New X99 Computer for Editing GH4 4K Video in VP13

NickHope wrote on 9/7/2014, 3:25 PM

Finally time to build a new PC after soldiering on for more than 7 years with my old Q6600/XP x64 machine.

It's primarily for editing Panasonic GH4 4k footage in Vegas Pro 13, but I also want to have a play with DaVinci Resolve Lite 11, Reason 8, and have the possibility of working with Adobe PPro and After Effects.

It will be built by Compute and More in Bangkok who built my last 2 boxes in 2003 and 2007. We've come up with the following specs based on the new Haswell-E, X99 and DDR4 stuff:

Motherboard: Asus X99-Deluxe

CPU: Intel i7-5960X

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 2400 (or 2666/2800 if it reaches Bangkok this week) (Edit: I should have got 2133. Reasons below)

O/S & programs drive: Plextor M6e M.2 128GB SSD drive (Edit: I ended up getting a Samsung 850 Pro 256Gb. Reasons below.)

Media drive: 2 x Western Digital Red NAS 4TB drives in a RAID 0 (Edit: I used IRST (Intel's "fake" RAID))

Render drive: Existing 1TB or 2TB HDD (Edit: I ended up without a render drive as such)

Other data drive: Existing 1TB HDD (Edit: I used 2 x existing Samsung 1Tb HDDs in IRST RAID 0. May add 2 more to make RAID10)

Case: Corsair Graphite Series 760T Full Tower with windowed sides (Edit: I ended up with the newer Corsair Graphite Series™ 780T White Full-Tower PC Case.)

CPU cooling: Corsair Hydro series H110 (Edit: This has rattly fans! It's a known problem. I swapped them for 2 x Noctua NF-A14 PWM)

Power supply: Corsair RM850 (Edit: I ended up with the RM1000).

GPU 1: Sapphire Radeon HD6970 (already bought on eBay) (Edit: This is in the primary slot with my monitors plugged into it.)

GPU 2: EVGA GTX 580 (already bought on eBay)

Drive bay: Thermaltake Max 5 Duo

Sound card: Don't know. M-Audio USB? (Edit: I ended up with the M-Audio M-track)

Monitors: Existing Dell 24", Asus 24" and Philips 17" (for now)

O/S: Windows 8.1 Pro

The whole GPU issue is a bit of a mess. I bought these GPUs off eBay because they seem to be the ones that are fastest with Vegas. But it seems neither of them support 4k, so in the short term I'll just monitor my 4k at 1080p on my existing monitor. Also both are behind the curve when it comes to optimum performance in DaVinci Resolve. I'll do various testing to see which is fastest (and most stable) in Vegas/Resolve and to see how they behave themselves when I run both together. I guess I may end up using only one of them and adding a 2nd, newer card that will support 4k for a new 28" 4k monitor.

I'd appreciate any comments on the choice of components, and I have the following specific questions:

1. Is 128GB likely to be enough for the O/S and typical programs going forward? Or should I get 256GB? I currently use only a 36GB C: drive! Quite a price difference between 128 and 256GB.
2. Is 32GB enough RAM? (later I might switch this for 64GB of faster RAM)
3. Do those GPUs need their own liquid cooling? (the builder said not)
4. Is RAID 0 necessary and the best flavour of RAID for my media drive?
5. Should I be looking at a 2nd RAID or an SSD for my render drive or is a standlone HDD OK?
6. Should I be looking at a small extra SSD cache drive as well?
7. Are those WD Red HDDs a good idea over the Green or Black ones? I don't suppose I need NAS but the builder is keen on them.
8. Any thoughts on best GPUs for use with Vegas Pro, Resolve, PPro/After Effects and 4k monitor? (maybe I should phrase this "Which 4k-supporting GPU is the least bad with Vegas?")

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Comments

NickHope wrote on 9/9/2014, 3:18 PM

Thanks again for all the replies.

Media Drive
astar, I understand that the WD Red drives use "Intellipower" to spin at between 5400-7200rpm. I hear the argument for using a large SSD as a media drive but the decision to go with a larger RAID 0 is partly based on project management. I tend to have multiple projects on the go at once, some of them including old archive footage. It seems to make more sense to have my archived footage, captured footage, and intermediates (for old DV/HDV projects) on one big drive. You can get something like 20 hours of 100Mbps GH4 4k footage on a 1TB drive. That's not a huge amount so the result would be a lot of shuffling data between the media SSD and other HDDs. A typical SSD does 540 MB/s read, 520 MB/s write. A RAID 0 should give around 300 to 340 MB/s so there's a significant difference but it's not an order of magnitude different.

I'm still not sure about the WD Red drives. They are just going to be used in an internal RAID 0, so I don't think the NAS technology is even relevant is it? Does anyone think it's worth paying extra for WD Black drives in this case? Longer warranty and 21 MB/s per drive faster performance (on paper).

I'm also going to put a single 1TB WD Black drive in for general files ("My Documents") to sync with a laptop HDD for travelling.

CPU
Agreed that the CPU is very expensive and my upgrade timing is unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how you look at it), but because I'm trying to build a system for editing 4k for years to come, I'm going to take it on the chin.

GPUs
Agreed also that the GPUs are long in the tooth, but so is Vegas' GPU code. They were chosen as the fastest realistically-priced performers with Vegas. It sucks that neither will display 4k resolution. If an R9 board can be shown to perform as well or better then I'd consider a 4GB one (or two) of those. But then it still wouldn't be ideal for Adobe. However I've read that AMD are now good for Resolve 10 and 11 (having been previously poor).

O/S & Programs Drive
John D, I think I'm going to heed your wise words and get a regular 240 or 256GB SATA SSD over the Plextor M.2 drive for the following reasons:
- Possible problems with True Image restore
- The M.2 drive takes up 4 of the 40 PCIe lanes. There is a possibility I'll even end up with 3 GPUs in this machine so I might need those lanes for that (x16 + x16 + x8). Apparently PCIe x8 would not cause significantly less GPU speed than x16 but x4 would.
- Extra expense without huge increase in speed

I'll revisit M.2 (and forthcoming Sata Express) SSD solutions for either boot drive or media drive later when they've matured and others have proved/disproved the True Image issue. At that point I could repurpose my regular SSD as a scratch drive or static page file drive.

UPS
There seems to be quite a price hike for UPSs above 1500VA. So I'll probably try and get a true sine wave 1500VA UPS and keep my fingers crossed. If I can't get a true sine wave one here, I'm reading that Corsair doesn't seem to be at risk of damage from simulated sine wave UPSs as much as some others such as Enermax. So I might just take the risk.

Edit: Regarding the ****, since when has the initial "V" followed by the initial "A" been an offensive word?

john_dennis wrote on 9/9/2014, 3:49 PM

I thought about the slot that the Plextor takes up but didn't mention it. With a lot of video cards it might get in the way.

If I couldn't use VA (Volt Amps) or kVA, I couldn't get through the day.

NickHope wrote on 9/9/2014, 10:51 PM

There are 2 versions of this Plextor SSD. One is attached to a PCIe board and physically takes up a PCIe slot (not good). But the other (the one I would use) is just a little M.2 card that sits out of the way in its own little M.2 slot on the mobo. So it's not the taking up of physical PCIe slots that's the problem, but the fact that it (electronically) pinches 4 of the mobo's 40 PCIe lanes. If I ended up with 3 GPUs (entirely feasible because of Vegas' GPU mess) it would be best to have them running at x16, x16 and x8, but with the plextor in place then they would have to run at x16, x16, x4 or at x16, x8, x8. Might be OK but that tipped the argument for me back to conventional SSD for now.

Edit: See halfway down this page for how the M.2 card mounts. That article is a good overview of this mobo.

john_dennis wrote on 9/10/2014, 5:38 PM

Nick!

I know you're all primed to finally upgrade but I was able to get my hands on an advanced copy of this a few days before it hits the street.

Worth considering.

OldSmoke wrote on 9/10/2014, 5:49 PM

LOL!

DataMeister wrote on 9/11/2014, 10:20 PM

I'm curious why you "wish" for faster than 2400Mhz RAM. As opposed to actually buying faster RAM. Is it a budget thing (because 2400Mhz does seem to be the current sweet spot), availability in your area, or just brand loyalty with G.Skill?

I believe Asus actually demo'd that X99-Deluxe motherboard with the Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM which comes in 2800Mhz (4x8GB) or if price isn't an option and you don't mind filling all the DIMM slots they have 3300Mhz (4x4GB) sticks. Not to mention those sticks come in white on black to match the motherboard.

Whether that is enough faster than 2400Mhz to matter I don't know, but I know that jumping from 1600Mhz to 2400Mhz makes for a snappier feeling computer with certain tasks and as luck would have it CPU magazine (one of my favorites) had an article recently on this very subject.
http://www.computerpoweruser.com/article/15439/memory-matters

NickHope wrote on 9/12/2014, 1:58 AM

PixelStuff, G.Skill 2400 was literally all that was available last Saturday at the places I asked in Bangkok. I think that by now there is a good chance they'll have faster and/or other brands. It's one reason why I've held off actually ordering for a few days. The other is to be more sure of the spec.. Cheers

OldSmoke wrote on 10/2/2014, 3:20 PM

@Nick

How is the build going? Still waiting? I am also looking into upgrading to handle my AX100 4K files better and was hoping to hear from you how that works out with the new machine.

As for memory speed, keep in mind the max supported by the 5960X is 2133 as stated on Intel's website. http://ark.intel.com/products/82930

OldSmoke wrote on 10/10/2014, 7:03 PM

bump

ushere wrote on 10/10/2014, 11:04 PM

i'd opt for a more sound proofed case with less lights.

NickHope wrote on 10/11/2014, 4:55 AM

I have the machine but still configuring. Didn't get as far as the whole scenario of testing graphics cards with Vegas yet but will report back in detail when I do. I have Vegas Pro 10, 12 and 13 installed, running and mostly configured.

I note what you say about the 2133 memory. I have 32Gb of 2400 memory and it's working OK. As I said, it was the only DDR4 memory available to me in Bangkok at the time.

The case I actually ended up with is the Corsair Graphite Series™ 780T White Full-Tower PC Case, which I am happy with so far, despite it being enormous and looking more like a suitcase than a computer. The computer is pretty quiet. Way quieter than my air conditioning.

I only have 2 problems. Firstly a rattly fan in the Corsair H110 cooler. This is apparently a common issue because of poor build quality of the fans. Once I optimised the fan speed settings in the Asus "Dual Intelligent Processors 5" software it went away but I expect it to return at certain fan speeds when the fans speed up when rendering etc.. I might replace them with better fans such as Noctua fans but I need to do some research about RPM speeds first. Suggestions?

Second problem is that my internet connection is not as stable as my older computer. Large downloads tend to fail. I've updated drivers etc. but still not got to the bottom of it and need to do more troubleshooting.

Oh and I lost one of my 2 IRST RAIDs (RAID0) when updating the motherboard software to version 0904. Luckily I had a very recent backup. I was thinking of going RAID10 instead of RAID0 for that RAID but this failure left me thinking that even RAID10 isn't really immune to this type of failure. There's no substitute for external backups. A dedicated RAID card would probably be better, but I don't want to use one if possible.

OldSmoke wrote on 10/11/2014, 6:49 AM

@Nick
Thanks for taking the time on this update.

The 780T seems to be the successor of the 600T which is what I currently have. These are great cases, big but very easy to build with plenty of space for expansion.

I actually gave up on the closed loop water cooling systems and went with a XSPC system. The only downside is it uses up two 5 1/4" slots in the casing for the reservoir and pump. I like this system as the pump is integrated in the reservoir making for a simpler installation.

As for RAID cards; I recently tested an Adaptec 6805e card. Its a 8 port 6GB/s PCIe x8 card and I was terribly disappointed, its now on eBay. It was slow to boot and also slow in data transfer; nowhere near what the onboard RST can do. It was even slower then my 6GB/s drives running on 3GB/s ports. Your MB has plenty of ports and I would use the on board RAID for sure. I bought a simple non raid card just to connect the BD burner and a hot swap tray for the backup drives which uses only a PCIe x4 slot, the very short ones. I am currently running a RAID 5 for my archive and may upgrade to a RAID10 and see if it is fast enough to do my editing from it rather then copy the project file over to my SSD.

Have you done any editing at all with the new system? I am asking because my current problem is playback of 4K files from the AX100 on the timeline. In Best/Full down to Preview/Full it takes almost a second between clip changes, straight cuts, for the playback to go back to full 29.97fps. It drops down to around 15fps and cross fades are worse. For that reason, I am using proxies which is fine but adds time to the whole editing process; creating proxies from 4K files is time consuming.

NickHope wrote on 10/11/2014, 9:47 AM

No serious editing yet. I did just open some GH4 29.97 UHD clips on the V13 Pro timeline at best/full, monitoring in just the preview window. With the HD6970 set as "GPU acceleration of video processing" there is a bit of delay before 29.97 but less than 1 second. With the GTX 580 it doesn't get above about 21fps but I have a very recent driver and will experiment with the older ones in due course. Don't read too much into these results as they were just a very quick look-see without attempting to optimize anything.

Ah, but now with GPU acceleration OFF that delay seems even less. Not sure what's up with that.

Sounds like a R9 290 or 290X might be the way to go for 4k timeline performance. I wouldn't be surprised if I have one or two of those in here soon, although that sucks if I want to run Adobe stuff on here.

OldSmoke wrote on 10/13/2014, 5:18 PM

@Nick

If you have the time, please keep us updated. I don't mind investing into new system to handle the 4K footage but I honestly not sure which route to go; 5960X or dual Xeon setup.

Edit:
Is there an option in the bios to set PCIe generation? Some board can select between Gen2.0 and Gen3.0. Your cards, like mine, are all Gen2.0.

Terje wrote on 10/14/2014, 4:02 AM

I can not remember where I read this, but for rendering on the GPU, GPU RAM is also apparently very, very important. The recommendation I read was 4G of GPU-RAM for 1080p rendering, and an absolute minimum of 8G for 4K video.

NickHope wrote on 10/14/2014, 6:10 AM

My internet problem seems like it might be specific to Windows 8.1. I seem to have fixed it by setting the DNS server to Google's ( 8 8 8 8 / 8 8 4 4 ) instead of auto. I've also updated the BIOS and settings of my router, which may have helped. It doesn't seem to be a mobo issue.

Yes, you can choose PCIe speed between auto, Gen1 and Gen2. I've left mine on auto for now.

I can't report on rendering performance yet, but I did some more quick testing of timeline performance. That 21 fps I reported earlier for the GTX 580 playing back a single UHD track was when that GPU was in the primary slot with both my monitors on it. After I changed the primary GPU to the HD 6970 and plugged the monitors into it the GTX 580 playback would reach 29.97. I get similar single-UHD-track timeline performance with either GPU set or neither. If anything slightly snappier on the HD 6970. I then made a more challenging project with a couple of tracks, colour corrector and a long transition. After a bit of a delay the HD 6970 would jump up to 21-22 fps. The Nvidia wouldn't go beyond 12-13 fps. And with neither set it would stay around 1 fps. So from this quick test it appears that the HD 6970 is the better GPU for timeline performance.

I've yet to get into the whole overclocking thing, but I plan to. There are a number of physical switches on this mobo for overclocking and I need to work out whether to do it there or in the BIOS/software.

I'll update the original post with what I actually ended up buying.

NickHope wrote on 10/14/2014, 6:20 AM

One more thing on the M-Audio M-Track. It's very good value for what it is, and I'm happy with it so far (haven't recorded with it yet), but it must be plugged into a USB 2.0 port. I got horrible sounds from it on USB 3.0. Also, no ASIO drivers appear on the M-Audio website for Windows 8.1, leading me to mistakenly think there are none, but the Windows 8 driver works fine. Some are using the ASIO4ALL driver and even the M-Audio manual talks about that for lower latency.

OldSmoke wrote on 10/14/2014, 6:34 AM

@Nick

You findings seem to support what other users have already seen. The AMD/ATI cards seem to be better for timeline performance as that is all done in OpenCL, no CUDA at all. Like you, I might well change to two 290 instead of my two GTX580.

ddm wrote on 10/14/2014, 3:54 PM

For some reason, the windows drivers for the m-audio devices are on the Avid site. I don't have a link right now, but it should be pretty easy to find. Let me know if you can't find it.

ddm wrote on 10/14/2014, 3:57 PM

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/download/en379411

that's the link to the m-audio drivers

NickHope wrote on 10/15/2014, 1:08 AM

I can't see it there ddm. I got it from http://www.m-audio.com/support/download/drivers/m-track-1.0.6

ddm wrote on 10/15/2014, 11:09 AM

you didn't see any drivers there? Or just the driver for your device? I see them here. anyway, you got them, so all is good.

NickHope wrote on 10/16/2014, 12:13 AM

I didn't see drivers for any M-Audio devices, including the M-Track.

NickHope wrote on 10/23/2014, 12:26 AM

So I've managed a whopping 39% overclock on the CPU. Now running at over 4600 MHz. Did a stack of rendering last night and all seems stable, very acceptable in terms of temperature, and very fast.

I'm not an experienced overclocker so I used the "Dual Intelligent Processors 5" (DIP5) program inside the Asus AI Suite III to do it. It does cyclical testing to push the CPU to an acceptable limit and then writes the appropriate settings into the UEFI BIOS. It also tests and tunes the fans etc. for the optimum quietness/cooling performance. Highly recommended! There are a number of YouTube videos on how to do it starring JJ from Asus who is everywhere.

Unfortunately, not having the "correct" 2133 MHz RAM was a complete pain because DIP5 sets that frequency in the BIOS during the first reboot when it starts to do its thing, and then Windows doesn't run properly. I ended up having to jump into the BIOS and reset the following 3 settings in the "AI Tweaker" section before it would continue. I'm sure with 2133 MHz this problem wouldn't occur.

AI Overclock Tuner: XMP > Auto
CPU Core Ration: Per Core > Sync All Cores
DRAM Frequency: DDR4-2133 MHz > DDR4-2400 MHz

Also, my system builder had wired my rear fan and my 2 front fans into the fan controller on top of my Corsair case. I had to change that and plug them into the chassis fan headers on the X99 Deluxe for the fan optimisation in DIP5 to work. Now the fans have optimised speed-temperature curves and speed up just enough to keep things cool when the system is stressed.

Here is a list of fan headers and what I have plugged into them:
CPU_FAN - 1st top water cooler fan
CPU_OPT - 2nd top water cooler fan
CHA_FAN1 - water cooler pump
CHA_FAN2 - rear fan
CHA_FAN3 - upper front fan
CHA_FAN4 - lower front fan