Proposed First Build (Video Editing)

iamjsmith83

Honorable
Mar 10, 2014
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10,510
After many more hours of research I have modified what I am planning to use for my first build. This build will be used for video editing using Sony Vegas Pro 12 as well as some music production using Ableton. I MIGHT do some gaming in the future. I would love some feedback on my choices :)

PROCESSOR ($250): Intel Xeon E3-1230V3 Haswell 3.3GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1150 80W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80646E31230V3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116906 I have no need or desire to overclock. I will be getting a discrete graphics card.

MOTHERBOARD ($165): ASUS Z87-PRO (V EDITION) LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132046 I know, I know I don't need a Z87 board and could buy an H87 board since I won't be overclocking. BUT I do not want to go with a micro ATX board. That leaves one H87 option on Newegg which has only a handful of reviews. Yeah I know that there might not be a lot of reviews on it since there's "nothing to review" but I don't feel safe taking that chance. Plus, 3 of the slots are PCI and not PCI express...at least that's how I am interpreting what I am reading. Anyway, the board I am going with has enough good reviews to make me feel more comfortable purchasing it. It has plenty of PCI express slots as well.

VIDEO CARD ($170): EVGA 02G-P4-3753-KR GeForce GTX 750 Ti Superclocked 2GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487024

MEMORY ($130): Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Profile Desktop Memory Model BLS2K8G3D1609ES2LX0 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148663

SSD ($95): Kingston HyperX 3K SH103S3/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (Stand-Alone Drive) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239045&ignorebbr=1 This will be my boot drive and hold the programs I will be using. I will be using Sony Vegas Pro 12 and Ableton Live 9.1 and of course the Microsoft Office products.

HDD ($90): Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148834&ignorebbr=1

POWER SUPPLY ($90): CORSAIR CSM Series CS550M 550W ATX12V v2.4 and EPS 2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139059

CASE: ($120): Corsair Vengeance Series C70 Gunmetal Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139013
 
Solution
time to step back and rethink things a bit.

1) Just how much editing are you planning on doing, and at what level? If you are doing feature length documentaries with lots of effects and layers of video then by all means stick with a Xeon build, but more likely than not an i7 is going to be more than enough for most editing workloads. High end audio editing and production is super easy for modern computers and can be easily done with an i3 processor. Again, if you are working with Maya, or doing other monster creativity work then keep with your basic build... but more likely than not it is simply overkill

2) That motherboard will not work with that processor. The socket is right, but the chipset is not. You will need a C220...
time to step back and rethink things a bit.

1) Just how much editing are you planning on doing, and at what level? If you are doing feature length documentaries with lots of effects and layers of video then by all means stick with a Xeon build, but more likely than not an i7 is going to be more than enough for most editing workloads. High end audio editing and production is super easy for modern computers and can be easily done with an i3 processor. Again, if you are working with Maya, or doing other monster creativity work then keep with your basic build... but more likely than not it is simply overkill

2) That motherboard will not work with that processor. The socket is right, but the chipset is not. You will need a C220 chipset to work with an E3 LGA1150 processor, which is going to cost you a bit more money, and I don't think you can buy one from Newegg.
Again, probably best to keep your motherboard and get a normal i7 processor, but if your heart is set on a Xeon then go look for a motherboard with a C220 chipeset.

3) The video card has little to nothing to do with video editing unless you are using specific software and filters that take advantage of it. I am not familiar with Vagas or Albeton (I use Premere and Audition), but you will want to check with those software manufacturers to see what GPUs are supported, and for what workloads. If simply for gaming, if you have the budget then swing for a 760 at minimum. A 770 would last you a good long time if you can stretch your budget a bit.

4) Crucial makes good ram. 8GB is likely enough, but 16GB certainly could not hurt for video editing. I would keep it as is.

5) Swing for a 240GB drive if you can afford it. 120GB fills up fast, and you want your drive to be big enough for windows, programs, the odd game or two, all of your small files (documents and music), and your scratch discs (significantly improves render times). You may be able to cram all of that on a 120GB drive... but it is going to be tight. 240GB will give you some breathing room.

6) Get 2 2TB drives and put them in a RAID1. HDDs die, and never at a good time. Having a RAID1 means that if a drive dies you can still work while the replacement is on the way, and can run with a performance hit while the RAID rebuilds itself. A RAID5 is much more efficient on space... but a drive failure typically means that you are down for several hours while you get a replacement drive, and while the RAID rebuilds. If you do not want to deal with the complications of an internal RAID then save up to get some sort of server or NAS that has a built in RAID for long term storage of your files. It is really important.
On a side note, I am using the 3TB version of the Seagate drives you picked and could not be happier. They are fast, cheap, and so far reliable.

7) Good PSU. Could probably get by with a cheaper Seasonic, but the one you picked should be great.

8) Don't get a noisy gamer case. Get something with some bulk and acoustic padding to line the insides. Also make sure that it has good dust filters on all intake fans, and has mounting points for nice quiet 140mm fans. I highly suggest something from Fractal Design, or look at the Deep Silence series. This is a workstation that is going to hum along while it works, not a game rig to show off to your friends; so get something practical and quiet. This is especially important when working with audio.

Other thoughts:
As a workstation, don't bother with a K-sku i7 processor. A normal i7 will work just fine, and you can do a turbo overclock up to 4.2GHz (as thermals allow) if you want a little extra performance out of it. Doing a full overclock has potential (granted, minimal potential) to introduce instability or shorten the life of your rig, so if this is for professional work then I would save the $30 and not bother with it.
Regardless, you will probably still want to invest in an aftermarket cooler for the sake of cutting down noise. Noctua makes some great coolers, though they are a bit expensive. Personally I bought a hyper 212 Evo and put 2 nice quiet low RPM 120mm fans on it. It runs very quiet, and keeps things very cold while costing much less than a large Noctua.

Best of luck!
 
Solution

iamjsmith83

Honorable
Mar 10, 2014
7
0
10,510
1) I plan on doing a lot of editing actually. It's like one of those serious hobby type things. I will be doing greenscreen stuff and stacking multiple video and audio tracks so I definitely want a quad-core processor with 8 threads.

2) THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR POINTING IT OUT THAT THE PROCESSOR WON'T WORK!!!! My newbie self assumed that the Xeon processor would work on that motherboard since it's a socket 1150. I had no clue they made the same socket for different chipsets. It kinda really irritates me that so many people read my proposed build list on other forums and didn't even catch that the Xeon processor wouldn't work with Z87 or H87 chipsets. I mean, seriously...how can I trust any advice now??? I will definitely be getting the i7 4770 like my original plan was. Some dude talked me into the Xeon processor since it was basically the same but for much cheaper...and other people agreed!

3) Sony Vegas does/can use the graphics card to an extent. I have seen plenty of proof in how much it helps in Render times compared to using the CPU only. They support AMD and NVIDIA. I was thinking 760 originally then after watching enough reviews and benchmarks and a few other articles, I realized I could save some cash and still have enough performance with the 750 ti.

4) Yes, I got something right!

5) I'm kind of confused...I was just going to have the programs on the SSD and was going to store video files on the HDD. Do you think maybe I should get one SSD for programs, a second for video files I edit, and then an HDD drive which holds all raw videos as well as rendered projects?

6) I don't know a single thing about RAID...guess I will have to look into it eventually.

8) I love that case. It's just too sexy to give up. Having it be super quiet isn't a big deal to me. I mean when I do edit I throw on headphones when perfecting audio. I am going to cut a new window out of acrylic and put a roll of RGB Leds in it.

I was under the impression that the stock Intel Cooler's were pretty damn quiet after the machine gets fired up...

Thank you for your help I really appreciate it.

 
1) Good good, the LGA1150 i7 platform is a great starting point. If you decide to make it more than a hobby and start making money with it then consider a Xenon, or an LGA2011/i7 platform as it will give you much more performance... it just costs an arm an a leg and is not worth the extra money unless it is going to make you money. Really, if you are purely after multi-threaded performance then look into some of AMD's offerings. I am an Intel fanboy, but AMD has lots of cores on the cheap if that is what you need.

2) No problem. It says right in the advert on Newegg's page that it is designed for the C220 chipset, also says it on Intel's site. Maybe it also works on a z87 chipset (have not played with it myself), but it would completely defeat the point of a workstation CPU as it would not enable the features that make Xeon so awesome.

3) While the 750ti may keep up with the 760 in games, it really cuts down the core count which is important for content creation. I have not looked that closely at current gen cards (waiting for the 800 series myself), so I am not well versed there, but my bet is that it would be a sizable step down for renders. Still, I am sure you can do your own research on it.

4) yep!

5) The issue with HDDs is that they are simply too slow to feed modern CPUs. I am on an A/B upgrade cycle on my computer, so when I upgraded my mobo/ram/cpu I continued to use my old HDDs like normal. I had programs and OS on one drive, audio on another drive, video on a 3rd drive, and scratch discs on a 4th drive. Even with all of that raw throughput I still could barely push my i7 2600 beyond a 60% load when doing video editing and rendering. HDDs are simply not fast enough.
Fast forward a bit and I bought my first SSD and replaced my HDDs with much faster and newer ones. With OS/programs/scratch on the SSD and content on my RAID1 I could push my CPU to 80-90% when exporting, but my SSD was constantly full (240GB). A while later I ended up with a little extra money and decided to get a 2nd SSD, and but them in a RAID0 for a larger volume. Now when I edit I put pretty much everything on the SSD for my project (backups on the RAID1 to be safe... still don't trust RAID0), and it simply pegs the CPU each and every time, putting the bottleneck on the processors where it belongs. Maybe you cannot get enough SSD space to start out with... but it is certainly a worthy investment down the road.

6) RAID is scary, and confusing, and... really surprisingly easy. Just use the Intel RAID built into the motherboard. It is stupid simple to set up and use, and even to recover from. I won't lie and say that there is not a little bit of a learning curve, and it certainly will not add performance to your system, but it is absolutely worth learning as it will save you from loosing projects... especially with the quality of drives that WD and Seagate are pushing out these days. Read a Wiki, look up a few walkthroughs on how to recover when things go wrong, and then put it into practice. The more serious you are about doing video projects that are rather difficult to backup on anything other than HDDs, the more important RAID becomes. Just stick with RAID1 or RAID5, the rest get rather messy.

8) to each his own. My first case back in the '90s was all sorts of sexy and cool... and now I have a quiet box that sits in another room so that I don't have to hear it. Computer noise is a horrible thing when editing, and the older and crankier you get, the more it will annoy you... unless you go deaf first.

Intel's coolers are certainly not loud... but what noise they make sounds very grating on the ears. Truth be told I am pretty sure that the cooler I am using now is probably a little louder than the stock Intel cooler... but it is a much easier noise to ignore.

No problem! Best of luck on your ventures!