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Building a high-performance editing machine

Jeremy Wiles

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I'm building a new editing machine. What parts could I replace to make this machine faster? I'd like to keep the price under $6k.

CPU: Intel i9-7900X
Graphics Card: GTX 1080 Ti
Motherboard: ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe
RAM: 64 GB quad channel DDR4-3200
OS Drive: Samsung 960 Pro 1 TB M.2 SSD
Cache Drive: Samsung 960 Pro 2 TB M.2 SSD
Storage Drive: 10TB Seagate Barracuda Pro
Power Supply: Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000
CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro H115i
Case: BeQuiet! Dark Base Pro 900
Operating System: Windows 7
 
I don't know what software you are going to use but for my personal use I would change the following

CPU: Intel i9-7900X > AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950x (16c/32t, 3,4..4 GHz) release date 10th of august. Same price
Graphics Card: GTX 1080 Ti > (upgrade now or in a later stage to 2 of them when you use Davinci Resolve Studio $299 a lot)
Motherboard: ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe > Threadripper motherboard (will be around the same price)
RAM: 64 GB quad channel DDR4-3200 > upgrade now or in a later stage to 128 GB (4 GB/thread) both intel and AMD use quad channel mem so DDR4-2667 should do the trick (AMD Ryzen Threadripper does benefit from DDR4-3200 CL14)
OS Drive: Samsung 960 Pro 1 TB M.2 SSD > Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB is fast enough you won't notice the difference
Cache Drive: Samsung 960 Pro 2 TB M.2 SSD > This one is pretty expensive
Storage Drive: 10TB Seagate Barracuda Pro > make sure you have a good backup plan (I would go for a raid1 or 10 solution).
Power Supply: Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000
CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro H115i > AIO liquid cooler or Noctua D15 aircooler for Ryzen Threadripper
Case: BeQuiet! Dark Base Pro 900
Operating System: Windows 7 > Windows 10

SIGGRAPH 2017 is within 10 days, so you might have a look in the press with what kind of GPU's NVidia or AMD are coming up with.
 
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The one downside to the new AMD CPUs is that they’re not quite as powerful as the Intel on a per-core basis. So apps that need a lot of CPU power, but can’t scale across multiple threads, are still going to do better on the Intel CPU. That said, most of our software tools in this world of powerful editing and content creation machines will benefit from the higher core count. So I’m going to say go for the AMD. I’ll be building one myself soon, not sure on exact timing, but probably by the end of August.
 
The one downside to the new AMD CPUs is that they’re not quite as powerful as the Intel on a per-core basis. So apps that need a lot of CPU power, but can’t scale across multiple threads, are still going to do better on the Intel CPU. That said, most of our software tools in this world of powerful editing and content creation machines will benefit from the higher core count. So I’m going to say go for the AMD. I’ll be building one myself soon, not sure on exact timing, but probably by the end of August.

Jeff, thanks for letting me know about the AMD. I think I'll wait for its release.

Can you list the parts of the build you're going to do?
 
Some info on motherboards for threadripper.

https://videocardz.com/71002/asus-gigabyte-msi-and-asrock-to-detail-x399-motherboards-on-july-25th

And some cinebench R15 multi results

index.php
 
So, is it confirmed that the new AMD Threadripper won't have TB3? I'd assume it wouldn't considering Thunderbolt is an Intel product. That's a deal killer for me, considering I'm using Maxx Digital TB3 Raid's. Wouldn't I get faster speeds using the Intel i9-7900X and a TB3 Raid?
 
So, is it confirmed that the new AMD Threadripper won't have TB3? I'd assume it wouldn't considering Thunderbolt is an Intel product. That's a deal killer for me, considering I'm using Maxx Digital TB3 Raid's. Wouldn't I get faster speeds using the Intel i9-7900X and a TB3 Raid?


Intel announced its making it royalty free, AMD hasn't said it will be adding Thunderbolt so at this point its a wait and see.
 
And when / if it does happen, you can bet that all the boards coming out now will not be supporting it.

It also seems that Intel’s licensing changes have some more specific requirements for integration. They’re trying to eliminate the half-assed approach of motherboard makers including an add-on card that you may or may not use and which may or may not work. We can start expecting to see TB3 enabled USB-C ports right on the motherboard. Which is a good thing.

I have the latest TB3 card from ASUS here. It’s flaky and I would not trust it for real work on a real workstation. If you’re using TB3 RAIDs, I would not plan on attaching them to your new workstation anytime soon. Not if you’re building in the next month or so.

I’ll post a build list for my Threadripper system once I get it all ironed out. But have not had time to work on it really.
 
Instead of the new I9-7900X I'm thinking of going with two Xeon 2697's. How does Premiere handle multi-threading? Would it be worth it to have a second CPU and twice the cores for editing?

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

These guys (https://uk.hardware.info/) use a two Xeon 2697 system with Premiere and are very happy with the performance.

What happened to the budget of $ 6.000?
Xeon 2697 = $ 2.700 so 2 would be $ 5.400
Does Xeon support thunderbolt???

How about single EPYC 7551P (32c/64t) for $ 2.100
with a http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Server-Motherboard/MZ31-AR0-rev-10#ov

When possible I would wait a month or two(I do), to see what is comming up and how the reviews are.
SIGGRAPH will also bring a lot of news.
 
And when / if it does happen, you can bet that all the boards coming out now will not be supporting it.

It also seems that Intel’s licensing changes have some more specific requirements for integration. They’re trying to eliminate the half-assed approach of motherboard makers including an add-on card that you may or may not use and which may or may not work. We can start expecting to see TB3 enabled USB-C ports right on the motherboard. Which is a good thing.

I have the latest TB3 card from ASUS here. It’s flaky and I would not trust it for real work on a real workstation. If you’re using TB3 RAIDs, I would not plan on attaching them to your new workstation anytime soon. Not if you’re building in the next month or so.

I’ll post a build list for my Threadripper system once I get it all ironed out. But have not had time to work on it really.


Seriously looking forward to your review/evaluation.
 
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