buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

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Sean Pollaro

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buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostThu Sep 25, 2014 8:46 pm

Looking to buy or build a new machine and really need some advice on where to start. Firstly, I'm an editor not a Computer wiz. I've never built a computer in my life and have no idea how to or even where to start. My ignorance of the inner workings of the machine has made my life as a video editor and part time colorist a challenge indeed. So, I need help. On my new machine I will be running Adobe Premiere and resolve 11.. Productions will have final deliveries of both 1080p and occasionally 4k. the footage I edit is primarily 5k R3d and sony xavc 4k but need to be prepared for whatever's thrown my way. for the past 4 years, I've been banging my head against the wall with a mid 2010 dual 6 core mac with only one quadro 4000 and an oldschool red rocket (lack of GPU being due to pcie slot limitations). This system never lived up to my expectations and has never given me close to real time playback of anything 4k in resolve and had mixed results in premiere. a lot of hanging on clips, choppy playback and frequent crashing.. Let me be clear, first and foremost I need a system that WORKS! Does this exist? Every machine I've had thus far has worked about 30% of the time. The rest of the time was spent scouring through forums at 3am.. I need my computer to work and to be lightning fast and able to handle multiple nodes of intense grading while maintaining realtime 4k playback. I need the ability to SEE what I'm grading and editing move in realtime (for God's sakes!) My understanding is that speed has less to do about CPU and is almost entirely about GPU and raid speed. So my main question is what platform?

Macintosh, Hackintosh, Windows or Linux?


I've always worked with macs but I'm willing to make the switch if I have to. At this point I just want the smoothest and fastest system possible at my budget which I'd like to keep under 8k if possible.. Ive seen mixed reviews online about the new Mac Pro but I'm skeptical firstly because of the GPU limitation, is the dual d700 enough juice for what I need? and secondly, I went that route in 2010 coughing up thousands of dollars on a machine that in my opinion greatly underperformed.. If the new Mac Pro is what i need to get realtime 4k playback in resolve with heavy processing applied then this makes my life very easy. I like the idea of a Hackintosh because i could beef up the GPU and stay on the familiar platform at a fraction of the cost but I dont know anybody who can do this for me and frankly like I said earlier I need a system that WORKS.. My fear is that I wont know how to troubleshoot it and if its not set up properly I could have another 6000+ dollar paper weight on my hands with no support. Windows seems like a decent idea on the GPU side but what I heard from Larry Jordan is that you need at least a thunderbolt 2 8 raid in order to get realtime full quality playback of 4k footage. Does thunderbolt 2 operate with windows? I dont even know this! will Resolve work well with Windows? Finally, Dont know anything about Linux or what it costs but it sounds like a good move for optimization and stability purposes which is what I'm mostly interested in..just dont know that I will have any idea how to move around or how to troubleshoot when the time arises... Thing is that I'm very busy with work and relearning things will definitely slow me up.. Any advice on this is greatly appreciated.
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Sean Pollaro

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostThu Sep 25, 2014 10:48 pm

bump
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Robert A. Ober

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 12:18 am

So the Mac configuration guide for Resolve 11 is at:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/suppor ... ci-resolve

You have to scroll down in the middle box.

Shortly before the new Mac Pro was released I believe it was Grant Perry himself that said Resolve 10 (latest at the time) ran really good on the D700s. I have a call into Melrose Mac to see what they know about running Resolve on the new Mac Pro.

Other than drive speed, your legacy Mac Pro is greatly lacking in GPU performance. The Quadro cards are for 3D work such as CAD and 3D model creation. They have fast floating point performance but are comparatively low on Cuda cores which is what Resolve needs. Check Barefeets.com and you will see that the gaming cards with many more Cuda cores greatly outperform the Quadro cards in Resolve. Also for 4K you need more memory such as the 6GB on the Titan.

Resolve can apparently also now use OpenCL or OpenGL which has better support on the AMD cards like those in the new Mac Pro.

Maybe one of the pro's will chime in but based on online responses it would seem that many are using legacy Macs with multiple high end GPU's like Nvidia Titans. For drives with the legacy Mac Pro you would want an SAS or better solution. I really like my ProAvio SAS RAID 0 box.

I have no relationship with any of these companies other than a user of their products. I am an IT Consultant who also does some video work. My main Macs are a 2009 Mac Pro and a maxed out Late 2013 MacBook Pro 15".

Good Luck in your search,
Robert A. Ober
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Raf Smolak

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 1:23 am

A new Mac Pro is going to be a solid machine for what you need, however, unless you're willing to replace it in 3-5 years, it's not going to be upgradeable to the same level as a custom built PC or old Mac Pro.

Whether you want to choose OS X or Windows doesn't really matter, you'll get good performance and stability out of both. Linux, however, is fairly limited with software so personally I would steer clear of that.

I haven't seen any TB2 motherboards for Windows that are truly high spec.

If you're not keen on building your own, I would looking at these guys: http://www.promax.com/s-210-promax-one-plus.aspx

I haven't used them, but they offer built-in RAID and they build the whole system for you. We use the same ASUS boards (Dual XEON) they have because of the large number of PCI-e slots - it makes it handy if you need to add your own Decklink cards.

Dual GPU's will be very welcoming to your needs.

BTW, Robert, that link you posted is :o, I think you hit a typo (barefeats.com).
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Sean Pollaro

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 3:54 am

thanks for this guys It really helps!
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Sean Pollaro

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 4:36 am

i just went to apple store and pieced together the mac I would need. 10,000 dollars! hahhaha are they f'n joking? yea right.. And I thought my budget of 8000 was a huge overshoot.. So I can spend 10 grand on a new mac pro or I can build a pc or legacy mac that has more GPU power for a fraction of the cost is this right?
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Adam Simmons

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 10:20 am

Raf Smolak wrote:...
I haven't seen any TB2 motherboards for Windows that are truly high spec....
The newer X99 motherboards allow for a TB 2 add in card and take the newer V3 Haswell-E CPU's as well as being able to take the new Xeon CPU's
As to the Xeon board, you should have a look at some of the Supermicro ones, they will also take the new V3 E5 xeon CPU's which are already up to 14 core with 18 core's due to be released later. They also make a board that is great for Resolve as it is spaced out so it needs a case that has 11 backplate spaces but means that a double height GPU doesn't cover any other slots.
This is a link to the server that contains the board (so you can see how the slots are spaced out) although you can buy the board separately and put it into a much quieter case
http://www.supermicro.com/products/syst ... 8GR-TR.cfm
DVC Built Clevo P775DM3-G Laptop with UHD screen, 7700K CPU@4.9Ghz, Geforce GTX 1060 6GB GPU, G-Sync UHD screen, 500GB M.2 Primary, 1x 480GB SSD, 1x1TB M.2, 1x 2TB Video drives.
Building Bespoke Video Editing systems for over 16 years
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Raf Smolak

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 2:21 pm

allinthemind wrote:i just went to apple store and pieced together the mac I would need. 10,000 dollars! hahhaha are they f'n joking? yea right.. And I thought my budget of 8000 was a huge overshoot.. So I can spend 10 grand on a new mac pro or I can build a pc or legacy mac that has more GPU power for a fraction of the cost is this right?


It may not be substantially cheaper, but you should almost certainly save some money, or get a better deal in terms of specs.
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waltervolpatto

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 4:53 pm

Raf Smolak wrote:
allinthemind wrote:i just went to apple store and pieced together the mac I would need. 10,000 dollars! hahhaha are they f'n joking? yea right.. And I thought my budget of 8000 was a huge overshoot.. So I can spend 10 grand on a new mac pro or I can build a pc or legacy mac that has more GPU power for a fraction of the cost is this right?


It may not be substantially cheaper, but you should almost certainly save some money, or get a better deal in terms of specs.



And it does not count the disk you will need....
W10-19043.1645- Supermicro MB C9X299-PGF - RAM 128GB CPU i9-10980XE 16c 4.3GHz (Oc) Water cooled
Decklink Studio 4K (12.3)
Resolve 18.5.1 / fusion studio 18
GPU 3090ti drivers 512.59 studio
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Sean Pollaro

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 5:58 pm

is it true that i can somewhat ignore CPU specs and just focus on the GPU? Like on the Mac Pro perhaps go with a lower core machine while selecting the dual d700s and achieve similar results in resolve?
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JPOwens

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 7:37 pm

allinthemind wrote:on the Mac Pro perhaps go with a lower core machine while selecting the dual d700s and achieve similar results in resolve?


It depends on your source media and codecs. Some are decoded in CPU, some (like R3D) step around the need for a RedRocket by deBayering on the GPUs. Personally, I'd lean toward GPU over CPU.

Building a monster system sort of depends on whether you want it to be able to eat New York without being afraid of the mice, but not consume you at the same time.

jPo
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Sean Pollaro

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Sep 26, 2014 8:34 pm

true dat.. I'm pretty sure that the formats will almost always be compressed QuickTime files. I'm really starting to consider a Promax PC as I'll have way more flexibility and wont have to completely reinvest every 4 years like I would with the Mac Pro..However I've heard from a few that maybe I should wait as there is a big 4k hardware revolution coming in the next year.. Thats the risk, you drop 10 to 12 grand on top of the line then the market is revolutionized with some new technology that greatly depreciates the value of your investment and renders your equipment antiquated. Any inside scoop on this? I've literally pissed away hundreds of thousands of dollars due to sneaky marketing hype and have never been satisfied with the results. I mustto get it right this time..
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Carlos Arnesen

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Sep 27, 2014 3:10 am

hey guys Im nearly to buy a new latop system and i need to know if this will be enough for play some smooth 4k RAW from the BMPC 4K in davinci resolve, what do you guys think about last the alienware m17

with this specs

Alienware 17
Operating System Windows® 7 Ultimate 64-bit, English
Memory 32GB DDR3L at 1600MHz (4 x 8G)
Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 880M graphics with 8GB total GDDR5
Hard Drive 256GB mSATA SSD Boot + 1TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gb/s- NV
Processor Intel® Core™ i7-4910MQ processor (Quad Core, 8MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.1GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
LCD 17.3" 120Hz WLED FHD (1920 x 1080) TrueLife Display w/3D Bundle

Or do you think i will need more power like the m18 that have same build but has Dualvideo card
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Adam Simmons

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Sep 27, 2014 6:45 am

Where are you going to be putting the actual footage? The 1TB drive won't be fast enough for 4k RAW footage to play back from.
Unless you are going to be playing back 3D there's not much point buying the 120Hz screen.

Also the overclocked CPU doesn't seem worth it, it's only being overclocked by at most 0.2Ghz as the turbo-boost on the 4910MQ is already 3.9Ghz

What you should possibly look at is someone local who supplies Clevo chassis'. These are rebranded around the world and should be cheaper than the Alienware for pretty much the same specs with the ability to add in extra drives.
The Clevo P170SM-A will take the same CPU (but not overclocked) 32GB RAM, the same GPU but will also allow for 2 mSATA (SSD)drives up to 1TB each as well as 2 normal 2.5" drives (either SSD or mechanical) as well as a Blu-ray/DVD drive which can be swapped out for another 2.5" drive.
They also make dual GPU versions as well
DVC Built Clevo P775DM3-G Laptop with UHD screen, 7700K CPU@4.9Ghz, Geforce GTX 1060 6GB GPU, G-Sync UHD screen, 500GB M.2 Primary, 1x 480GB SSD, 1x1TB M.2, 1x 2TB Video drives.
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JerryBruck

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Sep 27, 2014 1:35 pm

Allinthemind I can well relate to your exasperation and craving for a true glimpse of the big picture. Absolutely and overwhelmingly the best place to start is the Tweakers Page on the site ppbm7 dot com. Sit back and read every single one of the subsections, especially "Balanced Systems". These are written by the former resident expects at the Adobe Hardware forum who are now off on their own for some reason, and it's written with Adobe applications in mind. All of your questions and many more are addressed there. Under "Latest News" you can follow the building of a monster system several years back, which will give you some feeling for parts brands and what the DIY process is like, at least for someone very very determined to get the best out of a single CPU system. Today you can get further for less; this x79 build will be replaced by an x99 or two at some point, though their planning about this is at an early stage.

The Tweakers Page will show that different NLE's, and different apps within Adobe, and Resolve each make widely different demands on your hardware. What Harm Millaard and Bill Gehrke explain about the practical effects of various codecs and hardware parts will allow you to shop more intelligently or to frame good questions to a custom builder -- that's likely the best way to go if you haven't built a system before.

To address some of your questions -- the current bang-for-the-buck 4K-capable single CPU build will be windows-based and include the i7 5960x (the first consumer 8-core) overclocked from 3 GHz to around 4.2 GHz, sitting under a closed liquid cooler on a premium x99 board like the Asus x99 Deluxe (their x99 workstation board isn't out yet) or one of the x99 Gigabytes. Around $16-1700 for those three parts and you're underway, ... to...

At least 32G of memory, G.Skill Ripjaws widely recommended. This has to be DDR4, brand new and extra-expensive; 32 may be all you need for a while, and not too-long from now updates will allow you to replace 4 x 8G sticks with 4 x 16G, leaving four DIMM slots free for the future. (They may go all the way up to 64G each). For the OS and all programs, a 256G SSD (Crucial 850 Pro).

For GPU you can start with the new GTX 980 and trade up as needed, about $500 now but room for a pair of the next-edition Titans, the current iteration of which is pleasing to the authors of the Resolve Configuration Guide. (These are $1k each.) nVidia only, AMD will not float your video-editing boat at present. And only GTX -- Quadro cards are either a bottleneck or massive waste of money or both. All this explained and argued in detail on the site and on the Adobe Hardware forum.

In the PCIe slot meadow there will be room for an i/o card like one of the BMD Decklinks, those eventual twin GPUs and maybe a good hardware raid controller, which means one of the big Areca's -- PPBM7 is especially fascinating on this stuff, including RAID in theory and practice.

So much for the seven physical slots in the Asus x99 WS E, there may be one less in the Deluxe model. With a big enough array (that monster machine has about 30 1Tb HDDs in RAID 30 though you can do well with many less), it's faster than Thunderbolt 2. But t'bolt is indeed supported by the x99 chipset so you can use that on your build with a $70 PCIe card about to come out from Asus at least. Fitting all this in can become an issue, but for that there are expanders -- more money!

Or you can use a couple of SSDs for all your editing and storage until you figure out how much of that you'll need -- lots of TBs will eventually force you to hard drives unless you can find really a lot of money. Speed then means multiple drives and the hardware RAID controller. This whole area of drives is the most-often overlooked and most often the worst bottleneck.

You can see from this that a custom build or DIY will allow you grow into the machine you need, as you need it, to some degree at least.

Oh and then comes the case, the power supply and backup, the fans and design of the fan set-up, back-up of the back-up & so on, all subjects for study, prayer, fasting and meditation. I should mention that not only are many of the professional experts experiencing issues because the chipset, the RAM and the Haswell E CPU are all brand-new introductions, and there are many BIOS changes from the manufacturers, but there are alarming reports (alarming to me anyway) of these mobo-CPU combinations going up in smoke on the test benches of reviewers. Just saying.

A steady source of excellent free advice on the Adobe hardware board is Eric Bowen (eebowen), of the customer builder adkvideoediting dot com. Never met him and have no connection to the company; I'd turn to him if looking for a builder.

Excelsior.
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Carlos Arnesen

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Sep 27, 2014 3:52 pm

Adam Simmons wrote:Where are you going to be putting the actual footage? The 1TB drive won't be fast enough for 4k RAW footage to play back from.
Unless you are going to be playing back 3D there's not much point buying the 120Hz screen.

Also the overclocked CPU doesn't seem worth it, it's only being overclocked by at most 0.2Ghz as the turbo-boost on the 4910MQ is already 3.9Ghz

What you should possibly look at is someone local who supplies Clevo chassis'. These are rebranded around the world and should be cheaper than the Alienware for pretty much the same specs with the ability to add in extra drives.
The Clevo P170SM-A will take the same CPU (but not overclocked) 32GB RAM, the same GPU but will also allow for 2 mSATA (SSD)drives up to 1TB each as well as 2 normal 2.5" drives (either SSD or mechanical) as well as a Blu-ray/DVD drive which can be swapped out for another 2.5" drive.
They also make dual GPU versions as well


Hi adam, haha i know that drive is not the best one i was thinking in buying 3 fast SSD s an replacing the drives in de alien-ware by myself in the 3 bays that the alien-ware have

by the way what do you think about the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 880M 8GB total GDDR5

Im now doing a research about the clevo they look interesting :)
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Sean Pollaro

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSun Sep 28, 2014 3:57 am

Jerry,

Thanks for taking the time and giving me such a detailed breakdown! There is a wealth information here and it really helps. I'll check out the tweaker Page. Thanks!
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Adam Simmons

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSun Sep 28, 2014 8:08 am

I'm a system builder, and so far have seen none of the issues that Jerry refers to with regards to Haswell -E's. No going up in smoke, and have been running the 5930K & 5960X overclocked @over 4Ghz, although maybe it's an Asus issue as we don't tend to use their boards. Also not seeing any other issues (whatever they might be) with regard to the chipset, RAM and CPU's. Once built the systems perform exactly as I would expect, just faster.
DVC Built Clevo P775DM3-G Laptop with UHD screen, 7700K CPU@4.9Ghz, Geforce GTX 1060 6GB GPU, G-Sync UHD screen, 500GB M.2 Primary, 1x 480GB SSD, 1x1TB M.2, 1x 2TB Video drives.
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Frank Glencairn

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSun Sep 28, 2014 11:46 am

allinthemind wrote:true dat.. I'm pretty sure that the formats will almost always be compressed QuickTime files. ..


Since QT on Win is still crippled by 36bit, using mov files is always a bottleneck and a mayor PITA per se.
I try to avoid QT whenever possible, for exact that reason.
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JerryBruck

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSun Sep 28, 2014 1:56 pm

I'm glad of reassurance on the smoke and other issues, I had this primarily in mind:
legitreviews dot com/intel-x99-motherboard-goes-up-in-smoke-for-reasons-unknown_150008

The OP said he was considering a first time DIY, I thought he should know that there are risks. I've heard from experienced builders too about various kinds of stability issues, and these tend to be common or more common in first batches of a new generation, pre Rev 1. I confess I'm a little nervous about starting my own build.

There's been more than one melt-down reported, here's another from a NewEgg buyer review of the Asus x99 Deluxe, since removed from their site:

2 out of 5 eggs Failed after six days!
Pros: Amazing looking board with a ton of features. Excellent Newegg Premier customer service, thus the two eggs.
Cons: The system only lasted six days before failing. The board fried out taking the CPU (5960x) with it. (H100i cooler and temps in the mid 20s C). I purchased local two other boards and another CPU before giving up. Each board I brought home was defective. I couldn't believe that my favorite MB manufacturer had let me down...3 times. I have been building PCs for years and regularly build high end systems for others, so needless to say, I know what I'm doing. I really couldn't believe the quality (or lack there of) in these boards. I spent a few days reading multiple articles and posts online and found that I am by far not the only person having issues with these boards. I was so discouraged, I returned the boards, CPU, and memory and reverted back to my old system (4770k and ASUS Hero VI). I may try an X99 build again after the holidays, pending ASUS gets their issues resolved, although I'm extremely disgusted with the amount of time I list in this upgrade attempt, so I'm not sure ASUS will get any more of my money for a long time! I feel like they owe me a working motherboard after all the issues I had.
Other Thoughts: System Configuration:
Intel i7 5960x
ASUS X99 Deluxe
16GB Corsair LPX 2800MHz Cl16
EVGA GTX 780 TI Classified
Revo 3 X2 240GB SSD (system)
Crucial 960GB SSD (games)
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Corsair 750D Case
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Elliot Thomas

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSun Sep 28, 2014 10:55 pm

I havent seen any posts about actual WORKING 4k systems. Every one of them seems to have issues or are limited..
Last edited by Elliot Thomas on Mon Sep 29, 2014 9:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Andrea Monzini

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostMon Sep 29, 2014 8:19 am

Mac Pro 8 core and D700.
In alternative custom PC with Nvidia GTX Titan Black ( if possible two of them).
Good Cheaper GPU is GTX 780 6 GB.

Next iMac could be interesting if it will use Nvidia 880m 8 GB ( even if it's still old Kepler architecture) but for realtime playback probably you should use HD timeline and Half/Quarter Res for 4k Raw.
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Elliot Thomas

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostMon Sep 29, 2014 9:28 pm

I have a few questions for all of you regarding upgrading. Is it best to wait if he is wanting a new system for realtime 4k? I mean im hearing rumors about Thunderbolt 3. Also new cards with HDMI 2.0 also Displayport 1.3. Not to mention USB 3.1C coming out soon as well. What is the most reliable route to go? It is getting really confusing. MAC or PC? What will be most beneficial for the next TWO years before he has to upgrade again??
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waltervolpatto

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostMon Sep 29, 2014 10:15 pm

Elliot Thomas wrote:I havent seen any posts about actual WORKING 4k systems. Every one of them seems to have issues or are limited..


Full specced out Linux system +san: it works.

The Idea is that if you follow the recommended specification it works.

Downside? It is expensive.

so, let me fix it for you:

Elliot Thomas wrote:I havent seen any posts about actual WORKING 4k CHEAP systems. Every one of them seems to have issues or are limited..
W10-19043.1645- Supermicro MB C9X299-PGF - RAM 128GB CPU i9-10980XE 16c 4.3GHz (Oc) Water cooled
Decklink Studio 4K (12.3)
Resolve 18.5.1 / fusion studio 18
GPU 3090ti drivers 512.59 studio
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Marc Wielage

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostMon Sep 29, 2014 11:06 pm

Cheap is hard. I'm currently working on a 5K project on a stock 6-core D700 nMP, and it's working fine at quarter-res. The final output on the project will just be 2K, so I don't think it'll be agonizing. But the conform and copying was a bitch, just because of the vast amount of data involved. That's the real problem with system building: dealing with too much data and multiple projects. The i/o will kill you.
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Elliot Thomas

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostTue Sep 30, 2014 5:20 pm

Elliot Thomas wrote:I have a few questions for all of you regarding upgrading. Is it best to wait if he is wanting a new system for realtime 4k? I mean im hearing rumors about Thunderbolt 3. Also new cards with HDMI 2.0 also Displayport 1.3. Not to mention USB 3.1C coming out soon as well. What is the most reliable route to go? It is getting really confusing. MAC or PC? What will be most beneficial for the next TWO years before he has to upgrade again??



Any thoughts on this?
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Adam Simmons

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostTue Sep 30, 2014 6:23 pm

Even if you wait for TB 3 it will still be slower than a decent RAID card. A good, modern RAID card tends to use PCI-e 3 x8 whereas TB3 will be PCI-e 3 x4 so still only half the speed of a good RAID card and if you want to be able to edit RAW 4K the faster the better
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Raf Smolak

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostWed Oct 01, 2014 12:40 pm

If you're worried about being able to upgrade in the future I would suggest a PC. You'll almost certainly be able to expand with PCI-E slots or a newer motherboard should the need/want arise.
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JerryBruck

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostFri Oct 24, 2014 7:56 pm

@Adam Simmons: Asus has just this hour released a bios revision to its x99 Deluxe board and urges all owners to download this rev.1004 immediately. This is a response to the reports of frying boards I cited and especially to the persistence of the tech site LegitReviews. The consensus is these boards will now be safe.

You can follow the whole saga here:
http://www.legitreviews [dot] com/intel-x99-motherboard-goes-up-in-smoke-for-reasons-unknown_150008

Meantime that company's x99 E WS board is finally available, WS for workstation. For video-editing this one is the bomb, such as it is, no pun intended. E for "extended," not all ATX-labelled cases will accept it. As EATX goes, it's on the small side of that too-vague spec.

I hope young allinthemind is making good progress along correct lines.
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Oct 25, 2014 2:35 am

We've got a 12c/D700 Mac Pro in our DI theater at the moment. It's reasonable for e.g. ProRes 4444 workflows at 4K, but we'd like some additional power for 4K raw formats, R3D especially. We're presently researching building out something around the above-mentioned SYS-7048GR-TR Supermicro system. We use Supermicro gear for our shared storage server, and it's been rock solid for us. The previous version of this machine (which is still so new it isn't widely stocked) is BMD's recommended Linux configuration and their highest-end recommended Windows configuration, and I'd expect this machine to take its place once the guides are updated, so it's probably a pretty safe bet for a high-end Resolve system. I was coming up with numbers at about $9K with GPUs, RAM, a couple of 10 core CPUs, SSD boot drives, etc.

Upgradability is a bit oversold, in my opinion. By the time one major component needs upgrading, the others probably do as well, and before you know it you're scrapping everything except the power supply and the case. Except the old system in a functional state is probably worth more than just the power supply and the case are, so at that point it makes more sense to just buy another power supply and case and keep the old system in service alongside the new one.
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Oct 25, 2014 7:22 am

JerryBruck wrote:@Adam Simmons: Asus has just this hour released a bios revision to its x99 Deluxe board and urges all owners to download this rev.1004 immediately. This is a response to the reports of frying boards I cited and especially to the persistence of the tech site LegitReviews. The consensus is these boards will now be safe.

You can follow the whole saga here:
http://www.legitreviews [dot] com/intel-x99-motherboard-goes-up-in-smoke-for-reasons-unknown_150008

Meantime that company's x99 E WS board is finally available, WS for workstation. For video-editing this one is the bomb, such as it is, no pun intended. E for "extended," not all ATX-labelled cases will accept it. As EATX goes, it's on the small side of that too-vague spec.

I hope young allinthemind is making good progress along correct lines.
As I said it was an Asus issue and we don't use their boards.

I disagree about the WS board being the best for video editing. The board is being overloaded. All those PCI-e slots only have a finite amount of buslanes to push through and to manage that they use switchers, which are mostly fine for GPU's, but when trying to use the bandwidth for capturing can cause it to drop out. You're better off saving the money and buying a cheaper board that doesn't try to overload the bus lanes (as that seems to be the only real extra on the WS board compared to much cheaper boards) or going for a Xeon board that offers double the buslanes.
If you have the money then the best way would be to go for a Dual Xeon, something like the Supermicro X10DRG-Q if you want a good board for Resolve. This X10DRG-Q needs a special case (either the recommended Supermicro or Lian li do one that will hold the board and up to 20 harddrives etc so plenty of internal space if you add a RAID card) but is double spaced between the PCI-e 3 16 x slots and has 4 PCI-e 3 16x slots, 2 PCI-e 3 8x and 1 PCI-e 2 4x, all of which actually run at those speeds without switchers. The board will also take a Thunderbolt card but you have to use Supermicro's TB card for that. Although you will need to buy a second CPU the board itself is only around $40 more than the Asus X99-e WS board

As to upgradabilty, I'd have to disagree there. Newer and more powerful GPU's are coming out every year, RAM gets cheaper as time goes on as do hard drives so to my mind it's better to get a machine that's easy to swap out such things as RAM, GPU's, harddrives and even CPU's than to get a locked down system. Look at the new Xeon E5-26xx-V3 range, at the moment we can get up to 12 core, 14 core has been launched and 16 & 18 have been announced all of which are also supposed to work as single CPU's in most X99 boards as well as dual Xeon boards. So if you are limited at the moment you buy cheaper ones, then in a year or so you can give yourself a big boost by buying the 16/18 core CPU's when you can afford them without having to replace the whole system
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Oct 25, 2014 10:37 am

"If you have the money then the best way would be to go for a Dual Xeon" --- who wouldn't like to have a two-processor system, if you have the money, and a whole heck of a lot of money it is, over and above the best i7, when you consider that you need not just one but two very fast (non-overclockable) Xeons. The E-WS seems at the moment to be part of the best Haswell-E solution, yes i7 is 2nd best but the new generation is big step closer than just a month or two ago. Overloading can be a side effect when everything is on all cylinders but I expect the flexibility to be mostly good. I shall be prudent. We shall see.

Hard to disagree with Adam about Apple.
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Oct 25, 2014 10:37 am

Isn't the new Mac Pro upgradeable?
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Oct 25, 2014 5:14 pm

I still disagree about the E-WS, it's a waste of money, you pay double the price mainly to get all the sockets running through switching
Pete Harbour wrote:Isn't the new Mac Pro upgradeable?
It's very limited, you can't upgrade the internal GPU's and I suspect it's difficult to upgrade the CPU. Also I don't think they've upgraded it to the V3 Xeons yet so you are already on older tech, Mac pro has a max of a 12 core, X99 boards can take the new Xeon's which are already on 14 core with 16 and 18 core announced and using DDR4
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Oct 25, 2014 6:24 pm

Note that Intel sockets are generally not compatible across generations. Even sockets with the same name, e.g. there are actually now three mutually incompatible versions of "Socket 2011." In practice this means that usually, by the time you want a CPU upgrade, you're going to need to replace the motherboard as well.

I guess it's different for freelancers, etc. but as a facility, we almost always find that keeping old machines in service and transitioning them to different roles makes more sense than tossing out and replacing most of their guts. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the 2013 Mac Pro we've got in our DI theater is still in use in 5 or 6 years, except by then it'll be living in an offline edit suite cutting proxy footage.

For those who don't have these sorts of other roles to transition machines into as they age out of high-end work, though, one should also consider resale value. Macs tend to maintain resale value substantially better than Wintel machines — probably DIY Wintel machines especially. Selling a Mac Pro every two years and buying a new one probably doesn't cost that much more on an ongoing basis than upgrading a DIY Wintel machine. It might even be cheaper, depending on the timing.
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Oct 25, 2014 6:45 pm

Not sure what you mean by 3 socket 2011's. The Sandybridge-e and Ivybridge-e both used the same socket boards as did the first and second gen Xeon 2011 e5-26xx series. We're now on the Haswell-e so the second 2011 board for the Enthusiast range, and the e5-26xx V3 Xeons so the second 2011 pin board for those. The Xeons from each version could normally be made to work on the equivalent Enthusiast board.
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Oct 25, 2014 7:15 pm

@Adam Simmons
I've put your objection to the WS, out to some of the experienced experts I've been following and if they answer, I'll report back. Even if this turns out to be an issue that can't be settled, the discussion might be helpful to noob nation, amidst whose multitudes I too belong.
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Oct 25, 2014 9:41 pm

Well as I build systems for a living I have experience which is why I know these kind of boards can have issues.
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSun Oct 26, 2014 3:54 pm

@Adam Simmons -- Out of curiosity, have you built many overclocked i7 systems, and do you have experience pushing the 5960x's? How are you cooling them, especially the last category?
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSun Oct 26, 2014 8:04 pm

Overclocked the 5960x to 4.3GHz using a standard Corsair H100i watercooler
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostWed Nov 05, 2014 5:34 pm

The more i read about RAID, the more i question how good a built-in MB RAID controller is. The case is of course down to $$$ and i'd love to use my built-in controller vs an expensive/additional one. I'd like to try/start with 2 x 3TB drives in RAID0, on a Xeon E3 based Win7 system, how bad is my "hybrid" RAID config going to be on my CPU :) Someone with experience?... would be much appreciated... bow!
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostWed Nov 05, 2014 10:44 pm

The Intel RAID controller is fairly capable, I run a 4 disc RAID0 for 4K work, and it doesn't have any significant issues.
This is on a new X99 board though, not sure about the older systems.

I built an X99, 8 Core, 64GB machine, and it handles 4K okay with 2 GPUs.

On the GPU front, I'd wait a few weeks, as 8GB Nividia and 8GB AMD cards are about to be released, and you really want more than 4GB on the GPU cards for 4K work.

The CPU, Motherboard, 1000W Power supply and RAM alone came to $3500, and then another $1600 for two 4GB GPUs. I don't know how much the new 8GB GPUs will be.

So over $5000 without hard drives, it still struggles with some 4K work to stay realtime, I think moving to 8GB GPUs or adding a third GPU might get me over the line.

It isn't cheap to go 4K, and that is forgetting about the cost of a monitor...
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostThu Nov 06, 2014 6:50 am

On board RAID is usually fine for RAID 1 or 0, but not for anything else. If you want a RAID 5 or 6 or a faster RAID 0 then you really need a dedicated hardware RAID card.

Peter what speeds do you get from the BM Disk speed checker on the RAID? Also what type of 4K are you using and do you have the CPU overclocked?
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostThu Nov 06, 2014 10:31 am

Thanks for the feedback Adam! I'm thinking RAID 0. I'll post back once i put it together, not really on the 4K topic, but i'm sure it'll be useful for 4K peeps out there (RAID is a must for 4K right?)
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostThu Nov 06, 2014 1:03 pm

One thing to bear in mind, if you do use a RAID 0 then make sure you have everything backed up. If 1 drive fails you lose the lot
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostThu Nov 06, 2014 10:34 pm

Of course, probably the most important thing when it comes to RAID 0.
BTW the performance is mind blowing, can't catch an SSD... but far from a single drive!
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Nov 08, 2014 10:50 am

Adam Simmons wrote:On board RAID is usually fine for RAID 1 or 0, but not for anything else. If you want a RAID 5 or 6 or a faster RAID 0 then you really need a dedicated hardware RAID card.

Peter what speeds do you get from the BM Disk speed checker on the RAID? Also what type of 4K are you using and do you have the CPU overclocked?


I'll run the disk speed test again, I ran it now, but a Nuke render is running in the background, it still managed 340MB/s write and 390MB/s read, even with an intensive IO nuke script running in the background.
I'll run it later tonight when the machine is idle.
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Nov 15, 2014 12:07 pm

Well, here's my experience with 2 X 3TB Seagate 7200 64MB HDDs(ST3000DM001) in a RAID0 (Asus Z87A), no extra RAID controller:
Image
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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Nov 15, 2014 6:13 pm

What you have to remember though is that as the drives fill up they will get slower, so unlike SSD's the speed you see when the drives are empty are not going to be constant as it fills. On harddrives I would expect the drive speed to half by the time it gets to being full as well as slowing down due to file fragmentation.
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JerryBruck

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Re: buying a new system for realtime 4k in davinci resolve

PostSat Nov 15, 2014 8:42 pm

@Adam Simmons -- I never did get those experts detailed "other side" to your objection to PCIe cards that together exceed 40 lanes on an i7 5960x, but I was told that at least configurations going over by 8 or a little more shouldn't cause any problems.

A unique attribute of the Asus x99 E WS -- the workstation board -- is that it contains seven physical PCIe slots, I think the most otherwise is six. This would allow, for example, two double-wide GPUs, a RAID controller, a DeckLink and either a TB2, USB 3.1 or an NVME host controller, when these last become available. I don't think all of these would be in motion at at the same time.

Where there's slots, there's hope -- that's my motto, for the moment, at least.

@ Peter_r -- very interested in how your build continues to cope, or not, please keep me informed. If the new 8Gbs don't get you over, maybe the new versions of Titans will.
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