Noobie needs hand holding for Pro Video Editing Build

[VideoMatt]

Hey dudes!

Must be in my tenth hour of research now. Tonymac is a great resource with loads of pointers back towards here from Youtube and beyond. Thanks in advance for any help and advice

I've a few questions if I may...

Everyone talks about Noctua fans - Should I get one too?
Is the case in my build list suitable for this project? Will it have some ports on the front?
Like duh but where is the water in the water cooler? (really sorry for being a retard)
I often use firewire for video transfer - does this motherboard have a firewire port and is USB 3 like mega slow in comparison?
If I have Yosemite OS, will I be able to get wifi through the adapter and upload files for FTP?
Not fussed about overclocking, more so to have a quiet system, will this build be quiet?


Video Editing in FCP X is my priority for the project and I've mostly followed the buying guide for the "2011 Socket" components.

Any chance I might get this list checked please?

Asus Sabretooth X79

Intel Xeon E3-1230V3

Corsair H60 EVGANvidiaGeForceGTX760 or 970 (big difference?) Crucial Ballistix sport XT2 2 x 8GB Seagate Barrucuda 1TB Samsung 840 EVO 120GB Corsair Pro Series AX 760 Watt (can i come down on this?) Bitfenix Prodigy M MATX TP-Link TL-WDN4800 450Mbps wifi adaptor Apple wired numeric keyboard Samsung 27 inch HD Monitor Thanks Mucho! Matt, Solihll, UK

 

[applebirne]

Since i am new to Hackintoshes too, i can only answer a few questions

1. you should definitely get the 970 over the 760, the 970 is really much better
2. Pretty much every Harddrive works with Hackintoshes and most of The SSD's too, also the Samsung SSD's are known to work with Hackintoshes so you wont have any problems with that also they're booth a good choice.
3. if you take the msi 970 the Graphics Card should be Silent (i have an msi GTX970 an its super quiet)
4. if you put BeQuiet SilentWings 2 on the Corsair H60 it will be silent too.
5. The Corsair H60 is an all in one Solution, so the water is already inside (in the tubes) which has the advantage that its really easy to set up(even for newbies) but has the disadvantage that you can't refill it if its broken.

Im not english, so sorry if there are some misspellings

regards,
applebirne

 

[rwillett]

You need to research a little differently and sweat the important stuff and not the noise on the margins.

The most important decision you can make for video editing, especially with FCP X is your choice of video architecture. Note the word architecture and not the word card. nVidia cards are great cards but pretty poor (I'm being nice) when working with FCP X. Lots and lots of stuff about benchmarking with FCPX. Try googling for Bruce X. benchmark to get some idea.

So if you are serious about video ending junk the nVidia and go AMD. 2-3x faster for FCP X.

Second point is you are playing with newish technology with the X79 boards. Whilst they do work, are you technically competent to make it all work? Ask yourself that difficult question and be honest with yourself. If you don't know about water cooling, do you feel you can get through all the difficult things needed to make an X79 board work?

If you don't know the difference in capability between USB 3 and Firewire you may struggle further downstream. See previous comment on technical ability. Just for information USB 3.0 is faster than Firewire, though we can argue long and hard about latency and effective throughput. Firewire is getting more and more difficult to get working as its now an older technology. I know lots of high end stuff still uses it but you will struggle now to get a new video camera with Firewire.

Not sure how much video you're editing and where you're going to store it. Anybody who transfers video project files through WiFi deserves the pain they get when they watch it slowly transfer. My last video project which was five mins of video for the kids had a 60GB media directory of clips. Don't forget that FCP X will NOT allow you to back up to non directly connected disk systems unless you frig the system to have disk images mounted. Its a real pain in the bum.

Get the biggest PSU you can afford as FCP X (that was your primary target wasn't it) will handle dual graphics cards. The cheapest way to get quality and speed in FCP X is to use dual AMD 5770 cards. They're cheap off eBay, instantly recognised by FCP X and will work well. I did the Bruce X benchmark with an i4770 3.4Hgz with 2 x 5770 in 32 seconds. That is very, very fast. Waaaaay faster than any nVidia card.

My suggestion would be dump the X79 and Xeons unless they are free and you know what you are doing. get a recognised Z87X or Z97X board (they're basically the same), a decent 4770 CPU and dual 5770's as that will be as good as most systems out there. If you have more money go with the R280x's, a single 280X is about the same as a 110% of 7970 which is about the same as 110% 2 x 5770. Two of them are nice and just work. Thats what I use.

The rest is noise, I happen to have a Noctura cooler and they are great. How much time did I spend sweating that decision, about 10 secs, how much time sweating which graphics card? About two weeks.

If I look through your list, the only important decisions are the GPU, then the MB, CPU and RAM combination. The rest is dictated by the first lot.

 

[VideoMatt]

Thanks Rwillett and Applebirne,

Really useful info there and I've been doing a lot of research today. Thanks for the advice guys

The 5770s seem a little bit old, going back to 2010. Will this be an issue? There's a used one on Amazon at £125 so getting hold of two new ones might be a problem. Would rather have new I think.

What about Sapphire AMD R9 280 or the 280-X? Just a single unit? Is this a better option still than the 970? Worth splashing out on a 290x?

Whilst rendering out files in FCP and Compressor is my main priority (HD files with multiple filters), I may wish to use Apple Motion extensively and have a go with Maya too at some point.

Whether I opt for the 280x, the 290x or the 970, are all these compatible with openCL, Yosemtite and FCP X?

Can someone explain briefly what open CL is and also CUDA?

My alternative motherboard is the Z87N so thanks about your advice using the newer X79 and the problems I might have with it. As a new build first timer, having an easy installation would be a bonus although wifi is essential for FTPing finished .movs to clients (sometimes up to 2 gigs)

So how's this build looking for FCP X performance please? -

Gigabyte Z87N motherboard
xeon e3 CPU (cost effective)
SAPPHIRE AMD R9 290 TRI-X OC 4GB Graphics Card x 1
Ballistix Sport 16GB Ram

Not looking to overclock or to win any Benchmark awards. Would just like a simple first time build that runs the latest Mac OS and performs really well in FCP X, Motion and compressor.

Thanks for you help guys!

Matt

 

[rwillett]

The 5770's are old boards but they work with no effort. Thats the joy of them. You can pick them up on eBay for about £50-60 or look around. You won't get new and they aren't worth it new.

The 280x are equivalent to 2 x 5770 (ish). The ones I have are easy to use and no effort to install. You need to do an EDI partition mod which sounds difficult but is pretty simple.

Forget the 280, the 280x is the better card. The 290x is more effort and *may* not work. Its bleeding edge but may be OK in a few weeks or months. I can't comment as I ignored them as they were not compatible a few months ago. Stay away from the bleeding edge.

The AMD cards are compatible, the 970 works but is very slow. You need it Google for the difference between CUDA and OpenGL.

Not sure your Xeons work with the Z87X motherboard. I would check that. Personally speaking I'd go with the 280X, I have two and they work well.