Resolve basic PC set up

Hello everyone,

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This is a revised PC from the one below. Can anyone advise me on this? I'm getting some HDDs for striping from a friend.
https://amzn.com/w/Z2CGY5N8BK81
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I recently purchased a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and am in the process of building a very basic PC to handle the workflow.

Up until this time, I've been doing a lot on my laptop, which had enough power for the H.264 workflow from my DSLR using Premiere or Sony Vegas. Even some After Effects. It seems that it has a hard time handling Davinci Resolve Lite. However, at my job, I have a very basic purpose built PC which I use daily for graphic design, video editing, and recently, I've been grading some Canon H.264 clips and some Pro Res clips in Davinci Resolve 12 Lite. So far, everything has been running very smoothly and the PC is handling it quite nicely. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to try out Raw on this PC in Davinci, but I do plan to soon.

I would like to share with you the specs of this PC, because I have a VERY small budget and this PC fits into my budget. At the moment, I can't really afford anything more than this. The way I see it is, is that I can upgrade later as my workflow becomes heavier. As of now, I don't have the financial means to anticipate buying a new camera and editing 4K RAW and rendering out feature length films, therefore I would not like to build an overkill system in the same anticipation.

Some background related to my needs: I make short films, but will not be using this PC on a daily basis as I have a full time job where an adequate PC is supplied to me. The most I will be doing with this computer is grading BMPCC Raw in Davinci Resolve and maybe roundtripping from an NLE like Premiere or Vegas. I rarely do any composting aside from VERY basic After Effects work. I go to school for graphic design and use Photoshop and Illustrator a lot, which are not very demanding.

This is similar to my work PC, and I would like to inquire to some people who have more knowledge of this subject. I have no technical experience with PCs and am very new to Davinci Resolve. Do you think this is a good starting point and I can build up as my workflow becomes heavier? This PC comes to about $1050. My only concerns is maybe a bigger power supply and maybe a bigger SSD. But like I said, I'm not very knowledgeable so I am open to suggestions, but keep in mind, my budget doesnt stretch too far past $1200, and I would like to save wherever I can. I apologize for the lengthy post, but I just wanted to make sure that people advising me got a good idea of what I need.

Get better gpu. Gtx 770 or better with 4g memory or higher. somekind of raid is good also. 3 Hdd in raid0. Dont buy any seagate 2Tb hdd.

Don't waste your money on the overpriced motherboard. You can get a lot cheaper one that works just as well.

Also you might want to look at going with the 1151 Boards (Skylake) rather than the 1150 Haswells as the Haswells are being phased out

Get better gpu. Gtx 770 or better with 4g memory or higher. somekind of raid is good also. 3 Hdd in raid0. Dont buy any seagate 2Tb hdd.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I've been thinking about that and I guess I'd like more GPU than what my work computer has. Unfortunately I'll have to try and save money elsewhere, but someone else suggested a cheaper motherboard.

Don't waste your money on the overpriced motherboard. You can get a lot cheaper one that works just as well.

Also you might want to look at going with the 1151 Boards (Skylake) rather than the 1150 Haswells as the Haswells are being phased out

Thanks! Any cheap, reliable motherboards in particular you can recommend. Kind of lost when it comes to hardware but trying to learn!

Before you spend $1200, you really do want to confirm that such a system will run R12 adequately. My guess is "no", particularly if you're working with Raw footage. It may also depend on how much tolerance you have for sluggish performance.

In any case, you are not following BMD recommendations for generic MB types, and won't be able to do so on your budget. Buyer beware.

Before you spend $1200, you really do want to confirm that such a system will run R12 adequately. My guess is "no", particularly if you're working with Raw footage. It may also depend on how much tolerance you have for sluggish performance.

In any case, you are not following BMD recommendations for generic MB types, and won't be able to do so on your budget. Buyer beware.

I've modeled this after my work PC which does run R12 with raw files and everything seems to work smoothly. I haven't worked with huge workloads, just some RAW files I've been taking as most of my work previously at my job was with H.264 Canon footage, but everything seems to work fine. Being new to PC hardware, I just wanted to see where I could spend more and where I could save money.

This is a new set up I made in Amazon. My roommate has some HDDs he is going to sell me cheap for striping. Could anyone advise? https://amzn.com/w/Z2CGY5N8BK81

In any case, you are not following BMD recommendations for generic MB types, and won't be able to do so on your budget. Buyer beware.

If you were to only go with the BM recommendations then you would be paying for overpriced equipment on the PC side of things which are unnecessary and in some cases not even available any more. Just looking around the forum you can see that people have Resolve working with no problems in much cheaper systems than BM recommend.
I find it strange that on the PC/Linux side BM recommend only high end X99 or dual Xeon setups, but on the Mac side they recommend iMacs which use the same CPU and chipsets as the Z87/Z97 on the PC side

Hi, I would recommend the HP Z820 workstation. It´s rugged design, hell fast and relative cheap on ebay.

This is my configuration:

AVID Artist | DNxIO | Color | HP Z820, 2x Xeon E5-2687W v1 8-Core 3,1 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GUI: Quadro K4200, GPU: 2x Titan X, HP Thunderbolt 2, Delock USB 3.1, Gen 2 Controller, int. RAID 0 LSI (8x WD VelociRaptor 2,5 600GB with Silverstone SST-CP11B-500), int. RAID 5 (4x 3,5 Seagate 4TB), int. RAID 1 (2x 2,5 SSD OCZ Vertex 3 240GB) | Win 8.1 Pro 64 Bit, Nvidia Geforce 353.30, BMD Desktop Video 10.5, QT 7.7.8, Eucon 3.3.1 | Davinci Resolve v12 Studio, MC 8.4.2 /w Symphony Option

Regards

Dan

If you were to only go with the BM recommendations then you would be paying for overpriced equipment on the PC side of things

Great. But, in that case, there's no basis to complain if things don't work out as planned, or future versions of Resolve render the computer unusable. There are far too many possible hardware configurations even among recommended ones, to test all, much less embark on testing cheaper equipment.

My own MB was formerly recommended, but no longer is, Px79 having been superseded by x99. But performance remains commensurate. If performance isn't commensurate even with recommendations of the last 2-3 years, buy at your own risk.

Hi Thomas,

My (limited) experience with Resolve so far is that it takes a LOT of horsepower to run it smoothly (especially when it comes to H.264 type footage) when compared to other NLE and your stated budget doesn't really allow for that.

Also, I agree with what John said about LOTS of different configs and possible changing BMD recommendations, so it's challenging to know what will actually work for you without simply testing it.

That said, I tried to create a basic build that gets you near your budget

**keep in mind I don't work for BMD and in no way can promise this will do exactly what you need/want it to**

I mostly just wanted to create a system that MAY work while limiting myself to your budget.

Build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/PtsVNG

Some notes...

1. if you plan to overclock your CPU, you should consider getting a CPU cooler. The one that comes with the processor will be small and work just fine for normal clocking, but not really made for over-clocking.

2. Not included in that price is a case which I'll leave to you based on your style choice/needs, but make sure it can fit at ATX motherboard and you should be ok.

3. You'll probably also want to add an optical drive (but that should be pretty cheap)

4. If you decide to get a 2nd graphics card (or plan to down the road) I'd go with a 750 Watt power supply instead of the 600 I put into the build.

Hope that's helpful to get you started. Also, for any build I'd use that website (pcpartpicker) instead of Amazon or Newegg or other...it does a better job of helping you compare compatibility between parts and allows price comparison between several vendors at once! Nice!

If you were to only go with the BM recommendations then you would be paying for overpriced equipment on the PC side of things

Great. But, in that case, there's no basis to complain if things don't work out as planned, or future versions of Resolve render the computer unusable. There are far too many possible hardware configurations even among recommended ones, to test all, much less embark on testing cheaper equipment.

My own MB was formerly recommended, but no longer is, Px79 having been superseded by x99. But performance remains commensurate. If performance isn't commensurate even with recommendations of the last 2-3 years, buy at your own risk.

If a future version renders your computer unusable then that would apply across the board. The same would happen with the iMac as all that is is a Z87/Z97 in an iMac chassis and using OSX, yet BM recommend those.

Yes there are too many hardware configurations to test all, but to only test 1 X99 board which has since been discontinued is pretty poor, and people understand that performance is going to be dependent on what you buy.

but to only test 1 X99 board which has since been discontinued is pretty poor, and people understand that performance is going to be dependent on what you buy.

It's true that no computer bought today will be sufficient 10 years from now, but you're the guy who's advocating purchase of equipment which has never been recommended, and is well below the specs of what was recommended, 2-3 years ago. What's the prognosis for that equipment, for the next 2-3 years of releases?

As for that discontinued MB, Asus x99 Deluxe, here is it, available and in production:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813132506

Hi Thomas,

My (limited) experience with Resolve so far is that it takes a LOT of horsepower to run it smoothly (especially when it comes to H.264 type footage) when compared to other NLE and your stated budget doesn't really allow for that.

Also, I agree with what John said about LOTS of different configs and possible changing BMD recommendations, so it's challenging to know what will actually work for you without simply testing it.

That said, I tried to create a basic build that gets you near your budget

**keep in mind I don't work for BMD and in no way can promise this will do exactly what you need/want it to**

I mostly just wanted to create a system that MAY work while limiting myself to your budget.

Build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/PtsVNG

Some notes...

1. if you plan to overclock your CPU, you should consider getting a CPU cooler. The one that comes with the processor will be small and work just fine for normal clocking, but not really made for over-clocking.

2. Not included in that price is a case which I'll leave to you based on your style choice/needs, but make sure it can fit at ATX motherboard and you should be ok.

3. You'll probably also want to add an optical drive (but that should be pretty cheap)

4. If you decide to get a 2nd graphics card (or plan to down the road) I'd go with a 750 Watt power supply instead of the 600 I put into the build.

Hope that's helpful to get you started. Also, for any build I'd use that website (pcpartpicker) instead of Amazon or Newegg or other...it does a better job of helping you compare compatibility between parts and allows price comparison between several vendors at once! Nice!

Hello Dan,

Thanks so much for the detailed reply and shedding some light on pcpartpicker! Looks like an awesome website and I'll use it. Like I said, I have used Resolve 12 on a similar computer with BMPCC RAW files without issues. I do like some of the upgrades from my list that yours has and also the discounts applied as well. Cheers! I may be ordering the parts this weekend.

It's true that no computer bought today will be sufficient 10 years from now, but you're the guy who's advocating purchase of equipment which has never been recommended, and is well below the specs of what was recommended, 2-3 years ago. What's the prognosis for that equipment, for the next 2-3 years of releases?

As for that discontinued MB, Asus x99 Deluxe, here is it, available and in production:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813132506

Technically that's not the same model even though it's the same board. The standard Deluxe model has been discontinued which is what I looked for at the time of posting

As to advocating equipment that's never been recommended, do you actually read my posts with reference to the iMacs? As I've already said they use the Z87/Z97 chipset boards with the Haswell CPU's and they get recommended by Black Magic, only difference is the operating system. If anything you can make the spec better on the PC side as you can beef it up by overclocking and adding in much better GPU's.
The Z87/Z97 chipset with i7 CPU's are far from the minimum spec as BM recommend them in the iMacs, they are also much more powerful than the Dell Laptop which is also on the recommended list.

The OP has already said he has no need for 4K, and that he's basing the new system on one he already uses at work which works fine, so with the camera he wants to use a Z97 chipset board with a high end i7 should be more than sufficient as long as he get s a good GPU and fast drives for his RAW footage

As to advocating equipment that's never been recommended, do you actually read my posts with reference to the iMacs? As I've already said they use the Z87/Z97 chipset boards with the Haswell CPU's and they get recommended by Black Magic, only difference is the operating system.

This truly is my last word, folks can obviously buy whatever they want, but since you asked, yes, I did your read posts, and here are two explanations, even forgetting that "the only difference is the operating system" is not a trivial difference:

1) maybe BMD actually tested these Macs, and they haven't tested a myriad of low-cost Windows MBs, each with their own BIOS and hardware conflicts? or

2) the Mac recommendations reflect market realities which don't constrain the company in the Windows world, where it's free to offer its actual recommendations. Most companies don't over-spec their minimum requirements out of spite. They're just trying to avoid unhappy customers.