Need opinion about these components for new PC, please!

[Liam Tain]

Having built a few systems in my time ( I just finished my first editing build) I can tell you if you aren’t planning to Overclock, you don’t need gaming/OC ram. Ditch the gskill, and look at Crucial. Their parent company micron has been in the business quite awhile, the ram is stable, inexpensive and reliable. If you use their ram finder tool they guarantee the ram to work. I’d suggest going to the website, using the tool, finding the right ram, then checking out newegg or the like and getting it less expensive still (be wary of amazon, often a search there will bring up similar ram but not what you’re looking for.)

The money you can save on ram could move you from a 4570, into a 4770 (not 4770k, again don’t plan to Overclock no need to spend the money) hyper threading is always a good thing.

Also the stock cooler that comes with the CPU will be fine for non OC. Save you a bit there.

Keep in mind that you want the over estimation on the PSU, a PSU never puts out what it’s rated for. Maybe consider going from the CX500 to an HX650?

The editing system I just built cost me $1560 and that’s: everything from case to OS, including a new DVD drive. If you’d like id be happy to help you pick out components to keep it $1300 or less and form a solid system.

[Roger Maus]

Hi Liam, thanks for your reply!

Yes, I will replace th RAM for Crucial Ballistix Sport DIMM Kit 16GB which I wanted to take in the first place anyway.

I know that the PSU only delivers what is needed, but 700 Watt PSU simply use to be more expensive than 400 Watt PSU, you see?

Thanks for your response. I’ll replace the GTX 650 for a 750. No need for 2GB VRAM, right?

And I will save some money by taking a even cheaper board, e.g. ASRock H87 Pro4.

Nice to hear the boxed cooler will be enough!

I am thinking about changing the disk setup: no EVO 250, but cheaper SSDs, but more of them!
120GB Crucial M500 – for OS, programs, media cache
480GB Crucial M500 – for media/footage, project files (I doubt the GB are sufficient!)
2TB Seagate – for export, archive, backups

You think the CPU is the bottleneck?

[Liam Tain]

The M500s are excellent performers in the SSD ring, right up there with the samsung 840s, and they offer better security options. I’d consider ditching the 480 SSD and getting a larger HDD, again to save a few bucks, a good 7200 rpm (I like WD black series myself) will get you a lot more storage space for the money, or compromise and get a 10k RPM, I think velociraptors are still around? I wholeheartedly support the SSD for OS and programs though, I got the EVO myself (slightly better performance in the 120 range). You might also consider a hybrid drive for the storage/cache disk? Or split the difference get a 120 for OS/programs a 120 for cache, and a couple of 1 or 2TB for storage and backups? But in the interest of keeping things simple, the less drives the better.

The 4570 is a solid performer for a CPU, the cost-benefit ratio might not be worth the extra $100 if you don’t plan to make use of more than 4 cores. In fact in small single core tasks the 4570 is slightly faster than the 4770. It will also help keep things simpler for your friend, once you start using hyper threading you have to worry more about ram allocation etc etc blah blah stuff even I hate worrying about. But if you find there’s an extra $100 left in the budget and it’s burning a hole in your pocket, I’d consider either bumping up the ram to 32gb? 16gb is the least amount you’d want to run with a 4770, but it’s good for the 4570.

Have you checked out PCpartpicker? It’s a good resource to track your build and it will track costs showing you the best commonly found prices on your components. I prefer getting as many bits from one place to save shipping, but it could also help keep funds in the pocket.

I think you’ve got a solid machine on your hands though, watch out for the mistake I almost made though the mobo I bought only has SATA ports, and the optical drives I owned before were all IDE, would have made using that windows DVD darn hard to install, almost did to catch it. Phew.

[Roger Maus]

Thanks for your elaborate response. Just realized you are building a similar system right now: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1049743

Regarding PCpartpicker: we have a similar thing here in Germany. At geizhals.de you can do the same thing with your “wishlist”.

Thanks for calling the build a “solid machine”. This is all I wanted. (Optical drive will be SATA-BD LG Electronics BH16NS40.)

I think I will stick with the Barracuda 7200.14 2TB. WD Black are just a bit faster, which is not worth the extra bucks. Same about Hyrid HDDs. To keep it cheaper, I will at a bigger SSD (for project footage) and further 16GB of RAM later on.

I have a some spare 120GB SSDs (old Samsung 840 & OCZ Vertex2). Still wondering how to distribute all the files!?
Maybe 250GB Samsung EVO for OS & programs, 120GB SSD for Cache, HDD for footage & export, further 120GB SSD…. for what!? It’s simply to small, since there’s only about 90 “real” GB usable.
(Media/footage is normally ~200GB, Export files ~100GB.)

[Roger Maus]

I think I made up my mind: just now I realized that a i7-4770_ and a Xeon E3-1245v3 is practically the same. So I’ll take the latter one, since it is quite cheaper!

Do you think an extra GTX 750 is worth the money? How about using the built-in GPU of the processor and spending the money on some extra SSD or extra RAM instead?

[Roger Maus]

Hm. So my last question is: i7-4770_ or Xeon E3-1245v3, no IGP but extra GPU used?

[Liam Tain]

Xeons are mainly used for servers/very heavy workloads. The two biggest differences in those chips that will affect your build:
4770 = 1150 mobo and non EEC ram.
Xeon 1245 = 1155 mobo and EEC ram.

Performance wise (on paper) they’re basically the same chip. In reality I think the 4770 will perform better for the intended use. Unless the system is going to be rendering all day, every day, nonstop, it’s not going to make full use of a Xeon. price wise I think the Xeon is a little less, but I think you might lose those savings by having to switch your mobo and ram. If it were me, I’d stick with a 4770, i don’t think the system would benefit from a server chip vs a consumer chip in any way other than a price sticker on the chip.

Sorry for the lack of response, I didn’t get a message saying you’d posted again, only looked back at this thread by chance (last time I leave the “just this message” button checked).

[Roger Maus]

I am pretty sure the both work on the same 1150 socket!
see: ark.intel.com/products/75462/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1245-v3-8M-Cache-3_40-GHz – “Sockets Supported: FCLGA1150”

Furthermore, you don’t have to use EEC-RAM. Uncertified ones do work too!

It’s pity that I did not find any benchmarks comparing these two!

I think a major difference is that the IGP of the i7 are way better than the ones on Xeons, aren’t they?

[Liam Tain]

From what I understand you are correct about the IGP, but you mentioned you were getting a dedicated card, so you’d never actually use the IGP anyway. I think I had been looking at an older 1245, I think v1 may have been an 1155 socket.

If EEC ram doesn’t matter to you, and over clocking (not even a little) will never be taking place, (taking IGP out of the picture) the difference in the chips is pretty much:

4770 = 5-10% faster (without over clocking)
1245v3 = 5-10% cheaper.

Like I said xeons are meant to be server chips, sometimes run on a mutil CPU board. I don’t know if it’ll play. Ice with a dedicated GPU, I honestly don’t know anyone that’s every run a server chip (AMD or Intel) on a desktop. You shouldn’t have any issues, but you can always check the website of your GPU manufacturer for conflicts.

If you’re still unsure, err on the side of caution and go with the 4770.