Designing A New Build

[HipKat]

Here's what I'm looking at, let me know what you think. Looking for any conflicts you see and maybe a better compatible monitor. These are not set prices. I still need to shop around before I buy anything



CPU Intel Core i7-8700K $379
CPU COOLER Noctua NH-D15 SSO2 D-Type Premium CPU Cooler $87
GPU ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (eventually 2 of these) $450
SSD Samsung 850 Evo 500GB $140
HDD Western Digital Re WD3001FYYG 3TB 7200 RPM SAS 6Gb/s 32MB Cache $120
RAM HyperX Fury DDR4 2666 4X8GB $165
MBD ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero (Wi-Fi AC) LGA1151 $279
KBD Logitech G910 - Already Own
MOU Logitech G502 - Already Own
MNT AOC - U2879VF 28.0" 3840x2160 $297
CASE Thermaltake Core X71 Tempered Glass Edition $133
PWR SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 850W $109
OS Windows 10 64Bit Pro $140

Total $2300

 

[Voyager6]

Will a 850 Watt power supply be enough? Why not a 1000 Watt to give yourself some overhead?

 

[KE4EST]

I agree. Though it would work, I would bump up the PS. Especially if you intend on adding a second 1070ti later on.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I don't know what you use your computer for, so you might want to look at what the I7 gives you over an i5 and you might be paying more for CPU features you may or may not use.

Last time I built myself a new machine, I figured out I didn't need the i7 and that the i5 I selected was about equal in tests with the i7.

 

[harshness]

It usually pays to lay out what the equipment will be used for so that we have something to evaluate it against.

The CPU choice can come down to whether or not the software you use competently supports multiple cores. In products like CAD (Autodesk products in particular), I've found multi-core support sadly lacking.

I'd also look at the Gen 8 Intel and Ryzen processors depending on what you want to do.

 

[HipKat]

Good point, well, something versatile. I'm a big gamer, so gaming is a major point, but I also use Adobe programs for Graphic Design and I want to make sure I'm not looking to update again for about 5 years. The build I'm on now, I built in 2010 and it's till pretty strong for an older machine

 

[HipKat]

I don't know what you use your computer for, so you might want to look at what the I7 gives you over an i5 and you might be paying more for CPU features you may or may not use.

Last time I built myself a new machine, I figured out I didn't need the i7 and that the i5 I selected was about equal in tests with the i7.

I did look at that, but mostly, I want a machine that's still relevant in 5+ years, so I'm trying to go "all out". Upping the PSU to 1000 watts is a great idea, especially since I'm avoiding water cooled and plan to over stack the number of fans I can use, plus setting up SLI later this year, as said above.

 

[Magic Static]

If gaming is a major consideration I would upgrade that SSD choice to an M.2 drive. Your MB supports it but you lose use of a PCIe slot to it. But almost twice the speed of that SSD.
Amazon product ASIN B01LXS4TYB

 

[TheForce]

I may be doing the big upgrade this year to my video editing computer. But I will need everything state of the art because the next evolution in gaming is Augmented Reality in 360VR graphics. I'm already working with an 8 core machine that is running 24GB and it is taking major time to do the renders taxing all 8 cores to 90% and 21GB of cache in the ram. This is just for the 360VR part that is h265 and the video is sourced from 8 3840x1920 cameras. I'm looking at the i9-7980XE or similar with 18 core-36 thread with 48GB Ram. I only have one piece of software that will access all those cores but for what I am doing, I need to prepare for the future too. In the next few years we will be seeing the cameras increase pixels to 8K and 16K for 360VR. Currently the top of the consumer line is only 4K.

While nobody will really need that much horsepower for playing games in 360VR/AR, the graphics cards will be more important than number of cores in the CPU.

 

[HipKat]

I may be doing the big upgrade this year to my video editing computer. But I will need everything state of the art because the next evolution in gaming is Augmented Reality in 360VR graphics. I'm already working with an 8 core machine that is running 24GB and it is taking major time to do the renders taxing all 8 cores to 90% and 21GB of cache in the ram. This is just for the 360VR part that is h265 and the video is sourced from 8 3840x1920 cameras. I'm looking at the i9-7980XE or similar with 18 core-36 thread with 48GB Ram. I only have one piece of software that will access all those cores but for what I am doing, I need to prepare for the future too. In the next few years we will be seeing the cameras increase pixels to 8K and 16K for 360VR. Currently the top of the consumer line is only 4K.

While nobody will really need that much horsepower for playing games in 360VR/AR, the graphics cards will be more important than number of cores in the CPU.

That is absolutely true and WOW! I afraid to go look at the out of pocket costs with that kind've power

 

[TheForce]

Yes, it can get expensive with the state of the art. My current editing computer had one of the top graphics cards back 4 years ago when I built it for 3D editing. That card was $2500. Today it is less than $1000. And it doesn't even do 4K, but does support 4 monitors in 3D. Everyone keeps saying 3D is dead, but actually, it has evolved now and is being done in 4K 3D in 360VR with Head Mounted Devices, mostly for industrial applications and gaming for consumers. I'm interested in VR for documentaries for my travels. I do 3D 360 VR now but image quality is still nowhere near the typical 2D TV panel. Very early stages.

 

[TheForce]

If gaming is a major consideration I would upgrade that SSD choice to an M.2 drive. Your MB supports it but you lose use of a PCIe slot to it. But almost twice the speed of that SSD.
Amazon product ASIN B01LXS4TYB

I have the older Toshiba/OCZ card for about 2 years now. These are insanely fast and can feed HD video frames at 60 frames per second! The newer mother boards can support up to 2 of the M.2 storage units in dedicated slots so you don't use up your PCIe slots for the cards.

 

[HipKat]

Yes, it can get expensive with the state of the art. My current editing computer had one of the top graphics cards back 4 years ago when I built it for 3D editing. That card was $2500. Today it is less than $1000. And it doesn't even do 4K, but does support 4 monitors in 3D. Everyone keeps saying 3D is dead, but actually, it has evolved now and is being done in 4K 3D in 360VR with Head Mounted Devices, mostly for industrial applications and gaming for consumers. I'm interested in VR for documentaries for my travels. I do 3D 360 VR now but image quality is still nowhere near the typical 2D TV panel. Very early stages.

That's very interesting stuff. I never got into any type of video editing, but was always intrigued by it

 

[harshness]

That is absolutely true and WOW! I afraid to go look at the out of pocket costs with that kind've power

Other than the pride of convincing yourself that you chose well, I'm not convinced that it pays to try to plan more than a couple years ahead. Except for RAM and mainboards, the price of most everything else comes down pretty quickly and you often pick up little things as they come along (new versions of bluetooth or USB).

There's also the Intel anticipation bug that even Intel admits is likely to cause a 6% slowdown once they release the "mitigation".

Video editing is, almost perversely, a CPU-bound task where gaming leans much more heavily on GPUs so I'm not sure there's a single answer there. I think cycling through multiple dedicated machines may be less expensive than trying to build one that will last for years and be good at everything.

Windows in particular is creating a situation where everything runs under a sloth-like virtual machine (.net) and I pine for the days when modest machines ran code targeted to run on the CPU rather than a software-based engine that uses much of the available RAM and CPU cache just to keep itself fed.

 

[TheForce]

harshness- For about the past 2 years now good video editing software allows the option to use the GPU for faster rendering. It isn't always faster and you have to have the right card and drivers, but most of the time I use GPU and CPU for rendering. Don't ask me how the software divides the rendering tasks between the two, but it does speed things up. For along time the software has not accessed the CPU's with more than 8 logical processors, so it didn't pay to upgrade to the industrial strength intel CPU's but with the latest 360VR stuff and h265 or HEVC demands, I'm seeing software updates making the new 18 core/36 logicals a more economical decision. I agree with you that waiting 6 months or a little longer and you will get a better price. I'd like to see the i9 7980XE down to $1000 and then I'll spring for it.

I've had a personal grudge against Adobe for many years but last year I swallowed my pride and jumped on board for the Premier Pro subscription software. I actually see the subscription model to my benefit as they upgrade every couple weeks with new state of the art features. Plus the monthly rental would take me 3 years before break even on similar software purchase. The software still runs off the computer and only requires log-in with internet connection. So if you have no internet you can't use it. But, I can load it on as many machines as I wish for one rental fee. So with a project external hard drive I can begin working on a project on my surface Pro and when I get home continue on my heavy machine. I haven't tried to log-in two at the same time though. You can work two + projects with one log-in however.

 

[harshness]

I've had a personal grudge against Adobe for many years but last year I swallowed my pride and jumped on board for the Premier Pro subscription software. I actually see the subscription model to my benefit as they upgrade every couple weeks with new state of the art features. Plus the monthly rental would take me 3 years before break even on similar software purchase. The software still runs off the computer and only requires log-in with internet connection. So if you have no internet you can't use it. But, I can load it on as many machines as I wish for one rental fee.

As has long been the case with ray tracing and other forms of photo-realistic 3D rendering, I can see where "rendering farms" are going to be even more important to VR.

This is a lot like the model that Autodesk uses for rendering videos and mechanical stress analysis as a cloud service.

As for the downside of the subscription model, I point to the folly that is Microsoft Office 365 where software bugs are reincarnated continuously.

 

[TheForce]

I can see where "rendering farms" are going to be even more important to VR.

I haven't seen that term used in decades. When I was doing 3D animation using Autodesk 3D Studio I had 4 computers networked for a little render farm. I ended up working with Gary Yost in his team as a Broadcast Engineer consultant for a couple years. That was a fine company to work with. But I just couldn't make a living doing 3D animation and had to move into TV production.

Have you seen some of the farms being built for Bitcoin mining?

 

[harshness]

Have you seen some of the farms being built for Bitcoin mining?

No, but I did see an add from Newegg about a $900 AMD/Intel Vega Frontier card today. 2048 bits, 16GB of HBM2 (483GB/second RAM) and 26 teraflops of math power. Given the only great gaming performance, Newegg is marketing them as mining cards.

 

[harshness]

I haven't seen that term used in decades.

I go way back to before Lightwave ran on Pee Cees.

 

[TheForce]

You had a Commodore Amiga? LOL! I remember those. I had a friend who had the Toaster and was always calling me up to help him through a project. He landed a live switch job for a rock concert at UF and I did the wiring for it but refused to do the live switch. He did and it turned out OK. But to finish it, with graphics and more inserts, we used my FAST Video Machine. Do you recall those? I still have it stored in the garage.