Blackmagic Forum

Hello, I've set up the following PC at my local PC pusher's store:

(Tower ) Corsair Obsidian 500D Tempered Mid Tower
(Power ) Corsair RM1000x 1000W PSU
(CPU ) AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX Processor
(Cooling ) Deepcool Castle 280 RGB CPU Cooler
(GPU ) ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Turbo
(Motherboard) Gigabyte X399 DESIGNARE EX, Socket-TR4
(RAM ) HyperX Fury DDR4 2666MHz 32GB x2
(OS Drive ) Samsung PM981 SSD 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD

I did not go for the ThreadRipper 2990 due to it adding nearly 1500$ to the bill.

I've checked that the motherboard can be expanded with an additional 64GB of RAM (for a total of 128GB) if that becomes my bottleneck. There is also room for additional 2080ti cards if I go that path.

I already have a Samsung HD, 1TB for cache folders. I do all of my editing on my nas in a 1GB network. So far, I've had no issues with that (I typically edit footage from a Sony A7R mk3 + Mavic Pro drone, both 4k.

This sets me back with around $4,900. Based on the feedback I got from you guys, I've opted to go with AMD Threadripper as opposed to Intel's CPU's this time.

Would this be a thumbs up, or do you see any problems with my choice?

Threadripper 3 along with the new motherboard socket and PCI-e4 is due end of November.

You might save a few dollars waiting for Black Friday on Threadripper 2, or opt for the new V.3.

The new socket is not forward or backward compatible apparently.

3950x + RadeonVII + AsRock X570 creator + 2x32GB + the rest... is faster cheaper and more flexible.
A second GPU won't bring you much, the 2970wx is great under Linux but not under Windows(windows can't really handle the 4 NUMA nodes).

The 3950x will be release at the end of november 2019.

If you're going for that much system RAM, perhaps you're using Fusion as well. I've read that Fusion doesn't scale that well to multiple processors making per-core performance an important factor. Have you looked at that?

MishaEngel wrote:3950x + RadeonVII + AsRock X570 creator + 2x32GB + the rest... is faster cheaper and more flexible.
A second GPU won't bring you much, the 2970wx is great under Linux but not under Windows(windows can't really handle the 4 NUMA nodes).

The 3950x will be release at the end of november 2019.

Likely faster than Threadripper 2, but not likely faster than 3. Also less flexible, due to far fewer PCI-e lanes, slots, etc. Dual vs Quad channel RAM, it does help in high throughput scenarios.

Dual GPUs is a huge speed up with NR and compositing. Also the NUMA architecture has been revamped for TR3. It will be worth reading some reviews first.

David Williams wrote:

MishaEngel wrote:3950x + RadeonVII + AsRock X570 creator + 2x32GB + the rest... is faster cheaper and more flexible.
A second GPU won't bring you much, the 2970wx is great under Linux but not under Windows(windows can't really handle the 4 NUMA nodes).

The 3950x will be release at the end of november 2019.

Likely faster than Threadripper 2, but not likely faster than 3. Also less flexible, due to far fewer PCI-e lanes, slots, etc. Dual vs Quad channel RAM, it does help in high throughput scenarios.

Dual GPUs is a huge speed up with NR and compositing. Also the NUMA architecture has been revamped for TR3. It will be worth reading some reviews first.

Price is also an issue for many of us. TR3 sounds great but they don't come cheap and dual memory is fast enough with the 16c/32t 3950x thanks to the amount of level2+3 cache.
The MB has 2x ThunderBolt 3 and 10G ethernet 2x M2 slots, 8x sata(JBOD, raid0,1-10) and 4 PCIe lanes left for a decklink card, you won't need more for multi stream 4k editing.
Check the board here https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570%20Creator/index.asp, it's good value for money(~$500) IMO.

And you can use it as a hackintosh.

MishaEngel wrote:

David Williams wrote:

MishaEngel wrote:3950x + RadeonVII + AsRock X570 creator + 2x32GB + the rest... is faster cheaper and more flexible.
A second GPU won't bring you much, the 2970wx is great under Linux but not under Windows(windows can't really handle the 4 NUMA nodes).

The 3950x will be release at the end of november 2019.

Likely faster than Threadripper 2, but not likely faster than 3. Also less flexible, due to far fewer PCI-e lanes, slots, etc. Dual vs Quad channel RAM, it does help in high throughput scenarios.

Dual GPUs is a huge speed up with NR and compositing. Also the NUMA architecture has been revamped for TR3. It will be worth reading some reviews first.

Price is also an issue for many of us. TR3 sounds great but they don't come cheap and dual memory is fast enough with the 16c/32t 3950x thanks to the amount of level2+3 cache.
The MB has 2x ThunderBolt 3 and 10G ethernet 2x M2 slots, 8x sata(JBOD, raid0,1-10) and 4 PCIe lanes left for a decklink card, you won't need more for multi stream 4k editing.
Check the board here https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570%20Creator/index.asp, it's good value for money(~$500) IMO.

And you can use it as a hackintosh.

If you're on a tighter budget, sure, but he's already specc'ed TR2 and 2080TI. And CPU cache is great for smaller, repetitive operations, but does nothing for sustained through put, which is what video is all about. I'd still recommend waiting for TR3.

That said, your option would work fine too for general edit/grade for UHD x264, if somewhat slower for heavy usage at higher resolutions and post processing.

I'm interested in the ASrock TRX40 Creator for a future build if TR3 looks to be worth updating too from my Gigabyte G7 + 1950X. ASrock are a solid brand.

David Williams wrote:If you're on a tighter budget, sure, but he's already specc'ed TR2 and 2080TI. And CPU cache is great for smaller, repetitive operations, but does nothing for sustained through put, which is what video is all about. I'd still recommend waiting for TR3.

That said, your option would work fine too for general edit/grade for UHD x264, if somewhat slower for heavy usage at higher resolutions and post processing.

I'm interested in the ASrock TRX40 Creator for a future build if TR3 looks to be worth updating too from my Gigabyte G7 + 1950X. ASrock are a solid brand.

44 GB/s effective(Max Bandwidth 47.68 GiB/s at 3200) is a lot of memory bandwidth and enough to feed 16c/32tr running at 4.5 GHz all-core(according to AMD). 8k BRAW 3:1 at 60 fps and 8k .R3D 5:1 at 25 fps will run in realtime on this CPU and GPU. It will eat UHD x264 for breakfast no matter the chroma sub. sampling.
To my knowledge no current TRX40 board supports TB3 and for the money saved you can buy a nice BMPCC4k or something else.

MishaEngel wrote:

David Williams wrote:If you're on a tighter budget, sure, but he's already specc'ed TR2 and 2080TI. And CPU cache is great for smaller, repetitive operations, but does nothing for sustained through put, which is what video is all about. I'd still recommend waiting for TR3.

That said, your option would work fine too for general edit/grade for UHD x264, if somewhat slower for heavy usage at higher resolutions and post processing.

I'm interested in the ASrock TRX40 Creator for a future build if TR3 looks to be worth updating too from my Gigabyte G7 + 1950X. ASrock are a solid brand.

44 GB/s effective(Max Bandwidth 47.68 GiB/s at 3200) is a lot of memory bandwidth and enough to feed 16c/32tr running at 4.5 GHz all-core(according to AMD). 8k BRAW 3:1 at 60 fps and 8k .R3D 5:1 at 25 fps will run in realtime on this CPU and GPU. It will eat UHD x264 for breakfast no matter the chroma sub. sampling.
To my knowledge no current TRX40 board supports TB3 and for the money saved you can buy a nice BMPCC4k or something else.

You can quote theoretical numbers till the cows come home. I have multiple systems, I test them. It makes a difference. It's a major reason for hearing people complain systems not peaking CPU and GPU while still being framerate limited, system buses are saturated. Data moves, roughly, drive>cpu>gpu>cpu>drive, both ways. Now add multiple streams for cross fades, composites, windows, etc. Current systems are often bus limited.

Thunderbolt means nothing to me? Never has, it's just an encapsulation protocol that other bundles current protocols into one for convenience, with extra overhead in hardware and cost. Handy for laptops perhaps, with limited area for ports. It's now it's self encapsulated into USB

Anyway, enjoy your new system when you build it.

I'll wait for the TR3, thanks for the headsup!