I am going to be building a new pc and have a few questions. I mainly do video editing and conversion. I hardly ever play games but it would be nice to have the capability in the future if I wanted to. I also run two moniters. I also am going to use this computer as a server for all my media over my network so I will need at least 5 extra HDD bays not including my OS drive which will be a SSD. I have a blu-ray and a dvd drive so I think I'm gonna need at least 8 sata ports. I figured on getting a pretty big tower to house all of this stuff and now I just need some advice on what else to get. Here is what I have come up with so far. I am at $909.96 so far and want to stay at or below $1600. I know I still need RAM and maybe a video card so let me know what you think or if my choices below are not up to par. Thank you for any advice! Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119225 Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131992 CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116900 PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011
Go for a 4770K over the 4770: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116901 alternately if a microcenter is near you ($280): http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.aspx?sku=583369 The K series allow you to overclock your chip. That gives you extra performance for nothing. I think the Haswells can make it to around 4.2GHz on average with good air cooling. Another thing you will want to allow a decent budget for is cooling. Haswell CPUs run a tad hot because of using a TIM vs solder on the IHS. You can take temps down up 20 to degrees by "delidding" but that would instantly void the warranty on the chip and there is risk of damage. Do not forget a good TIM!!! something like pk-3 is great. If you want to try something fancy like Indigo Extreme or Coolaboratory Ultra they perform a little better. Video editing really heats up your system!!! You will want a couple of good fans for nice airflow to get rid of the heat from the CPU/GPU while editing. With that said, you should budget roughly $80-$100 on a good cooler whether it is air or closed loop. You really do not have the budget for good water cooling. What affects editing the most is RAM and HDD speed (your CPU/GPU will be more than adequate). You need lots of ram for smooth playback and scrubbing. I recommend 32GB with 16GB as a minimum. Software matters here, but generally nothing *needs* more than 32GB (although any Adobe software can eat as much RAM as you throw at it). Rendering is almost entirely CPU dependent with some strain on RAM and GPU, although HDD read speed plays a factor. You will need a good SSD for your software and OS (240GB/120GB minimum). It will make everything snappier. Then you will want an SSD for your work drive (500GB+) and a mechanical drive for output. Outside of ultra fast raid setups, that is the best you can do on a budget. That should minimize the HD bottleneck. For GPU, a GTX 570/580 are your best CUDA cards at under $250. The Titan is the best CUDA performer, but way over budget. For gaming, the newer series outperform the 5xx cards, but not in CUDA. If not for Davinci Resolve, I would have gone with an AMD 7870. It is around $200 and it's OpenCL is better than nvidia. I went for the GTX 580 myself because Davinci Resolve can only utilize CUDA (that should change in September though). If you have all the peripherals, this system would be around your budget: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1js5t For $1600 +/- it features: CPU: 4770K MOB: Asus z87 Pro RAM: 32GB G.Skill 1600MHz HSF: Phanteks PH-TC114PE SSD: Samsung 840 120GB SSD: Samsung 840 240GB (this may be too small depending on what you do) GPU: Sapphire 7870GHz edition PSU: Corsair AX850 CAS: Cooler Master HAF X (same as your build) You can do better, but this is a good start for a video editing build. If you need to cut money, you can replace the 240GB SSD with a fast mechanical drive. 240GB is going to limit how many projects you can work on at a time and that should cut about $200 by going mechanical. It depends what you work with. An SSD will not make the difference because of the 400MB/s read vs 120MB/s, but rather the speed at which it accesses your files. Basically when you make a cut, to get smooth playback and scrubbing, the hard drive has to scan different files and jump at different spots in the drive. This is not really an issue with SSD, but for mechanical drives, you can get delays up to 1/2 second per cut while editing and even while rendering. I recommend SSD for a work drive if you are dealing with HD/SD footage from AVCHD, XDCAM and DSLR. Here are guidelines for space: AVCHD: ~20 hours on 250GB - A lot (120GB+ will suffice) XDCAM: ~10 hours on 250GB - Good IPB50: ~10 hours on 250GB - Good I-100: ~7.5 hours on 250GB - OK (Recommend 500GB) DNxHD: ~4.5 hours on 250GB - Small (need 500GB+)
Wow what a lot to consider! Thank you so much for all your input. I'll let you know what I end up getting!
Just my opinion i would go for a gigabyte motherboard having had msi gigabyte asus and ASRock i find gigabyte much better. There is no need to get all techi on this just a simple fact gigabyte produce the best motherboards followed by asus.
I'm building a pc for my son but I'm new to all this. Very tecky and confusing but I hope to learn off you lads.
