The Ultimate Video Editing Workstation and 10Gb/s networking

[DieselWeasel]

Hey,

this won't be much of a LOG, but I just wanted to share the build I did a few weeks ago. It is my workstation at work. The whole office is Mac based so when I started working there about two years ago I had no choice but to get used to working on macs, but this time arround my boss gave me the oportunity to go with a PC (after much debate  ).

 

Because I am sometimes required to edit on set I started out by planing for a combo of a dell XPS 17 (having a lot of thunderbolt ports was a requirement because of all the thundebolt devices we use in production) and a 3700x (I knew 5000 series was coming out and would wait for it), but in the end I was told to just get a desktop for the office and we would use my old Macbook for editing on set or just get a new one. 

 

 

I was expecting that I would be without a GPU for a few months, but I was very lucky to find some 3080s in stock at a local shop so the GPU was one of the first things to arrive and I had to wait about 5 weeks for the rest of the system. ( + There was a whole thing with a German computer store that didn't respond to our emails and kept ignoring our request to change the shipping address and that caused a lot of frustration.)

 

 

At the same time we finally recived our 10Gb/s networking equipment and storage, so I sprinkled in some photos of our new 12-bay Synology NAS and everything that goes with it. 

 

I am sorry for the bad quality of some photos, I just took some quick snaps with my phone, sometimes it was the fastest way to share it with my friends. 

 

 

Here are the specs for the workstation:

CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970x

GPU:  EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra

MOBO: Gigabyte TRX40 Designare

RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 128GB DDR4 3000-16 K4

PSU: Super Flower Leadex 1600W 80Plus Platinum (a bit overkill I know  )

SSDs: 2x GIGABYTE AORUS SSD NVMe G4 500GB

            PNY XLR8 SSD CS3030 M.2 NVMe 2TB    (I will remove this one because I don't need it and we will use it in an external enclosure)

CASE: Fractal Design Define 7 XL

COOLER: Be quiet! Dark Rock PRO TR4

NIC: ASUS XG-C100C (10Gbs RJ45)

 

Personal gear: Logitech MX Master 2S and Logitech Craft Keyboard and I use Beyerdynamic DT 770 Black Edition Headphones when I'm editing.

 

 

Networking and NAS:

SWITCHES: 2x Mikrotik CRS326-24S+2Q+RM

Wi-Fi Router: Linksys wrt1900ac  - we just moved it from our old office (before my time  )

NAS: Synology RS3618xs 

Drives: 12 x Seagate Exos x16 16TB  in RAID 6 (I know I'm takinga bit of a risk here with such a large RAID 6, but we didn't want to loose too much space)

NIC: Mellanox Connectx-2 dual 10Gbs with SFP+ connectors  - maybe I made a mistake here, because what I learned is, that the unsupported NIC makes the fans on the NAS run at a higher RPM "for safety"

UPS: PowerWalker VFI 3000 CRM LCD

 

The old Synology that you can see on the picture is a DS1812+ that I took offline just this week. It is filled with 8 x 3TB WD RED drives and might in the future serve as an off-site backup.

 

(We had to get the second switch, because the NAS turned out to be too loud to have it in a closet in the office. - even though I planned the whole NAS and infrastrature in our new offices I had no input on where to put it and had to work with whatever was there. In the end we decided to relocate the NAS into our storage area in the basement - we will link the switches together with a 40Gbs fiber connection.)

 

 

SO HERE IT IS: MY OFFICE WORKSTATION:

 

I was very interasted in how would a super-ultrawide monitor fit into my workflow and I must say it is fantastic, but I am planning to put a second 27" 4k monitor above it so I can have a full-screen image of whatever I am editing on it. Do you know any good wall mounted monitor arms? It needs to to carry a Dell U2718Q, but if you know a monitor stand that can carry this massive 49" and 27" above it that would be a good solution too - even better  .

 

 

I have hidden the rest of the images in spoiler tabs, so that they don't open all at once  

Spoiler

 

 

All this components made quite an enterance and everyone wanted to see what I got. We were all very exited to see this 49" monitor and everyone swarmed around me to see when I would open the box. Unlucky for them, because it was the last thing I would need to open and I sure as hell would not rush this build. I took my sweet sweet time with it and enjoyed every small step.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

These pins really look impressive, don't you think?

Don't even need this  the board has 4 slots on it already  

Masterfully applied thermal paste if you ask me.

EVGA FTW3 Ultra  RTX 3080 vs Gigabyte Windforce GTX 1070

Posted on the first try ! 

Hopefully I will never again need to take the GPU out because it is a b***** to get to the release pin on the Pcie slot!!  

I chose the vented top at first, but I could hear the PC runing from under the desk (the small fan on the motherboard most likely) so I changed it back to the full top panel

 

 

[DieselWeasel]

Some more images of the PC

Spoiler

 

 

The Wifi antenna is comically large. Here it is next to the macbook 86w charger.

 

These are the results of cinebench on our other office computers - my Macbook Pro 15" 2018 and two iMacs (one is 2019 and one 2020 I think)

And this is the score I got haha  

Had to try some games you know.... 

 

Puts my home system to shame

 

NAS and Networking

 

Spoiler

PowerWalker 3000VA online UPS

This was a smal woops on my part  Had to order some low profile brackets of ebay.

Imagine all the porn you could store on these. r/cableporn ofcourse, nothing dirty.

Had some fun with it first you know

Don't you just f***** hate messing with these power plugs/bricks.... 

This was all I ever wanted to make me smile.

 

 

 

[Stygian Zenith]

Nice build! Did you pay for it or your boss? That must cost a fortune LOL. 

[DieselWeasel]

1 minute ago, Stygian Zenith said:

Nice build! Did you pay for it or your boss? That must cost a fortune LOL. 

Haha, my boss/company ofcourse. I could never afford something like this. Look at the picture of my current home build.

[Stygian Zenith]

11 minutes ago, DieselWeasel said:

Haha, my boss/company ofcourse. I could never afford something like this. Look at the picture of my current home build.

At least its cheaper than a Mac Pro. Lmao  

[DieselWeasel]

9 minutes ago, Stygian Zenith said:

At least its cheaper than a Mac Pro. Lmao  

Oh yes, and much better value than the iMac we have. We recently got a new 2020 IMac and it's very impressive for its mac price - at least when you try to compare it to a simmilarly priced iMac Pro, MacPro or Macbook Pro 16"... This machine is about 10-20% more expensive than the 2020 Imac with i9-10910 and a 5700xt, but it has almost twice the performance in some areas - some very un-optimised things are almost the same in performance - I'm looking at you After Effects and Premiere Pro  We have someone doing 3D now and my PC is almost 2,5 times faster then that iMac for rendering. It is all very impressive. I only hope I can match my editing skill with the power of this computer