Good graphics cards?

[Electrifly]

Budget (including currency): $2000

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: ProPresenter 7

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

As of now:

Ryzen 7 5800X

Gigabyte B550M DS3H micro atx am4 board (i realize a BIOS update may be necessary)

Cosair Vengeance LPX 16 GB Ram

Western Digital Blue 500 GB M.2 SSD

THE BIG THING: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6 gb gaming x

 

Basically I am making a PC for my church. We are trying to get this pc to have many different outputs (a stage display, projector display, etc.) I think this is all good but I just wanted to make sure these parts would work for having many outputs but still powerful enough to have good graphics. Any recommendations for changes to help?

 

Also I need to get an additional video card for SDI outputs. I really do not know how those work. Does anyone know what I need to get to have the PC have 4 SDI outputs?

 

 

[-rascal-]

4 minutes ago, Electrifly said:

Budget (including currency): $2000

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: ProPresenter 7

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

As of now:

Ryzen 7 5800X

Gigabyte B550M DS3H micro atx am4 board (i realize a BIOS update may be necessary)

Cosair Vengeance LPX 16 GB Ram

Western Digital Blue 500 GB M.2 SSD

THE BIG THING: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6 gb gaming x

 

Basically I am making a PC for my church. We are trying to get this pc to have many different outputs (a stage display, projector display, etc.) I think this is all good but I just wanted to make sure these parts would work for having many outputs but still powerful enough to have good graphics. Any recommendations for changes to help?

 

Also I need to get an additional video card for SDI outputs. I really do not know how those work. Does anyone know what I need to get to have the PC have 4 SDI outputs?

 

 

 

Getting a Ryzen 5800X is overkill for a PC mainly used for stage displays / projector displays / multiple monitor or TV outputs.

There is no need for a 8-core 16-thread CPU, at all.

Something like a Ryzen 5600X / 3600X / 3600 would probably even overkill, too.

I'd recommend that you drop the 5800X for a 5600X / 3600X / 3600, or even a 3300X.

 

It doesn't take much GPU power to output video / movie / photos / powerpoint presentation across multiple monitors.

You could get away with iGPU / integrated graphics .... if it can support the #-number of displays and types of video output that you need.

 

A single "standard" GPU, regardless of AMD or nVidia, can provide up to 3 display outputs at a time.

[emosun]

If youre just sending the same signal out to everything then you can just use almost any computer hooked up to whatever adapters you need for your projectors and displays. There more than likely will not be any sort of 3d hardware acceleration needed for a church like setting.

[Electrifly]

Ok so I made some edits. I do still want to make sure it is powerful because I don't know what kind of upgrades we may need for the future.

 

I moved to a Ryzen 5 3600 processor

MSI Mag B550 Tomahawk motherboard

And an EVGA GTX 1650 G6

 

Are these parts still good enough to meet the requirements? Also I am still unsure how to get the SDI outputs on the PC. Is there a separate video card I need?

[tim0901]

This really depends on exactly what you're trying to project.

 

The ProPresenter 7 website gives the following recommendation for specs:

 

Spoiler

Quote

Recommendations

 

GPU: If you are outputting to more than 4 HD screens, you should have a dedicated (meaning, not integrated) GPU.
Video compression: H264 or H265 (HEVC) at 30mbps or less for HD, 50mbps for 4K; For videos with Alpha channels, ProRes 4444 is recommended.

 

Sample Configurations

 

Here are some recommendations for typical outputs As always, you can download the software at no charge to test performance on any computer.

 

HD (720p or 1080i); 1 Output (with or without Alpha Key), 1 HD Stage Display

 

• MacOS: Any Intel based Mac made since 2015 should be able to accomplish this (Intel core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM)
• Windows 10: Intel i3 processor (or equivalent AMD processor) or better

 

One 4k60 (or Four 1080p60) Graphics Outputs:

 

• MacOS: iMac or MacBook Pro with an i7 or i9 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a dedicated GPU
• Windows 10: Intel i7 or i9 processor (or equivalent AMD processor) or better; 16 GB of RAM, a dedicated GPU with 4GB of VRAM

 

These are the minimum specifications we’d ever suggest running ProPresenter at. We recommend better hardware for the ideal experience based on how you plan to use ProPresenter.

 

Which suggests that this software is doing far more than a simple powerpoint presentation does - powerpoint doesn't need 16GB of RAM to display at 4k.

 

If you only want to project the same thing to multiple places at 1080p or lower, something like a HDMI splitter would likely allow you to simplify your PC dramatically - likely including dropping the dGPU - but this unfortunately takes mainline Ryzen out of the options. Something like a Ryzen APU would likelybe suitable (if you can find one at a sensible price) but otherwise you may have to go Intel - their 11th gen offerings are likely going to see significant price reductions soon as well.

 

I would be tempted to try using an iGPU solution anyway, with the idea of purchasing a dedicated GPU later should you run into any problems. Spending $1000 on a GPU that you may not even need doesn't sound like the best use of church money to me.

[Electrifly]

Ok so I did end up moving to an Intel Core i7 9700k which does have the integrated graphics (Intel UHD Graphics 630) and got rid of the GTX 1650 G6. 

And niw with Propresenter 7 would it be best to keep the 16 GB of RAM or can I get away with 8 GB?

 

 

[Electrifly]

I'm sorry I should have mentioned this earlier. Since I am less educated in the ways of PC building, do you think that what I have now would be better than a Mac Mini? (That is what we are upgrading from)

 

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

[tim0901]

Just now, Electrifly said:

I'm sorry I should have mentioned this earlier. Since I am less educated in the ways of PC building, do you think that what I have now would be better than a Mac Mini? (That is what we are upgrading from)

 

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

Do you know which Mac mini? How old is it?

[Electrifly]

It is the M1 Mac Mini I believe and it is quite a few years old. I have been working on the tech team for years and I think it is still the same computer

[tim0901]

1 minute ago, Electrifly said:

It is the M1 Mac Mini I believe and it is quite a few years old. I have been working on the tech team for years and I think it is still the same computer

The M1 Mac Mini was only released in November of last year, so if it's quite a few years old then it must be an Intel based model. They look basically identical, the 'M1' in the name refers to the CPU inside it.

 

In which case yes, your proposed system would be a very significant upgrade. But so would a modern Mac Mini - even the $699 base model. It's very possible that you may have a far smoother time by simply buying a new Mac Mini, given that everything is already part of the Mac ecosystem - there are people online saying that they have a very good experience with it.

 

I would probably go for 16GB of RAM on either system to be safe though.

[Quackers101]

If you have mac, do you still want to be using macOS?

Then you could just get one of the newer laptops? (around to get released)

But if you want to game or other things, then sure, a windows PC could be nice.

 

Is it just to run some projects to be shown in church and nothing more? also most systems lean towards 16 GB of memory compared to 8 but 8 GB can still work fine (less if you do video editing?). Also having the storage you need for your tasks.

[Electrifly]

If we are getting a new pc then we will probably go with windows. But if we go to the upgrade Mac Mini obviosuly macOS then.

 

We are also streaming the service so I don't know if that means I need to upgrade what I have been working on.

[Electrifly]

7 minutes ago, tim0901 said:

The M1 Mac Mini was only released in November of last year, so if it's quite a few years old then it must be an Intel based model. They look basically identical, the 'M1' in the name refers to the CPU inside it.

 

In which case yes, your proposed system would be a very significant upgrade. But so would a modern Mac Mini - even the $699 base model. It's very possible that you may have a far smoother time by simply buying a new Mac Mini, given that everything is already part of the Mac ecosystem - there are people online saying that they have a very good experience with it.

 

I would probably go for 16GB of RAM on either system to be safe though.

Let me just make sure I got this all right. If we have the older Mac Mini model it would be best to just get the newer one? And if we have the newer one then the PC I have works fine.

 

Intel Core i7 9700K

ASRock B365 Phantom Gaming

Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB Ram

Western Digital Blue 500 GB Ssd

Phanteks Eclipse P400A

EVGA BQ Semi Modular 600 W PSU

[BondiBlue]

24 minutes ago, Electrifly said:

It is the M1 Mac Mini I believe and it is quite a few years old. I have been working on the tech team for years and I think it is still the same computer

If it's the M1 Mac mini then it's not even a year old yet. There is no newer model of Mac mini. 

 

54 minutes ago, tim0901 said:

It is the M1 Mac Mini I believe and it is quite a few years old. I have been working on the tech team for years and I think it is still the same computer

I've used ProPresenter in the past on a Core i7-2600K rig with a Radeon HD 6870 1GB, and it had zero issues running 3 separate 1080p displays. Of course, it depends on what all you're doing within the software, but you generally don't need anything too crazy.

[tim0901]

1 minute ago, Electrifly said:

Let me just make sure I got this all right. If we have the older Mac Mini model it would be best to just get the newer one? And if we have the newer one then the PC I have works fine.

 

Intel Core i7 9700K

ASRock B365 Phantom Gaming

Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB Ram

Western Digital Blue 500 GB Ssd

Phanteks Eclipse P400A

EVGA BQ Semi Modular 600 W PSU

Pretty much yeah

 

If you have an older Mac Mini (you should be able to find the exact model in the About This Mac menu) then my suggestion would be to by buy a new Mac Mini and see if it is suitable for your needs. If you're in the US and buy it from the Apple store, then you should have 14 days from the date of purchase to evaluate whether it is suitable for your needs (please confirm this is the case in your state - I'm not American but this page states that this is the case).

 

If the Mac can't do what you need then take it back, get a refund and build a new PC.

 

This is all assuming that you only want to display a single graphic on multiple screens though. HDMI splitters mirror the content to each display and cannot be used to run different things on each. If you need more, you will need a PC with a dedicated GPU purely for the HDMI ports - a modern Mac Mini will not be suitable either as they can only support up to two different displays (one of which must be adapted from USB-C).

[tim0901]

3 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

I've used ProPresenter in the past on a Core i7-2600K rig with a Radeon HD 6870 1GB, and it had zero issues running 3 separate 1080p displays. Of course, it depends on what all you're doing within the software, but you generally don't need anything too crazy.

Yeah very much depends on what you're doing with it from what I've seen online. Especially if you're dealing with incoming video signals then your CPU usage will go through the roof.

 

Livestreaming the presentation as OP wishes to do will add a not-insignificant load on top though.

[Electrifly]

On 11/5/2021 at 10:13 PM, tim0901 said:

Do you know which Mac mini? How old is it?

I found out today we have a late 2015 Mac Mini model and a late 2012 model. We decided we were not going to upgrade to the M1 because it doesn't meet the requirements we need for outputs and all. We decided to go the PC route. By going with the PC we can solve our output issue easily by getting an sdi card

Our tech team director thinks we should have a dGPU because we have to run a very powerful program with multiple outputs. Which would be a good starting place?