Hey John.. OK.. I totally blew that initial post by neglecting to post the link (I had meant to.. really!) 😯

I updated the post up top with link.. (thank you!)

Rob:

I have a similar machine except I got the 32 gig ram and the 8 Gig AMD and the SSD is 500 Gig. I run my machine about 8 hours a day. I mostly do short videos - wildlife for stock, but I also do artist interviews for a local non-profit art gallery. The are mostly small segments but due to the conditions under which they are filmed I often have 10 to 20 video tracks and voice plus music tacks - and Audio and video adjustments, Pan/Track/crop as well as track stuff. All 8 logical cores run at 100% and over clock auto upto 4.4.

I am getting between 3-4 times render rates (I work with 4k and sometimes use proxies). I additionally have my PX-5S stage piano/control/synth hooked up to music (midi in/out, loops, and vst's) using this machine - no latency using the on-board USB audio.

I have an additional 4 Tb's store USB 3.0 and fast Blue-ray running. I think the 850 watt Power is enough although the external drives and Blueray have their own power.

I did have to replace two fans, which they sent very quickly (probably just a bad batch), otherwise it has been a workhorse for the last 5 months. The water cooling is very silent and keeps the machine very cool along with the 4 large fans.

If I were a doing lots of long video and could afford it, I go with a larger machine, but for a small shop with no large projects for over night work (Projects that are long and have lots of editing) I think its a good machine, especially give the price and the reviews this company gets.

At this price point the only way to get a better machine is to build your own (The company I owned had 35 machines running dual operating systems - windows and IBM brand Unix- which I built so I think I am qualified to make such a statement).

While retired I still do stock stills/videos and some free stuff for the non-profit, on any given day I might be working with 4 or 5 short videos, several hundred stills, and stuff for my last commercial client, and so far I get tired before the machine does:)

Hope this helps. Maybe someone here uses this machine for long arch, episodic and can speak to how it works with 30 minute or longer stuff with lots of edits/VX/music - you know really complex stuff that would push the machine in rendering.

When you say you're getting 3-4x render speed.. is that 3-4x longer to render than footage length, or 3-4x shorter?

Currently mine takes 3-4x longer to render (and pre-render proxies) so my machines are working through the night.

When you say you're getting 3-4x render speed.. is that 3-4x longer to render than footage length, or 3-4x shorter?

 

Currently mine takes 3-4x longer to render (and pre-render proxies) so my machines are working through the night.

That is longer, but I am rendering 4K with lots of tracks, FX, and audio. For files with little done to them I get 1.3 to 1.6 times length. Proxies from PRoRes 4K 150 MB rate are built in about 1.2-1.3 times the length. 1080P stuff is very fast. ProRes 4K to Sony AVC 1080P (100 > 25 data rates) in 1.5 times with color correction and medium sharpening 10 second length. to add to this, I think it is a very reasonable machine for the price. With liquid cooling you can use batch render once you are done with post and let the machine run with no fear of over heating. Adding a few more SSD's might improve things as I am rendering to the OS SSD, but for what I paid I am happy with the performance. What kills me is how long it takes to upload a 6 gig file for stock:(

If you had a choice.. rx480 or rx580?

Don't know much abut the rx580, felt the rx480 with 8 Gig was about as much $$$ I wanted to spend.

I've yet to see a report that gives me any confidence that the RX580 is as fast/reliable for Vegas as the RX480. Doesn't mean it isn't, but I just haven't seen a report on the forum yet, and certainly no test figures. Bear in mind that the RX580 will probably force you to use a 17.X.X driver that crashes Vegas with the Defocus FX if GPU acceleration of video processing is enabled. Some other FX may be affected too. See here.

Oh... glorious. Thanks for the info. Nick. I already bit the bullet and ordered me a Cyberpower with RX580 in it.. it sounds like others' experience is that it will not only crash Vegas Pro on startup but it also won't render many effects successfully... I think I may be walking into a nightmare of problems instead of the productivity boost I need right now.

UGH UGH UGH.

CYBERPOWERPC Gamer Supreme Liquid Cool SLC9940 Desktop Gaming PC (Intel i7-7700K 4.2GHz, AMD RX 580 8GB, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 2TB 7200RPM HDD, 240GB SSD, 802.11AC WiFi, Win 10 Home) Black

It hasn't shipped yet.. I'm wondering now if I should cancel this and order one with the same processor, but RX470 4 GB instead. I figured the 580 would be faster/newer and the extra video RAM couldn't hurt.. double-UGH.

OY. OK. I canceled the order. Curiously, the config I'm now looking at is the same processor, RX480 8 GB x2 Crossfire (??), 16 GB RAM, and a smaller SSD drive (128 GB), smaller 7200 RPM drive (only 1 TB).. and it costs a little more than the one with the RX580???

But if the RX480 will work reliably with Vegas and the RX580 won't, it's a no-brainer for me.

Is that generally the wisdom now? (I'm only looking at the AMD cards because everyone on here write that the NVIDIA are essentially useless for render speed improvements in Vegas 14.. and I've personally disabled GPU acceleration on my NVIDIA boxes to stabilize rendering)

480, 32gb, 256 or 500 ssd…

Based what I've read on this forum over time, two RX480s would probably get into diminishing returns. It's probably better to spend the money on more memory or a larger boot SSD than 120GB. If you could afford it, now would probably be time to add more cores.

How do you see a larger boot SSD affecting Vegas speed *at all*? While I appreciate SSD load/boot improvements (I upgraded two of my hard drives recently to 256 GB SSDs), 128 GB should be fine to boot and load Vegas I'd think... am I missing something?

More RAM than 16 GB.. Cyberpowers seem pre-config'd.. don't see an option to change from 16 to 32 on purchase but can add later.

Video RAM on the RX480... 4 GB vs 8 GB... does this one really matter?

Don't know but its only a little more to go the 8 Gig......

@D7K... you missed the part that the CyberpowerPCs are preconfig'd.. limited options to choose which card with which-sized SSD and RAM config...

@john_dennis.. what sites sell computers with > 4 cores that you'd recommend? Looking on Amazon isn't getting me anywhere..

Thanks!

A 256 GB SSD won't speed up render times. If all your apps fit on a 120, spend the money somewhere else.

I build my own but I've heard one report of a user having this company build one.

https://www.pugetsystems.com

It's probably not the low cost solution.

@D7K... you missed the part that the CyberpowerPCs are preconfig'd.. limited options to choose which card with which-sized SSD and RAM config...

Go to the CyberpowerPC site. I got a machine with 32 gig memory, RX480 8 gig, and 512 SSD I7 7700 (4.2, normally runs at 4.4 when rendering). I bought about six months ago so maybe their site has changed.

Thanks @D7K.. maybe just the options on Amazon are limited.. I'll look directly on their site..

Grr... @D7K.. their site only offers the RX580 in the configs

I ordered mine in late January when the i7 7700 first came out, got a 3 TB 7200 rpm disk, 512 SSD, 32 gigs of Ram, and kthe RX450 8 Gig, all for about $1600, which I thought was a good deal.

OOOOHhhhhh boy... I just found their "customize" button. NOW I'm in trouble... choice of case, motherboards.. choice of processors including 6, 8 and 10-core options (at slower 3.5 GHz instead of 4.2... so then the question.. more cores slightly slower, or less cores but each being faster?!)....

more cores slightly slower, or less cores but each being faster?!)....

Probably the latter (but I'm no expert).

newegg.com might be worth a look. They have some off-the-shelf PCs with i7 and AMD RX GPUs.

Regarding system drive size, my 2-3-year-old PC that I do everything on has a Samsung Pro 256GB SSD. After formatting, that comes down to 213GB. It now has just 74GB free, and my Documents folder etc. are on other drives. I'm certainly near the top of the scale in terms of number or programs, but if you also use a lot of programs, 128GB might start to become limiting.