New Machine Configuration?

Jaums wrote on 10/23/2011, 9:16 AM
To accommodate an upgrade to V11, went to my local MicroCenter build-your-own desk and a seemingly knowledgeable tech suggested he could put a machine together for me in the $1100 to $1200 range built around a Radeon 6870. Haven't gotten into all of the specifics with him yet such as processor & RAM, but sound like a reasonable plan for my price range?

The Radeon is the one Sony used for the tests they published [http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/gpuacceleration ] and at $179 is less than half the price of the Nvidia GTX570 they tested.

Sound like a plan? Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Jaums















Comments

filmy wrote on 10/23/2011, 11:05 AM
I just built a new box about three weeks ago. If you are a DIY kind of person than look around NewEgg for what might work for you.

What I got, breifly, includes:

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX mobo
AMD Phenom II x6 CPU (1090T Black Edition)
Win 7 Professional 64bit
GTS 450 (Ferri)
16 Gigs of Ram

(Plus thing slike a Hard drive, Blu Ray Burner, Power supply, case, etc)

And it was under $1,000.00 (This is with the promo's like Free shipping) The first total was $978.04, Once I got some shipping issue/s staighted out it was $966.06. Once I figure in the two mail in rebates the final cost will be $926.06
JHendrix wrote on 10/24/2011, 9:49 AM
926 for a 6 core with 16 gb ram?

did you have to built it yourself?

producer611 wrote on 10/24/2011, 11:12 AM
Check out Videoguys DIY build 8 -
Check prices between Newegg and Microcenter - suggest WD drives - great support and even upgrade (trade-in) options, also prefer GTX cards -
TheRhino wrote on 10/24/2011, 1:39 PM
I agree, check-out Videoguys DIY (currently build 8 - soon to be 9...)

When we upgraded our workstations 2 years ago, Videoguys were raving about the stability of the Asus P6T motherboards and newly released I7 processors for video editing applications. We used the P6T6 workstation class motherboards and could not be happier - 2 years of total stability and they even still sell the P6T6, which is very rare unless the board is a real winner...

However, if I were to build a new workstation today, I think I would base it on the soon to be released X79 chipset and 6-core Sandy Bridge processor. This has the NEW 2011 pin CPU SOCKET that you will need if you ever choose to upgrade to 8-core. The 1366 has officially reached end-of-life...

The X79 chipset supports PCIe 3.0 which will help speed-up I/O functions of future RAID controllers and video input/output devices.

In our current machine, there are some projects where the CPU only reaches 75% even with one RAID rendering to another RAID. Makes me think that all of the I/O demands are bogging-down PCIe 2.0.

At this point 2 years ago we had the choice between the 775 socket and 1366 socket. Had we chosen the older 775 motherboards, we would have been limited to 4-core performance. When the 6-core 980X was released and we found that it easly overclocked to 3.8-4.0ghz, it only took 10 minutes of processor swapping to improve our render speeds by over 50%.

Workstation C with $600 USD of upgrades in April, 2021
--$360 11700K @ 5.0ghz
--$200 ASRock W480 Creator (onboard 10G net, TB3, etc.)
Borrowed from my 9900K until prices drop:
--32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3200 ($100 on Black Friday...)
Reused from same Tower Case that housed the Xeon:
--Used VEGA 56 GPU ($200 on eBay before mining craze...)
--Noctua Cooler, 750W PSU, OS SSD, LSI RAID Controller, SATAs, etc.

Performs VERY close to my overclocked 9900K (below), but at stock settings with no tweaking...

Workstation D with $1,350 USD of upgrades in April, 2019
--$500 9900K @ 5.0ghz
--$140 Corsair H150i liquid cooling with 360mm radiator (3 fans)
--$200 open box Asus Z390 WS (PLX chip manages 4/5 PCIe slots)
--$160 32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3000 (added another 32GB later...)
--$350 refurbished, but like-new Radeon Vega 64 LQ (liquid cooled)

Renders Vegas11 "Red Car Test" (AMD VCE) in 13s when clocked at 4.9 ghz
(note: BOTH onboard Intel & Vega64 show utilization during QSV & VCE renders...)

Source Video1 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 on motherboard in RAID0
Source Video2 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 (1) via U.2 adapter & (1) on separate PCIe card
Target Video1 = 32TB RAID0--(4) 8TB SATA hot-swap drives on PCIe RAID card with backups elsewhere

10G Network using used $30 Mellanox2 Adapters & Qnap QSW-M408-2C 10G Switch
Copy of Work Files, Source & Output Video, OS Images on QNAP 653b NAS with (6) 14TB WD RED
Blackmagic Decklink PCie card for capturing from tape, etc.
(2) internal BR Burners connected via USB 3.0 to SATA adapters
Old Cooler Master CM Stacker ATX case with (13) 5.25" front drive-bays holds & cools everything.

Workstations A & B are the 2 remaining 6-core 4.0ghz Xeon 5660 or I7 980x on Asus P6T6 motherboards.

$999 Walmart Evoo 17 Laptop with I7-9750H 6-core CPU, RTX 2060, (2) M.2 bays & (1) SSD bay...

filmy wrote on 10/24/2011, 4:11 PM
>>>did you have to built it yourself?<<<

Yep - but it was easy. Compared to how it was a decade or so ago everything is pretty much "snap" in these days. Very few actual small screws to drop in the case and get lost.
filmy wrote on 10/24/2011, 4:28 PM
The ASUS Sabertooth 990FX is built for the future as well, it was one of the factors as to why I got it. Along with a 5 year full warrenty it has USB 3 as well as SATA III support. It will support Socket AM3+ processors when they come out. It also supports SLI so it is not limited to only CrossFireX.

FWIW it also has built in audio, 7:1, and optical output.

Support for boot drives larger than 2T and on board RAID options.

And it has a firewire port - something I still need and something many mobos no longer have.

And the bios - extremely nice GUI. For those who like to tweak the bios it is major. Comes with overclocking ablity out of the box either via the bios on boot or via Windows.

And while I have only 16 gigs of RAM it will take up to 32.

EDIT: I should mention I did check out Videoguys, among other places, when I was pricing the system. The best deal I could find was part by part at NewEgg.
JHendrix wrote on 10/24/2011, 6:53 PM
not clear if the prices at the bottom of the page are just parts or if they build it for you??

http://videoguys.com/Guide/E/Videoguys+DIY8+Sneak+Peek+Work+in+Progess+Coming+this+Fall/0x094b1737e0a06c495e5178a167fbdbd7.aspx