New Computer for Pro 13

Jeff Bauer wrote on 9/26/2014, 11:57 AM

With the introduction of the X99 chipset and Haswell E processors I am planning on building my first computer to run Vegas Pro. I would appreciate comments and suggestions.

Here is what I am looking at:
CPU: i7-5960X (8 core, 3.0GHz)
CPU Cooler: NZXT X61 (280mm water cooled AIO)
RAM: 32GB TBD MHz (probably 2133 -2800)
MOBO: ASUS Rampage V Extreme
Video Card: Radeon R9 290
Boot Drive: 256 GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD (Win 7 Pro 64 bit and programs) – SATA III (6G) connection
Projects Drive: 512 GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD (files for current editing project) – SATA III
Storage Drive: 4 TB WD Caviar Black HDD (all other files, scratch drive, renders, output) – SATA III
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDR-2209 Blu Ray burner
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000W Platinum
Case: NZXT Phantom 820

I was also thinking of purchasing three Noctura NF-F12 PWM fans to replace the rear case exhaust fan, and water cooler fans. I plan to cool the case with intake air from the front, bottom, and side and exhaust air out the back and top.

I also intend to use the Silverstone FP-57B to convert a front 5.25” bay to a hot swap bay where I will locate the Storage Drive.

I would appreciate any suggestions on my drive configuration (especially related to scratch drive and render locations) and cooling fan setup (especially for the water cooler fan placement). I would also be interested in thoughts on whether it is worth waiting until black Friday/cyber Monday to try to get some discounts on any of the components.

Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions on any items related to this build.

Jeff

Comments

OldSmoke wrote on 9/26/2014, 12:15 PM

It's all looking good. if budget allows, setup at least a RAID 1 for your storage, a RAID 5 or 10 would be even better. If you are tech savvy, build your own cooling system and also watercool the R9 290, they tend to run rather hot.

Edit: The 5960X only supports DDR4 up to 2133.

Hulk wrote on 9/26/2014, 12:38 PM

Wow! That's gonna be a beast of a system!

Looks absolutely perfect to me.

Definitely report back how it performs.

Jeff Bauer wrote on 9/26/2014, 12:42 PM

Thanks Old Smoke.

Not sure I feel up to a custom water cooling job.

Great tip on the RAM.

I figure a few years down the road when the software demands are greater, I can migrate to RAID to keep the performance respectable. Hopefully I wont need it to start, but it's an option.

BruceUSA wrote on 9/26/2014, 4:36 PM

Looking good. You will be very please with the R9 290. Radeon R9 290/290x are run very hot. I was getting 91c with stock cooling for my 290x. I now running EK full water block. 2x 290x OCed 1200/1500, the temp at maximun load (Benching) never get pass 51c, othervise it is at around 42c and VRM1 and VRM2 at around 31c-39c.

ps, with your Phantom 820, you can easily house a 360mm and 240mm radiator. Go that route, that way you can cool both GPU/CPU and OC a little on both if you like.

OldSmoke wrote on 9/26/2014, 4:54 PM

Jeff

RAID 1 & 5 are not for performance but redundancy. RAID 10 is both, redundancy and performance but requires 4 disk minimum. RAID 1 is already a good choice for a storage media and the minimum I would do. All you need is a second 4TB disk; the MB has already RAID on board.

astar wrote on 9/26/2014, 5:19 PM

The config looks good. Personally, I would use the X99-E WS mobo instead of gaming boards that are stuffed full of after thought gizmos. I just prefer adding dedicated cards for the additional features I need, which can then be removed if they fail. I also do not do overclocking, I prefer stability over stats. In the past I have had quality issues with Asus boards, Gigabyte seems to have better quality and stability. The GA-x99-UD4 looks pretty good to me. I am sure everyone has their story about which boards are best.

Not sure why no m2 for boot which is much faster than sata 6.

I second raid 1 for project and storage drive.

Good 4k will require 10-bit color, seems like with a config this grand you would go firepro over r9.

OldSmoke wrote on 9/26/2014, 7:02 PM

[I]Good 4k will require 10-bit color[/I]

What makes you that? I am very happy with 4K at 8-bit and I don't think Vegas is really setup for 10-bit in and out... there where plenty of threads about that.

Also the ASUS X99-E WS still has plenty of issues and the Rampage is currently the only really working one from ASUS.

Jeff Bauer wrote on 9/26/2014, 9:18 PM

Ooops I got my RAID configurations mixed up. I'll give it some consideration.

Jeff Bauer wrote on 9/26/2014, 9:20 PM

Thanks for the heads up I will definately keep an eye on the temps and add additional cooling if necessary.

How is the noise from those cards?

Jeff Bauer wrote on 9/26/2014, 9:21 PM

Which M2 drive were you thinking of? The ones I have seen are only marginally faster than a good SATA SSD.

flyingski wrote on 9/26/2014, 10:06 PM

Jeff,

You are going to O.C. the Haswell E aren't you? With water cooling you should hit 4.0 or better. Please post back when the build is complete. I've got upgrade fever...again.

ushere wrote on 9/27/2014, 12:01 AM

looks great, wish you all the best with it, BUT,

what's around the corner? ;-)

NickHope wrote on 9/27/2014, 5:09 AM

The 5960X only supports DDR4 up to 2133

Really? I have 32Gb of 2400 with mine.

Also the ASUS X99-E WS still has plenty of issues and the Rampage is currently the only really working one from ASUS.

I have the Asus X99 Deluxe and it's OK. The only problem I have had is with internet connectivity, and aborted large downloads, but that might be down to drivers, Win 8.1, Firefox, my router, or just about anything. The Rampage doesn't seem necessary for video editing.

Not sure why no m2 for boot which is much faster than sata 6.

I am not convinced that imaging software such as Acronis True Image can find an M.2 boot drive for a restore. Acronis' support staff didn't know what one was a couple of weeks ago when I discussed it with them. Also it takes up 4 PCI lanes, which you *might* miss if you ended up with 3 GPUs. I went with a Samsung Pro SSD and will take another look at M.2 and Sata-Express options in a year or so and then possibly repurpose my Samsung SSD as a scratch drive and/or static page file drive.

OldSmoke wrote on 9/27/2014, 8:37 AM

Nick

You can read up the supported memory for the 5960X on Intel's website http://ark.intel.com/products/82930

My 3930K has also a limitation which is 1066. Yes you can have faster memory and I tried to run it at 2133 but that CPU won't last as long. The memory controller isn't build for it. I also found absolutely no difference in Cinebench when using 2133 vs 1066.

The Deluxe board has many issues, plenty to read on the Internet but I think a few Bios updates down the road and it will be ok. I like the X99-E WS but from I read it isn't ready yet.

Jeff Bauer wrote on 9/27/2014, 10:11 AM

Hulk,

Will do.

Jeff

Jeff Bauer wrote on 9/27/2014, 10:49 AM

Thanks everyone for the valuable inputs. Should I wait until Black Friday/Cyber Monday to pick up some good deals on any of this equipment?
Jeff

DataMeister wrote on 9/27/2014, 3:28 PM

I would say if you are not in a hurry then of course wait until Black Friday.

In addition to that, build yourself a wishlist of all your parts in Amazon.com and Newegg.com then go setup an account on camelcamelcamel.com and track the prices on all of those Amazon parts. Set some watch prices so you'll get an email if they drop below whatever looks like an average price.

For Newegg subscribe to their email newsletter which has regular coupon codes for stuff. Then install the HoverHound plugin for Google Chrome so you can easily compare Newegg (coupon) prices to the Newegg, Amazon and Tiger Direct price history.

If you are patient then 5-6 of your key components could go on sale over the next 2 months for $15-30 off their lowest historical price. That's the best way to save money on a custom build ... if not in a hurry.

If you are outside the U.S. then this may not apply.

Jeff Bauer wrote on 9/27/2014, 4:09 PM

Awesome PixelStuff! I’ll follow your advice. There is no deadline for the build, but I am anxious to have it up and running.

Jeff Bauer wrote on 9/28/2014, 10:28 AM

Any recommendations on which brand of video card to get?

DataMeister wrote on 9/28/2014, 10:10 PM

As a pure Vegas accellerator the AMD FirePro W9100 is probably one of the best you can currently buy ... for a mere $3,500. However I'm not sure how it compares to the nVidia Quadro flagship.

For a general purpose consumer card, picking the best probably depends on what you want most. Based on overall performance the new nVidia GTX 980 or 970 is definitely the pinnacle of modern technology. They managed to leapfrog AMD for most benchmarks while actually reducing the amount of electrcity needed. Plus I have always been a big fan of nVidia's driver package.

However if you purely want the card to accelerate Sony Vegas then the AMD Radeon R9 290 looks like it still out performs the GTX 980.

Read this page:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/20
or
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8568/the-geforce-gtx-970-review-feat-evga/14

It will be interesting to see some GTX 980 benchmarks for Vegas Po 13. Does anyone have those yet?

astar wrote on 9/29/2014, 1:05 PM

M.2 performance and ranking - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-xp941-z97-pci-express,3826-8.html

I think AMD and NVIDIA are both doing special things to limit or tweek their GPU lines for marketing reasons. It will be interesting to see in the future what happens to the quadro/firepro lines since 4K is 10/12bit color capable. The Vegas pro results on anandtech are based on rendering output, which is not playback performance. I am sure Nvidia would own the benchmark if vegas was cuda focused and not opencl. What would be nice is some type of info display in vegas, that tested the system for proper cpu instruction sets, and GPU calculation speeds. Only then would we be able to determine the weakness of particular system specs. I think system performance is more about the types of math being used to do plugin effects, and pixel formats, than brand manufacturer. From Sony's marketing materials, you can pretty much only determine that you need an x86 processor, and a gpu that can do opencl. What is specifically is happening on the render performance test that is giving AMD the edge over Nvidia. Even some type of tech specs page that details needs by plug-in effect, or pixel format would be nice. That way you could at least determine what is important based on your level of workflow. Even just coping Blackmagic's diskperf app, and making a display of what formats the system is capable of, and which it is not.

Jeff Bauer wrote on 10/16/2014, 10:19 PM

Build Update
I am awaiting delivery of the final components. Thanks for all the valuable input. I have decided to go with the 2133 MHz memory sticks per Old Smokes recommendation. As he correctly pointed out, the X-99 chipset default memory speed is 2133. You can overclock it higher, but plug and play is 2133. Another factor was simply availability and price. DDR4 memory seems to be getting harder to find, especially at the higher speeds and the price seems to be creeping up not down as I had hoped.

As for the M.2 and RAID configuration, I’m sticking with my original plans for now. In order to get the performance improvements available through M.2 you really have to go to an x4 based drive and those get really expensive. I’m just not convinced that the performance improvement is worth the cost or that I need it right now. As for redundant RAID, I recognize the value, but for now I will stick with my routine backup strategy utilizing otherwise obsolete drives. I’m not working in a business environment that requires high data integrity and while a loss of some data would be disappointing, it’s not the end of the world for me.

Hopefully everything will be up and running in a few weeks and I can report back with some benchmark data.

Jeff Bauer wrote on 11/10/2014, 8:26 PM

Initial Benchmarks

Well I finally got the system built and some initial (no overclocking) benchmarks run.
Windows Boot Time ~ 70 seconds as recorded in the Event Viewer
Lux Mark v2.0 with scene set to “room” (complex) the combined CPU & GPU score was 1900
Cinebench R15 154.85 fps and 1367 pts

At this point the system is bare bones. The only programs loaded are Norton Internet Security (NIS), Samsung Magician, NZXT CAM, and most of the ASUS AI suite applications. I am only getting about 70% of the advertised IOPS on the SSD’s. I spent some time trying to improve that performance but was unsuccessful. I reset most of those tweaks back to the default settings. I ran the benchmarks from the non-OS SSD.

I also tried setting NIS to silent mode and re-running the benchmarks as well as implementing rapid mode. The best Luxmark score I got was 1914 with Cinebench scores in the low 160’s fps and low 1400 pts.

Next I will try some overclocking.

NickHope wrote on 11/10/2014, 10:17 PM

Using Asus' 5-way optimisation in AI Suite I got the multiplier on my 5960x up to 46. Still had 2 crashes when opening images in Firefox while rendering stuff so I manually reduced it to 45 and all good for a couple of weeks now.

When you're all set up it would be very interesting to see you try the SCS 4k benchmark. Myself, Oldsmoke and others are interested to see how an overclocked 5960x and R9 290 or 290x perform, as this might be a good enough combo for fairly heavy 4k editing without going to dual Xeons etc..