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Switching to PC - What to get!

Post Date: 2015-01-29
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pjnormz View Drop Down
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Posts: 8 		  Quote pjnormz Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: Switching to PC - What to get!
    Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 3:36am
So, I'm rather new to the PC world having lived on Macs since the 80s. However I'm ready for the jump after much research (and hands on experience).

My current 2010 Mac Pro runs off a similar drive configuration with a Nvidia 680 card.

Due to my lack of experience with PCs, I want to make sure I'm not 'overdoing' it just to have the latest tech. I can always upgrade later if necessary. That being said, I also don't want to purchase something that will need to be upgraded rather quickly just to save a few bucks.

Any help/criticism is much appreciated...

Budget:
$5k-$7500

Expectations:
Faster render times, smooth operation with native 4k footage, and ability to handle 3D renders, etc.

Usage:
Post Production (editing, color correction, 3D, adobe suite, Cinema 4d, resolve),

Special Needs:
Help understanding what i'm buying (Lol)

Saved Ticket #: 1140055

Specifications:

Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Hailstorm II Edition
Exterior Finish: - Standard Factory Finish
Trim Accents: - Standard Factory Finish
Processor: 1x (Intel Xeon 8-Core E5-2687W 3.10GHz (20MB Cache)
Motherboard: ASUS P9X79-E WS (Intel X79 Chipset) (Workstation Class)
System Memory: 32GB DDR3 1866MHz Corsair Vengeance Pro (High-Performance)
Power Supply: 1050W Corsair HX1050
Expansion Bay: Dual Solid State Hard Drive Hot Swap Bay
Optical Drive: Blu-Ray & DVD Writer/Reader (Burn + Play Blu-Ray & DVDs) (12x BD-R)
Storage Set 1: 1x SSD (256GB Samsung 850 PRO)
Storage Set 2: 2x SSD (512GB Samsung 850 PRO)
Storage Set 3: 1x Storage (2TB Western Digital - Enterprise Edition)
RAID Config: RAID 5: Performance + Drive Failure Protection (Recommended) (Requires 3 HDDs)
RAID Card: - No Thanks
Internet Access: Wireless PCI-E ASUS PCE-N53 (Dual Band Performance) (Supports 802.11n/g/b)
Graphics Card(s): NVIDIA Quadro K4000 3GB (Outputs: 1x DVI-I ; 2x DisplayPort 1.2)
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Zx (Includes Audio Control Module)
HPC Processor: - No Thanks
Extreme Cooling: H20: HydroLux Level 1: Digital Storm Exotic Custom Cooling System (CPU Only)
H20 Tube Color:Red Tubing with High-Performance Fluid (UV Lighting Reactive)
Chassis Fans: Upgrade All Fans to Corsair Airflow Performance Edition (Up to 6 Fans)
Internal Lighting: - No Thanks
Airflow Control: Digital Storm Thermal Management Control Board & Software
Chassis Mods: - No Thanks
Noise Reduction: - No Thanks
LaserMark: - No Thanks

Warranty: Life-time Expert Care with 3 Year Limited Warranty (3 Year Labor & 1 Year Part Replacement)

Edited by pjnormz - 29 Jan 2015 at 3:38am
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FrankW View Drop Down
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Posts: 2254 		  Quote FrankW Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 8:01am
Hi pjnormz,

You have a really good lay out for a work station. The question is do you need that much horsepower for your work. If your 680 GPU is now doing a good job for you we could save some money on the Quadro K4000. The Quadro is a heck of a GPU for high level computations. But you might drop down to a K2000 or even dual 980X GPUs.    I am a little confused because of that existing 680?

The 850 Pro SSDs are a great choice. I do question why you have selected the ASUS PCE-N53 n,g,b. Do you already have a n router? I would be looking at the ASUS PCE-AC66 or AC-68. They offer a lot higher speed. Even if you all ready have n,g,b router the PCE-ACxx is backward compatible and you will be good to go when you upgrade your router. I see that DS is not listing the PSE-AC units. You could have them order one, or you could get one and install it after you get your computer.

You don't need the extreme liquid cooling but it is nice to have. The H20: Stage 2: Corsair H110 280mm Radiator Liquid CPU Cooler would probable do the job for you at a big savings.

Frank
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Posts: 297 		  Quote michaeljhuman Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 8:29am
I found liquid cooling from Corsair reliable on the one PC I have built with it. Still working some 3 years later. Fairly quiet, and can keep PC cool enough even running Furmark's CPU burner.
"The other day, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. What an elephant was doing in my pajamas, I will never know"
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Posts: 1674 		  Quote  Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 10:48am
pjnormz,

You do want as much of a GPU as you can get. The editing programs use GPUs heavily and the more you have, the faster they will render.

The only oddity I noticed in your specification is the storage. Yes, you want an SSD for your operating system as well as Adobe and other editing software. A RAID 5 will not work well with 2 SSDs and 1 HDD...The HDD capacity will be reduced to 512GB to match the SSDs and will slow everything down. Either you want to go with an SSD array where you hold a project or two while you work on them, or you go with a much larger, but slower HDD array to hold many more projects. If you have a lot of external storage already, you may want to opt for the former, but if not, the latter would be probably be more useful for you.

As for the cooler, if you are going to do any large overnight renderings or other major tasks where you won't be at the computer for an extended period of time while it crunches on something, the most reliable cooler will be an air cooler and not a water cooler. An air cooler can still dissipate some heat, even if the fan were to fail. Water coolers, however, do not convect away heat as efficiently (much less, in fact) and the system will overheat if the fans fail (having multiple fans does help, though). The water cooled systems also have another breaking point with the water pump...if that goes, the system will completely overheat.
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pjnormz View Drop Down
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Posts: 8 		  Quote pjnormz Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 11:08am
Originally posted by FrankW

Hi pjnormz,

You have a really good lay out for a work station. The question is do you need that much horsepower for your work. If your 680 GPU is now doing a good job for you we could save some money on the Quadro K4000. The Quadro is a heck of a GPU for high level computations. But you might drop down to a K2000 or even dual 980X GPUs.    I am a little confused because of that existing 680?

The 850 Pro SSDs are a great choice. I do question why you have selected the ASUS PCE-N53 n,g,b. Do you already have a n router? I would be looking at the ASUS PCE-AC66 or AC-68. They offer a lot higher speed. Even if you all ready have n,g,b router the PCE-ACxx is backward compatible and you will be good to go when you upgrade your router. I see that DS is not listing the PSE-AC units. You could have them order one, or you could get one and install it after you get your computer.

You don't need the extreme liquid cooling but it is nice to have. The H20: Stage 2: Corsair H110 280mm Radiator Liquid CPU Cooler would probable do the job for you at a big savings.

Frank


Very insightful Frank. I really appreciate the response.

The existing 680 is for MAC only (i have a mac pro 2o1o).

I did not know that abut the ASUS PCE_AC66 - i thought I was picking the most optimal speed. I'll def go with your advice.

Great advice on the cooling system. I was not sure if I was overdoing it.

One other question - Is the Tesla (HPC Processor) going to make a big impact if I add that down the road?



Edited by pjnormz - 29 Jan 2015 at 11:33am
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pjnormz View Drop Down
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Posts: 8 		  Quote pjnormz Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 11:12am
Originally posted by 

pjnormz,

You do want as much of a GPU as you can get. The editing programs use GPUs heavily and the more you have, the faster they will render.

The only oddity I noticed in your specification is the storage. Yes, you want an SSD for your operating system as well as Adobe and other editing software. A RAID 5 will not work well with 2 SSDs and 1 HDD...The HDD capacity will be reduced to 512GB to match the SSDs and will slow everything down. Either you want to go with an SSD array where you hold a project or two while you work on them, or you go with a much larger, but slower HDD array to hold many more projects. If you have a lot of external storage already, you may want to opt for the former, but if not, the latter would be probably be more useful for you.

As for the cooler, if you are going to do any large overnight renderings or other major tasks where you won't be at the computer for an extended period of time while it crunches on something, the most reliable cooler will be an air cooler and not a water cooler. An air cooler can still dissipate some heat, even if the fan were to fail. Water coolers, however, do not convect away heat as efficiently (much less, in fact) and the system will overheat if the fans fail (having multiple fans does help, though). The water cooled systems also have another breaking point with the water pump...if that goes, the system will completely overheat.


Thank you. That's great to know about the air vs liquid cooling.

As for my drive array, I think you misread the layout. The RAID 5 would work with the 3 SSDs i have (1 256 gb, and 2 x 512 gb). In Adobe, that's 1 for the programs, one for video data, and one for cache. The additional drive HDD is just for additional storage, not for active use during editing.

When you say GPUs, are you suggesting I grab a better video card?
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Posts: 1674 		  Quote  Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 12:12pm
Oh, in that case, you'll want to have the drives in the RAID to be the same size, otherwise the 512GB drives will only use 256GB of their capacity. I'd also suggest having your HDD mass storage with some failure tolerance array (like a RAID 1 or 5). You may also want to consider getting ECC RAM...you have already selected a Xeon CPU and the Quadro GPU has ECC VRAM. With ECC RAM you will have error correction through your entire system, then.

As for GPUs, you can see in the chart at the bottom of the page how bigger and more GPUs can affect performance of Adobe Premier.
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Posts: 8 		  Quote pjnormz Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 1:16pm
Originally posted by 

Oh, in that case, you'll want to have the drives in the RAID to be the same size, otherwise the 512GB drives will only use 256GB of their capacity. I'd also suggest having your HDD mass storage with some failure tolerance array (like a RAID 1 or 5). You may also want to consider getting ECC RAM...you have already selected a Xeon CPU and the Quadro GPU has ECC VRAM. With ECC RAM you will have error correction through your entire system, then.

As for GPUs, you can see in the chart at the bottom of the page how bigger and more GPUs can affect performance of Adobe Premier.


Got it on the SSD drive sizes (i switched the primary to 512gb). I'm debating on making the primary a 256 gb strictly for the OS and programs, and then having 3 1TB 850 pro SSDs with RAID 5 protection. My thought is I don't need to worry about RAID on the my programs/OS drive. Thoughts?

I did not know that they should be equal! RAID 1 for the HDD sounds perfect.

I selected the ECC RAM. Thanks again!

After looking at the GPU chart, I do not see the 4200 and 2200 models listed by DS. Do I ask for that separately?


Edited by pjnormz - 29 Jan 2015 at 1:42pm
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Posts: 8 		  Quote pjnormz Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 1:30pm
So based on your wonderful feedback, I've reconstructed my machine. I plan to switch to the k4200 instead of the 4000 with the hope of adding a 2nd k4200 in the future.

here is the config code: 1140232

Any additional feedback is much appreciated:

Specifications:
Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Hailstorm II Edition
Exterior Finish: - Standard Factory Finish
Trim Accents: - Standard Factory Finish
Processor: 1x (Intel Xeon 8-Core E5-2687W 3.10GHz (20MB Cache)
Motherboard: ASUS P9X79-E WS (Intel X79 Chipset) (Workstation Class)
System Memory: 32GB DDR3 (Server/Workstation ECC Registered) 1600MHz Digital Storm Certified (8GBx4 Config)
Power Supply: 1050W Corsair HX1050
Expansion Bay: Dual Solid State Hard Drive Hot Swap Bay
Optical Drive: - No Thanks
Storage Set 1: 1x SSD (512GB Samsung 850 PRO)
Storage Set 2: 2x SSD (512GB Samsung 850 PRO)
Storage Set 3: 1x Storage (2TB Western Digital - Enterprise Edition)
RAID Config: RAID 5: Performance + Drive Failure Protection (Recommended) (Requires 3 HDDs)
RAID Card: - No Thanks
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Graphics Card(s): NVIDIA Quadro K4000 3GB (Outputs: 1x DVI-I ; 2x DisplayPort 1.2)
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Zx (Includes Audio Control Module)
HPC Processor: - No Thanks
Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 2: Corsair H110 280mm Radiator Liquid CPU Cooler (Extreme-Performance Edition)
H20 Tube Color:- Not Applicable, I do not have a FrostChill or Sub-Zero LCS Cooling System Selected
Chassis Fans: Upgrade All Fans to Corsair Airflow Performance Edition (Up to 6 Fans)
Internal Lighting: - No Thanks
Airflow Control: Digital Storm Thermal Management Control Board & Software
Chassis Mods: - No Thanks
Noise Reduction: - No Thanks
LaserMark: - No Thanks
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Posts: 1674 		  Quote  Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 2:21pm
The 4200 and 2200 are recent revisions to the GPUs. You could special order if you want. Call up DS and see if they have any Quadros in stock. If they don't have any (maybe they do for any enterprise customers they have, though) you may be able to persuade them to revise their offerings. Same thing goes with the motherboard and processor. I'd suggest the Gigabyte MW50-SV0. It accepts the newer E5-2687W v3 10-core processor, but I think the E5-16XX processors would be a better fit for you. I think the E5-1660 with a Quadro K5200 would be the best performance combination and the possibility to expand to a second K5200 at a later point if you decide you need the extra performance.
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Posts: 1674 		  Quote  Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 2:23pm
Also, if you decide in the future that Windows is not the way you want to go, Gigabyte MB's have a reputation of being better for creating hackintosh's. It is really dependent on the precise hardware in use, but in the past, it has been easier with Gigabyte.
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Posts: 8 		  Quote pjnormz Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 29 Jan 2015 at 2:29pm
Originally posted by 

The 4200 and 2200 are recent revisions to the GPUs. You could special order if you want. Call up DS and see if they have any Quadros in stock. If they don't have any (maybe they do for any enterprise customers they have, though) you may be able to persuade them to revise their offerings. Same thing goes with the motherboard and processor. I'd suggest the Gigabyte MW50-SV0. It accepts the newer E5-2687W v3 10-core processor, but I think the E5-16XX processors would be a better fit for you. I think the E5-1660 with a Quadro K5200 would be the best performance combination and the possibility to expand to a second K5200 at a later point if you decide you need the extra performance.


Awesome. Thanks again for your help!

I'd prefer a hackintosh, but I wonder if the hassle of updating is worth it.
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Posts: 1674 		  Quote  Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 30 Jan 2015 at 3:21pm
You have to be very careful on the hardware selection with a hackintosh. Much research is needed to make sure components will work with it.
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