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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Mac Pro Alternative, Video-Editing-PC

  • Mac Pro Alternative, Video-Editing-PC

    Posted by Akira Murakami on February 25, 2014 at 3:42 pm

    Hi guys,
    I’m searching for an alternative to the new Mac Pros. I need a new PC to work with Adobe After Effects and Premiere CC and DaVinci Resolve. At the moment I’m working in HD but I want be prepared for 4K too.
    I thought about a setup like these:
    https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/2ZMsw

    What do you think? Will it work fine?

    Best regards

    Akira

    Ericbowen replied 12 years, 5 months ago 5 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Joseph W. bourke

    February 25, 2014 at 4:07 pm

    Just to give you another possible route, I recently purchased a refurbished HP Z800, with 4TB of storage, 48GB of RAM, and an older NVidia 1GB graphics card for $1300 from this guy:

    https://stores.ebay.com/THESERVERSTORE/Z800-/_i.html?_fsub=5772687013&_sid=4059453&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322

    He buys pallets of these machines off lease, then refurbs them and resells them. I spoke to the guy on the phone, and had nothing but good dealings when I purchased mine. It had no OS, and I also bought an SSD for the OS (Win 7 Ultimate). I don’t think you could configure a new machine for anywhere near that cheap, but I may be wrong. Also, the one thing I absolutely love about the Z800 is that it has a totally tool-less chassis. You can tear it right down to the motherboard with no tools! It has sleds for up to four internal hard drives, and you can buy all sorts of cards and parts for it pretty inexpensively. Mine has been up and running for four months or so, and it’s a screamer!

    Here’s some discussion on the computer from around the time I bought it, with a little more information:

    https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/322/910

    Just another option…

    Joe Bourke
    Owner/Creative Director
    Bourke Media
    http://www.bourkemedia.com

  • Akira Murakami

    February 25, 2014 at 4:54 pm

    Thank you Joe,
    but I’m living in Europe, so this seller isn’t a cheap option for me (international delivery + taxes).

    Best regards

    Akira

  • Tero Ahlfors

    February 25, 2014 at 5:00 pm

    [Akira Murakami] “I want be prepared for 4K too. “

    If you’re working with compressed 4K stuff you’ll need a very beefy CPU or two and if you’re working with uncompressed 4K you’ll need a disk array that can read/write about 1-2 GB/s depending on the frame size. That is not a typo.

  • Akira Murakami

    February 25, 2014 at 5:17 pm

    I thought I could use a 500GB SSD as a scratch disk and I would set the 4x2TB HDDs into Raid 5. But that isn’t fast enough for 4k? Wow,,, I thought that SSDs are the fastest option possible, isn’t it?
    And you think the i7 with 6 cores hasn’t enough power too? Hm,,,
    Maybe I should say that my budget is limited, I hoped that 4000 $ are enough for 4k

  • Ridley Walker

    February 25, 2014 at 9:49 pm

    Europe? I see Canadian retailers listed. The MOBO selected won’t fit in the selected case.

  • Akira Murakami

    February 25, 2014 at 10:07 pm

    I created the list to show you my setup easily. But I would buy these components in other shops.

    That seems to be a mistake of pcpartiker.com
    This guy has no problems with it https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/b/Lfo

  • Ericbowen

    March 3, 2014 at 6:35 pm

    4K media has different disk requirements depending on what codecs. Those Red drives are not the ones you want since their Variable drives. Also don’t use Raid 5 on the onboard controller. That is just asking for problems. I would suggest getting the enterprise drives and raid 10 on the onboard or get a SAS raid controller such as Intel/LSI or Areca and run a raid 5 or 6. Raid 10 with 4 enterprise drives will give you around 300MB/s or so. A 4 drive raid 5 with hose drives would be about the same. That is enough for Red and Raw but not any uncompressed formats above 1080. I would also suggest a 1000W PSU. Beyond that the rest looks ok. Keep in mind those Evo drives perform ok as individual drives but are horrible in raid. I suggest getting the Crucial drives instead regardless.

    Eric-ADK
    Tech Manager
    support@adkvideoediting.com

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