x79 or z77 board... need pro's and con's before I decide

[marknotton]

So I'm torn between two different boards/cpus.

Gigabyte X79-UD5 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006678HJC/?tag=tonymacx86-21) - Buyer's Guide January 2013
or Asus P8Z77-V Premium (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00810TS3G/?tag=tonymacx86-21)

I need a powerful machine for video editing... and I don't mind spending a fair bit on it.

I've done a good amount of research, but this will be my first build. I know that Z77 boards seem to be more favoured for first timers, but the x79 boards can support 64gb RAM (for the future) and the 6-core CPU seems very appealing and worth the effort/risk.

- I need as many HDD's in it as I can... are Marvell chipsets for the SATA ports still pretty much unusable, or are there fixes I haven't seen?
- Sound card issues?
- Power management issues showing positive progress?

Parts I currently have on the shopping list: Samsung 840 128gb, Evga GTX 680 4gb, Corsair Dominator 32gb, Corsair H100i CPU cooler, Be Quiet Pro 10 1000w PSU... and i7-3930K or i7-3770K depending on the board.

Any insights or comments would go a long way.

Cheers,

Mark

 

[DBP]

- I need as many HDD's in it as I can... are Marvell chipsets for the SATA ports still pretty much unusable, or are there fixes I haven't seen?

Well, the Marvell controller on my GA-Z77X-UP5 works great. It just needs one of the "3rd Party eSATA/SATA" options in MultiBeast (read the MultiBeast PDF documentation so you understand which to choose).
One (only one) of my WD MyBook Studios had an issue with it where the drive occasionally took itself offline (WD Support says it's an incompatibility between that model and Marvell controllers) but everything else works fine. And I simply moved that drive to one of the ASM1061 controllers sitting in a PCIe slot. All-up I have 14 SATA ports in lammergeier.

- Power management issues showing positive progress?

I don't think there'll be any movement on Socket 2011 PM until maybe new Mac Pros appear. In the meantime at least those CPUs do auto-switch from idle (usually 1.2 GHz) up to max clock. Just like an i7-3770K, just with no steps in between.

 

[marknotton]

In the meantime at least those CPUs do auto-switch from idle (usually 1.2 GHz) up to max clock. Just like an i7-3770K, just with no steps in between.

Thanks DBP, I didn't know it could do that. Do you reckon general internet browsing and listening to music would push the CPU to go full-blast, or will it stick at 1.2 GHz?

My big thing at the moment is justifying the z77 boards with all its stability, on-going hackintosh support, fancy new CPU's, and thunderbolt support. Or stick with the a x79 board, regardless of it's problems... just because I want 6 core's to help with video editing.

I couldn't find any useful 4-core vs 6-core comparisons online. Anyone know of any?

 

[DBP]

I expect that every now and then it will spike up to full throttle and down, especially when doing things like web browsing. But rather than me extrapolating from what my Z/H77 CPUs/boards do, best to ask an X79 user.

There have been a few video-editing-related threads in the Buying Advice forum recently talking about 6 cores vs 4.

 

[kundica]

Thanks DBP, I didn't know it could do that. Do you reckon general internet browsing and listening to music would push the CPU to go full-blast, or will it stick at 1.2 GHz?

The CPU on my x79 system doesn't jump around all that much. If I'm online, just browsing, watching videos, listening to music, etc., it usually remains idle. The larger resolution I stream, the more chance there is for it to jump up though.

 

[StickyS]

So I'm torn between two different boards/cpus.

Gigabyte X79-UD5 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006678HJC/?tag=tonymacx86-21) - Buyer's Guide January 2013
or Asus P8Z77-V Premium (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00810TS3G/?tag=tonymacx86-21)

I need a powerful machine for video editing... and I don't mind spending a fair bit on it.

I've done a good amount of research, but this will be my first build. I know that Z77 boards seem to be more favoured for first timers, but the x79 boards can support 64gb RAM (for the future) and the 6-core CPU seems very appealing and worth the effort/risk.

- I need as many HDD's in it as I can... are Marvell chipsets for the SATA ports still pretty much unusable, or are there fixes I haven't seen?
- Sound card issues?
- Power management issues showing positive progress?

Parts I currently have on the shopping list: Samsung 840 128gb, Evga GTX 680 4gb, Corsair Dominator 32gb, Corsair H100i CPU cooler, Be Quiet Pro 10 1000w PSU... and i7-3930K or i7-3770K depending on the board.

Any insights or comments would go a long way.

Cheers,

Mark

Get the 840 Pro rather than the 840, the writes speeds are at least twice as fast. Also, rather than getting a reference EVGA 680 4gb, get a Gigabyte Wndforce 3 GTX 670 or MSI Power EDition Gtx 670. You don't need 4gb of VRAM if you aren't gaming on more than three displays. Also, the custom pcb will easily help you overclock to surpass most 680's. Corsair dominator ram is just expensive because of the bling and the brand, you could go couch cheaper there(GSkill or Vengeance) and get the same performance. That PSU isn't very common, so I don't know how it will work...I can definitely recommend seasonic and corsair psu's though, buy at least
a 750W.

 

[marknotton]

Oh you guys... and all of your knowledge

DPB - This guy sums 3770k and the 3930k up quite nicely: http://youtu.be/JhcHFlOnIbk Not exactly a comparison, but I found it helped.

kundica - I've read that while going full blast doesn't necessarily decrease the life-span of your CPU, it's does take up a lot more power.

StickyS - Lots of good points there. It's easy to think that more money = better equipment. But that's clearly not always the case. I had often wondered why so many hackintosh builds often use the 670, when the 680 in theory should be better. I thought I'd go with the 4gb vRam as I plan to have two large monitors and a third interactive pen display (Cintiq 24HD should finances ever allow it). But I'll probably only ever stick to one display for gaming.

D'you reckon a 670 2gb, will still handle that well?

I'd certainly like to look around a bit more for the Ram. The G.Skill have their TridentX range which seems as-good-as or better. I might look into that a some more.

Thanks guys, huge help.

Mark

 

[StickyS]

Oh you guys... and all of your knowledge

DPB - This guy sums 3770k and the 3930k up quite nicely: http://youtu.be/JhcHFlOnIbk Not exactly a comparison, but I found it helped.

kundica - I've read that while going full blast doesn't necessarily decrease the life-span of your CPU, it's does take up a lot more power.

StickyS - Lots of good points there. It's easy to think that more money = better equipment. But that's clearly not always the case. I had often wondered why so many hackintosh builds often use the 670, when the 680 in theory should be better. I thought I'd go with the 4gb vRam as I plan to have two large monitors and a third interactive pen display (Cintiq 24HD should finances ever allow it). But I'll probably only ever stick to one display for gaming.

D'you reckon a 670 2gb, will still handle that well?

I'd certainly like to look around a bit more for the Ram. The G.Skill have their TridentX range which seems as-good-as or better. I might look into that a some more.

Thanks guys, huge help.

Mark

A 670 with 2gb of VRAM will handle three monitors without gaming with EASE. It won't sweat a bit...If you won't be gaming, I'm not sure you will need as much power that a 670 gives you...at maximum with stock core clocks it can handle BF3 on ULTRA settings at 60fps on three surround monitors at 1920x1080p. Since you will be using 2-3 monitors and only ever gaming on one, I think you could save some cash and buy at least a 660.

With regards to regular DDR3 RAM: This has an affect on your cpu cooler, if you go with a 3930k I highly suggest an NH-D14 because of how cool it will keep the cpu. You will also be able to easily overclock the 3930k with the NH-D14. GSkill Ripjaws fit under the NH-D14, but the trident series do not. For video editing, I think the amount of the ram is more important than what it looks like. I don't know what effect latency has on video editing, but otherwise, the two pairs are same performance wise. If you buy 8 sticks of 8gb each, you will save $120...
I compared this : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231623
to this : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231528

 

[qwerty123]

@MarkNotton I'm about to build--probably this weekend--and Sabertooth x79 3930k with g skill Ram and a Noctua Nh-d14 cooler. I currently have a 3770k.

I think you should think about what kind of footage, etc you are going to be working with. If you are mainly sticking to about 1080p, then a 3770k will do fine. I think the differences you'll experience in terms of rendering (which you may likely not need to do that much of), exporting, transcoding, etc., aren't going to be mind blowingly different between the two processors. But you'll likely save a few seconds per minute going with the 3930k.

Also note that there's a difference between speedstep and cpu usage, i.e, what percentage of the cpu is being utilized (monitored via activity monitor). I think I have this correct--Kundica and DBP know I've asked about this before.

The installation for an x79 is not going to be as straightforward: you'll likely have to enter in a boot command or two during the install: see eelhead's recent golden build; there's also a good Asus x79 build description that goes into this (not Yo Mang's... more recent).

I will tell you that my current 1155 3770k machine is running flawlessly with everything working (it's basically Slugnet's golden build with slight mods). I'm getting a 14,900 geekbench (64bit) without overclock.

One thing I do recommend irrespective of which way you go is to get a good cooler: both chips are over-clockable; the 3770k stock fan sucks and the 3930k doesn't come with a fan. Also think about how much you care about case noise. Different chasis produce differnt amounts of noise other things equal.

 

[marknotton]

Thanks StickyS, I'm going to go with the 670 with 2gb. Just for a little future proofing. If I really want to take things to another level sometime down the line, I'll just add an additional identical card. Even if my hacktintosh can't handle the SLI, the Windows partition I plan to have should.

As for RAM, I'm likely going to ignore the pretty looking Dominator Platinum and go with a Vengeance line instead. I'd rather save some money and still get almost identical performance.

qwerty123, how did your new build go? too early to tell?

To be honest, I think trying to build a video editing machine that works with anything over 1080 is unnecessary at the moment. I see the benefits for future proofing, but that's still a fair way down the line for me. By the time I'm ready to comfortably work with 4k footage, my current build will be well out of date. The maximum resolution I will be working with is 2.5k on the BlackMagic camera. Even then, I will downsize that to 1080 anyway.

So... with all that advice, I think I'm going for a z77 board, with a very reasonable 3770k CPU

You both mentioned about the cooler. The Noctua fans/coolers seem to be a big hit at the moment (despite how ugly they are). But I've seen a lot of comparisons and think the H100i CPU cooler will work fine too, I don't plan to OC it too much.

I've got the Corsair 650D mid-tower case. Everything will fit in there JUST right. I even have enough space for a Push-Pull config with some Be Quiet 120mm fans. I've also replaced the side panel window with a mesh, which has another fan on it too. I've probably gone a little over-board with the fans actually. I've never built a PC with noise as a concern, so I think which ever way I go, this build will be much quieter than what I'm use to.

If anyones interested, I'll post some pics once it's done (late Feb).

Thanks again guys!