Using xeons for video editing.

[Too old 4 this]

Hi.  I don't know much about pcs so please bare with me. 

 

Budget (including currency): £1000

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Davinci Resolve / Fusion / handbreak 

Other details 

CPU X 2 E5-2698 V3 16 core 32 thread (£120 each CPU score over 19,000)

2x 64gb DDR 4 2400mhz 1 kit for each CPU

I see China LGA 2011 motherboards on eBay for about £130.  With 2x nvme support and ddr4 support. 2 16 lane pcie.

""""

The motherboard I am unsure of as it has 2 CPU rail ports.     I have a 800w psu but only has 1 8 pin CPU rail 

 

"""

 

Basically my Ryzen 2700x is on its last legs and I need something for rendering 8k.  I use 2 rx580 8gb GPUs for the cashe rendering which work fine but I need to replace the machine.   It's had a hard life which is why I am looking at a duel CPU  Xeon set up. 

 

Looking I see the board just uses standard 2011 CPU coolers.  And can split the case fans on each header (  the board's ATX and I have a large case )

 

I am unsure about PSU.   It's not going to be on 24/7 so it's primary purpose is to use it as a desktop for editing on resolve. ( I am aware resolve can't use all the cores ) but I can't afford much after covid.  I can prob scrap £1000 together.

 

I know the GPUs are weak but they do chew through stuff and they are only used to create the render cashe.  I cannot really afford to replace them yet.  

 

I got loads of SSD  typically crucial mx500 drives as the machine will be entirely SSD based for speed.  (Scratch disk / render drive /  program drive )  

 

I just really stuck on the PSU as its for desktop / workstation use.  It won't ever see a single game as resolve and my plugins  are the only programs that will ever be used on this.   

 

Please could I get some advice on PSUs as the CPU rail sockets are at different ends of the motherboard.      

 

In my 2700x I have a CIT pro 800w PSU 80 plus  to be fair it's been perfect and I run long full CPU loads when rendering for hours at a time.  ( Some times days )

 

I just need an affordable PSU that can run 2 X 4+4  CPU rails and be ATX standard.   Without the blade server noise.  

 

Work dried up during covid and I finally got some through but I don't have a rig to push 8k renders through  and the 2700x is now thermally throttling.  As the CPU speed is all over the place. 

 

 

 

Thanks 

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, Too old 4 this said:

 

Basically my Ryzen 2700x is on its last legs and I need something for rendering 8k.  I use 2 rx580 8gb GPUs for the cashe rendering which work fine but I need to replace the machine.   It's had a hard life which is why I am looking at a duel CPU  Xeon set up. 

What is the cpu and gpu usage you see when rendering? What is vram usage?

 

 

 

Id really avoid those dual 2011 xeons here. Id just get a faster am4 chip like a 3900x/5950x. Those will be much faster than dual xeons for almost all uses, and then you can keep your same rame and psu too. And you don't get the numa issues either. And lots of programs like the much faster single threaded speed. Most video encoding doesn't scale well to that many cores.

 

[Too old 4 this]

Yeah I saw the 3900x however it's CPU score was 24000.  I don't know much about pcs  so I thought duel xeons would give double that.  Glad I asked now. 

 

The 2700x can drop as low as 70% on a render and has been as low as 50%.  Vram useage is just the cashe   I don't use the GPUs to render out the footage just cashe all the transitions colour grades or any fusion stuff.   Native or x264 gives a higher quality than the AMD acf vce.   So the extra time is worth it.  

 

I took it to a shop and had them re thermal paste everything but I think the 2700x is burnt out.  

 

As much as I would love a 5950x I don't think my budget will stretch that far. I did consider running proxmox and running it in a VM.   

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, Too old 4 this said:

Yeah I saw the 3900x however it's CPU score was 24000.  I don't know much about pcs  so I thought duel xeons would give double that.  Glad I asked now. 

Don't look at those cpus scores, they really don't applyfor things like video editing that doesn't scales to all those cores perfectly.

 

7 minutes ago, Too old 4 this said:

The 2700x can drop as low as 70% on a render and has been as low as 50%

Then the xeons are likely not going to help or do worse as it seems single thread limited

 

What gpu usage are you seeing? resolve loves using cpu.

 

8 minutes ago, Too old 4 this said:

I took it to a shop and had them re thermal paste everything but I think the 2700x is burnt out.  

 

What  do you mean by burnt  out? Cpus rarely die like that.

 

9 minutes ago, Too old 4 this said:

As much as I would love a 5950x I don't think my budget will stretch that far. I did consider running proxmox and running it in a VM.   

The 5950x should be in the budget you listed here.

 

How would you use a vm? seems like it would just slow it down here.

[Too old 4 this]

Sorry for the late reply.   Fell asleep. 

 

I got 2 RX 580 8gb I use to create cashe.   I don't render out with them just  use them for the colour grade sections and to be fair they create the cashe pretty fast.   It creates the cashe at about 80% gpu useage. 

 

 

What I mean by burnt out is I think due to all the long renders.   Some have been 2hours of footage   it used to peg at 100% and just stay there. Now it's all over the place. I thought CPU drop on %  was the cpu throttling out. 

 

 

 

In a vm.  I was going to just throw a pcie Passthrough for the GPUs and pass through the SSD to the VM   assign  say  30 threads on 1 CPU.   And have 2 windows 10 environments.     One on each CPU.  I pay for resolve so the other CPU could be used for rendering only.   

 

Resolve really doesn't like no machine which I typically use to access machines.  

 

I tend to edit when out in the evening. At first it was fine but the 17.3 update but then it went funny.     It was working fine on a fire HD with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.     

I have a raspi pi running postgresql for the database share.   I typically used pivpn to access the network at home.  

 

 

[Kilrah]

2 minutes ago, Too old 4 this said:

What I mean by burnt out is I think due to all the long renders.   Some have been 2hours of footage   it used to peg at 100% and just stay there. Now it's all over the place.

You can have a CPU running 100% for years, it won't care. 

 

If you think it's throttling check the temperatures, as long as it's cool enough it won't. If it was actually broken it'd crash, not throttle more.

[Too old 4 this]

Really confused on the way forward now.  

 

Had a look at server ATX PSU and none of them have 2x 4+4.  So how are these boards even powered 

[Kilrah]

Higher wattage standard ATX PSUs will have 2 cables.

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, Too old 4 this said:

I got 2 RX 580 8gb I use to create cashe.   I don't render out with them just  use them for the colour grade sections and to be fair they create the cashe pretty fast.   It creates the cashe at about 80% gpu useage. 

 

That might be your limit performance wise, not the cpu. Id probalby try to get a faster gpu if you can.

 

7 hours ago, Too old 4 this said:

What I mean by burnt out is I think due to all the long renders.   Some have been 2hours of footage   it used to peg at 100% and just stay there. Now it's all over the place. I thought CPU drop on %  was the cpu throttling out. 

 

 

That won't hurt the cpu at all, there made to be ran at near 100% all the time.

 

7 hours ago, Too old 4 this said:

n a vm.  I was going to just throw a pcie Passthrough for the GPUs and pass through the SSD to the VM   assign  say  30 threads on 1 CPU.   And have 2 windows 10 environments.     One on each CPU.  I pay for resolve so the other CPU could be used for rendering only.   

 

Why run a vm? If you need 2 users at one id run multipoint software, but I don't see the point of a vm here.

 

28 minutes ago, Too old 4 this said:

Really confused on the way forward now.  

 

Had a look at server ATX PSU and none of them have 2x 4+4.  So how are these boards even powered 

Id just get faster gpu like a 3070 here, and a faster cpu like a 3900x. The dual xeons will likely be slower for your usecse here.

[Too old 4 this]

Ok 5950x was £650 on amazon. So ordered that. 

 

The GPUs I would have preferred to replace if 1660tis were still £250.  Appears i am as stuck as gamers on gpu front and I don't fancy paying those prices.      I don't render out on the gpu.  I use native x264.  Same with handbreak it gives a better quality which I am starting to think only I notice lol so may not bother with.    I was using the rx580s to just create the cashe on transitions  colour grades and fusion / render in place stuff on resolve.    They fly doing this I cannot grumble.  

 

I grabbed a b550 motherboard as well.   As it's the same am4 socket. £80.

So I can try the 2700x in that to see if it is indeed the cpu that is broken.   

 

Thanks for your help on this.   

 

The reason I would have thrown proxmox on the build is because with studio I could have remote rendered on a different VM and carried on editing.   I could have just used a cheap pc  to RDP / no machine / parsec to the VMS and edited from there as my postgresql is dedicated on the network. So I only had to connect up resolve to the network database and all my projects are available in both the editing vm and the render VM.    

 

With timescales I don't really have the luxury of playing basketball and messing about in render.  I have to keep working or I won't make enough to cover rent and bills.  

 

I been using resolve since 13 on the dongle system which I have 4 dongles I carry one with me everywhere incase I get the luxury of a client having a copy of resolve.   Or I VPN back to the house and use my kindle fire and RDP to the machine.  As I never really got on with laptops.    In meetings  they may ask for a render and it's been far quicker to use the Kindle RDP and run the render on the home desktop  than a laptop locally.    I can just pop the output on the Nas which is attached to nextcloud SMB.  

 

Typically only 720p are used in that use case as they don't need anything better than that in those situations.  

 

There isn't much money banging about in edit editing at the moment and I didn't get to do much the entire covid lockdown  so had to live on savings hence why I was trying to do all this cheap.