Editing and Color Correction machine - buy or build?

Hi, folks. My HP p6320y has done it's job but the time has come to step things up and get a proper post production machine.

Now I am in no way interested, whatsoever, to spark a Mac vs. PC debate. However, I am also not ruling out Macs but must say I have a considerable investment in PC based software - Sony Vegas Pro, DVD Architect Pro, HitFilm Ulitmate and other PC based software - that I like and if it can run all that stuff on a Mac then so be it, I am not married to either platform! If a Mac turns out to be both cost effective and gives me the boost I so sorely need then I am all about it. (Did I stress that I need GPUs and CUDAs - whatever the heck they are)

Anywhooodle, my question to the floor is - buy or build? Budget? I plan on spending $2K and can push it to $2.5K, if the value is there for the money? And much more than that, what are people on IT using these days? This is all part of my research because I am close to pulling the trigger on a new machine that should hold me over for at least the next 3 years.

Thanks in advance for your reads, help and responses, folks.

Sam
 
I'm running a Mac Pro 3.2 ghz 8 core with 24GB RAM and 3TB hard drive space. I'm planning on popping in a 512GB SSD to house the software.

As to what platform you should run, take your pick. The Mac Pro offers the most hardware but costs the most by a large margin. You can build/spec a PC to give you close to the same performance for less money. I went with the Mac because the industry is heavily Mac biased.
 
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Build. Your budge is not high enough to consider just buying.

Although that last build feels wrong... why the 3930k ?

Because the 3960X is almost double the price for at best marginal gains in output. Both are unlocked for overclocking as desired. Sure the 3960 can be pushed a bit further, but for acquiring the best performance/cost ratio, I felt the 3930k was the chip for me.
 
Because the 3960X is almost double the price for at best marginal gains in output. Both are unlocked for overclocking as desired. Sure the 3960 can be pushed a bit further, but for acquiring the best performance/cost ratio, I felt the 3930k was the chip for me.

I don't think OP needs O/C. The non K version will do just fine.
 
Sweet advice, everyone! Thank you all. for your responses and help.

Some background - I worked in technology as a software tester for 5 years and in system integrations for another 2. So while I am comfortable around machines and have upgraded memory cards I have never really built one - though the thought of doing so has come up for me from time to time. I just never really had the time to build a PC. My tech savvy on the software side, not so much the hardware. That said, I have upgraded memory cards and opened up PCs before and can follow YouTube like instructions. So with that little resume do you think I have the skill set to build a PC?


For myself, I built my own monster.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/9Jle

I think if you have the time, patience, and know-how: build a PC. If you just have the know-how: buy a PC. If you just want to focus on editing and neither know or want to know about computers: get a Mac.

For those prices? I think I can make the time. That said, define time? How many hours am I looking at to go from components to running machine?

Also, with my savings I was thinking of adding an SSD for the operating system (is 240 GB too small?) and other software, maybe including a scratch SSD, adding thunderbolt capabilities and going with a Quadro 2000 or 4000. Are these components overkill?


Build. Your budge is not high enough to consider just buying.

Although that last build feels wrong... why the 3930k ?

Was it just the CPU that made that build feel wrong or are there other things you don't like about it?


I don't think OP needs O/C. The non K version will do just fine.

Aaaah, O/C! Heard of it, never understood it and wanted to know for editing and color correction - do I really need it?


Finally, I know I will be taking a soaking on labor costs but if I were to go buy I was checking out these guys, https://www.performancepc.net/video-editing-computers?gclid=CMK-1K684bECFYLb4AodNlAA6Q. What say you all?

Thanks again. I cannot put into words how much I appreciate your input.

Sam
 
It's very easy to build a PC on your own. You don't need to be a tech nerd. I did it once while being assisted by a friend who did it before. I did it another time for a friend who knows close to nothing about computers.

Be sure to follow some written instructions as sometimes you can skip on steps if you start feeling it's just a puzzle game.


I can't really help you on the building part and you should check some hardware forum (lots of them out here), and also because I'm not familiar with the software you use.

O/C is a fine thing when you know what you're doing, have proper PSU and cooling. But even so, it's believed that it reduces the lifespan of the CPU and makes it a little less stable. I don't think any video editor needs O/Cing.

And I don't know much about tha video card but I odn't think it's very CUDA-rich. CUDA is a technology by nVidia which allows for GPU acceleration (helping the CPU do some calcutations). Google it you'll know more than I can tell you in minutes.
 
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For those prices? I think I can make the time. That said, define time? How many hours am I looking at to go from components to running machine?

Also, with my savings I was thinking of adding an SSD for the operating system (is 240 GB too small?) and other software, maybe including a scratch SSD, adding thunderbolt capabilities and going with a Quadro 2000 or 4000. Are these components overkill?

Once I had all my components, it took me like 45 minutes to actually get it all together. Which turned into like 4 hours of work due to a bad mobo. So, stay away from Gigabyte. Although, they sent me a brand new one as a replacement instead of repairing mine.

240GB is more than enough for just the OS and video software. I've got a 120GB in my beast right now, and it's gives me plenty of room for the OS and all the video software I could want. My games and video/pictures are taking up most of the room(25-30GB of the 40GB used) till I get an external drive.
 
Thanks, Artificial. The 120 GB it is.

The responses on here were awesome, but what else is new about the IT faithful? Most appreciated.

FYI, everyone, in my research I found some PCs made by Rain and Supermicro that are a bit on the pricey side but appear to be monsters designed for editing and 3d graphics. Impressive stuff.

Sam
 
I don't think OP needs O/C. The non K version will do just fine.

If by non-K version you mean the 3820, then yes, that's a decent chip, and solely for editing might even be a better choice. The Problem is that it's 4-core versus 6-core, though, so for programs like After Effects that can handle multi-core processing, I like to be able to give each of my six cores about 4-5 GB of memory to work with, and my computer chugs out files like it's its own render farm.

If by non-K version you mean a 3930 without the K at the end, then you're referring to an imaginary chip.

Sweet advice, everyone! Thank you all. for your responses and help.

Some background - I worked in technology as a software tester for 5 years and in system integrations for another 2. So while I am comfortable around machines and have upgraded memory cards I have never really built one - though the thought of doing so has come up for me from time to time. I just never really had the time to build a PC. My tech savvy on the software side, not so much the hardware. That said, I have upgraded memory cards and opened up PCs before and can follow YouTube like instructions. So with that little resume do you think I have the skill set to build a PC?

Newegg has a great free 3-part series on how to build a computer. I rferenced it quite a bit when I made my first build, and it helped me out a lot.

Here it is.


For those prices? I think I can make the time. That said, define time? How many hours am I looking at to go from components to running machine?

The reason I reference time isn't so much because it takes any large amount of time to put things together, but because I build this rig over the course of nearly a year, and waited for each and every part to go on a phenomenal sale before I got it. It took extra time, but I probably saved nearly a grand. Just the man-hours needed to order and build, you could easily come up with the build concept with an hour or two of research and comparison, order parts, wait a week for them to arrive, and then build your rig as a new builder in a couple hours depending on the complexity of the rig.

Also, with my savings I was thinking of adding an SSD for the operating system (is 240 GB too small?) and other software, maybe including a scratch SSD, adding thunderbolt capabilities and going with a Quadro 2000 or 4000. Are these components overkill?

I enjoy SSDs as a boot and scratch disk. My one major recommendation there is that if you get an SSD, make sure it's SATA III compliant. There are a few SSDs that are SATA II, and they saturate their bandwidth so quickly that you might as well just get a 7200 RPM drive with much more capacity for much cheaper. If you got to 90gb-120gb SSDs, you'd have more than enough room to comfortably hold your OS on one, and use the other as a scratch disk. From there either just get a decent capacity 7200 or more RPM drive to hold your media, or consider a RAID option.

As far as the Quadro goes, if you're looking to deal with a lot of 3D graphics or RED footage in your pipeline, it's worth it and then some. If not, you can get some sort of NVidea card with CUDA ores and raytracing for pretty cheap and it'll treat you just fine.

Aaaah, O/C! Heard of it, never understood it and wanted to know for editing and color correction - do I really need it?

Don't even bother, to me it's not worth the hassle and stress. As I mentioned above, I got the 3930 vs the 3820 or 3960 because it was a good price, fast, 6-core processor. I don't do O/C on my system because I don't want to run the risk of burning it out before its time.

Finally, I know I will be taking a soaking on labor costs but if I were to go buy I was checking out these guys, https://www.performancepc.net/video-editing-computers?gclid=CMK-1K684bECFYLb4AodNlAA6Q. What say you all?

It's not a bad option, but consider the price-point again. My computer (other than the fact that they have a Quadro in theirs) is almost identical to the VE-130...

...but I paid about half that price.

Choice is yours.
 
Are you planning on running single or dual monitors?

I have two Samsung monitors that I fully plan on using for this machine. Won't the motherboard be able to handle that? Thanks.

Newegg has a great free 3-part series on how to build a computer. I rferenced it quite a bit when I made my first build, and it helped me out a lot.

Here it is.

The reason I reference time isn't so much because it takes any large amount of time to put things together, but because I build this rig over the course of nearly a year, and waited for each and every part to go on a phenomenal sale before I got it. It took extra time, but I probably saved nearly a grand. Just the man-hours needed to order and build, you could easily come up with the build concept with an hour or two of research and comparison, order parts, wait a week for them to arrive, and then build your rig as a new builder in a couple hours depending on the complexity of the rig.

I enjoy SSDs as a boot and scratch disk. My one major recommendation there is that if you get an SSD, make sure it's SATA III compliant. There are a few SSDs that are SATA II, and they saturate their bandwidth so quickly that you might as well just get a 7200 RPM drive with much more capacity for much cheaper. If you got to 90gb-120gb SSDs, you'd have more than enough room to comfortably hold your OS on one, and use the other as a scratch disk. From there either just get a decent capacity 7200 or more RPM drive to hold your media, or consider a RAID option.

As far as the Quadro goes, if you're looking to deal with a lot of 3D graphics or RED footage in your pipeline, it's worth it and then some. If not, you can get some sort of NVidea card with CUDA ores and raytracing for pretty cheap and it'll treat you just fine.

Don't even bother, to me it's not worth the hassle and stress. As I mentioned above, I got the 3930 vs the 3820 or 3960 because it was a good price, fast, 6-core processor. I don't do O/C on my system because I don't want to run the risk of burning it out before its time.

It's not a bad option, but consider the price-point again. My computer (other than the fact that they have a Quadro in theirs) is almost identical to the VE-130...

...but I paid about half that price.

Choice is yours.

Superb, detailed and packed post. Thank you, very much Caidh Mor. Thanks for the link on the "how to build" info. So if I got you correctly? I can pretty much buy the components for that machine and build my own PC? Oh man, I am all about that. Saving dough is the way to go. LOL

As far as the card I will be going the GEForce GTX 560 TI.

One last thing (and perhaps the instruction link will answer this) does the chip determine the motherboard, or vice-verse?

Thanks again for your help and time.
 
Finally, I know I will be taking a soaking on labor costs but if I were to go buy I was checking out these guys, https://www.performancepc.net/video-editing-computers?gclid=CMK-1K684bECFYLb4AodNlAA6Q. What say you all?

I looked at them before I finally settled on ADK. http://www.adkvideoediting.com/choose.asp

One last thing (and perhaps the instruction link will answer this) does the chip determine the motherboard, or vice-verse?

My guess is, you will want to pick your chip first and then get the board that will handle it.

Compatibility is the only reason I went with a company that would assemble and test it out-- I had a hard time discerning what was compatible with what. (But I am positive I could have mastered the nuances of everything by taking a little more time and learning all about each component.)
 
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I have two Samsung monitors that I fully plan on using for this machine. Won't the motherboard be able to handle that? Thanks.

As far as the card I will be going the GEForce GTX 560 TI.

One last thing (and perhaps the instruction link will answer this) does the chip determine the motherboard, or vice-verse?

The video card will be what determines how many/big the monitor(s) can be.

That card should be enough to run both monitors smoothly. My GTX 480(slightly better than the 560 Ti) and i5-3570k almost instantly renders and has smooth playback in Premiere Elements 10. That's with a single 20" monitor.

Typically a system is built around the CPU(chip). But, most of the time the motherboard is determined by the socket of the CPU that you want to use.
 
My guess is, you will want to pick your chip first and then get the board that will handle it.

+1, let the chip dictate the mobo. Generally speaking, any major motherboard series is designed to where it has boards covering each of the major chipsets. So if you just look for a board that fits your chip, you can then narrow down one that works for your size and component specifications.

Compatibility is the only reason I went with a company that would assemble and test it out-- I had a hard time discerning what was compatible with what. (But I am positive I could have mastered the nuances of everything by taking a little more time and learning all about each component.)

www.pcpartpicker.com

They have a built in system that you start from the top, work down, and it automatically narrows down your choices based on what will or won't work with the system you're building, and price-checks for you at several major internet retailers. It was a crying shame that I only found it when I had selected everything except my monitors.

Starting to learn to build yourself, it's possible to screw up. Screw-ups can be costly, too. Often the most expensive part of your computer will be the processor, and it's one of the easiest things to kill during build. Just make sure that you give due diligence learning the craft, and you'll absolutely slash your rig expenses forever.
 
The video card will be what determines how many/big the monitor(s) can be.

That card should be enough to run both monitors smoothly. My GTX 480(slightly better than the 560 Ti) and i5-3570k almost instantly renders and has smooth playback in Premiere Elements 10. That's with a single 20" monitor.

Typically a system is built around the CPU(chip). But, most of the time the motherboard is determined by the socket of the CPU that you want to use.

Sweetness!!! Ok, here's the thing with discrete video cards - for video editing, does newer mean better? I was looking at Quadro cards over the GTX but everything I have seen so far suggest that the GTXs (and not all of them) are the way to go for video editing. Then I look at the GTXs and think the 560 TI (Fermi) is better than the 560 which is better than the 460 and so on and so forth. But your mentioning the 480. I could use a bit of advise on this. I read somewhere that you want more CUDAs in your card (not really sure what those are to be honest). I have Sony Vegas Pro 11 now but plan on moving to 12 once it comes out.

It's mad hard to research video cards as most of the people talking about them are coming from a gaming POV, which I can honestly say I am not sure if that's a plus or minus from a video editing perspective.

HELP!! :)


www.pcpartpicker.com

They have a built in system that you start from the top, work down, and it automatically narrows down your choices based on what will or won't work with the system you're building, and price-checks for you at several major internet retailers. It was a crying shame that I only found it when I had selected everything except my monitors.

Starting to learn to build yourself, it's possible to screw up. Screw-ups can be costly, too. Often the most expensive part of your computer will be the processor, and it's one of the easiest things to kill during build. Just make sure that you give due diligence learning the craft, and you'll absolutely slash your rig expenses forever.

pcpartpicker.com, eh? that is a massive +1 for you, Caidh. What a resource! Thank you!!

@ Artificial and Caidh and everyone who has been helping me with this - thank you all. BIG TIME!
One last question - Intel i7 quadcore or AMD FX eight-core (bulldozer I think it's been called) for video editing?

Sam
 
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Sweetness!!! Ok, here's the thing with discrete video cards - for video editing, does newer mean better? I was looking at Quadro cards over the GTX but everything I have seen so far suggest that the GTXs (and not all of them) are the way to go for video editing. Then I look at the GTXs and think the 560 TI (Fermi) is better than the 560 which is better than the 460 and so on and so forth. But your mentioning the 480. I could use a bit of advise on this. I read somewhere that you want more CUDAs in your card (not really sure what those are to be honest). I have Sony Vegas Pro 11 now but plan on moving to 12 once it comes out.

It's mad hard to research video cards as most of the people talking about them are coming from a gaming POV, which I can honestly say I am not sure if that's a plus or minus from a video editing perspective.

One last question - Intel i7 quadcore or AMD FX eight-core (bulldozer I think it's been called) for video editing?

Newer doesn't mean better. It's more about the actual series of card i.e. Nvidia: 5xx, 4xx, 6xx Radeon 6xxx, 7xxx. The older GTX480 was top of the line 2 or 3 years ago, and it's still a great card that's better than the 560 Ti. For example, the Radeon 6850 is better than the Radeon 7770. For video editing purposes, I'd go with a newer card over an older card if they are close i.e. 560 Ti vs. 480.

But, because I'm mainly gaming and I picked up a NIB 480 for cheap I'm happy with my 480. If I didn't get the deal I got, I'd have a 560 Ti.

The newer cards will work better with the latest and greatest video editing software. Along with the newer processors. I'm not sure which ones, but I know some make better use of the multi-core processors than others. I'd take Intel's i7 over AMD's fx-8150 any day, especially with your budget. If you were doing a budget build, then you could consider AMD.

Just a little tid bit of extra info. AMD's bulldozer is the microarchitecture of their latest chips. Intel's latest microarchitecture is Ivy Bridge.
 
The one main reason I have found that the Quadros are in so much favor among video editing types is the 10-bit monitor support. (Unless your Samsungs are 10-bit, or you are planning on using 10-bit monitors in the future, I'd go with a faster, cheaper card.)

Make sure your software will play well with the latest card, though (sometimes with Premiere you have to manually unlock the CUDA functionality with the newest cards-- not sure about Vegas).

And FWIW, I also went with the i7 3930K Processor and overclocked to 4.5GHz.
 
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