Building a Resolve PC?

[Tom Lowe]

If you could build a dream machine for Resolve, what specs and hardware would it have?

I have a new overclocked 3960x PC system sitting here with about 4 empty PCI slots. Should I pack those with 680 GTX 4GB? Would a Red Rocket help?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

You're off to a good start, Tom. My ideal Resolve system, for the moment, is this...

Dual Xeon E5 -- either dual 2687W or 2690. The 2687W have the edge, but also consume more power.
Overclocking is a bonus.
Minimum of 64GB RAM, 128GB is nice, 256GB is gravy
2 x GTX680 4GB OC video cards -- or a combo of a K5000 + Tesla K20X (if you feel $pendy)
RED Rocket
Decklink HD Extreme 3D+ card -- or DeckLink 4K if you have a 4K monitor/ projector
Lots of fast RAID storage to work from

That's pretty much it... I would start with 2 GPUs and go from there. The K5000 + Tesla is the equivalent of a GTX 670 plus two 680's for CUDA performance, but with more RAM. You can rock 3 or 4 680's in there if you have the slots. Since they're double-width, I recommend getting EVGA's single-slot-wide WC models. However, I don't know if they're available yet and if they have or will have 4GB on them, I haven't kept tabs on that.


My current Resolve system is an HP Z820 tower (not overclocked)
2 x E5-2687W 3.1GHz Xeons
128GB RAM
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD
5 x WD RE4 2TB in RAID-0
Blu-Ray writer
Quadro 6000 + Tesla C2075
RED Rocket
Decklink HD Extreme 3D+
ATTO R680 -- attatched to 24TB external RAID + LTO-5 tape backup

This system tears a new asshole in Resolve and Premiere. Nuke runs great as well, AfterEffects does well in rendering as it's multi-CPU aware at that point, but generally working in AE or Photoshop is kinda bland and the iMac sitting on the other side of the desk is actually faster for Photoshop and many other things. Same with my i7-3960X desktop in the other room -- that thing is a monster until you need more than 6 CPU cores. The unfortunate down-side to these monster Xeon boxes is desktop systems with 4 or 6 core i7 CPUs are faster for non-multithreaded applications, photoshop, most modeling software, etc.. When everything is confined to one or two CPU cores, the smaller system with a faster-clocked CPU can win if it has the memory and storage I/O to match. So I tend to run Premiere and AE on the Z820 and do a lot of polishing, finishing and rendering on the Z820. Most of my photoshop work and other stuff happens elsewhere...

 

[Bruce Allen]

Personally I am waiting for the next nVidia cards based off of the K20 compute chip. They have shipped 16000 of them to Cray fort their new supercomputer and supposedly will have them available to mortals in a gaming card soon. There are benchmarks further workstation variants and they look pretty awesome.

For compute tasks, the 680 is actually not as fast as the 580 and the K20 chip is the true 480 / 580 successor. It is reasonably fast and also not extremely loud so that is a plus if the system is on the same room as you.

I would also check with the Blackmagic guys to see when their first K20 optimized build of Resolve is coming out.

However if you need a system now, just plop in two 680s, a RAID card and a Red Rocket (if you work with lots of RED footage - though personally we haven't had as much luck as we hope can't get it to play back 5K - maybe we need two?!) and should be good?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Bruce Allen]

Oh yeah... didn't Blackmagic also just enable support for their 4K Decklink?

And Jeff's advice is gold as usual, of course!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Pablo Moreno]

the Z820 is a Monster! period..

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

680 and 580 performance in CUDA is pretty similar, some functions faster or slower between the two cards. 680 wins out on large memory moves and handling large memory sets, especially when you can get the 4GB version. OTOH, unless they have a miracle new WC 680 I haven't seen, the 580's overclock like a mutha' and can probably win the performance war that way. 680's being newer are getting more attention with drivers and optimization right now. For OpenGL and DirectX performance, the two cards are very similar again. The 580 pushes more points and polygons, the 680 has superior texture pipes.

One thing to be aware of with the 580 vs. 680 is that generally speaking the 680 is about 3 to 5 % faster in most CUDA benchmarks for single-precision operations. For double precision, the 680's performance takes a nosedive. Thankfully both Premiere and Resolve are using single precision within their CUDA processing.

The "K20" GPU (GK110 chip) should hit mainstream graphics cards later this spring or early summer. Probably going to be the GeForce 700 series, but I'm just guessing. GK110/K20 is available now as a Tesla card, sells for $3300. Quadro K6000 will use the GK110 as well and will replace the current Fermi Quadro 6000, but no specific release date yet. GTX680 and Quadro K5000 both use the 1536 core GK104 GPU chip. The GTX690 and Tesla K10 both use dual GK104 chips. It is the GK104 that struggles with dual precision.

Resolve 9.1 just released about a week ago supports DeckLink 4K now.

 

[Richard Tran]

You're off to a good start, Tom. My ideal Resolve system, for the moment, is this...

Dual Xeon E5 -- either dual 2687W or 2690. The 2687W have the edge, but also consume more power.
Overclocking is a bonus.
Minimum of 64GB RAM, 128GB is nice, 256GB is gravy
2 x GTX680 4GB OC video cards -- or a combo of a K5000 + Tesla K20X (if you feel $pendy)
RED Rocket
Decklink HD Extreme 3D+ card -- or DeckLink 4K if you have a 4K monitor/ projector
Lots of fast RAID storage to work from

That's pretty much it... I would start with 2 GPUs and go from there. The K5000 + Tesla is the equivalent of a GTX 670 plus two 680's for CUDA performance, but with more RAM. You can rock 3 or 4 680's in there if you have the slots. Since they're double-width, I recommend getting EVGA's single-slot-wide WC models. However, I don't know if they're available yet and if they have or will have 4GB on them, I haven't kept tabs on that.


My current Resolve system is an HP Z820 tower (not overclocked)
2 x E5-2687W 3.1GHz Xeons
128GB RAM
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD
5 x WD RE4 2TB in RAID-0
Blu-Ray writer
Quadro 6000 + Tesla C2075
RED Rocket
Decklink HD Extreme 3D+
ATTO R680 -- attatched to 24TB external RAID + LTO-5 tape backup

This system tears a new asshole in Resolve and Premiere. Nuke runs great as well, AfterEffects does well in rendering as it's multi-CPU aware at that point, but generally working in AE or Photoshop is kinda bland and the iMac sitting on the other side of the desk is actually faster for Photoshop and many other things. Same with my i7-3960X desktop in the other room -- that thing is a monster until you need more than 6 CPU cores. The unfortunate down-side to these monster Xeon boxes is desktop systems with 4 or 6 core i7 CPUs are faster for non-multithreaded applications, photoshop, most modeling software, etc.. When everything is confined to one or two CPU cores, the smaller system with a faster-clocked CPU can win if it has the memory and storage I/O to match. So I tend to run Premiere and AE on the Z820 and do a lot of polishing, finishing and rendering on the Z820. Most of my photoshop work and other stuff happens elsewhere...

Windows 7 only uses 192GB of ram though correct? I think Windows 8 on the other hand will use all 256GB.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Windows 7 only uses 192GB of ram though correct? I think Windows 8 on the other hand will use all 256GB.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx

Correct. Windows 8 Pro and Enterprise use up to 512GB. Microsoft has loosely promised an update to Windows 7 to allow for more than the 192GB, but not sure if it will happen or how much of an increase we'll see. For most people out there, this is a non issue. Seriously, 128GB is plenty for just about anything. Where it really helps in R3D workflow is we can cache a boatload of footage. Getting more than 256GB in a system right now is possible, but takes 32GB modules, all of which are performance hindered by the current controllers and crippled in speed to 1333MHz. Even the 16GB modules on the market right now at 1600MHz leave a lot to be desired. The 32GB modules currently out there cause some space issues in a lot of systems. The tech just isn't quite there yet to pull off 512GB in a reasonable way, or at a reasonable price.

 

[Richard Tran]

You're off to a good start, Tom. My ideal Resolve system, for the moment, is this...

Dual Xeon E5 -- either dual 2687W or 2690. The 2687W have the edge, but also consume more power.
Overclocking is a bonus.
Minimum of 64GB RAM, 128GB is nice, 256GB is gravy
2 x GTX680 4GB OC video cards -- or a combo of a K5000 + Tesla K20X (if you feel $pendy)
RED Rocket
Decklink HD Extreme 3D+ card -- or DeckLink 4K if you have a 4K monitor/ projector
Lots of fast RAID storage to work from

That's pretty much it... I would start with 2 GPUs and go from there. The K5000 + Tesla is the equivalent of a GTX 670 plus two 680's for CUDA performance, but with more RAM. You can rock 3 or 4 680's in there if you have the slots. Since they're double-width, I recommend getting EVGA's single-slot-wide WC models. However, I don't know if they're available yet and if they have or will have 4GB on them, I haven't kept tabs on that.


My current Resolve system is an HP Z820 tower (not overclocked)
2 x E5-2687W 3.1GHz Xeons
128GB RAM
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD
5 x WD RE4 2TB in RAID-0
Blu-Ray writer
Quadro 6000 + Tesla C2075
RED Rocket
Decklink HD Extreme 3D+
ATTO R680 -- attatched to 24TB external RAID + LTO-5 tape backup

This system tears a new asshole in Resolve and Premiere. Nuke runs great as well, AfterEffects does well in rendering as it's multi-CPU aware at that point, but generally working in AE or Photoshop is kinda bland and the iMac sitting on the other side of the desk is actually faster for Photoshop and many other things. Same with my i7-3960X desktop in the other room -- that thing is a monster until you need more than 6 CPU cores. The unfortunate down-side to these monster Xeon boxes is desktop systems with 4 or 6 core i7 CPUs are faster for non-multithreaded applications, photoshop, most modeling software, etc.. When everything is confined to one or two CPU cores, the smaller system with a faster-clocked CPU can win if it has the memory and storage I/O to match. So I tend to run Premiere and AE on the Z820 and do a lot of polishing, finishing and rendering on the Z820. Most of my photoshop work and other stuff happens elsewhere...

What do you put on your 10Tb Raid drive, if you don't mind me asking.

 

[Chris Reynolds]

Hi Jeff

I am building a system pretty much based around all you post I find on reduser!! Dual 2687W on a Supermicro - X9DAi. Been doing plenty of research elsewhere but I always love hearing you answers ;-).
I only have one question and that is cooling??
what case, fans and CPU coolers do you recommend?

Thanks in advance, Chris

 

[Tom Lowe]

So for Resolve, will it really be helpful to have dual xeons vs an overclocked 3960x system? I think my 3960x is running over 5ghz.

Also, my 3960 rig has more slots free for GPU cards than my dual xeon rig has.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

What do you put on your 10Tb Raid drive, if you don't mind me asking.

The 10TB (5 x 2TB RE4's) are in the Z820's internal bays.

So for Resolve, will it really be helpful to have dual xeons vs an overclocked 3960x system? I think my 3960x is running over 5ghz.

Also, my 3960 rig has more slots free for GPU cards than my dual xeon rig has.

If you're reliably overclocked that much on a 3960X, it should be a monster. I'm at 4.8GHz on my 3960X, but I think it's my G.Skill RipJaw X memory that can't take any further abuse, the CPU is stable under liquid cooling. If you put at least 48GB of RAM in there, preferably 64GB on that system, it should work well. A RED Rocket will be helpful along with a Decklink card and 2 GPUs for sure, add a third if you have the room and power to drive it. That system will match any dual Xeon box, even beat it, for most anything. Where the dual Xeon is going is going to have the advantage is on highly multithreaded tasks -- it will have 16 cores, 32 threads, vs. 6 cores and 12 threads of the i7. The 5GHz clock speed will only go so far toward recovering what those extra cores can do. I would start with that system and get it running. Maybe move the GPUs and Rocket and other stuff to a new dual Xeon box later this year when Intel releases new CPUs...?

FWIW, if you run at least two 680's and a Rocket in that 3960X system, especially with it overclocked, you'll have a better Resolve system than what most people are running Resolve on. Just sayin'...

Hi Jeff

I am building a system pretty much based around all you post I find on reduser!! Dual 2687W on a Supermicro - X9DAi. Been doing plenty of research elsewhere but I always love hearing you answers ;-).
I only have one question and that is cooling??
what case, fans and CPU coolers do you recommend?

Thanks in advance, Chris

For the SuperMicro configuration, you can get their tower case with motherboard installed and pre-wired. It's a handy barebones configuration, but the fans are LOUD! and you will end up replacing them unless you're keeping the system in a server room or something.

Case isn't such a big deal, you need an E-ATX form factor one, look around at which ones have enough drive bays and other features to satisfy you. I have yet to find the "perfect" case. My favorites are Thermaltake and Lian-Li, they both make several nice ones.

I recommend the Thermaltake liquid cooling that will fit the LGA2011 sockets and they make large sized waterblocks to fit the E5 Xeons. The 2687W is my Xeon CPU of choice at the moment, 2960 my second choice. The 2687W is best when water cooled -- HP won't even sell them without water cooling.

Fans, first consideration is airflow. Secondly, they have to be quiet. I hate noisy computers. The Z820, if you have ever been around one, is pushing a little too much past my noise threshold, but I tolerate it. Hard to keep a beast like this in silent mode... Besides, the fan on the Rocket card and most video cards are usually big offenders in the noise department as well. Thermaltake, Zalman, Enermax, GUID, etc.. all make some good fan options.

 

[Chris Reynolds]

The 10TB (5 x 2TB RE4's) are in the Z820's internal bays.




If you're reliably overclocked that much on a 3960X, it should be a monster. I'm at 4.8GHz on my 3960X, but I think it's my G.Skill RipJaw X memory that can't take any further abuse, the CPU is stable under liquid cooling. If you put at least 48GB of RAM in there, preferably 64GB on that system, it should work well. A RED Rocket will be helpful along with a Decklink card and 2 GPUs for sure, add a third if you have the room and power to drive it. That system will match any dual Xeon box, even beat it, for most anything. Where the dual Xeon is going is going to have the advantage is on highly multithreaded tasks -- it will have 16 cores, 32 threads, vs. 6 cores and 12 threads of the i7. The 5GHz clock speed will only go so far toward recovering what those extra cores can do. I would start with that system and get it running. Maybe move the GPUs and Rocket and other stuff to a new dual Xeon box later this year when Intel releases new CPUs...?

FWIW, if you run at least two 680's and a Rocket in that 3960X system, especially with it overclocked, you'll have a better Resolve system than what most people are running Resolve on. Just sayin'...




For the SuperMicro configuration, you can get their tower case with motherboard installed and pre-wired. It's a handy barebones configuration, but the fans are LOUD! and you will end up replacing them unless you're keeping the system in a server room or something.

Case isn't such a big deal, you need an E-ATX form factor one, look around at which ones have enough drive bays and other features to satisfy you. I have yet to find the "perfect" case. My favorites are Thermaltake and Lian-Li, they both make several nice ones.

I recommend the Thermaltake liquid cooling that will fit the LGA2011 sockets and they make large sized waterblocks to fit the E5 Xeons. The 2687W is my Xeon CPU of choice at the moment, 2960 my second choice. The 2687W is best when water cooled -- HP won't even sell them without water cooling.

Fans, first consideration is airflow. Secondly, they have to be quiet. I hate noisy computers. The Z820, if you have ever been around one, is pushing a little too much past my noise threshold, but I tolerate it. Hard to keep a beast like this in silent mode... Besides, the fan on the Rocket card and most video cards are usually big offenders in the noise department as well. Thermaltake, Zalman, Enermax, GUID, etc.. all make some good fan options.

Thank you Jeff. Pretty much what I though but it is certainly reassuring to hear it from you!! Noise doesn't worry me as they will be in a machine room. Just experimenting with some machines for 3D and also a machine to run my Avid DS's on even though it won't be qualified by Avid but, neither is any of my raids that I use on those systems at a tenth the price and faster bandwidth. Avid is always so far behind in qualifying systems is does my head in

Cheers, Chris

 

[Richard Tran]

The 10TB (5 x 2TB RE4's) are in the Z820's internal bays.


.

Sorry,

What I meant was, is that where you put your pagefile? Or do you usually disable it with 128gb of ram.
Do you move your c:/temp folder by any chance? Or leave it on your c-drive?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Sorry,

What I meant was, is that where you put your pagefile? Or do you usually disable it with 128gb of ram.
Do you move your c:/temp folder by any chance? Or leave it on your c-drive?

Hey, I mis-read your question anyway.

The 10TB is general workspace and typically used for online backups of current projects, image files and audio files that need to be pulled during playback where I may not want it to interfere with bandwidth for the external RAID pulling multiple streams of video. I guess it's just like having a couple fast drives with oodles of space.

The page file is a touchy subject with most system tweakers, some will agree with me, some won't. Anyway, here's my take on it.... Don't ever, ever, EVER disable the page file. Don't fucking do it, that breaks stuff. Seriously. OK, so then how do you manage the page file? How big does it need to be? where should it be located? I typically keep it on my system volume, right on the C drive. As for size, that is a loaded question with lots of variables. Dynamic sizing, Windows managed, is usually a good place to start. The page file is truly misunderstood by most people. Windows only uses it at certain times and for certain purposes, it's not simply a huge chunk of virtual memory that is continuously swapped to. It can behave that way on some systems, but only if there are problems. The two most common such problems are insufficient RAM or shitty software with rampant memory leakage. The insufficient RAM is the most common offender.

Windows won't ever page out your currently active application or any applications assigned a higher than normal priority. Typically when the page file gets used is when you load up a bunch of apps and then leave them loaded in the background. Especially if they secure large chunks of RAM or load large sets of data, where the cumulative RAM use for all of them exceeds what your system can handle. For most any system with 12GB or less, I recommend setting the page file as a fixed size equal to RAM and being done with it. From there, as memory capacity increases, I tend to set the hard limit on the page file a little larger, but with 128GB in the Z820, I have the page file limit set at 24GB. The pagefile.sys rarely grows to over a few GB in size.

C:/temp get's left where it wants to be as well. Typically things that get put there should be removed by whichever application puts them there. Occasionally that doesn't happen and I'll do a manual cleaning every now and then. If you find the c:/temp is filling up with crap and it doesn't get cycled out, identify the offending apps and see if there's something you can change. Or tell the developers they suck... That second option usually meets with little success, but sometimes people need a small kick in the ass. In the past, Microsoft themselves was a pretty big offender of cluttering their own temp folder, but Win7, Win8 and their domestic apps do a lot better.

C drive, the 512GB SSD in the case of the Z820, is primarily for apps and OS. I keep documents, downloads, images, music, etc.. on the internal RAID and they're queued up for automated nightly backup to the external RAID. Current projects are usually backed up by hand from the external RAID to the internal if I deem it necessary. I tend to do revolving backup to tape about every other friday. Will backup current project(s) to tape on occasion if I want the extra security. Often I'll do the temporary stuff like that between the two RAIDs or other external disks. I'd love to have a kick-ass SAN or online shared storage and backup system for all my systems, but that stuff costs huge money. And even the best and fastest solutions out there are still relatively slow. I do have some networked backups going on some systems, but I'm limited to Gigabit Ethernet on the Z820... No more free slots to install a 10G card...

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

Hi Jeff

I am building a system pretty much based around all you post I find on reduser!! Dual 2687W on a Supermicro - X9DAi. Been doing plenty of research elsewhere but I always love hearing you answers ;-).
I only have one question and that is cooling??
what case, fans and CPU coolers do you recommend?


Thanks in advance, Chris

I have this system with this chassi

http://www.supermicro.nl/products/system/4U/7047/SYS-7047A-T.cfm
I have no liquid cooling but fans in all fan holes. Im pretty impressed of its low noise.
But i did get fooled when i after the purchase was informed that you cant raid "all" disks together. You caan raid the upper four disks but not any of the lower four disks together. You could raid the lower but not with ghe upper. This sounds like pure stupidity. I wanted to have a 5 disk raid 5 internally so im hoping im misiniformed.

Perhaps this is only true with the built in raidcard on the motherboard.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

There are two SATA-2, each with 4 ports, that serve those bays. They have RAID support on each header, but you can't create RAIDs between the two headers... Well, you can do striping or mirroring via software. If you want a bigger internal RAID, they have models with integrated SAS controllers -- pretty much everything with the C606 chipset. Then you get two mini-SAS (4 ports on each connector again) and you can RAID all 8 together if you like.

I found the 7047A tower configuration to be quite loud. Much louder and somewhat high-pitched or "whiney" compared to a Mac Pro tower, as an example.

I like the X9DAi board a lot for workstation use, but there are some others that might be a better fit depending on your needs. I guess that's why SuperMicro makes like 20 different X9 series motherboards. Even with that, and with offerings from EVGA, ASUS, Gigabyte, etc.. It seems like every E5-2600 motherboard out there is lacking in some way. I don't know of any boards that use the platform to its full potential. I don't think it's a fault of the manufacturers ignoring some features, but the platform forces compromises. There is just no way to take everything this platform can offer and fit it into an E-ATX or E-ATX/M package. Look at the T7500 dual Xeon workstation from Dell and it's funky design where the 2nd CPU PCIe lanes are assigned to the two isolated slots way up top, located over the PSU. It's actually a nice design. I rather like Dell's design for their flagship E5 Xeon workstation. Much more thought put into it than HP's Z820. However, I can't recommend the Dell as I have yet to meet anyone with that system not having performance or stability issues. I have not used one enough to form an opinion of it myself. I may have been tempted to buy it rather than the Z820, but Dell took their sweet time bringing it to market.

The Z820 design is cramped. They literally found a way to shoe-horn the E5 platform into the same chassis that held the previous iteration of dual Xeon platform. But now we have more usable PCIe lanes and larger CPUs. They're using a more compact PSU and some other nice features, but they needed to give the motherboard more clearance on the bottom and make that bottom slot a true double-width one. It barely is -- I have to use it that way to make all my cards fit, but all the SATA connectors run along the bottom and are in the way, there isn't enough clearance there for proper airflow on a GPU fan -- my Tesla card runs hot. Not hot enough to be of concern, but hotter than it would if I moved it up a slot.

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

Jeff, i think i go with 4 striped disks. Wished to have used one more and go raid 5. So software raid 5 is a no no? Is it for stability or more the perfomance wise? Do you suggest 2tb disks or bigger. I like the wd re4 drives but the only go to 2tb.


Edit: how about a raid 5+0?

 

[Mark T Workman]

If you could build a dream machine for Resolve, what specs and hardware would it have?

I have a new overclocked 3960x PC system sitting here with about 4 empty PCI slots. Should I pack those with 680 GTX 4GB? Would a Red Rocket help?

This is a good thread (the GPU discussion should be helpful!) but raises more questions than it answers for me:
1) Have the lack of secondary color correction control on RESOLVE been solved?
2) Have the Pro Res issues (post for the many fan boys out there) been solved?
3) Is RESOLVE a very good choice for this type of system you've built or is it a second tier alternative with the DaVinci stamp on it as some claim?

The i7 3960x Sandy Bridge-E requires moving over to a LGA 2011 mobo series with separate cooling purchase required so I respect the cash you've already put out for performance. Yet bang for buck on "speedy," I'm not so sure it's a great choice for many current users since it requires replacing many key components. Of course, with 6K on the horizon, this remain open for debate...

Your RAM choices should be best at 24GB or 48GB (or even 96GB) with six core according to my research. Other choices could cause problems... I also can't in good conscience, recommend Lian Li cases after the horrible problems (and complete lack of customer service!) I experienced (electrical shorts/system failure!) with a defective case last year. Never again!

Good luck to you! I'm sure readers will appreciate any more FYI with regard to this software and build!

 

[DJ Meyer]

Personally I am waiting for the next nVidia cards based off of the K20 compute chip. They have shipped 16000 of them to Cray fort their new supercomputer and supposedly will have them available to mortals in a gaming card soon. There are benchmarks further workstation variants and they look pretty awesome.

For compute tasks, the 680 is actually not as fast as the 580 and the K20 chip is the true 480 / 580 successor. It is reasonably fast and also not extremely loud so that is a plus if the system is on the same room as you.

I would also check with the Blackmagic guys to see when their first K20 optimized build of Resolve is coming out.

However if you need a system now, just plop in two 680s, a RAID card and a Red Rocket (if you work with lots of RED footage - though personally we haven't had as much luck as we hope can't get it to play back 5K - maybe we need two?!) and should be good?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

The K20 and K20x's are available now. Got one in from serverdirect.com