Basket for 4K editing

Russinating · 18 Jul 2016 at 13:52

We're getting some slowdown on a 4K editing rig and looking at an upgrade.

Any improvements on this without breaking the bank completely? The rig already has GTX 960 so the second will be going in for a dual GPU.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 960 OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GV-N960OC-4GD)= £158.99
1 x Intel i7-5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - Retail (BX80648I75820K)= £359.99
1 x Gigabyte X99-SLI Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £187.99
2 x Kingston HyperX Predator 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (HX432C16PB= £99.95
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 850w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020099-UK)= £99.95

Total: £1,006.82
(includes shipping: £0.00)

Thanks in advance!

Quartz · 18 Jul 2016 at 14:00

What is the source of the slow-down? CPU? RAM? GPU? SSD? Pinpoint that first.

Borealis · 18 Jul 2016 at 14:03

I would echo Quartz here and try to identify where the slowdown is first.

That CPU/mobo combo should be available as a bundle deal and save you a few £££s:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...rboard-bundle-20-pounds-saving-bu-020-gi.html

I wouldn't SLI 960s personally. Although they're capable of SLI, you're likely to be better off with a single more powerful card. Then again, I don't work with 4K video so your software may be able to take advantage of multiple GPUs.

850W is overkill for a 5820K/960SLI build. You'd be fine with a 750W unit for sure. The CX series are budget models, so if you want a modular PSU, I'd recommend getting one of these:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/evga...plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-012-ea.html

It's only £10 more and is a much better PSU.

Russinating · 18 Jul 2016 at 14:06

Quartz said:
What is the source of the slow-down? CPU? RAM? GPU? SSD? Pinpoint that first.

All of the above, probably. Current CPU is i7-3770 3.40GHz LGA1155, RAM is 16GB of DDR3, GPU is a 960. OS is on a SSD which is new and fine.

Borealis said:
I would echo Quartz here and try to identify where the slowdown is first.

That CPU/mobo combo should be available as a bundle deal and save you a few £££s:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...rboard-bundle-20-pounds-saving-bu-020-gi.html

I wouldn't SLI 960s personally. Although they're capable of SLI, you're likely to be better off with a single more powerful card. Then again, I don't work with 4K video so your software may be able to take advantage of multiple GPUs.

850W is overkill for a 5820K/960SLI build. You'd be fine with a 750W unit for sure. The CX series are budget models, so if you want a modular PSU, I'd recommend getting one of these:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/evga...plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-012-ea.html

It's only £10 more and is a much better PSU.

Thanks. Obviously want to utilise the existing GPU rather than replacing. Will take a look at the PSU.

Borealis · 18 Jul 2016 at 14:36

The CX series are by no means in the same league as CiT/Powercool, but if it was for a professional workstation I'd consider better units just for peace of mind. The last thing you want is down-time due to a PSU failure!

TBH, I think that video editing is likely to be more CPU/RAM bound than GPU bound. It could be a situation where more threads and RAM is the solution.

Here's another PSU:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/xfx-...old-fully-modular-power-supply-ca-016-xf.html

Same price as your original choice, but built by Seasonic.

Quartz · 18 Jul 2016 at 15:03

Russinating said:
All of the above, probably.

You're making a business decision here. 'Probably' doesn't cut it. All you need to do is bring up Task Manager on a secondary monitor and you'll find out if you're CPU-limited or RAM-limited or both.

Current CPU is i7-3770 3.40GHz LGA1155, RAM is 16GB of DDR3, GPU is a 960. OS is on a SSD which is new and fine.

If you're CPU-bound, go for a many-cored Xeon. Video processing thrives on multiple cores.

Russinating · 18 Jul 2016 at 15:19

Borealis said:
TBH, I think that video editing is likely to be more CPU/RAM bound than GPU bound. It could be a situation where more threads and RAM is the solution.

Everything I've read seems to suggest GPU has more of an impact than CPU now all the software we use utilises GPU acceleration?

Quartz said:
You're making a business decision here. 'Probably' doesn't cut it. All you need to do is bring up Task Manager on a secondary monitor and you'll find out if you're CPU-limited or RAM-limited or both.

If you're CPU-bound, go for a many-cored Xeon. Video processing thrives on multiple cores.

Regardless of what the bottle neck is now, surely upgrading the first bottleneck will just make something else that's dated the next one? All the components are 2 years old and underpowered so.