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System advice please
Until now I’ve only been toying around with AE 7 (this forums been very helpful). I’ve decided it’s time to get serious about AE and it’s uses (we do a lot of independent films), I’m building a new system and plan to utilize the Adobe CC suite and am curious how it would stand up to the newer software?
Here are the vital bits:
i7 4770k
16gigs of crucial ballistix DDR3 1866 (2×8)
Samsung EVO 120gb SSD (for OS and Adobe software)
1TB WD Black 7200rpm HDD (for files and scratch)
Asus branded GTX 760 (for CUDA and to speed up previews)Can I expect to see decent render times and response with this? Would it be better to bump up to 32gigs 4×8 (the most the new mobo can handle)? Should I consider incorporating a second HDD to use as scratch or cache disk? Or is there hardware that you’d recommend over the brands I’ve chosen?
I’ve been using a 3ghz core 2 duo and 2gig (of reccognized) ram thus far so I expect to be wow’ed by this system regardless, just curious as to how much time I can expect to save on renders etc.
Thanks for the advice.
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3 Replies
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[Liam Tain] “16gigs of crucial ballistix DDR3 1866 (2×8)”
I’d got for more. 24-32 GB will help you make better use of Ae’s multiprocessing feature.
[Liam Tain] “Samsung EVO 120gb SSD (for OS and Adobe software)
1TB WD Black 7200rpm HDD (for files and scratch)”Ae’s disk cache performs best on a high-speed disk. If you can bump the size of that system disk up some, you can use the extra space for Ae’s cache.
[Liam Tain] “Asus branded GTX 760 (for CUDA and to speed up previews)”
Mostly everything in Ae is rendered on the CPU. The only thing that CUDA will speed up is Ae’s raytracing renderer (new in CS6). If you’re mainly going to use the classic 3D renderer, you will not see a speedup from the GPU.
That said, this is a good card for Premiere — just don’t expect too much from it in Ae.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
I’ve never used SSDs in a build before, I’ve been reading that constant writing and erasing will shorten the life span?Maybe I’ll shift the budget around and incorporate an additional smaller SSD just to use as disk cache? Keeping the 1tb HDD for storage and output.
Would there be enough of a benefit of using a dedicated SSD vs the space on the 7200rpm HDD to warrant the additional purchase?
I’ve been debating between 16 and 32 for ram, “oh I could just add some more in later” “who REALLY needs 32gigs” but I feel myself tipping into the 32 column for sure now.
Thanks for the input Walter.
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[Liam Tain] “I’ve never used SSDs in a build before, I’ve been reading that constant writing and erasing will shorten the life span?Maybe I’ll shift the budget around and incorporate an additional smaller SSD just to use as disk cache? Keeping the 1tb HDD for storage and output.”
This is technically true, but vastly overstated online. All recent SSDs include some degree of wear-leveling, so in the real world, I think you can expect your SSDs to last just as long as your mechanical hard drives.
[Liam Tain] “Would there be enough of a benefit of using a dedicated SSD vs the space on the 7200rpm HDD to warrant the additional purchase?”
It doesn’t need to be dedicated if the budget is tight. You could do one larger SSD for OS, apps and cache if you wanted to.
[Liam Tain] “I’ve been debating between 16 and 32 for ram, “oh I could just add some more in later” “who REALLY needs 32gigs” but I feel myself tipping into the 32 column for sure now.”
You could always start with 16 GB of RAM and bump it up later as budget permits. Just make sure you buy the larger sticks so that you have slots free for upgrading without replacing everything.
Good luck with your new machine.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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