Upgrade Help (8/2018)

[DMH79]

The recent Premiere update pointed out improvements in speed for 7th gen or later Intel CPUs which got me thinking...is it time to upgrade my MB and CPU?

I'll list my specs below and what it is I do regularly and any help/advice on upgrade vs. don't worry about it would be helpful.

The Crash on 8-6-18:

It's been a long time since I visited this forum. But a good crash will always make you rethink your hardware setup. After 3-4 good years on my build I had BOTH my OS drive (Samsung 850 Pro) crash and my 4TB RAID0 Striped HDD Media Drive crash on me at once. Both were unrecoverable. I knew the RAID0 might go, but the 850 Pro shocked me.

- So after the crash I replaced my Media Drive and picked up a 2TB 860 Evo.

- And I replaced my OS Drive and picked up a 860 Pro (so I don't have to wait for warranty replacement)

So now my setup looks like this:

Motherboard: Asus X99 Deluxe

CPU: Intel 5960x

RAM: 64GB (8 x 8GB ) G.Skill DDR4 2666 (PC4-21300)

GPU: GTX 970

OS Drive: 512 GB Samsung 860 Pro (NEW - replaced yesterday)

Cache Drive: 256GB Samsung 850 Pro

Media Drive: 2TB Samsung 860 Evo (NEW - replaced yesterday)

Case: Corsair 760T

Windows 10 Pro

Premiere 12.0.1 (hadn't updated because one big project was started on 12.0.1 and it's not quite done yet)

Performance PRIOR to Crash:

Performance prior to this crash was pretty good. Some minor playback stuttering while thumbnails populated after scrolling quickly through timeline. But overall, it was okay. Very busy timeline with multicam and lots of dissolves and TONS of warp stabilized footage. All footage was shot at 1080p60 and everything is edited at 24p.

****We will be upgrading cameras to shoot 4k60p this year and still edit on 24p timeline.***

WHAT I DO: Heavy Video Editing Primarily Weddings. Lots of Sony XAVC-s 1080p60 (soon to be 4k60p) footage on 24p timeline. Lots of Multicam. Lots of Warp Stabilizer (several hundred clips per project). I feel like all the warp stabilization is CPU intensive and all the frame dropping at high res is CPU and Memory intensive.   NOTE about my RAM: I had to upgrade from 32 to 64gb last year because Premiere would slow to a stutter after a couple hours of editing. Closing premiere and opening it back up again flushed the memory and I'd be back up to full speed. Since going to 64gb, I haven't had that issue. Also FYI...I don't render much at all. No need.

BUDGET: eh, hard to say but I'd love to keep it under $800 if I'm upgrading ONLY my MB and CPU. I know CPU's can get crazy expensive, so I might be able to budge a bit, but that's my hope. One can always "hope" right? Obviously if I was upgrading my GPU and RAM and more I'd have to budget more. But not sure that's needed in my case.  ---  If someone were to say "for what you described, you really need to do ____ , and that will cost ____ much more" than I'd consider it, just at a later date. Right now, I have $800 left (after replacing the drives above) to spend and wondering if I should jump or wait...and if I should wait...wait for what?

[DMH79]

Thoughts?

Looking into maybe swapping in the x299 (which version tho?) and maybe a 7820x cpu. Not sure if that will be a worthy upgrade for what I do.

Also, my media drive is the 2tb 860 evo. If I go the route above should I swap it for the m2 version instead? Any benefits there?

[RjL190365]

Going from an i7-5###X to a 7###X will not solve your problems, in your case, since none of the HEDT (High-End DeskTop) platforms support QuickSync at all (they do not have integrated graphics at all, and thus will require a discrete GPU just to even function at all).

[DMH79]

RjL190365  wrote

Going from an i7-5###X to a 7###X will not solve your problems, in your case, since none of the HEDT (High-End DeskTop) platforms support QuickSync at all (they do not have integrated graphics at all, and thus will require a discrete GPU just to even function at all).

I apologize but can you explain QuickSync and why it would be important in my case. You also mentioned requiring a discrete GPU to even function...I'm confused...does my GTX 970 GPU not count?)

Thank you for your response though...just looking to improve my system specifically for what I edit day in and day out. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

[RjL190365]

QuickSync is an Intel technology that utilizes the integrated graphics that's inside the CPU package to accelerate H.264 and H.265 encodes (exports). Only those mainstream-level i3, i5 and i7 CPUs with integrated Intel HD, UHD or Iris graphics support QuickSync.

A discrete GPU means any separate GPU at all, whether it's through an add-in card or a separate chip on the system board.

[DMH79]

RjL190365  wrote

QuickSync is an Intel technology that utilizes the integrated graphics that's inside the CPU package to accelerate H.264 and H.265 encodes (exports). Only those mainstream-level i3, i5 and i7 CPUs with integrated Intel HD, UHD or Iris graphics support QuickSync.

A discrete GPU means any separate GPU at all, whether it's through an add-in card or a separate chip on the system board.

So, based on my current system listed in the OP, do you see any upgrades that might make everything run even better than it already is. Especially as I prep to move into editing 4k60p footage on a 24p timeline (lots of multicam, lots of dissolves, lots of warp stabilizer)?

I'm less concerned about export speed (usually done overnight anyway) and rendering speed (barely ever need to render stuff) and more focused on smooth and snappy playback performance at full res with all the 4k60p>24p frame dropping and loads of multicam/dissolves/warp stabilizers that we use.

Look forward to your help. Thx.

[DMH79]

For what I do...

1) Where do you think I should put my money?

2) I see in October new z390 and 9900k coming soon that'll probably be less than $1k. Maybe it's worth the wait? I guess my hesitation would be the max memory allowed since it appears my work is a memory hog.

3) Reading up on stuff, would it help if I returned my recently purchased 2TB 860 Evo drive (used for the Media Drive) and paid a couple hundred more for the 2TB 970 Evo NMVe?  I know it's faster but would that really even help since it's just the media drive? Would I even see a performance boost there worth spending money on or is it so minimal?

4) Or would I see a bigger bump in performance by using one as my OS and one as my cache drive? (since, again, I do see a slight annoying delay in video clip thumbnails populating when I have multiple layers on a timeline of stabilized or 4k footage and I scroll through the timeline quickly...during this delay of anywhere from a couple to several seconds, I can't play the video. On normal 4k or 1080p timelines with 1-2 layers and not much else, there's very little delay). My new OS drive (860 Pro) is still returnable so if it'll work in my X99 Deluxe should I do that as well as swap out the current 850 Pro (256gb) cache drive for a 970 Pro (256gb) M.2 drive?? Might that solve my thumbnail annoyance with multilayered timelines?

5) Similar to #4 but just to clarify...The issue where I do fast scrolling along the timeline with tons of clips on it and then when I stop I have to wait several seconds sometimes for the thumbnails to finish populating before I can play the video...is that the cache? How can I speed this up or eliminate that? Again, I'm using a 850 Pro for the dedicated cache drive right now. And again, this isn't on simple timelines, it's on timelines with several stacked layers of clips all at 60p on a 24p timeline, often with warp stabilizer applied, or at the very least in 4k. Would love to speed this little stutter up if possible but have no idea where it originates (drives? cpu? gpu?RAM???)

Thanks.