Content Production / Professional / Gaming Monitor Questions

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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Hey guys,

In the future, I will be creating my own PC. The main usages for this PC will be content production as well as gaming. With content production being the main focus.

Content production ranges from game production, to video editing, to graphics design, modelling, etc. Gaming will take place time-to-time, and when it is, will be recorded most of the time - the games played will be light to heavy.

The overall budget is around £2000. Peripherals have their own separate budget, but it would be nice to include the peripherals into the overall budget. Here is the PC build:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£303.99 @ Ebuyer)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£90.99 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI Plus ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£170.00)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£143.74 @ More Computers)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£58.74 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£38.97 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£38.97 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) (£264.97 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) (£264.97 @ Aria PC)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case (£80.76 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£123.47 @ Dabs)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£9.00 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) (£72.30 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £1660.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-10 15:47 GMT+0000

My questions are:
- Does FreeSync really make a difference for a build like this?
- Does refresh rate really matter in a build like this?

And things that would help are:
- A good monitor within the price range which is 1440p and uses the answers from the questions.
- Advice for getting a monitor.
- Improvements for the build.

Yes, I could fit a 1440p, 144hz, IPS monitor into this price range. But that is a lot of the budget eaten up. I just wanna see where I can save money.

This is also coming from someone who has a really bad current monitor - and will probably be blown away by any new monitor.

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
Since you are under your 2000 budget, I would bump the SSD to 500GB. You should research if the primary software you use will work better with NVIDIA or AMD video cards. You might get better performance on your content creation with NVIDIA, you need to research this. I don't know why you would buy 1TB disks at this point in time.

kanewolf

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Since you are under your 2000 budget, I would bump the SSD to 500GB. You should research if the primary software you use will work better with NVIDIA or AMD video cards. You might get better performance on your content creation with NVIDIA, you need to research this. I don't know why you would buy 1TB disks at this point in time.
 
Solution

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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Yeah, thanks for the advice. I'm going to research it right now.

For the SSD, all I'm really going to have is the OS and a few applications like Adobe CC and UE4.

Could you tell me the problem with the 1TB disks?
I honestly don't use that much storage. Maybe videos will take up a lot of space, but I can always buy more hard drives later on.

Also, the two 1TB drives are going to be in RAID 1, just a heads up.
 

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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Oops, accidently pressed best answer rather than reply.

Anyways, I've researched it. And it seems NVIDIA has the advantage. It has CUDA as well as OPEN-CL. I think I'll be changing the R9 390's with 970's.
 

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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It all depends on the outcome of this PC. If this PC has the potential to profit, which hopefully it will, then I will be upgrading all the drives to dedicated drives for a specific thing.
 

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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But wouldn't I be throwing money away too. :p
 

kanewolf

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There is nothing WRONG with 1TB disks but the price and performance sweet spot is probably 2TB maybe even 4TB disks any more. Don't assume you are safe with RAID1. It is not a substitute for backups.

@Suzuki has a point. If you aren't going to bump the SSD to 500GB, get a second one for a scratch disk.
 

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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Yeah, I've been trying to get a reason to not use two WD Blues. My ideal drive setup would be a WD Blue/Black with a WD Green for backups.

I would have used 2TB, but WD Blues don't come in 2TB models. I also stay away from anything not WD because I've heard their not as reliable (like Seagate).

A scratch disk sounds alright, what's a good size?
 

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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It depends on what you mean by "heavy effects". I'm not really professional or experienced at Adobe CC. Video editing mainly revolves around adding information, text, pictures nicely on top of the original footage. It will probably be in a Material Design fashion, not really heavy.
 
If that's the case, then you the CPU is going to do most of the work, as it normally would. CUDA only applies to effects that can be CUDA-accelerated, everything else is done by CPU. A common misconception is that enabling GPU render in Adobe, saves you a lot of time with any project, which is not the case at all. A proper drive setup however, will save you a ton of time during your WORKFLOW, not render times. Example: "weak" CPU to afford more drives, is going to be more productive than a "stronger" CPU with a weak drive setup. It all depends on project file sizes, and effects you use, but a scratch drive should be mandatory, as that is going to bottleneck you from start to finish of workflow, if you don't have one, seconds > minutes > hours, in the long run.
 

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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But, as you said, they are designed for 24/7 use. That is for things like CCTV, I don't plan on keeping the PC on 24/7.
 

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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Using all the current feedback, the PC build is now:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£303.99 @ Ebuyer)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£90.99 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI Plus ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£170.00)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£143.74 @ More Computers)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£44.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£58.74 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Western Digital WD Green 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£62.58 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£99.95 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (2-Way SLI) (£268.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (2-Way SLI) (£268.98 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case (£80.76 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£67.98 @ CCL Computers)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£9.00 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) (£72.30 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £1742.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-10 16:51 GMT+0000
 

PowerHotmail

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Sep 22, 2014
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I've just included a scratch disk (Samsung 850 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive) as the scratch disk.
 

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