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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Moving to RED. Best setup for Davinci Resolve

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Sterling Williams

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I'm not sure if this has been asked before, but just thought I would see what everyone's ideal build would be for Davinci Resolve and RED.

Basically, if you were going to build a PC today, what would your parts list be?



I thought I would post my current setup.

My current build:

i7-8700k
MSI z370 gaming M5 motherboard
16 GB G Skill Trident Z 2400 (My last build had 32, never use more than 10-12 gb)
GTX 1070


(side note: I've tried to OC the 8700 to 5 ghz and just cant get it stable without taking volts/temps higher than I wanted to. Not sure if anybody here has any insight. Using an NZXT Kraken x62 280mm AIO)
 
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This is more a philosophy than a methodology per se. There's a lot of different ways to do it.

My suggestion is to shoot some color charts and see what yields the best results that way, then do some tests with real-world images and experiment. A lot will depend on how well you know Resolve and how deep you want to get into it. As of the last few months, I tend to use RWG-RGB for color science and RedLog3G10 as a starting point, but there are times when I might go with RedLogFilm under some situations. I tend to do a lot more after the Raw settings anyway, because it's faster and I tend to correct different parts of the picture using tracking masks, along with curves.

There's been quite a few discussions about this in the past few years. Here's one:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?155633-Working-with-R3D-in-Davinci-Resolve
 
Sterling Williams said:
(side note: I've tried to OC the 8700 to 5 ghz and just cant get it stable without taking volts/temps higher than I wanted to. Not sure if anybody here has any insight. Using an NZXT Kraken x62 280mm AIO)
Click to expand...

Pretty good price/performance 4k editing station.

When you want more GHz out of your CPU you will need something like a der8auer Delid Die Mate 2 - CPU IHS Heatsink Removal Tool to delid the CPU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopM4p4CBrs
and use other thermal paste, something like this http://www.thermal-grizzly.com/en/products/26-conductonaut-en
The NZXT Kraken x62 is a great AIO cooler.
 
Misha Engel said:
Pretty good price/performance 4k editing station.

When you want more GHz out of your CPU you will need something like a der8auer Delid Die Mate 2 - CPU IHS Heatsink Removal Tool to delid the CPU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopM4p4CBrs
and use other thermal paste, something like this http://www.thermal-grizzly.com/en/products/26-conductonaut-en
The NZXT Kraken x62 is a great AIO cooler.
Click to expand...


I did swap out the stock thermal paste on the X62 to the Noctua NT-H1

but I haven't gone as far as deliding a processor yet (not sure I want to get that crazy with it, I've seen plenty of people hit 5ghz with the stock cpu)
 
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Sterling Williams said:
I've seen plenty of people hit 5ghz with the stock cpu)
Click to expand...

Not everybody gets a golden sample (they call them i7-8086k these days).
The delid die mate 2 is only $50 and it's save and the liquid metal is around $15.

Thermal conductivity of Noctua NT-H1 is 8.9 W/mK and conductonaut is 73 W/mK (8 times more conductive).
 
Hard drive read/write speed will be a MAJOR factor when it comes to throughput (saving, playback, rendering, etc...). Additionally, the motherboard also plays a major role in how fast data can move between components. If you don't have a great motherboard, it doesn't matter how fast your CPU or GPU is, because the motherboard bus lane will be the bottleneck and you will never benefit from the full processing potential.

SSDs are perfect for the operating system and any software, but be aware that using an SSD as your working drive for video editing. Too many writes will shorten the life of that SSD, and unlike a hard drive when an SSD fails, all data is lost.

Dedicated raid cards are worth every penny regarding data redundancy and getting the bet write/read speed. I highly recommend the ATTO raid cards (https://store.atto.com/25-sassata-raid-adapters).

I build all my editing machines (I plan to post about that in the future), and currently, my setup includes the ATTO 6Gb SAS RAID card and 4x 8TB HGST NAS 7200RPM drives. Using ATTO's raid software, I have the drives configured in the DVRAID (DVRAID is a customized RAID-4 configuration for video playback performance, it's faster than raid-5 for read speeds but slower with writes) mode. At the moment it easily handles RED's 8k workflows without a problem and knowing that all my video footage is backed up instantly gives me a lot of piece of mind.

Hope this helps. Cheers.
 
Yes, Puget Systems is a first-class company and they can definitely build high-end Resolve Windows systems. But not cheap.
 
i would question their claim the 32g is enough sys ram, it clearly is not in the real world, fusion uses huge amounts of sys ram, and their claim that you can't work from spinning drives is also clearly bunk

my main workstation has dual 12c, dual 1080Ti, 128g, 32Tb of spinning disk on SAS, that runs pretty much anything i need it to in the real world, where i often see Resolve using 90g by it's self, i also have Nucoda on this machine and it uses 60g, so 128 is safe

my secondary workstation has dual 8c, single 1080, 128g, 32Tb spinning disk on SAS, also have Nucoda on this machine, UHD + OFX are a push on this machine, do-able with node cacheing, no sweat running UHD on this machine with Nucoda tho, far better

my conform station has dual 6c, single 1080, 96g, 64Tb spinning disk on SAS, HD only, and that's all that is needed for this machine, also run DS and Media Composer on this one

also have three edit stations that are similar, older machines, dual 4c / single 1050Ti / 32g / 16 Tb on SAS, they run Resolve alongside Media Composer, with proxies and optmised media they do fine for the tasks they are asked to take on, but that's about their limit

nowhere do i use SSD for media, only sys drives, on every single machine the sys drive is mirrored set of EVO's
 
Martin Stevens said:
Is this info out-of-date?
Click to expand...

It is biased, as almost everything from a commercial enterprise is.

There is even a thread on the BMD forums asking for a Resolve Benchmarking tool https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=75564. There is at least one company who won't be happy with this benchmarking tool (NVidia and AMD don't care or welcome it).
With some commen sense and a little look around here (or elsewere on the www) it's not that hard to configure a systems that has the best price/ perfomance ratio for your needs.
 
Misha Engel said:
It is biased, as almost everything from a commercial enterprise is.

There is even a thread on the BMD forums asking for a Resolve Benchmarking tool https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=75564. There is at least one company who won't be happy with this benchmarking tool (NVidia and AMD don't care or welcome it).
With some commen sense and a little look around here (or elsewere on the www) it's not that hard to configure a systems that has the best price/ perfomance ratio for your needs.
Click to expand...

Misha,

Thank you for all your feedback (not just on this thread but others that are hardware related)

Thats really my question (I updated the original post). Let's say you were going to build a PC today (for Resolve/RED), what would your parts list be and why?
 
Sterling Williams said:
Misha,

Thank you for all your feedback (not just on this thread but others that are hardware related)

Thats really my question (I updated the original post). Let's say you were going to build a PC today (for Resolve/RED), what would your parts list be and why?
Click to expand...

Sorry for the late response Sterling.

At the moment we have 1 TR1950x + 2 VEGA FE's and a lot of other stuff in it ($ 10k) and 4 3970x + GTX970.
The TR is used for everything (yes we also had our first project with the Helium in 8k) and the 3970x's are mainly used for 1080p and sometimes UHD (your setup is about 25..30% faster).

When I would buy a new system it will again be around $10k, but I won't build a new one, because we first need some new storage servers.

System: For 8k editing and color grading in resolve.
TR2990x (32c/64t 3,4..4 GHz all-core and 4.2 GHz on 2 cores) ~ $1.500 (august 13, 2018)
3 VEGA FE's 16 GB and 10 bit OpenGL overlay ~ $ 3.000
1 samsung 970 evo 1 TB boot/system drive $ 400
2 Samsung 970 pro 1 TB as scratch drive ~ $ 1.000
64 GB RAM DDR4 - 3200 cl 14 (4x16GB) ~ $ 900 (ram is just to expensive these days)
1 ASRock Fatal1ty X399 (with 10 G ethernet build in) ~ $ 400
8 local spinning drives 8 TB/each in raid 10(8x8/2~32 TB) as local "fast bulk" storage ~ $ 2.000
1 PSU 1500+ watt titanium ~ $ 400
1 AIO NZXT Kraken X72 ~ $ 200
1 Computer case ~ $ 300

Around $ 10k

+ 4k 10 bit editing monitor ~$1.000

totals $ 11k (more than twice as fast as the fastest imac pro for a similar price).

And a DeckLink 4K Extreme 12G ~ $ 900 for the color grading on our OLED TV.


But we don't have budget at the moment so this won't happen this year.
 
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Misha Engel said:
1 samsung 970 evo 1 TB boot/system drive $ 400
2 Samsung 970 pro 1 TB as scratch drive ~ $ 1.000
Click to expand...
You could get by with a 500GB boot drive, but I would strongly recommend a 2TB SSD scratch drive if you can. Other than that, it looks like a great system. I agree, in the $10K range, there are better alternatives than iMac Pro.
 
The one component that is overlooked - although Misha listed it - is the power supply unit. Do not skimp on the PSU. I'd rather have a really good PSU than maximal RAM. It's not about how much the PSU can deliver, it's about reliability, safety and efficiency. I only care about PC specs for the sake of crypto mining, but there is one thing that everyone says, no matter what the application: buy a really good PSU.

I agree that SSDs should not be used except for the swap file and the OS + applications. It's just the safest policy. Yes, SSDs give better performance, but so does overclocking your CPU beyond the redline. Think of the catastrophes that cinematographers have faced thanks to failed solid-state digital magazines.
 
Marc Wielage said:
You could get by with a 500GB boot drive, but I would strongly recommend a 2TB SSD scratch drive if you can. Other than that, it looks like a great system. I agree, in the $10K range, there are better alternatives than iMac Pro.
Click to expand...

2 Samsung 970 pro 1 TB in raid 0 as scratch drive ~ $ 1.000 is 2 TB, the reason for 2x970 pro 1 TB instead of 2 960 pro 2 TB is the write speed.
The 970 pro's can do write speeds over 5 GB/s which can be important for DPX 16 bits 8k 25 fps (approx 5 GB/s) http://phfx.com/tools/framesToDataRate/framesToDataRate.cgi?resX=&resY=&resolution=&REDresolution=&REDresolutionB=8K-FF-8192x4320&REDCODERAWCR=5&fps=25&hours=&minutes=&intermediateCodec=none

At the moment we use a highpoint SSD raid controller with 4x 960 pro's 512 GB in it (R/W ~ 7 GB/s) but we loose a PCIe 8(16) lane for an extra GPU.
 
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Misha Engel said:
2 Samsung 970 pro 1 TB in raid 0 as scratch drive ~ $ 1.000 is 2 TB, the reason for 2x970 pro 1 TB instead of 2 960 pro 2 TB is the write speed.
Click to expand...
It doesn't really matter for a boot drive. You want sheer speed, create an SSD RAID. I think it's just a question of putting money where you need it. Even for a cache drive for Resolve, it doesn't necessarily have to be very fast. If you can hit 1000MB/s, you're totally covered unless you want to play 8K on an 8K monitor or something wild like that.
 
i use mirrored 480g EVO's for my boot drive, a very cheap form of safety...

my "scratch" drive is a SAS array of 16 spinning disks in RAID5, fast and big enough for my needs, 2Tb is rather miniscule in my world... i moved more than that onto my array today alone... no bottlenecks with media I/O or space, absolutly no need for the speed of M2 or raided SSD's

i have another set of mirrored 2Tb WD black drives for metadata / project file daily bak's / software installers etc, never is there any media on that drive

if i was going to spend 10k USD for a resolve centric suite from scratch i'd get;

- a refurb'd z840 with dual 12-14c's / 128g / dual 1080Ti's and a decklink4k pro
- refurb'd sansdigital SAS 8 slot cage and HBA
- 8 x WD_red_Pro's
- a terrenex LUT box, going to a C8/Flanders250/Sony250 of your choice
- Resolve studio code
- Fusion dongle
- light illusion or CalMan licence
- I1d probe
- a macmini with Scopebox
- an Avid Artist Color & Transport, 2x StreamDeck's
- Paul Dore / BCC / Ignite OFX

i would not be spending resources on buckets of SSD's if you do not have an accurate monitor and the tools to keep it accurate, that's the basics, most basic of all basic's....
 
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