Computer Builds, What do you think?

[Will Holman]

I'm tired of waiting for the new Mac Pro and I'm looking to build a fast monster computer. I'm looking to go linux and window and ditch mac altogether. With the builds listed below can I still run Davinci Resolve, CS6 and playback full res 5k footage realtime. Comments and suggestion welcomed.
Thanks

NZXT SWITCH 810 Matte Black CA-SW810-M1 Steel / Plastic ATX HYBRID Full Tower Gaming Computer Case
ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 SSI EEB Intel Motherboard
2 PNY VCGGTX7803XPB GeForce GTX 780 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Video Card
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand TPG-1200M 1200W ATX 12V v2.3 & EPS 12V v2.92 SLI Certified CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
2 Intel Xeon E5-2640 Sandy Bridge-EP 2.5GHz (3GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 95W Six-Core Server Processor BX80621E52640
G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL
5 Seagate 600 Series ST480HM000 2.5" 480GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
LG Black 14X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 12X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA BDXL Blu-Ray Burner with SW, 3D Play Back - BH14NS40

Second Option

NZXT Phantom 630 CA-PH630-W1 White Steel / Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case
6 Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive
4 EVGA 04G-P4-2690-KR GeForce GTX 690 4GB 512-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
ENERMAX Platimax EPM1200EWT 1200W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Modular Power Supply
CORSAIR Vengeance 64GB (8 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory Model CMZ64GX3M8A1600C9
ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 SSI EEB Intel Motherboard
ASUS Black Blu-ray Burner SATA BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS
SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD500BW 2.5" 500GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
2 Intel Xeon E5-2687W Sandy Bridge-EP 3.1GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 150W 8-Core Server Processor BX80621E52687W

 

[Will Holman]

Anyone. Let me know if I'm on the right track.
Thanks,
Will

 

[David Kuhn]

My 2 cents:

-Never used NZXT (no opinion)
-I like Asus (bought a number of asus boards over the years, had good luck with them overall)
-I Avoid PNY (they sell a lot of crap... returned a couple items and now don't buy)
-I like Thermaltake supplies.
-6 core is good, 8 core is better (I've had good luck with the SB 2680's).
-Used G.Skill without problem in the past, but I'm not that picky on memory as long as the vendor is reputable (no PNY).
-Assuming you're buying 5 SSD's to raid them... there are some writeups about how SSD's don't give you a big performance bump in raid configurations (over standalone), have only -setup SSD's in RAID1 myself so no personal experience with a RAID5 setup. If you DO choose to go raid... think about getting a card (mobo raid implementations are generally not that great)
-I don't usually even bother with cd/dvd/bluray burners - external hdd's and flash memory are cheap enough to have replaced burnable media for me.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

OK... I'm about to start ripping and tearing. Don't take it personally, there are just some things that are not right here. Right up front, your power supply choices are not going to cut it. Both PSUs you have picked are 1200W max output and only have 85~88% efficiency ratings. You don't want to stress your PSU, you want something that is going to provide 10 to 15% more than the peak requirements of your system under load and without burning itself up. If you peg all your cores and GPUs in an intense render session for 3 days straight, the PSU should handle it without breaking a sweat. If you're serious about those 4 x GTX690's, you may seriously want to consider dual PSU's or other supplementary power form. I would advocate a dual PSU setup in that situation as they are a lot gentler on the hardware over time... But then again, I'm not sure you really want that GPU config...

I'm tired of waiting for the new Mac Pro and I'm looking to build a fast monster computer. I'm looking to go linux and window and ditch mac altogether. With the builds listed below can I still run Davinci Resolve, CS6 and playback full res 5k footage realtime. Comments and suggestion welcomed.
Thanks

NZXT SWITCH 810 Matte Black CA-SW810-M1 Steel / Plastic ATX HYBRID Full Tower Gaming Computer Case

Hmm... No experience with this case. I see it has decent reviews. I guess if it fits your needs. Looks just like the older Chieftec / Antec towers from about 10 years ago. Actually looks identical in design. If so, not a bad case, but ventilation would be my biggest concern.

ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 SSI EEB Intel Motherboard

I can't recommend this board. My professional opinion is that it's garbage. Very high DOA and failure rate. Very problematic with GPU compatibility of cards with larger RAM sizes. I know for a fact that the Quadro K5000 and GTX Titan just don't work on this motherboard. ASUS says they are working on a fix, but they have been working on a fix for a long time now and there's a good chance this board will be EOL'd in a few months with the launch of the Ivy Bridge-EP Xeons. While the new CPUs *should* drop-in to this motherboard, I'd want confirmation before buying, since the new CPUs ship in about 60 days from now. On that note, this is strictly a buy now only if you have no choice. No eSATA on the board? WTF? So we have to waste a slot space to pipe them out the rear. Already have to do that to pipe out the other two USB3 ports and the firewire. Not that anyone gives a rat's ass about the firewire...

Take a look at the SuperMicro offerings. The X9DAi is decent and I think the newer X9DRF is probably more to our likings these days, but I haven't worked with that one myself.

PNY VCGGTX7803XPB GeForce GTX 780 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Video Card

The 780's look like great cards! You will want 3 of them if this is to be a powerhouse Resolve system. I can't comment on GPU usage in Resolve 10, but in Resolve 9 having 2 GPUs in a system is kinda pointless. Currently, if you have one CUDA GPU, it will use it for both GUI and acceleration. It only suffers about a 5% penalty. If you add a second GPU, it uses the secondary for CUDA acceleration and the primary as GUI. So you don't gain much of anything. If you add a third, then you have one for GUI and two for CUDA acceleration. As for Adobe CC, they seem to be sorting out multi-GPU acceleration still. 2 is better than one, 3 is probably overkill for Adobe at the moment.

Thermaltake Toughpower Grand TPG-1200M 1200W ATX 12V v2.3 & EPS 12V v2.92 SLI Certified CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

1500W. Seriously. Do it.

Intel Xeon E5-2640 Sandy Bridge-EP 2.5GHz (3GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 95W Six-Core Server Processor BX80621E52640

Great for software that can utilize all the cores. Slow for software that isn't heavily multithreaded. The 2.5GHz target clock is pretty lackluster.

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL

Wrong type of RAM. For the Xeon platform, you really should use RDIMMs -- ECC Registered memory. Like these.

Seagate 600 Series ST480HM000 2.5" 480GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Expen$ive. But whatever floats your boat. Not much storage and you'll find that SSD write times will drag down any RAID you build out of them. Better off to build a bigger HDD RAID that will actually be faster for writes if done correctly.

LG Black 14X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 12X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA BDXL Blu-Ray Burner with SW, 3D Play Back - BH14NS40

ok.



Second Option

NZXT Phantom 630 CA-PH630-W1 White Steel / Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case

see above.

Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive

Those drives are tuned for use in NAS applications, not high-performance internal RAIDs. Not what you want... You really should consider one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145622

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236353

Although, I would probably still recommend 3TB or 2TB drives at this point. The 4's are still improving and have reliability issues from all makers. The Hitachi ones, top of my two links, seem to be the best at the moment, but I've encountered one DOA unit so far out of 7. Of the WD RE ones, I see reports of DOA at various places. No DOA here, but I have had one fail out of 6 bought.

EVGA 04G-P4-2690-KR GeForce GTX 690 4GB 512-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Before you get too far ahead of yourself here, you do realize that is the equivalent of 8 GPUs, right? You're going to need a 2000W PSU in this bad boy to play this game and I'm not even sure what software is going to juggle that. 4 x GTX690s is the same as 8 x GTX680s with a 8% underclock.

ENERMAX Platimax EPM1200EWT 1200W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Modular Power Supply

You have just increased the TDP of the CPUs in this configuration vs. above and more than doubled the GPU power requirement. 1900W. Seriously.

CORSAIR Vengeance 64GB (8 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory Model CMZ64GX3M8A1600C9

Once again, wrong type of RAM.

ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 SSI EEB Intel Motherboard

...

ASUS Black Blu-ray Burner SATA BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS

ok.

SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD500BW 2.5" 500GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

these are nice.

Intel Xeon E5-2687W Sandy Bridge-EP 3.1GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 150W 8-Core Server Processor BX80621E52687W

My CPU of choice. Also consider the E5-2690. They are a bit lower on the turbo speed, but they also run a bit cooler and consume less wattage.


If you can hold off another 2 months, you will have a ton more options.

 

[Brad Allen]

I'm with you on this one Jeff. I'm currently waiting for those new E5 2600 v2's to land. The 10core 3.4ghz variants seem like they should pack a fair amount of punch when they land both for single threaded and multithreaded applications.

Still unclear on what I should do on the GPU front - would be interested to see some OpenCL vs CUDA benchmarks in Resolve and Adobe CC.

 

[danu prasd]

Jeff,

What will coming on the next two months ? Worth to wait ?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I think at this point, it's best to wait for the V2 CPUs to arrive. Only buy now if you're absolutely desperate. The one hiccup I do see happening is a RAM shortage. There are pretty much no 1866MHz RDIMM offerings out there to match with the V2's. The few that are out there are super expensive and scarce. It won't take too long for that to change, but I can see an initial shortage and hugely inflated prices with long lead times. So I'm shopping for my RAM now for the couple systems I know I'm going to build. But haven't found what I want yet. Samsung and Hynix both have them in their catalogs, but not actual shipping product. I'm assuming that Apple will secure what they need for the new Mac Pro from Hynix and only if there is any left over will it trickle into the open channel.

Not sure on motherboards just yet either. The bulk of the E5-2600 motherboard offerings are crap. And while the new CPUs should drop right in when released, I'm skeptical about a few things. The ASUS board has issues with GPUs and general reliability. The Tyan board is just OK. SuperMicro makes a few good ones, but not one single one that I find truly exploits the possibilities of the platform. Arima has a couple very nice offerings, but they're only available to OEMs and integrators -- these are what BOXX are using, I think, anyway, as the specs seem to fit and they have tended to use a lot of Arima motherboards in the past. I may just take a wait and see posture on this one.

I have a set of 1866MHz RDIMMs here ( 4 x 4GB) for playing / testing. I have not been able to get them to work reliably in a couple motherboards I've tried. SuperMicro seems to be the only one at the moment. I can push to 1866 on the RAM clock and consistently get a 4~5% overclock on the 2687W CPUs. I've seen some people claim 6%, but I've not been able to get any CPUs to do it.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Jeff,

What will coming on the next two months ? Worth to wait ?

Ivy Bridge based Xeon and the process shrink from 32nm to 22nm. So we will get 10 and 12 core CPUs instead of 6 and 8 core that we have now. They will consume the same amount of power, but will run cooler and faster. Faster memory throughput. At least one new entry to the C600 family of chipsets. Rumor has it the new entry or entries to the family have an integrated Thunderbolt pathway that allows for direct pathing to a Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 controller.

 

[Jeff J Daniels]

Jeff, you always offer such great detailed, yet concise feedback.

From another user ready to upgrade, thanks!

 

[Nook Kim]

Hi Will,

I'm curious to learn what problems you have with current Mac Pro (2012) with a Red Rocket? Unless you're monitoring for 4K real-time DI, I don't see any performance issue here. The fact that Linux can't do Prores and custom builds like these suggestions here wouldn't guarentee the level of stability Mac offers.

Just curious..

 

[Darren Orange]

I don't often just respond so briefly but I have to full endorse Jeff here. He's heading the nail dead on. What I will add however is that really you need to create an external raid solution for backing up and more high speed internally.

This will break up your power needs a lot and give you some flexibility SSD's use a fraction of the power HDD do so that could help you a lot.

Either way Jeff is dead on here.

 

[Elsie N]

... What I will add however is that really you need to create an external raid solution for backing up and more high speed internally.

This will break up your power needs a lot and give you some flexibility SSD's use a fraction of the power HDD do so that could help you a lot.

Either way Jeff is dead on here.

I agree with the external RAID solution. I've got 3 mediasonic 4 bay boxes... two with their own RAID solutions that I will use as RAID 5s and one without its own RAID capability that I will either setup as RAID 0 (Two separate 2 HDD software RAIDs if it will let me) or as concatenated drives.

I've populated one of the RAID 5s with 4, 4TB Seagate drives. Haven't fired it up yet for formatting but fingers crossed I won't have a failed drive in the bunch. I've populated the non-raid box with two, 4 TB Seagates and 2, 3 TB Seagates with the hopes of two software RAID 0s. If not they will act as concatenated. Haven't fired this one up yet either.

As Jeff suggested earlier, I may populate the second RAID 5 box with 3TB drives. My experience with the 4TB drives will help me make that decision.

But I'm liking the possibilities of ~ 13 TBs x 2 RAID 5 boxes, plus 14 or (maxed out) 16 TBs of other external storage for a total of ~40 TBs external to go along with the 10 TBs internal I already have installed as 3 RAID 0s. And with the 3 External Boxes having their own power supply.

With only an 800 Watt power supply this is the only way I can have this much storage on the cheap. Also, my mainboard (ASUS Sabertooth 990 FX) has only two USB 3 ports so one of my boxes will connect through eSATA.

 

[Jerome Garnier Brun]

Unfortunatly, Nvidia SLI is limited to 4 GPUs so 2 GTX 690 is the max, 4 won't work!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Unfortunatly, Nvidia SLI is limited to 4 GPUs so 2 GTX 690 is the max, 4 won't work!

For SLI operation that's true, but for multi-GPU CUDA there is no such restriction. You don't have to use the SLI connection brackets unless you specifically want SLI support across certain GPUs for apps (nearly all just games) that support it.

Anyway, dual GTX690s is a fine configuration for Resolve. Not sure how it would perform in Adobe CC as I don't currently have a system set up that way. 4 of them would be a waste of resources. While Resolve seems to scale its CUDA processing abilities rather well, there still is an aspect of diminishing returns. In most situations for real-world use, you won't be stressing multiple GPUs. When you start to do blurred vignettes and/ or lots of tracking, you do need some serious GPU horsepower. But if you provide more than your system can use in conjunction with the CPUs that still do the bulk of the processing, then you just have extra overhead with little purpose.

 

[jake blackstone]

For SLI operation that's true, but for multi-GPU CUDA there is no such restriction. You don't have to use the SLI connection brackets unless you specifically want SLI support across certain GPUs for apps (nearly all just games) that support it.

Anyway, dual GTX690s is a fine configuration for Resolve. Not sure how it would perform in Adobe CC as I don't currently have a system set up that way. 4 of them would be a waste of resources. While Resolve seems to scale its CUDA processing abilities rather well, there still is an aspect of diminishing returns. In most situations for real-world use, you won't be stressing multiple GPUs. When you start to do blurred vignettes and/ or lots of tracking, you do need some serious GPU horsepower. But if you provide more than your system can use in conjunction with the CPUs that still do the bulk of the processing, then you just have extra overhead with little purpose.

An upcoming Resolve 10 will be a serious resource hog. Imagine doing a temporal noise reduction, motion flow and one or more OFX effects at he same time, all in real time. I seriously doubt, that even four heavy duty GPUs will be able to handle all this in real time. Unlike PP or AE Resolve doesn't have playback quality selector. It's always full resolution. Resolve slowly starting to address this playback issue with persistent cache, but it is work in progress. Meanwhile many users wil have to do some serious GPU upgrading in order to be able to take full advantage of new capabilities in Resolve 10

 

[Elsie N]

An upcoming Resolve 10 will be a serious resource hog. Imagine doing a temporal noise reduction, motion flow and one or more OFX effects at he same time, all in real time. I seriously doubt, that even four heavy duty GPUs will be able to handle all this in real time. Unlike PP or AE Resolve doesn't have playback quality selector. It's always full resolution. Resolve slowly starting to address this playback issue with persistent cache, but it is work in progress. Meanwhile many users wil have to do some serious GPU upgrading in order to be able to take full advantage of new capabilities in Resolve 10

Jake, thanks for the headsup... but is there any way to work a Rocket X into the workflow that you are aware of?

 

[jake blackstone]

Jake, thanks for the headsup... but is there any way to work a Rocket X into the workflow that you are aware of?

RR is only used for debayer. It will do nothing to help with processing of the effects, which are mostly done with GPU.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The Rocket does take a big load off the CPUs for decoding of R3D frames. Rocket X will do even more, but it's not out yet... Not sure how much it will be accelerated by the current SDK library, if it will simply accelerate current Rocket operations, or if we will need to further optimize software to truly use it.

 

[jake blackstone]

The Rocket does take a big load off the CPUs for decoding of R3D frames. Rocket X will do even more, but it's not out yet... Not sure how much it will be accelerated by the current SDK library, if it will simply accelerate current Rocket operations, or if we will need to further optimize software to truly use it.

I wonder what kind of GPU assistance will be provided for the debayer and decompression, as it was hinted by Jarred. It's about time...