What PC to build, updated January 2012
A question often asked is what system to build for NLE.
The previous article about this topic dates back to March 2010, so it was due an update because there were so many new developments in the past two years, including CS5.5
Basically you can think along three roads, a budget PC, an economical PC and the warrior PC. Notice that MAC is not mentioned here. There are three reasons for that, one is I'm not qualified to really advise on MAC's, two is that they are way overpriced and three they are severely limited in component choices. So this is all about PC.
Whether you want to have a budget, economical or warrior PC, there are a number of common components that you will always need, a case, a PSU, CPU cooler, monitor, keyboard, mouse, DVD/BR burner and stuff like that so I'm not going into those components, with the exception of case, PSU and CPU cooler.
CASE:
While the case of your choice is often determined by looks and what appeals to you (or your CFO, the wife), I want to stress that for all categories, budget, economical or warrior, it is better to use a BIG tower, instead of a mid tower.
Why, you may wonder. Actually there are a lot of reasons. Mid towers can limit your choices in CPU coolers, because the case is not wide enough to install certain CPU coolers. The height of the cooler does not fit in the case. They can limit your choice of video card, because these have grown in length significantly and mid towers often do not allow the installation of certain video cards due to the limited depth or prevent you from installing hard disks in certain slots. Mid towers will limit your expansion capabilities (less drive cages), make installation of components more difficult, have limited cable management features, have limited airflow and tend to become hotter than big towers and thus more noisy (the fans need to run at higher speed) and limit overclockabilty.
A BIG tower is the (only) way to go.
PSU:
The PSU is one of the most crucial components in any system but also the one component most often overlooked. A good PSU will give you years of reliable work on your PC, a suboptimal or mediocre PSU will give you tremendous headaches and unexplainable crashes, hangs or errors, causing you to miss deadlines.
Go to eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Pro v2.5 and get the Pro version. Enter all your components, including planned expansions, set the Motherboard to High End - Desktop, set the CPU Utilization (TDP) to 100%, set System Load to 100% and Capacitor Aging to 30% and press the Calculate button. Add 10 - 15% to this Wattage for safety and note the required amperage on the various rails (+3.3V, +5V and +12V). Based on these figures, select a good GOLD label PSU, that meets the total wattage and the amperage on each rail. It is your best guarantee for long and reliable, troublefree editing.
Budget, economical or warrior system
Before going into these three systems, you can consider them to be a rough 'Best-buying Guide', let me remind you of the basic practical system requirements for CS5.5 and consider your own workflow to interpret these charts.
It starts with the codec:
Since DSLR is getting so popular, let me remind you that this is ranked under the 'Difficult' codecs and P2 is an 'Easy' codec. The more difficult the codec you use, the higher the system requirements. See:
For the full article, see Adobe Forums: System requirements for CS5
As a rough translation from 'Easy', 'Intermediate' and 'Difficult' to the kind of system you want to build, you could say that 'Easy' can be handled quite well with a 'Budget' system, 'Intermediate' is best handled by an 'Economical' or better system and 'Difficult' requires an 'Economical' or better system. A 'Budget' system may struggle with the load of such 'Difficult' codecs.
Note that in the following table, I have mentioned components in each category. These are just examples of what could fit in each category, they are not necessarily a combination of components that I would build per se.
Also note that I have not chosen the fastest CPU in each category, but only unlocked CPU's. Each can be overclocked for optimal results and then will deliver a better Bang-For-The-Buck (BFTB) than the highest clocked CPU in that range. Finally, note that the budget system can benefit from increasing memory to 4 x 4 GB for only € 38 extra. That is the weakest link in the budget system.
Prices mentioned are current day prices in the Netherlands (01-11-2012) including 19% VAT.
Here are my suggestions:
The main difference in comparison to the previous guide, is that the i7-3930K appears to be faster and better affordable than a dual Xeon X5680 system.
Anyway, I hope this helps people comtemplating a new system to get the right components in an affordable system.
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Replies
Ignorance would be my guess, I've been recently informed upon more researching 
Thanks for your help man. I'm going w/ the z77 sabertooth after inspecting that and other mobos more extensively. I appreciate the heads up on it! Finally, I'll have a nice system for the price point...
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I'll be allocating my disk setup (refer to post 172)? I don't know what else I could use my only ssd for or if I need to 😕
Amazing build Harm. Great information. Finally someone that knows what they are talking about. Is everything still holding up? Anything you would change in 2013? How does it handle or how do you think it would handle 12bit 2.5K and 4K RAW realtime rendering in Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve 9?
With your current build, would it be possible to add 1 Quardro 4000 for GUI and 1 GTX 690 4GB for CUDA GPU without creating heating/power/ventilation/space problems and having to buy an external PCIe expansion chassis to house CUDA GPUs (like the Cubix GPU-Expander)? If not, what would you do to make this possible? I ask this because for grading 2.5K RAW video from the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, Blackmagic recommends at least a Quadro 600 or 4000 for GUI and at least 2x GTX 680's for GPU or 1x GTX 690 4GB. For 4K work, they recommend 1 Quadro 4000/600 and 4x GTX 580 3GB for CUDA GPU. Blackmagic claims that Nvidia's Maximus setup like a Quadro 6000 + Tesla C2075 or a K5000 + TESLA K20 will actually run slower on Resolve than a Quadro 600 + 2 GTX 680s but that it will still work. The Maximus setup seems like a waist of money then right? Why bother? But Adobe claims up to 2000% speed increases with a Maximus setup in Premiere Pro? What are your thoughts on this? What is the truth? What would you add/change or not do to your current build so that it worked with both Premeire Pro CS6/After Effects & DaVinci Resolve(see image below for BlackMagic's recommendations on a build)?
And what about using one Mercury Accelsior PCIe Express SSD or two in a Raid Configuration for your boot drive instead of a traditional SSD. OWC claims up to 820 MB/s Read 720MB/s Write speeds but wondering how true that is. If true, would you add them to your config? Could you? Could the motherboard you've selected handle this and does it have enough PCIe slots? Probably obvious to you but not for me. I'm still baffled by the number of hard drives you are using? Do you need that many for storage or is it for speed? The more hard drives you stack, the faster?? If for speed, what about replacing them with SSD drives once the cost comes down? Besides cost, what's the downside to having 20 1 TB SSDs in RAID 30? Would you see significant performance gains? less heat? less noise? or nothing of benefit? and what about these 15,000 RPM SAS and SATA drives?
Would be interesting to compare your computer with a decked out HP Z820 Workstation with dual 8 core Xeons or an old 12 core Mac Pro. With a great graphics card setup and top-end hard drive setup, I really wonder if the dual core Xeons are neccessary? I have a buddy that edits on a top-end 2012 iMac and can handle video editing in Premiere(without Mercury Playback Engine support) with ease. It's only until he starts messing around with 2K RAW footage. Then the computer freezes. Makes me wonder what those iMacs could do if you could actually switch out their graphics card.
I'm trying to find or build a computer in your price range $7-8000 that can handle 2k and even 4k editing and grading in realtime with ease. Would appreciate your advice. And thanks again for putting all your work out there and documenting it on your website to show us wannabees how it's done. Great stuff.
Alex,
You raise a lot of questions in your post. I'll try to answer some of them.
Would I do anything different now than I did several months ago? In essence, no. Well, the Corsair Performance Pro has been replaced by the Neutron GTX, so that would be a slight alteration. The video card is still up to date, but it is likely that nVidia will come out with the GeForce Titan in a few weeks, based on the GK110 chip, which currently is only used on the Tesla K20 cards. Now that will be a nice card to consider, since it has a 384 bit memory bus, 2688 CUDA cores and 6 GB VRAM @ 5200 MHz. Price expected to be around $ 900. For the rest, nothing to change in my setup.
Maximus IMO is a complete waste of money. From the few Maximus configurations I have seen in the PPBM5 Benchmark none made any impression, apart from the extravagant price. Performance was no better than a single GTX 660 Ti, despite the cost of a K6000 plus a C2075. I have not yet seen results with a Tesla K20. However, Adobe's claim of performance increases around 2000% appears to be accurate, since I found these kind of figures:
where the first two observations were with a GTX 680 and the latter two with a GTX 660. Bear in mind that MPE Gain figures are usually higher on slower systems.
I have no experience at all with BM products and have only heard about Resolve, but never used it. Simply said, I'm not qualified to answer your question with regards to Resolve, but if, and that is a big IF, sometime in the future PR will support multiple video cards, like AE does now, then it might make sense to add a GeForce Titan card. In my system I have plenty of room for such an extra card even though I have to consider adding a 2-nd PSU and distributing the power consumers over the two power supplies to prevent problems. That entails having a second look at my fans on the PSU side of my case, but that is a minor issue.
Recently someone mentioned that a dual CPU HP Z820 with similar performance as my system may well run into the $ 25 - 30 K range, because of the very costly external storage setup. Which brings me to your question about my raid array. I don't need the storage space, it was purely for the speed and if money were no object here and if I were to do it again, I would probably exchange the Seagate Constellation ES drives for the Seagate Constellation ES5 drives.
During experimental testing I have found that sustained write speeds have a huge impact on export times. Exporting a three hour DV timeline to disk resulted in these figures:
Note that all 4 systems have a separate disk for OS & programs and use for project, media and export the following setup:
- Harm i7-3930K: 3 x 7 Raid3 SATA striped to Raid30
- BillG i7-980X: 1 x 8 Raid0 SCSI 15K
- BillG i7-2600K: 1 OCZ Vertex4 SSD
- BillG i7-2600K: 1 Seagate 7200.12 HDD
Repeating this on a really SINGLE disk system (everything, OS, programs, project, media etc. on just 1 disk) gave 1841 seconds as the result.
Hope this answers the bulk of your questions.
Harm (and Bill) - you must by now have a PhD in hardware build for Adobe
/Ulf
At first let me say thank you for the many very informative posts here, I am really impressed. I hope I will formulate in an understandable way, as my English is mainly self-trained, please excuse possible mistakes (and if something 'sounds' not nice, never plan to be mean or to not sound nice)
All this readings explained / solved a lot of questions, but a few are still open, so I hope it is o.K. to post them here:
Did I understand this thread correct, when I got this impression?
The 1.5V issue doesn't count for Ivy Bridge (e.g. i7 3770K)?
Whilst looking for possible RAMs for the 6core possibility (always mixed with jumping back to ‘here’), I 'fell in love' with those
32 GB Crucial Ballistix Sport VLP = 1.35V
but decided to go for budget reasons with the 3770K (or wait for Haswell) instead, so the 1.35V might not be important anymore.
Any reasons why I shouldn't pick them? I know they run with e.g. Maximus V Gene via reading a review, but I do not know if the Extreme 'can't stand them' nevertheless.
After reading through the specs of my just bought Master Collection CS5 I read e.g. the 'need' for 7.1 audio. For several reasons (incl. PCIe numbers, thunderbolt, OC-help,…) I am looking for the moment into the Asus Maximus V Extreme. That board seemingly has only 5 channels, does that mean I have to add a 7.1 able audio card like Asus Xonar DX/XD? Might that card be a 'heat-problem' when planning to add a 2nd 2-slot GPU in the future, if the need should arise?
I know this might sound a bit strange/unusual, but I need my system to be also portable in the widest way of meaning:
it wouldn't be problem for me, if the case's weight would be 30kg, but I would prefer to be able to carry it with one hand. The other issue I have is my concern about GPU weight rooted stability issues... so I love cases that offer the possibility to support the GPU.
As it was repeatedly suggested to look out for a big enough case I picked for the moment 2 possibilities:
Cooler Master HAF X black = has HAF and the mentioned GPU bracket / support
Thermaltake Level 10 GT = strange Design, but the handle moved to the stabile/closed side of the case might make it '1-handed-carryable' possibility (is that even a word?). Any thoughts for pro or contra or experience with one of the cases?
What got me to start to read through the complete thread and ( I think ) all what's behind all the links too, was the example table at the beginning for the CS5 to pc equipment-software-using needs / balanced equipment’s in relation to the budget. (~ is able to do this with that kind of system).
I think a few already hinted at in being interested in this at well, so I'll add, why the grant of the following petition would make my day:
any chance someone could do something like that for the 3rd Generation / CS6 or a hypothetically list for Haswell, the 700er Generation of nVidia in combination to a guessed pc-performance need of the future CS6.5 or CS7 - using nearly actual material for ppl like me who love the lower energy levels of e.g. the GTX 670 but don't have the warrior-budget.
The new websites are great, but for me partly a bit overwhelming.I think I never needed google so much for research all the little terms and acronyms. I do understand them now in general, but not 100% in the for me probably important details (I do not even know, what I might have missed).
To feel more sure or… such a little nice table would be really great. A bit like someone offers your a 'hand-holding'? Me = female, no offence meant with that example.
Btw, I did already editing and color / effects… with another software (Full-HD, .h264/AVCHD,…) and know / own / work a bit with Photoshop 4., but have never had anything to do with RAID,…and also do not know the terms pros or semi-pros or... might use.
In case someone is interested in this:
My goal is the multi-software-modules using, means AE, PP, PS,…, of the ‘pc-hungry’ Adobe together, but in time.
I'm guessing the release of PS7 and my catching up might fall together, so I try to find a SILENT portable solution still worth ~ 'medium' in 2014 - as far that is possible with quad
(silent - emphasis to show how important that so often not mentioned little detail is for me)
.
Priority goal beside the .... silent pc
, is for working with all Master Collection possibilities and stability, speed is nice but I am usually rather patient. But I hate it, if something was for nothing.
Hence my interest in the Asus version of the GTX 670 4GB….. and when AE gets annoying a second one of those too (two 4GB are still cheaper as the 690, but as far as I could research that little details: way less loud too?
Or to wait for Haswell and 770 or whatever might then be ~ #3 on the price-list and is also a quiet one (but bad with energy?)
=> Hence my interest also in examples / recommended balanced systems not only in the warriors class (even if those are really nice…)
In the hope someone(s)might be patient enough to answer in a simple way, it is less difficult toformulate for me (as I choose which one to use) then to understand words I might not know. Thank you for reading, have a nice Eastern / holliday!
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