After Effects CS 6 Workstation

[Brian Betz]

Thanks Tom and Walter…yeah that was one of the reasons I decided to wait last year as the salesperson just didn’t seem to be all that knowledgeable and it was the time HD prices were on the rise….I will check out ProMAX or DV411 and see what I can figure out on my own. Funny that sales would be so weak on this system. I’ll have to see what I come up with.

Brian

[Brian Betz]

First off thanks for so much great advice! After doing some searching around below is what I’ve come up with and please do not hesitate to offer suggestions. I am trying to keep my price manageable and figure I can add to the system at a later date. I have points next to components and questions follow:

P Z820 Workstation
Windows 7 Professional 64
HP Z820 1125W 90% Efficient Chassis
Xeon E5-2609 2.40 10MB 1066 4C (My understanding is this not hyper-threaded and thus only 4 core. I noted on the HP website that the Xeon E5-2630 (2.30 GHz, 15 MB cache, 6 cores) was hyper-threaded and thus may go with this instead.
HP Single Processor Air Cooling Kit
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 2.0GB Graphics (I may take Tom’s suggestion and buy a PNY GTX 570 card and install myself.)
24GB DDR3-1600 (4x4GB+4x2GB) 1CPU Unbuffered RAM
256GB SATA 1st Solid State Drive (This would be the system drive)
256GB SATA 2nd Solid State Drive (Cashe drive for After Effects)
500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3rd Hard Drive
500GB 7200 RPM SATA 4th Hard Drive (These 2 drives would be the media drive set to RAID 0 – I know there is no redundancy, but may be my price point for now.)

A few questions below:

1. Any thoughts on the processors? I typically make short videos but use After Effects heavily and thus I don’t think the 4 core will be enough.

2. In terms of the graphics card, I do see you can save a lot by doing what Tom suggested (going with a Nvidia PNY GTX 570 instead of a Quadro. I also may be able to get a good deal on the GTX… But I am a little nervous getting a new system without a card and having to install. I use to do more of this in the past.

3. The HP rep told me that “RAID can only be factory installed when the primary hard drive is included in the RAID. In this instance it is not. You would have to go through the BIOS and select which hard drives you want in what RAID setting.” Thus, again something I would need to do….and yeah I once did this type of thing quite regularly and have just gotten away from it.

Any thoughts or suggestions are most appreciated!

Brian

[Tom Daigon]

I personally feel its important to maximize the potential of the machine you purchase by getting the most powerful one you can afford.

Also I think getting dual 8 threaded processors which give you a potential of 32 hyper threads is the best way to go when using the CS6 software.And in line with that, getting the fastest processor speed as well.

My philosophy was to get a machine that could handle any codec / project needs that were thrown at it.

I also feel the new generation of PCI-E external raids is the way to go. I get about 1000MB/sec read/write speed on my Dulce DQg2 system.

All these choices serve to fortify the performance of the Mercury Playback Engine . And that means good things for you.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Brian Betz]

Thanks Tom….Yes the dual 8 threaded processors and the Dulce do look nice. I just don’t think I can spend that much at this point. I guess trying to keep this under 5 K can be very difficult. Trying to get the basics so that I can add on later. I had thought about adding an external RAID sometime in the future.
Brian

[Tom Daigon]

I know it does end up being costly. If you dont anticipate editing a lot of Red or 4K stuff I would suggest talking to Eric at ADK. He know a lot about Adobe software and designing the best system to fit your needs.

https://www.adkvideoediting.com/choose.asp

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Brian Betz]

Tom,

No Red or 4K….not anytime soon. Thanks for the tip…I will give him a call. I have heard good things about ASK. I may go with the HP system with some modifications, but it is making my head swim a bit.

Brian

[Brian Betz]

I just wanted to thank everyone for all the assistance in helping me with my workstation selection. A special shout out to Tom as I decided to finally go with ADK and got the ADK 3900 Core i7 model. Nevertheless, all comments made were very helpful in learning about my options and what makes the most sense in line with my budget and need to optimize for After Effects CS6. I did call around a bit, but just felt very comfortable with ADK. I spoke with a Dave and as I would ask a question he would anticipate what my next one would be…thus he seemed very knowledgeable. This is a great forum and I really appreciate all the help!

Brian

[Tom Daigon]

Brian, Im glad you found a system you feel good about.Congrats.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid

[Brian Betz]

A true “relief” to finally make a decision…I went through this last year and bailed, but feeling good about this one.. Thanks again Tom!

Brian

[Tom Daigon]

Glad to help. Keep us posted on how things go.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid