GPU for video editing

[Trionth]

What GPU should I look in to buying for a video editing rig? I was going to throw a 980 ti in, but we need to cut some costs.

 

My client (brother in law) uses the following:

Aftereffects

Premiere Pro

Unity 3D

 

He is also maybe getting in to game design (so he says.) Here is the current build:

 

The goal is to make this as strong or stronger as the Mac Pro (he was going to spend $4,500 on it, so near top of the [old] parts line)

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/XCzvzy
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/XCzvzy/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor  ($351.98 @ Newegg) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($60.00 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Asus X99-A/USB 3.1 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($263.98 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($157.99 @ Adorama) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($149.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($159.88 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($159.88 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB FTW ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($639.99 @ Amazon) 
Case: Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 5 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($125.46 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($119.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $2171.14

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-18 12:48 EDT-0400

 

Originally the goal was 64 GB Ram and two 4k monitors. Decided to halve the RAM and need to find cheaper non-4k monitors (any suggestions?)

 

This build needs to come in around $2200 with monitors.

[ALwin]

When you say he wants a rig for video editing... what sort of work does he do?  I see a lot of people asking on this forum about configuring a computer for video editing, but most of them work with video as a hobby. 

 

If he is a professional video editor, what field of video does he work with?  Does he work a lot with color grading?  Does he work in editing news videos?  Is he just a hobbyist?

 

You can probably get away with not using the Hitachi Deskstar NAS HDDs.

[Trionth]

7 minutes ago, ALwin said:

When you say he wants a rig for video editing... what sort of work does he do?  I see a lot of people asking on this forum about configuring a computer for video editing, but most of them work with video as a hobby.  If he is a professional video editor, what field of video does he work with?  Does he work a lot with color grading?  Does he work in editing news videos?  Is he just a hobbyist?

 

You can probably get away with not using the Hitachi Deskstar NAS HDDs.

His business is video editing, I dont know much about it. Here is a demo reel he has: 

 

 

Guess its a lot of local advertising stuff. He is working more and more in 4k he says too so he needs that 8TB of storage (currently has 4TB full now of footage.) I need to get a backup solution for him still as well, but I'm still researching that. Those Hitachi drives were much cheaper than what I usually use (WD Black) and Ive heard good things about them. A WD Black 2TB is the same price as those 4TB Hitachi. 

[JulesTKirk]

If he does need 2 4k monitors then a 980ti sounds pretty decent, altough you could save money by going to a lower priced motherboard, as detailed in some videos of LTT and based on my experience an Asus X99 will not increase "performances" , although it does have usb 3.1 but you can probably get a lower end motherboard that is still doing RAID (I assumed you were going to put the 2 hitachi drives in RAID 5) and add a 3.1 Card. Also yeah Hitachi NAS HDD? That's Odd, just go with 2 Seagate desktop drives it'll be a lot cheaper. But 4k screens are expensive so... having 2 monitors + 980ti, the i7 etc... May not be possible to get under 2200$ but you can certainly cut down on the price of the build.

 

Also the MasterCase Pro 5 is a perfect case, but if the goal really is to cut down pricing well... Theres probably good cases cheaper than that, and judging by the hardware and what the use will be, you probably don't need the flexibility the of the MC Pro 5

[Trionth]

6 minutes ago, JulesTKirk said:

If he does need 2 4k monitors then a 980ti sounds pretty decent, altough you could save money by going to a lower priced motherboard, as detailed in some videos of LTT and based on my experience an Asus X99 will not increase "performances" , although it does have usb 3.1 but you can probably get a lower end motherboard that is still doing RAID (I assumed you were going to put the 2 hitachi drives in RAID 5) and add a 3.1 Card. Also yeah Hitachi NAS HDD? That's Odd, just go with 2 Seagate desktop drives it'll be a lot cheaper. But 4k screens are expensive so... having 2 monitors + 980ti, the i7 etc... May not be possible to get under 2200$ but you can certainly cut down on the price of the build

I'll cut down on the drives then. I wasn't sure if setting the HDDs to raid 5 was a good idea or not. Still fairly new, Ive only built a couple PCs. He doesnt HAVE to have 4k monitors I'm going to try and find some cheaper temporary monitors. Any recommendations on a different motherboard? I like Asus BIOS (maybe Im just used to it)

 

Edit: All the Seagate 4TB drives I'm finding are at or over $200.

[ALwin]

Even if he works with 4K, I don't think he needs two 4K monitors.  Get one 4K monitor for previewing the 4K footage during editing, and have a smaller resolution monitor on the side to view all the rest of Adobe Premiere/After Effects control panels.

 

If your brother in law also needs to color correct and color grade videos, he might want to think about the color gamut supported by a monitor.

 

I work with 4K footage on a rMBP, and my camera records in extremely high bit rates that single 30 minute 4K video from the camera comes out as file (total) that is over 120GB.

 

Also you might want to read this article and go check out discussions on places like Create Cow.  CUDA is not everything.

http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2011/02/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro.html

[Trionth]

2 minutes ago, ALwin said:

Even if he works with 4K, I don't think he needs two 4K monitors.  Get one 4K monitor for previewing the 4K footage during editing, and have a smaller resolution monitor on the side to view all the rest of Adobe Premiere/After Effects control panels.

 

If your brother in law also needs to color correct and color grade videos, he might want to think about the color gamut supported by a monitor.

 

I work with 4K footage on a rMBP, and my camera records in extremely high bit rates that single 30 minute 4K video from the camera comes out as file (total) that is over 120GB.

 

Also you might want to read this article and go check out discussions on places like Create Cow.  CUDA is not everything.

http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2011/02/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro.html

Thanks for the link, I'll use it to try and make a decision on the video card.

 

I agree with the 4k monitor suggestions.

 

Since you work in stuff like this, what is your current set-up storage/backup wise? I've never worked with files this large so its a bit daunting to find a fast storage and reliable backup solution that economical.

[JulesTKirk]

I agree, he should get a color graded 4k monitor and some other "generic" 1080p monitor from a reputable brand. As for the motherboard I actually just checked the prices and actually they check out, they could be some cheaper options at Gigabyte and AsRock but not by much, we're talking about a 50$ difference. You can check out the: Gigabyte GA-X99-SLI , the MSI X99 RAIDER or ASRock X99 Extreme4. But maybe you could go down to something simpler like a i7 4770k CPU, which means a 1150 socket and motherboard prices way smaller. (I got a 4770k for editing + 970 and it runs smoothly) Mobos with a 1150 could be around 150$ I believe, any brand will do just make sure it supports RAID and has a lot of PCI-E expansions as long as front USB 3.0 connector etc...

 

[ALwin]

2 minutes ago, TyrelOlsen said:

snip

I work off a 2TB USB 3.0 drive for active projects and archive/backup stuff onto a Synology NAS and external drives.

[ALwin]

2 minutes ago, JulesTKirk said:

snip

Even a 1440p or 1080p resolution monitor is sufficient to work with 4K video.  The 4K resolution is mainly to "pixel-peep".

[JulesTKirk]

1 minute ago, ALwin said:

I work off a 2TB USB 3.0 drive for active projects and archive/backup stuff onto a Synology NAS and external drives.

Similar setup over here, I'd suggest some kind of 4xHDD nas, depending on what mode you'll be setting it up you may not need "NAS" or "Server" drives. You can buy 2 of theses and use "Bittorent Sync" to externalize one of the two (you'll have it mirrored)

[Trionth]

2 minutes ago, JulesTKirk said:

I agree, he should get a color graded 4k monitor and some other "generic" 1080p monitor from a reputable brand. As for the motherboard I actually just checked the prices and actually they check out, they could be some cheaper options at Gigabyte and AsRock but not by much, we're talking about a 50$ difference. You can check out the: Gigabyte GA-X99-SLI , the MSI X99 RAIDER or ASRock X99 Extreme4. But maybe you could go down to something simpler like a i7 4770k CPU, which means a 1150 socket and motherboard prices way smaller. (I got a 4770k for editing + 970 and it runs smoothly) Mobos with a 1150 could be around 150$ I believe, any brand will do just make sure it supports RAID and has a lot of PCI-E expansions as long as front USB 3.0 connector etc...

 

I did consider going with a different socket, but I think this will give him the most room for expansions/upgrades once he has the money. I'm curious if theres much of a difference in render time between the 4770k (or 4790k) and the 5820k.

[ALwin]

8 minutes ago, TyrelOlsen said:

snip

Assuming same GPU and everything else similarly configured, the 6-core CPU might save him a few extra minutes compared to a 4-core CPU.  Don't expect a rendering job that takes 30 minutes to suddenly just take 1 minute on a the higher core CPU.

 

EDIT:

Her is my experience with using a GPU with a large number of CUDA cores for video editing.

• Rendering times don't always improve, because not every video effect applied to the video footage during edit supports GPU acceleration.  The CPU is more often used.
• Where GPU plays a better role is when scrubbing the video in the timeline.  That's where you will see a noticeable difference.

Also I recommend you do a bit of research on what nVidia does with drivers for GeForce, Quadro and Tesla GPUs.  GeForce and Quadros share GPU chipsets and architectures, but nVidia optimizes/cripples what the GPU can do based on what the cards are marketed for.

[JulesTKirk]

2 minutes ago, TyrelOlsen said:

I did consider going with a different socket, but I think this will give him the most room for expansions/upgrades once he has the money. I'm curious if theres much of a difference in render time between the 4770k (or 4790k) and the 5820k.

I'm not sure, I know the newer sockets allow for DDR4 memory at higher speeds and have more cores so yes it would be faster but HOW much, I do not know, there should be some benchmarks out there I believe

[Trionth]

Just now, ALwin said:

Assuming same GPU and everything else similarly configured, the 6-core CPU might save him a few extra minutes compared to a 4-core CPU.  Don't expect a rendering job that takes 30 minutes to suddenly just take 1 minute on a the higher core CPU.

 

Not that big of a difference huh... Well, time to work up a new build!

[JulesTKirk]

1 minute ago, TyrelOlsen said:

 

Not that big of a difference huh... Well, time to work up a new build!

Share your new part list once you're done

Also, look up the Synology DiskStation DS416 for the NAS. This one has 2 ethernet ports for faster with link aggregation (you'll have to get him a switch than can be managed tho)

[ALwin]

I edited my last comment, regarding GPU performance in video editing.

[Trionth]

So what about a i7 6700k. Cheaper CPU, cheaper mobo, still allows DDR4 RAM up to 64 GB. Only thing I would miss out on is 2 processing cores and the option to upgrade to the 8 core or (if he ever got rich, the xeon) but if he ever gets that kind of money he can probably build a whole new rig.

 

I'll post the new build in a moment.

[JulesTKirk]

2 minutes ago, TyrelOlsen said:

So what about a i7 6700k. Cheaper CPU, cheaper mobo, still allows DDR4 RAM up to 64 GB. Only thing I would miss out on is 2 processing cores and the option to upgrade to the 8 core or (if he ever got rich, the xeon) but if he ever gets that kind of money he can probably build a whole new rig.

 

I'll post the new build in a moment.

I'm terribly unfamiliar with the Skylakes, which is why I didn't suggest. But i've looked it up and seems like a good option 

[Trionth]

5 minutes ago, JulesTKirk said:

I'm terribly unfamiliar with the Skylakes, which is why I didn't suggest. But i've looked it up and seems like a good option 

I don't have much experience with them either, but I haven't seen anything bad about them. My own personal PC is still using an i7 2600 still lol, so I dont ever really feel bad taking a chance on intel.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/FJTZgs
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/FJTZgs/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($369.95 @ B&H) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($60.00 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($142.98 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($149.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($149.89 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($159.88 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($159.88 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB FTW ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($639.99 @ Amazon) 
Case: Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 5 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($125.46 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($119.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $2078.01

 

This only saves me around $100. Maybe it would be best to have a smaller internal storage and have him work on projects from a usb 3.1 or thunderbolt external. Still going to have to pay for the drives though... The struggle. 

 

I went dual channel 16gb ram so he can upgrade later, but thinking about it, its better to buy ram kits together for optimal compatibility right? Maybe I should just populate all 4 slots with a less expensive 4x8GB kit.

 

The GPU is still the biggest money sink. Is it overkill? From reading that article it would seem so.

[JulesTKirk]

Well the 4770k isn't a lot cheaper but if it can save you money... Also heres the link for the seagate drives i've mentionned: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=seagate+4tb&N=-1&isNodeId=1

 

And a link to a MUCH cheaper corsair case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139058&ignorebbr=1

 

It's indeed best to buy ram kits together, don't bother populating all slots, if he wants to upgrade you'll have to replace everything and have leftover dimms

[Trionth]

7 minutes ago, JulesTKirk said:

Well the 4770k isn't a lot cheaper but if it can save you money... Also heres the link for the seagate drives i've mentionned: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=seagate+4tb&N=-1&isNodeId=1

 

And a link to a MUCH cheaper corsair case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139058&ignorebbr=1

 

It's indeed best to buy ram kits together, don't bother populating all slots, if he wants to upgrade you'll have to replace everything and have leftover dimms

Forgot I put a case on there... Ouch. Thank you for the link to those seagate drives!

 

Its settled then: keep the 980 ti!

[JulesTKirk]

You're very welcome

Next step would be... build log? haha

[done12many2]

25 minutes ago, TyrelOlsen said:

So what about a i7 6700k. Cheaper CPU, cheaper mobo, still allows DDR4 RAM up to 64 GB. Only thing I would miss out on is 2 processing cores and the option to upgrade to the 8 core or (if he ever got rich, the xeon) but if he ever gets that kind of money he can probably build a whole new rig.

 

I'll post the new build in a moment.

If you are considering a drop to the 6700k you might want to consider going the 4790k route.  The boards are very inexpensive and the drop to DDR3 will have little impact.

 

I personally think that you should stay with the x99/5820k build, but address cost cuts in areas that you can afford to do.  That platform will carry your brother a long ways in his type of work.  

 

I absolutely agree with ALwin on the Synology NAS units.  They are top notch, but that too should come at a later time.

[Trionth]

Just now, JulesTKirk said:

You're very welcome

Next step would be... build log? haha

Would people even care about something like that?

 

I AM building a skylake i7 Radeon R9 Fury inside a fat fifty ammo can. I will definitely take pictures and post that when its finished. $$ is an issue there, I don't have the disposable income my bro-in-law does.