2013 Franken Mac Pro Tube – FCPX editor upgrades 2013 Mac Pro

[Bill Davis]

[Dominic Deacon] “It honestly takes about half an hour to an hour to put a pc together. It’s kind of fun and it’s kind of cool cause you know what’s in there and what to do if things go wrong.”

Sorry, but you’re going to be hard pressed to tell me that doing the research and comparison to know that all the stuff on the left in this picture, is precisely what’s BEST for your DYI rig config is going to get done in 30 minutes.

I totally get the satisfaction of spending those hours, days, weeks or months to educate yourself about how many Megahertz are best and which power supply is beefy enough to handle the RAM load. But you’re never going to convince me that’s a 3o minute gig.

It’s a lifetime gig. And if you’re comfortable acting as both editor AND systems integrator – the approach is PERFECT for you. It’s just honestly a NIGHTMARE for many of us.

Especially knowing I can pickup what’s on the right in one hour from a standing start anywhere in the US – and know exactly what its going to do. Everything is engineered to work precisely with everything else.

Custom building made sense to me back in the day when without optimizing every single component, you couldn’t get the job done. But those days are gone. I’ll totally admit you can get more “bang for the buck” with the DIY rig. The thing is, I’m not even close to convinced that I need anymore “bang” at all. I can run buckets of work through my practice without blinking. The hardware I use, a MacBook Pro actually – (lame as it may be to others) is orders of magnitude faster and more fluid than any other system I’ve ever cut on for the past 20 years. And I paid my bills for ALL those years. So I’m delighted to trade the former time spent reading component specs and figuring out which card is the best for the next 6 months – for more time playing with the dog.

That I can edit anywhere and leave the desk behind, is just extra goodness.

My 2 cents, YMMV.

(BTW, I lifted the “component group pic” and the (iMac pic) from a quick Google Search to make the point.
If I need take them down, somebody just let me know.)

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

[Shawn Miller] “What if a low cost, DIY machine rendered your animations out 20% faster? That seems like a pretty good cost savings over the life of that computer. ☺ “

If it was 10 hours vs 8 hours probably.

But if it’s 10 seconds vs 8 seconds, Meh.

Rendering is now something I almost never think about.
My timeline works flawlessly without it, and when it’s time to finally do it, 95% of the time, I discover my background rendering has done it while I wasn’t thinking about it.

Computing in 2017 is quite a bit different than it was in 1997. YMMV.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Andy Patterson]

[Andrew Kimery] “I used to build PCs as a hobby but I don’t anymore. I’ve thought about doing a Hackintosh, but I just have the to find the time to do it (and find the right guide to get the features that I want).”

I admit building a hackintosh is a bit trickier than a PC. I admit it is not a job for the average video editor. You have to make sure the mobo has a compatible bios/efi and the hardware is Mac compatible.

[Eric Santiago]

[andy patterson] “If you have time to visit the Cow you have time to build a PC : )
“

I will always have time to help others on here as well as REDUSER.

I should have known better not to get into this topic, but I was bored ☺

I do find time to post here when my nMP renders in 2 min intervals.

The ones that take long are usually in Resolve and they average 1 hour or more if working with a full feature.

To be honest I really don’t know since I sched all my long renders over night 🙂

[Eric Santiago]

Sorry to hijack this thread, since we have a few seasoned DIY PC builders here, what’s your opinion on these Nvidia cards?

I am looking at an HP Z840 and they are offering these:

NVIDIA® Quadro® K4200 (4 GB)
NVIDIA® Quadro® K5200 (8 GB)
NVIDIA® Quadro® M4000 (8 GB)
NVIDIA® Quadro® M5000 (8 GB)
NVIDIA® Quadro® K6000 (12 GB)

I dont have an idea on pricing and I am sure the K6000 is above my price range.

Its mostly for Maya and Renderman.

Ive posted similiar questions on Max/Maya and no reply.

Thanks in advance 🙂

[Andy Patterson]

[Bill Davis] “Sorry, but you’re going to be hard pressed to tell me that doing the research and comparison to know that all the stuff on the left in this picture, is precisely what’s BEST for your DYI rig config is going to get done in 30 minutes.”

Why would I research all the products on the left in your photo? That would be stupid. I don’t research products I am not going to buy. Do you? Why would I? If I need a RAM module I just get the least expensive provided it is gskill, PNY, Crucial etc. It takes a whopping two minutes to look up an 8 GB RAM module on new egg. I am only going to look up what I need. You would spend the same amount of time if you need to upgrade the RAM in you iMac or Macbook Pro. If I need a floppy drive or a USB card reader I can just get the least expensive. They will work just fine. If I was to build a computer today I would just get an i7 Kaby Lake. No time wasted researching anything from AMD and I already now I don’t want a core i3 or Core i5. Once AMD releases the Zen CPUs things will change. I have used the same case for 7 years. I have used monitors for 7 years. We PC users can reuse the parts when we get a new MOBO and CPU. With an iMac you have to buy every part new. Even your screen.

[Bill Davis] “I totally get the satisfaction of spending those hours, days, weeks or months to educate yourself about how many Megahertz are best and which power supply is beefy enough to handle the RAM load. But you’re never going to convince me that’s a 3o minute gig.”

My prior comments address this but I am sure you would be forced to make decisions if deciding between an iMac and the Mac Pro. Do you want 4 core or 12 core? AMD D 500s or AMD 700s. You have to research external RAID systems if you are going to be editing 4K. I can just get 6 inexpensive 4 TB SATA Seagate drives. That is 24 TB of RAID for less than $600.00. I would take two minutes to order.

I would put zero time into choosing my RAID how much time would you spend researching an external RAID?

[Bill Davis] “It’s a lifetime gig. And if you’re comfortable acting as both editor AND systems integrator – the approach is PERFECT for you. It’s just honestly a NIGHTMARE for many of us.”

I have had many Mac users tell me they wish they knew how to build a computer. For many people it can be scary.

[Bill Davis] “Custom building made sense to me back in the day when without optimizing every single component, you couldn’t get the job done. But those days are gone. I’ll totally admit you can get more “bang for the buck” with the DIY rig. The thing is, I’m not even close to convinced that I need anymore “bang” at all.”

I would tend to agree. My GTX 650 Ti and 3.4 GHZ Haswell can edit 4K just fine. I imagine it could edit 8K (not full resolution) but I do not know for sure.

[Bill Davis] “I can run buckets of work through my practice without blinking. The hardware I use, a MacBook Pro actually – (lame as it may be to others) is orders of magnitude faster and more fluid than any other system I’ve ever cut on for the past 20 years.”

I doubt your Macbook will play 8K at full resolution. Tom Sefton has to be able to play at full 8K resolution.

[Bill Davis] “And I paid my bills for ALL those years. So I’m delighted to trade the former time spent reading component specs and figuring out which card is the best for the next 6 months – for more time playing with the dog.”

I can play with the dog as much as you Bill if not more. I don’t put lot of time into researching computer parts. Just because an ATX computer can accept all the generic parts on the makret does not mean I research each and every part when I go to buy a RAM module. I don’t doubt I spend less time buying a RAM module than you do. I think you would have to find out the specs for your laptop first in order to buy RAM. I know my specs already. Want to race Bill?

[Bill Davis] “That I can edit anywhere and leave the desk behind, is just extra goodness.”

I don’t doubt your laptop works great for your needs but I think Tom Sefton would need to see a video of you editing 8K at full resolution on your laptop before he could buy a laptop.

[Tom Sefton]

Andy, stop being passive aggressive and snarky. I asked honest questions using the biggest footage available that would give benchmarks on rendering and editing that could show how how your homemade rig would shine.

Ive done 10 mins of searching around and found a few benchmarks for high res export from homemade rigs vs new Mac Pro or MacBook Pro and it’s enlightening. Thanks for the offer of testing the footage – let’s park that one for now.

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[Andy Patterson]

[Tom Sefton] “Andy, stop being passive aggressive and snarky. I asked honest questions using the biggest footage available that would give benchmarks on rendering and editing that could show how how your homemade rig would shine.”

I am not being passive aggressive or snarky. I don’t mind you asking questions but I do not have 8K video clips to test out on my system. I wish I did. If you send it I will test.

[Tom Sefton] “Ive done 10 mins of searching around and found a few benchmarks for high res export from homemade rigs vs new Mac Pro or MacBook Pro and it’s enlightening. Thanks for the offer of testing the footage – let’s park that one for now.”

I am glad you found what you were looking for. Having said that at the time Pixel Corps and FCP.uk did there testing there were $1,600.00 PCs that could play the native Red One 4K R3D files at full resolution even though a $7,000.00 Mac Pro could not. Perhaps if the Mac Pro could have been configured with dual 8 Core Xeons and a single D 700 graphic cards it could have. Will a $6,800.00 PC play 8K at full resolution? I think the 16 core 32 thread AMD Zen processors will be a game changer but who knows for sure? Having said PCs will always have more options and offer more computing power until Apple offers a generic ATX workstation (they won’t).

[Andy Patterson]

[Eric Santiago] “Sorry to hijack this thread, since we have a few seasoned DIY PC builders here, what’s your opinion on these Nvidia cards?

I am looking at an HP Z840 and they are offering these:

NVIDIA® Quadro® K4200 (4 GB)
NVIDIA® Quadro® K5200 (8 GB)
NVIDIA® Quadro® M4000 (8 GB)
NVIDIA® Quadro® M5000 (8 GB)
NVIDIA® Quadro® K6000 (12 GB)”

You might find a Youtube video review of one of those cards. Keep in mind the AMD Zen CPUs will be out next month. The Zen CPUs may or may not be a serious game changer but I hope they are.

[Andy Patterson]

[Bill Davis] “Rendering is now something I almost never think about.
My timeline works flawlessly without it, and when it’s time to finally do it, 95% of the time, I discover my background rendering has done it while I wasn’t thinking about it.

Computing in 2017 is quite a bit different than it was in 1997. YMMV.”

I am not sure when Fast Multimedia introduced background rendering. I know they had it in 1999. Keep in mind that in 2003 Pinnacle/Fast Multimedia’s Liquid Edition was able to use the graphics card just like FCPX and Premiere Pro CC. I used to have Liquid Edition. It was a good program. It had CPU Effects and GPU Effects. If you had dual Xeons you might want to use CPU effects. If you had a $300.00 graphics card you might want to use GPU effects. You could use a combination of the two. Things maybe different from 1997 but I used to edit like you about 15 years ago. With Media Encoder the need for background rendering from the timeline is not as important as it once was since you can edit projects while other projects are rendering in the background. What would Liquid Edition be like today if Avid did not end of life it in 2007? I imagine it would kick ass.