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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 :)

Our Davinci Resolve PC BEAST...

R

Richard Towns

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We came from a FCP/Color workflow and after the whole FCPX debacle we said screw it, why isn't it possible to move to a PC with more power at a lower cost?

We loved OSX and the hardware built specifically for the OS, but then Blackmagic came along and started offering Davinci for 1k so we re-evaluated. It was only the OS and Prores that was keeping us from switching.

The second hit was the lack of the Mac Pro updates. We needed something. We managed to stretch a 2006 maxed out Mac Pro until the end of 2012 and decided to go PC.

We took the leap and here's the result: http://on.fb.me/WrsPBp (it's our Facebook page with a pic of the internals).

We're looking at what happens when Dragon is released, but this beast as of current can crush our 5K in realtime (Premiere and Davinci) like it was an animated GIF. I suppose the only thing will be to add a Cubix and another Rocket if needed, but right now It's self-contained.

Could not be happier. Cost was just under 20k CDN.

We call it Big Iron, and it was built using Blackmagic's suggestions so it's a certified config. Thoughts?
 
Richard Towns said:
We came from a FCP/Color workflow and after the whole FCPX debacle we said screw it, why isn't it possible to move to a PC with more power at a lower cost?

We loved OSX and the hardware built specifically for the OS, but then Blackmagic came along and started offering Davinci for 1k so we re-evaluated. It was only the OS and Prores that was keeping us from switching.

The second hit was the lack of the Mac Pro updates. We needed something. We managed to stretch a 2006 maxed out Mac Pro until the end of 2012 and decided to go PC.

We took the leap and here's the result: http://on.fb.me/WrsPBp (it's our Facebook page with a pic of the internals).

We're looking at what happens when Dragon is released, but this beast as of current can crush our 5K in realtime (Premiere and Davinci) like it was an animated GIF. I suppose the only thing will be to add a Cubix and another Rocket if needed, but right now It's self-contained.

Could not be happier. Cost was just under 20k CDN.

We call it Big Iron, and it was built using Blackmagic's suggestions so it's a certified config. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Beautiful Beast Richard.
Unfortunately I'm still tied to ProRes as delivery then I have to use a Hackintosh.
I await the arrival of Dragon too, hopefully at the end of Nab;)


Congratulations again.
Luigi
 
As much as I am pissed off with Apple and their lack of upgrades to Mac Pro, knowing that the new - completely redesigned Mac Pro is coming out by June, I can tie over just a little longer with the iMac and Thunderbolt enclosure...
I know the power/price goes highly in favor of PC, but I am unwilling to waste 30% of my time making sure the bloody thing works and not being able to guarantee a deadline to my clients. The iMac is slower, but I can rely on it and schedule my work accordingly and therefore the deadlines. The main complication I am facing is clients editing more and more in Premiere and me grading in Color / DaVinci. And I can't justify having to buy all the SW I have ($20K +) for the WIN platform...
 
Peter Majtan said:
As much as I am pissed off with Apple and their lack of upgrades to Mac Pro, knowing that the new - completely redesigned Mac Pro is coming out by June, I can tie over just a little longer with the iMac and Thunderbolt enclosure...
I know the power/price goes highly in favor of PC, but I am unwilling to waste 30% of my time making sure the bloody thing works and not being able to guarantee a deadline to my clients. The iMac is slower, but I can rely on it and schedule my work accordingly and therefore the deadlines. The main complication I am facing is clients editing more and more in Premiere and me grading in Color / DaVinci. And I can't justify having to buy all the SW I have ($20K +) for the WIN platform...
Click to expand...

Blackmagic tested all of these components that we put in here thouroughly, it's rock solid and we haven't had a single crash or hang. Alrthough I do understand your point about the software.
 
Very Impressive machine. would like to know the MB & Case as well.
 
Matt Gottshalk said:
What Mobo and case is that?

Very sweet setup.
Click to expand...

Here are the specs:
Supermicro 7047GR-TRF Tower (Super X9DRG-QF Motherboard)
2 x Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPUs
96GB RAM (DIMM 240-pin - DDR3)
Quadro 600 (GUI)
2 x GTX580 3GB (GPU)
2 x OWC Mercury SSD 240GB (System Drive)
6 x WDD Black 2TB (RAID 0 Media Drive, 1GB/sec)
Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD Extreme 3D+
And then top it off with a Red Rocket
 
Last edited:
Les C. said:
Another solution for ProRes on Win7, faster than OS X, of course!

http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/
Click to expand...

Um... It's a frameserver implementation, not an implementation of ProRes on Windows. You can use it to serve up frames to a system that can encode ProRes or to save an image sequence that can be converted to ProRes. So you can use this in combination with FFMPEG to encode ProRes on Windows. It's a free, but still a kludge, solution. Honestly, you do better to export out to DPX or EXR sequence and then use compressor on an i7 Mac Mini to make your ProRes. More expensive, sure, but much less finicky and it's worry free. Not to mention quite fast with superior results for PR4444 encoding. To say it's faster than OSX is totally misleading, that's a question of hardware to some extent, but it's all in how it's setup. Compressor on OSX is quite capable and multi-processor, multi-node aware. FFMPEG, not so much, you need additional management software tools to farm it out and get all the bits and pieces together.

For anyone who still has to deliver ProRes in any professional capacity, they're best served to have at least one Mac as part of their workflow pipeline. Just the reality of it for now.


As for the system outlined in this thread, looks nice. :) I personally would choose a different and more capable GUI card. Actually, I would have gone water-cooling and used 3 x EVGA GTX680 HydroCopper cards. Muahahahaaa... Anyway, this configuration rocks. Looks like a screamer for Resolve.
 
Why the E5-2690 instead of the E5-2687w?
 
DJ Meyer said:
Why the E5-2690 instead of the E5-2687w?
Click to expand...

Also a good question, but I've found the two main reasons people choose the 2690's is because:

1> They think they're better/faster because of the higher model number. And in some ways they are better -- see number 2.

2> Performance is very similar between the 2690 and 2687W, but the 2690's run a bit cooler and consume a bit lest power. I personally don't feel comfortable running the 2687W under extreme loads without liquid cooling. Or at least the vapor-chamber "liquid" cooling approach used by HP and a few others.
 
I've heard people say that but I haven't experienced it. My workstation is E5-2687w's on air, rendering 24/7 generally, and i see mid 60's C max.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Also a good question, but I've found the two main reasons people choose the 2690's is because:

1> They think they're better/faster because of the higher model number. And in some ways they are better -- see number 2.

2> Performance is very similar between the 2690 and 2687W, but the 2690's run a bit cooler and consume a bit lest power. I personally don't feel comfortable running the 2687W under extreme loads without liquid cooling. Or at least the vapor-chamber "liquid" cooling approach used by HP and a few others.
Click to expand...
Have you monitored how useful "Turbo Boost" is with the Xeons?

And as you mentioned cooling, do you have some recommendations (as it could theoretical improve the length of time running in Turbo Boost)?

I'd like to avoid anything that could leak, and have had good luck with giant copper Zalman heatsinks (but never tried them on Xeons or know if they support Xeons).
 
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