my thread title was meant to say. $3500 budget. PC Build sorry for the misleading title..
 
Kalani Prince said:
Yeah, I'm definitely open to idea's, I guess I just figured that rigs gamers were building would be good for editing as well..

What about USB 3.0?, Isn't it much faster than eSata?

Thanks for the comments, I'll check out some external drive solutions as well..
Click to expand...

The rigs gamers build are for games, which have a moderate CPU load and a high GPU load. That GPU load isn't at all like the GPU load we generate in post production. Mostly they are looking at speed of 3D processing, texture fill rates etc etc.

Again, we need overall system bandwidth and high capacity. Sustained high speed transfer of huge data sets. We also need sustained high CPU processing capacity.

USB 3.0 is a 5Gbps bus. In practice you won't get that speed, and what speed you do get won't be sustained, like every version of USB it has high overhead on the bus, and the CPU.

SATA has three versions. The most common right now is SATA II, which is 3Gbps. On paper that looks slower than USB3, but in practice its faster- especially with very large files, like say video files.

SATA III is just getting rolled out. That is a 6Gbps protocol, and it can truly sustain that promised 600MB/s transfer rate readily- provided your disk subsystem can keep up. There is a dearth of eSATA 6G devices right now.

If you are looking for the "ultimate" in external storage connection speed, then right now you should look seriously at the brand new MacBook Pro. Thunderbolt is pretty incredible, with its 10Gbps full duplex data. Again however ... there aren't any devices for Thunderbolt yet. They are coming though, and when they arrive- well they are fast enough to change the way people think about external storage and systems interconnections.

Until recently that kind of speed was the province of data centers with very high end fibre channel.
 
Alexander Ibrahim said:
The rigs gamers build are for games, which have a moderate CPU load and a high GPU load. That GPU load isn't at all like the GPU load we generate in post production. Mostly they are looking at speed of 3D processing, texture fill rates etc etc.

Again, we need overall system bandwidth and high capacity. Sustained high speed transfer of huge data sets. We also need sustained high CPU processing capacity.

USB 3.0 is a 5Gbps bus. In practice you won't get that speed, and what speed you do get won't be sustained, like every version of USB it has high overhead on the bus, and the CPU.

SATA has three versions. The most common right now is SATA II, which is 3Gbps. On paper that looks slower than USB3, but in practice its faster- especially with very large files, like say video files.

SATA III is just getting rolled out. That is a 6Gbps protocol, and it can truly sustain that promised 600MB/s transfer rate readily- provided your disk subsystem can keep up. There is a dearth of eSATA 6G devices right now.

If you are looking for the "ultimate" in external storage connection speed, then right now you should look seriously at the brand new MacBook Pro. Thunderbolt is pretty incredible, with its 10Gbps full duplex data. Again however ... there aren't any devices for Thunderbolt yet. They are coming though, and when they arrive- well they are fast enough to change the way people think about external storage and systems interconnections.

Until recently that kind of speed was the province of data centers with very high end fibre channel.
Click to expand...

Wow, thank you Alexander for the wonderful information.. You sound pretty well versed in the realities of these variables all working to the best capacity..

I'm going to go back to the drawing board.. So a single SSD for OS is probably even overkill for editing purposes huh? I never play games and don't really care how long the system boots, haha..

I do care about encode time and render time when something does need rendering..

thank you for your time, it's much appreciated!
 
Do they still make PCs?

Jim
 
Jannard said:
Do they still make PCs?

Jim
Click to expand...

They still make them, but how wants to use them :coolgleamA: I don't (@home)...
At the office I still have to use a PC :emote_headwall:
 
A Mac is, after all, a PC with a brand name.

The brand name costs a lot, too. Sometimes, as much as the PC itself.
 
The Mac vs PC war is a misnomer. I'm sure PC's are fine machines, but who the hell wants to use Windows? Seriously? I just can't stomach the Fisher Price aesthetic and the handholding "Are you sure you wanted to push the button you pushed" pop ups. That alone is worth the apple on the side of the box.
 
Kalani Prince said:
I'm going to go back to the drawing board.. So a single SSD for OS is probably even overkill for editing purposes huh? I never play games and don't really care how long the system boots, haha..
Click to expand...
I think you misunderstand.
The Revo drive is overkill. But a single SSD SataIII 6Gb/s like Crucial RealSSD C300 SATA 6 Gb/s, up to 355MB/75MB sec read/write for OS is a good and economical choice for now.
All SSD's has for a long time had TRIM support, so that's not an issue.
But if you wait a little for the 2nd generation 6Gb/s SSD's that will be released in the coming weeks will be a better choice.
Some SSD's that are announced with new SF-2200 from Sand Force; Intel SSD 510, OCZ Vertex 3, Pretec P4000/200GB, P6000/512GB,N2000/1TB, Patriot Wildfire, Corsair Force GT,G.Skill Phoenix II, Runcore.....
Read the tests and pick the one that will give you best performance for the money.

If you can afford it, add a dedicated SSD as Scratch disk/media cache disk.

I do care about encode time and render time when something does need rendering..

thank you for your time, it's much appreciated!
Click to expand...

Render-farm (and render quality) will always be a bottleneck if you don't build a render-farm.
The best you can do is the new Sandy Bridge CPU, either i5 or i7 and a Nivida GPU for mercury motor.
Interesting read is the Quick Sync article at Anandatech. Even if this doesn't apply directly to your work-flow, transcoding/downsample from HD/Blu-Ray to smaller formats, it gives some insight/surprises into what combination of hardware gives the best results; Quick Sync: The Best Way to Transcode

At least be assured that you get more power and hardware control/configurations for less money on a PC platform than on a Mac platform. :coolgleamA:
 
Iannis Holwech said:
At least be assured that you get more power and hardware control/configurations for less money on a PC platform than on a Mac platform. :coolgleamA:
Click to expand...

Why not get the best of both worlds and build an Intel MAC Pro with your own specifications for roughly a third of the price and oodles more horsepower -

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.comcustomac-pro-2010.html

Spec out your PC as you wish and also be able to boot Snow Leopard natively - runs fautlessly, even when overclocked for an extra 1Ghz.

Recently built mine with 12Gb Ram, i7-950 running at 4Ghz (air cooled (not stock fan)) an Nvidia GPU (only a GTS 450) for CUDA performance in CS5 and only spent the equivalent of ~$1300. Very fast in Win 7 64bit. Dual booting Snow Leopard With a retail DVD. With a i7-980 it would absolutely fly!

When they get Sandy Bridge support fully smoothed out the options for immense encoding/transcoding will be amazing.
 
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Hackintosh comes with a mess of problems, in my experience, even when hardware selection is carried out very carefully. Sure, there are people who have "run this box 24x7 and never had a problem". But there are also people who have had pretty major issues that could cost some serious time and money if being used for professional purposes. Fine for a personal computer, but I'd never trust it for work.
 
Jannard said:
Do they still make PCs?

Jim
Click to expand...

Don't worry, Apple will release the same thing with a 3 year old video card in 8-12 months for twice the price. ;)
 
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