Newegg has some kit prices that are very decent. EBay is also your friend here, sometimes you just can find a computer that's new someone doesn't want, with maybe a lesser chip, and slap that bad boy in there. I found my current rig that way, new HP z420 workstation for incredible price, was a bit low on memory, but I fixed that, paid less than half in the end as I recall, with warranty, HP support.

Or, buy a motherboard and memory and slap your other components, Hard drives, etc. windows, onto that, if it will fit in your existing case w powersupply. Or, If you can afford it, build from scratch and network both computers, for what I like to do, I love two computers, always, while one is doing something time intensive you can jump over to the other one, keep on online, on offline, or mostly....redundancy is good. I use the old KVM switch for one KB and use two mice. I have an array of monitors, also switchable, with video switchers... You would, for two computers, need a second windows license, which if you have an old laptop even, you could use that license, I prefer win 7 64 for my purposes.

OR, sell that chip, pay a few extra bucks, and get this screamer. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?reviews=all&Item=9SIA5YV6YM5664

 

Thank you for all the advice

In regards to that HP workstation I think that the processor that I won destroys it spec wise (I could be wrong) I would rather keep it in order to future proof the system that I put together.

I could take a look on Ebay but I am not sure if I will find a used PC that can handle a 8th gen i7 for that much less than the retail outlets

From the quick research I had done just purchasing the MB and 32 GB of DDR 4 RAM I will be up at $600- I might be able to deal with 16GB of RAM but it is still $$$ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GCWQ9TK/ref=twister_B07CQQWW2P?_encoding=UTF8&th=1

maybe someone could recommend to me a MB that is just as good as this one but might be a bit less

https://www.amazon.com/Strix-Z370-I-Gaming-Motherboard-802-11ac/dp/B075RJ16BQ

I have built a lot of machines over the years, never did i have as stable a machine as the HP. It runs Vegas beautifully, Davinci and After Effects. Now, a Xeon processor is really the one they've used and one reason is those are the Intel chips that are meant to go two (or more) on the same motherboard, so if you'd want to get crazy with max cores. Xeons deal with some throughput issues related to video processing better than the more standard chips, but YMMV depending on which chip and a host of other variables.

NOW, I priced the "build from scratch" and you're just not going to get away with less that $600 unless you find some one offs on ebay or something, then you're building, testing, installing windows, and we haven't discuss video cards (which your chip has on board, up to three monitors, but I don't know if that degrades the normal non video performance or not, probably not that much, but some).... The HP has a NVDIA Quatro 4000 I believe, super nice card, and 32 Gigs of ECC Ram, which costs about double the price as error correcting Ram is much more stable. Everything on that machine is Cadillac quality, not Ford.

The HP comes WITH Windows 10 installed also, which you would need to buy a license for or abandon your other machine and use that license...and as I said, having two computers happens to be my favorite way to work, but again, that's me and everyone has their own requirements. There's always "extras" we just don't always count on when we build our dream machine....you think it's going to cost x, but you forgot tax, your did not think you needed a new powersupply, but you do, and so forth and so on, so spending x usually add $300. to that figure...just the way it often works out.

So, you did not tell me how much you had to work with, and you indicated money was a problem. If I was on a budget and could get $350 on ebay for that chip of yours, I would spend the extra, get the HP, and THEN when I had enough to do it right, ($1500 +) THEN I would go to the Thread Ripper or Intel equivalent, and so really, it comes down to money, but buddy, don't knock that Xeon chip, it's pretty damned fast.

 

From the quick research I had done just purchasing the MB and 32 GB of DDR 4 RAM I will be up at $600- I might be able to deal with 16GB of RAM but it is still $$$ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GCWQ9TK/ref=twister_B07CQQWW2P?_encoding=UTF8&th=1

 

I looked at the RAM on Amazon, and as I recall, the spec for your chip is for the 2666 mHz Ram, not the 3200, which would be a bit cheaper.

I have built a lot of machines over the years, never did i have as stable a machine as the HP. It runs Vegas beautifully, Davinci and After Effects. Now, a Xeon processor is really the one they've used and one reason is those are the Intel chips that are meant to go two (or more) on the same motherboard, so if you'd want to get crazy with max cores. Xeons deal with some throughput issues related to video processing better than the more standard chips, but YMMV depending on which chip and a host of other variables.

NOW, I priced the "build from scratch" and you're just not going to get away with less that $600 unless you find some one offs on ebay or something, then you're building, testing, installing windows, and we haven't discuss video cards (which your chip has on board, up to three monitors, but I don't know if that degrades the normal non video performance or not, probably not that much, but some).... The HP has a NVDIA Quatro 4000 I believe, super nice card, and 32 Gigs of ECC Ram, which costs about double the price as error correcting Ram is much more stable. Everything on that machine is Cadillac quality, not Ford.

The HP comes WITH Windows 10 installed also, which you would need to buy a license for or abandon your other machine and use that license...and as I said, having two computers happens to be my favorite way to work, but again, that's me and everyone has their own requirements. There's always "extras" we just don't always count on when we build our dream machine....you think it's going to cost x, but you forgot tax, your did not think you needed a new powersupply, but you do, and so forth and so on, so spending x usually add $300. to that figure...just the way it often works out.

So, you did not tell me how much you had to work with, and you indicated money was a problem. If I was on a budget and could get $350 on ebay for that chip of yours, I would spend the extra, get the HP, and THEN when I had enough to do it right, ($1500 +) THEN I would go to the Thread Ripper or Intel equivalent, and so really, it comes down to money, but buddy, don't knock that Xeon chip, it's pretty damned fast.

Much appreciated, I have had a XPS Studio 8000 for 10 years and it has been running 24/7 all that time, it has been solid, more so after the move to Windows 10.

I have a GTX 960 card which is much more powerful than that Quadro card that I could move over to the new system or I could just use the on board graphics until I pick up a 10 series card. The 12 cores and 5 clock speed will still be way more faster than what I have been working with for 10 years.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-Quadro-4000-vs-Nvidia-GTX-960/m7693vs3165

I could pick up a windows license from here for like $11 and download the ISO for WIn 10 Pro

https://www.scdkey.com/microsoft-windows-10-pro-oem-cd-key-global_1227-20.html

The Threadripper I heard is sort of weak with single threaded tasks, my CPU might be faster in that regard.

Thank you again for putting the time in to help me out!!

 

From the quick research I had done just purchasing the MB and 32 GB of DDR 4 RAM I will be up at $600- I might be able to deal with 16GB of RAM but it is still $$$ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GCWQ9TK/ref=twister_B07CQQWW2P?_encoding=UTF8&th=1

 

I looked at the RAM on Amazon, and as I recall, the spec for your chip is for the 2666 mHz Ram, not the 3200, which would be a bit cheaper.

You are correct, it is a bit cheaper but still over $300 for 32 GB, but I could start out with 16GB at first

I actually went towards the more "pro" style, 10 bit Black Magic card. I have to admit I am not really up to speed on Cards, I bought an AMD latest offering a couple of years ago, the thing was as big as a boat, I swear, and had to almost bang out the end of my case to fit it in. Literally. Long story short, I noticed zero improvement, (walked it back to Fry's and was done with it) and so, I always felt the gamer cards were a lot of hype, at least in the realm of video production, the CPU is the bottleneck there, as far as realtime playback with FX or compositing going on. Same thing on rendering, only recently did Vegas seem to up its commitment to GPU assisted rendering and/or playback in a serious way. Before it was more hype, I believe, and sometimes you'd just do better (and still sometimes) to disable the GPU assisted.

At the end of the day, I am somewhat agnostic on cards, though I would be more towards the Blackmagic style vid production cards, but again, take that with a huge grain of salt, over my pay grade you may say.

So, it sounds like you are committed to building the new machine, like, 'I have the monster CPU, now, let's get it on. ' BUT as you are finding out, when you're on the bleeding edge, (well, not quite in this case) or second tier, you pay the price all the way around.

The nice thing about memory, (if you have the MB slots) is you can get a pair of 8s and add a pair later, Obviously, don't get 4 GBs sticks, even though cheaper, then you're somewhat stuck or lose that investment.

So, that was my main focus, does 32 GB (like HP) let's say vs. what you might afford, plus the added stability of ECC RAM (and it really does cost about double, I was surprised when I beefed up mine, first time I bought ECC) and a really fine tuned sytem (HP engineering on the Z series Workstations and their continuous support is SUPERB, I get their bios, sound card, system chip upgrade notices regularly, for example, and that is all handled very smoothly) offset the Chip speed, or somewhat. You are talking same core count here, same thread count.

I am surprise more folks are not weighing in here. I have enjoyed building machines and tweaking, but the off the shelf or "to order" HP Workstation idea (I only did it because it was a steal on Ebay, literally a steal)..has convinced me that THAT really is the way to go IF you can afford.

GPU acceleration worked for me since SVP11 when it was first introduced. At that time I used a GTX570, one lebe below what the developer used, which was a GTX580. It improved timeline playback, especially with FX and render times dropped too, even more so with MC AVC.

I currently use a Fury X and VP15. Together with my aging 3930k running at 4.3GHz I can preview 4K 30p 8bit at Best/Full with FXs applied; I only use Vegas own FXs aside from NeatVideo which is extreme power hungry.

If a user doesn’t notice any improvement with GPU acceleration then you either have the wrong GPU, driver or a weak CPU to begin with. Xeon CPUs are good and can have lots of cores but they are rather low clocked and some can’t event get boost on all cores. For Vegas and as of now, a high clocked 4.5-5.0GHz HEDT CPU will always be faster then a Xeon CPU no matter how many cores it has.

Richvideo, just took a quick look at the link for the memory. If you did not notice, it is a kit of 4x4GB (16GB total). With the link for the MB (Asus ROG Strix X370-i), it is an ITX motherboard, and would only support two of the four DIMM modules.

If you have gone through some of the posts concerning hardware and Vegas (Pro or Studio), you will see an extremely wide array of equipment that the users either swear by, or swear at. DaVinci Resolve and Hitfilm both have the same problem. Can neither confirm or deny about Avid, since really never followed any forum/thread/topic. And if you "read between the lines" for Apple, they have their issues as well. From what is available currently, you really have to figure out what you want to spend.

I, like "BruceUSA" on this forum, have an AMD 1950x processor, but I use nVidia graphics, as due to most of my past experience (note I said "My Experience"), have had particularly bad luck with (old) ATI and AMD graphics cards. Others have great success with them. Prior to this AMD build on an MSI Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard, 32 GB RAM, I was using Intel platforms (actually two X99 systems, one with i7-5820k, the other i7-5930K), and they worked great. I just wanted to "downsize". I use a Gigabyte GTX 1080 on this machine, as I also do some older gaming (Mass Effect Trilogy), but have not done any "overclocking" on either the processor or GPU (only use MSI Afterburner to set fan curve and give the card extra "power headroom"). I do use an Intel 800 GB 750 PCI-e for OS/Apps; a Samsung 960 EVO 1 TB PCI-e for media source; a Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB for assets (music, lut files, vfx files) and another for strictly scratch, plus the last one for Adobe Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC. Still have two WD Red 2 TB drives for rendering to, and a WD 4 TB Black for whatever else. I use a WD 2 TB and 3 TB USB 3.0 drives for driver and program backups, including hardware, and have re-dedicated one of the old X99 platforms for a dedicated Home Server with a total of 18 WD Red 4 TB drives connected to an LSI RAID card.

So, what you need to do, is read through the posts on this forum, and others concerning hardware, digest it all with a Big Grain of Salt, figure out what YOU can spend, and go for it. Because if you read enough in all these topics, what it comes down to is, IS IT WORKING FOR YOU!? Other than that, who cares if you have less RAM or a cheaper video card? I haven't been that "ecstatically" pleased with this AMD ThreadRipper platform, but can't fault it much either, but I knew that prior to purchasing and "downsizing". Just be careful on what you read out there, now that nVidia has announced their new cards (Releasing 20 September). There will be the rumor mongers and hype-specialists claiming this or that, and the card(s) has/have not even hit the hands of reviewers yet. But, I would have to believe, that within a week or two, there will be lots of "Hands-On reviews", at least for gaming benchmarks! Already seen the question here on Magix about how the new RTX 2080 performs with Vegas Pro 16? Who friggin' knows?! Neither is available yet!!!!!