Building a 4k Editing Rig

spruitm

spruitm

Active member
I need a new computer to keep up with the 4k editing. I am a huge fan of Mac's, but unless I'm getting a Mac Pro, which is way out of the budget, I don't think it would be worth it for what I'm going for. I have no problem building my own and will be using premiere to edit on, so the interface is going to be about the same either way.

I have two setups built on Newegg:

Option 1

-Intel Core i7-4790K Quad-Core 4.0GHz

-EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB

-16 GB DDR3

-Asus mobo

128 GB ssd, 1TB HDD, power supply, etc..

Total = $1,233

Option 2

-Intel Core i7-5820K Haswell-E 6-Core 3.3GHz

-EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB

-16 GB DDR4

-256 GB ssd, 1TB HDD....

Total = $1,734

Second one has a newer generation processor, which means newer motherboard and ddr4 ram. Not only will it all be faster, but it will be able to be upgraded for longer.

Option 1 saves me $500, does anyone have experience with a lot of 4k editing and do you think this setup would be able to handle it. I'm not looking for the fastest render times or anything, I just want it to play and navigated smoothly while editing.

Most of the footage will be coming from a gh4 and gopro 4

Any helpful tips appreciated and +karma and all that.
 
I don't think either of those options are very good for video editing. Both processors will obviously kill whatever you throw at them although having the extra two physical cores with the newer generation is probably a good idea and I'd stick with the Haswell-E platform.

There's a few things I would change though, I would get something like a GTX 750 ti for ~$160-180 instead of wasting it all on the 970/980. You'll see almost identical performace in Premiere because it is only utilizing the CUDA cores.

Use that extra cash to invest in some faster hard drives. I'm thinking something like 2 SSD's in RAID 0 as a scratch disk for you to work off of. That way your hard drives will never be a bottleneck for you (in both builds right now they will be).

You should also look into getting a decent monitor to edit with. There are some off-brand korean IPS displays that you can get for pretty cheap that are 27" and 1440p.
 
Id go option b, but go up to 32gb of ram and 120gb ssd. You may not need 4gb of vram really either imo.
 
13361807:Michael_Thatcher said:
You should also look into getting a decent monitor to edit with. There are some off-brand korean IPS displays that you can get for pretty cheap that are 27" and 1440p.
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Links!?

where where where
 
check this out, let me know what you think
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/nYZdwP

**if you live near microcenter, go. They have the 5820K for $300, and the staff is pretty good at making reasonable suggestions. They do work on commission, but I did my research first, and the guys I talked to were knowledgeable and not very pushy.

Not sure on PSU, I added a pretty beefy one (I have the cx600m) in case you want to overclock or sli or both. For the case, I picked a nice, silent, clean lookng atx tower, feel free to switch it. I use a Corsair air 240, it's mATX, but if you don't need the expansion for full ATX (and feel like paying the premium for an mATX X99 board), it is great. Mouse and keyboard are highly subjective/you may already own them, but they aren't included. Same goes for the monitor. I personally use an LG 25UM65, and I love it, but there are many more great options to choose from as well.
 
Sorry to triple post, but I wanted to clarify that you can feel free to add more RAM, 16gb is the minimum, but haswell-e supports quad channel, and with 4k editing, this could give a decent performance boost. I also only included the boot drive, you will want at least a few terabytes of storage for footage (preferably in RAID 0).
 
Thank you all. I'm leaning more towards the first option, mainly due to cost, but adding more ssd and probably more ram

Hackintosh is a possibility if i feel like doing a lot of tinkering around, but not completely necessary
 
just wondering why intel in particular? AMD has a 8 core 5 ghz processor that is around the same price as the intel chipset you chose (depending on the place your buying it its cheaper)

obviously check on mobo compatibility but an extra Gh plus 4 additional cores over the intel for the same price or less? seems obvious to me

put the (savings?) into a ssd, you will just bottleneck at the drive and you wont be able to utilize the performance of the other components without it. use the tb drive as a secondary but stick a ssd in as a primary.
 
13363798:DorianF said:
just wondering why intel in particular? AMD has a 8 core 5 ghz processor that is around the same price as the intel chipset you chose (depending on the place your buying it its cheaper)

obviously check on mobo compatibility but an extra Gh plus 4 additional cores over the intel for the same price or less? seems obvious to me

put the (savings?) into a ssd, you will just bottleneck at the drive and you wont be able to utilize the performance of the other components without it. use the tb drive as a secondary but stick a ssd in as a primary.
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i should clarify:

as opposed to option A

use savings to invest in LARGER SSD, you bottleneck on the tb because it has to spin and find the data you want (the faster the rpm the faster the drive), the more footage you can keep on the ssd the faster your render times and ram previews will be

or drop the savings into a faster secondary drive (7200rm +)5400 rpm is pretty sluggish
 
13362063:pussyfooter said:
Id go option b, but go up to 32gb of ram and 120gb ssd. You may not need 4gb of vram really either imo.
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Definitely go with 32, 16 ain't gonna cut it for 4k.
 
13363798:DorianF said:
just wondering why intel in particular? AMD has a 8 core 5 ghz processor that is around the same price as the intel chipset you chose
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I'm trying to edit video, not heat my house.

But for real, just because it is higher ghz and more cores does not mean it's better, they are each using their own rating system and I have never had a good experience with AMD
 
13366934:SteezyJapaneezy said:
Not if you know how to handle it properly
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I disagree, hardly anyone has 4k monitors and most websites don't even do 4k, so you would be better off filming 1080p 60 or something . Just my 0.02
 
13366970:MLJ said:
I disagree, hardly anyone has 4k monitors and most websites don't even do 4k, so you would be better off filming 1080p 60 or something . Just my 0.02
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Just because you film in 4K doesn't mean you have to deliver in 4K. There are other ways to use 4k
 
Did it! All the parts finally got here today, put it all together tonight, and I am just rocketing around right now. I'll probably wait til tomorrow to get into the editing, but dang she's FAST!!!
 
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