Bernard Newnham
Forum Replies Created
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[Jeremy Garchow] “So, I do in fact need to “trip up” on everything you just mentioned.
While I have no idea what exact components are best, I do know what goes inside of a computer.”
You quoted a load of stuff –
“…an overclocked and watercooled SR-2 will cost you half the price and operate at nearly the same speed as the SR-X when rendering 3D…..”
etc, etc, and then implied you were confused.
So was I.
It’s badly written material, and it’s all about stuff that people who are just doing editing don’t need. I was suggesting some standard components rather than this week’s very fastest and most expensive.
Just trying to be helpful.
Bernie
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[Jeremy Garchow] ” I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I would assume I am not alone in that department.”
That’s fair enough – it’s like any complex technical thing the first time (like editing).
Unless you are needing the very fastest machinery – the Ferrari of computers – you don’t need to trip through all that stuff in your post. If you’re not running a render farm but just doing editing and some graphics, you just want straightforward stuff.
Processor – at the top end, there’s mega expensive stuff that Apple like to put in workstations, usually branded Xeon. You don’t need them, just the current “sweet spot” Core something. At the time of writing, it’s the Core i5-3570K . You can pay much more or much less, but that will do the job. It will come with a heatsink.
Next, a motherboard to carry it. It’s a socket LGA1155, so you’ll need one with that socket. Dabs, here in the UK, have 105 to choose from, but you can narrow that down with their selector system. You want the latest chipset – Z77 (down to 49). You want separate graphics (45). You want the full size ATX motherboard (30). Now it’s down to brands, and what options you want. Some will take more memory than others, some will have more SATA connectors, etc etc. For your first time, pick a major brand – Asus or Gigabyte maybe. Arbitrarily picking Asus (I’ve used lots of both makes) I’m down to 19. At this point one has to start doing a bit more research on what each board has on it, and a trip to the Asus website tells all. I’m picking the one I picked earlier – P8Z77-V PRO – although the price cut probably means it’s about to be superceded. Dabs had five makers boards to choose from, and all are generally reliable, so if you have particular needs with inputs and outputs, you can generally find something.
Memory. Go for lots, as it’s cheap at the moment. As it’s a commodity, like pork belly futures, the prices go up and down. Kingston and Crucial are the big manufacturers, and both have systems to select which memory you want for your motherboard. Crucial tells me that I can have 32Gb for my motherboard on part No BLS4C8G3D1609ES2LX0BEU which I can buy from them, or dabs, or someone else. I might not want 32Gb, but I can check around for smaller.
Graphics card. Again, you probably want the current “sweet spot”. You don’t need all that expensive Quadro stuff unless you’re doing 3DsMax or CAD. Editing doesn’t need it. So maybe a GTX660.
After that, it’s just drives and boxes. I highly recommend an SSD as boot drive.
Bernie
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” I think it has a lot to do with how carefully any PC is put together”
True of any gear I suppose, but it is difficult to get building a PC wrong. Put the processor in the slot provided, add the heatsink. Slot in the memory. Screw the motherboard to the standoffs provided. Plug in the graphics card. Connect the cables to the drives and power supply etc. That’s about it. There are endless how-tos on the net, eg – https://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Computer
It either works straight away, or not,really. Mostly it does, because PCs are designed to be built by not-too-bright people who aren’t concentrating, rather than someone who’s about to use the thing to make money – and get on the air.
I still have my G4 here. It seems too pretty to chuck away, but I have no use for it…..actually, perhaps I could build a PC inside. Should fit ok.
Bernie
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I’m always a touch amazed at the “I had so many crashes on PCs and so few on Macs” stories. I have very few on either these days, and for a long time now.
Back when FCP was in earlier versions – up to about 4 – I habitually changed the autosave to 5 minutes from 30 on any new setup because it crashed so often. I only persevered because I thought it was a really good system despite the aggro. I had some very short tempered days though…..
Jason, further up, says-
“I’ve lost days before when using PC based systems – even with full tech support, I’ve had whole mornings where clever people have been ‘under the hood’ (this on HP 800 workstations so not cheap stuff) “One does have to wonder what year that was – sometime in the nineties? And what software he was using. I remember all that stuff too, but I was a lot younger then.
Bernie
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“PC hard drives spin just like Mac hard drives spin, no?”
Jeremy –
Of course they do, they’re from the same place (or places). Hard drives are commodities used by PC makers and Apple alike. So is memory.
It’s true that I don’t have to keep the show on the road any more, but experience in these things doesn’t go away when you leave the BBC. If I was asked to spec a small editing house now – just a few machines and no common files needing shared editing, I’d do the same as when I did exactly that in our low cost unit at the BBC.
What do I need to do?
Edit from various formats, add graphics created nearby, and export in some format or other (DigiBeta in those days) – a 30 minute show each week.What shall I use?
Stuff that people can work and fits the budget.In those days we ran 2 Eidos Optimas for off-line, an Avid on-line and a graphics pc workstation running Photoshop and After Effects with DigiSuite to get the video in and out.
Now – 15 years on, with the same low budget requirement –
Three, maybe four, PCs running Windows, and probably the whole Adobe Production Bundle. Not because I’m a loyal Adobe customer, but because currently that’s the right choice for that job. I’d have someone build the PCs to my spec, because as producer I’m too busy to do it myself. When the PCs get old, I’ll just update all or parts of them, and I too will move my drives to the new machine if they work ok, though I’d rather buy a new boot drive, preferably an SSD.
I shall have vastly more flexibility than if I’d gone Mac, and it’ll cost much less to set up and maintain. A few years ago I would have spent the extra dosh on a couple of G4s running FCP, but that time has passed now
Bernie
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Craig –
I lost interest in which boxes manufacturers tested and approved their gear on years ago. I discovered that generally by the time I looked I couldn’t buy the stuff any more.
I think – though I’ve only just passed my eyes over your list – that almost all the gear on the list is out of date. The whole HP Z400 range appears to be long gone. The Asus P8P67 PRO has been superceded by the Asus P8Z77-V PRO whixch is in my (quickly produced) list above. In three months, things will have moved on again. That’s the way it is outside the world of Apple – always something new.
Blackmagic can test on a motherboard/memory/processor system, but it’ll probably be out of date before it’s published, so they have to build to the general standard. Everyone else builds to the standard too, including Apple, and mostly that standard works, over a huge range of gear and manufacturers. Everything works with everything else because it has to, otherwise companies don’t make money.
Bernie
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Is it really that easy? I always read about mother board conflicts and when you are talking about a professional video setup with capture cards, storage cards, etc, its not as easy as “just changing it”.”
Yes. Both the motherboard manufacturers and the video card manufacturers have come a long way from the dreaded old conflicting interrupts stuff. These days I only have a Blackmagic Intensity Pro, and don’t use that much, but it goes in the the PC or the hackintosh and does its job as required. Other stuff – graphics cards, drives, RAM etc, just slip in and work too.
[Jeremy Garchow] “Almost any place that I went to to price a similar configured PC cost about the same as the jolly expensive Mac.”
Off to Apple…..
27-inch, 2.9GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 ,8GB memory, 1TB hard drive, GeForce GTX 660M
£1,499.00Off to Dabs….
Dabs don’t have a Core i5 at 2.9Ghz, but a faster i5-3750k at 3.4Ghz is £173.8Gb RAM – £30.99.
No, I want 16Gb – £50.98Motherboard – lets have a nice one, though there are lots to choose from – Asus P8Z77-V PRO at £149.98 – though I could probably get one at £100 and not lose much.
1TB drive – no, lets upgrade and get two at 2TB – £141
GTX 660M – no, lets have better – a GTX670 for £300
At that point, I’m on just over £800, and I have all the important bits. Because I’ve been doing this a while now, I have case, keyboards, mice and screens already, and because they aren’t all stuck in a flashy plastic box, I can re-use them till they are out of date. Big price in that would be a nice big new screen. I’ll have an Acer 27″ priced at £200.
At that point I still haven’t nearly hit the cost of the iMac and I have £500 to spare to go on holiday. A couple of hours work when the boxes arrive, and we’re back editing again, or in my current case writing an application for a uni newsroom in Actionscript 3.
Bernie
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True – it really isn’t difficult or time consuming. Instead of looking at the Apple site and picking from a very few models, none of which particularly fits your spec and are jolly expensive, you go to your local equivalent of dabs.com and choose from dozens of graphics cards, processors, motherboards etc for just the ones you want.
And you know that if any of these needs updating in a few months, you just change it – none of that “when are they producing a new MacPro?” rubbish.
A couple of hours – if that – to set up, and you’re on your way with the very latest in editing machinery, with the sure and certain knowledge that if any part of it stops being at the cutting edge, you can just change it….. GTX690 getting a bit slow for your 6k video? Out it comes, and in with a nice new GTXXX8000 mega card. Drives not spacious enough? Out with those four 2 terabyte clunkers and in with some brand new 6 terabyte SSDs. All terribly easy, and can be done in no time at all, with still time to edit the odd four-minuter before lunch. And no Thunderbolt required at all.
Bernie
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I got into building gear when I had to order a custom machine for the graphics designer on our team at the BBC, where I was a producer. We were told to pioneer “low cost” production, which meant DV cameras, strictly no Quantel, and shoot and edit it yourself. A bit of research at IBC said we we needed a powerful PC – Pentium 2 or whatever – with Matrox Digisuite, a still impressive set of cards.
When the PC turned up, it was wrong, and I had to take it apart and start again. It then ran for two years on our weekly show. When we needed a second one, I just ordered the parts. If you wanted something done properly, even at the BBC, do it yourself!
Since I left, I’ve made about a dozen, including a hackintosh. They all worked fine, and some are still running merrily. One that used to be my main machine has been a Linux terminal at my flying club since 2008. It’s never turned off.
So it is possible to do your own – in fact it’s easy these days. A lot like Lego, really.
And I for one am not into “gear porn” – these are machines to do a job, reliably and for a long time. I only ever used the Macs – a G4 then the hack – for Final Cut, as the PCs can do so much more and for so much less.
BTW Crystal Disc says that one of the four drives in this machine has 26041 hours on it. Only a backup though, ‘cos that’s a lot of hours.
Bernie
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“Or maybe another way to put it, How many 4x PCIe slots does your Windows laptop have?”
Absolutely none at all. But then, I haven’t edited seriously on a laptop since FCP1, when I was showing it off around the UK for the Royal Television Society. Though I can see that on very rare occasions one might need to edit on a laptop, I think comfy chairs, multiple screens, big speakers, lots of internal drives including SSDs, and hand-picked motherboards, graphics cards and processors are definitely the way to go.
I haven’t quite worked out a practical use for Thunderbolt yet, unless you happen to be lumbered with a closed system, like an iMac or laptop. I think the fact that I’ve just read two current PC magazines and only found one mention of Thunderbolt – it’s in some new GigaByte motherboard – means that the wider market aren’t too interested in it.
Bernie