Planing a Mac Pro for transcoding 5k footage, feedback would be awesome!

[Bdalsey]

The plan is...

Corsair Vengeance Series C70 Gunmetal Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-OC Force LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz LGA 1150 84W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I74770K

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory Model F3-19200CL10Q-32GBZHD

ASUS GTXTITAN-6GD5 GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Might get 2 ^

Corsair Neutron Series GTX CSSD-N240GBGTXB-BK 2.5" 240GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)


Western Digital WD Black WD4001FAEX 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

CORSAIR AXi series AX1200i 1200W Digital ATX12V v2.31 and EPS 2.92 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full ...

CORSAIR Hydro Series H100i Extreme Performance Water/Liquid CPU Cooler. 240mm

Rosewill AC1200UBE USB 3.0 Wireless AC1200 Dual-Band Adapter

ASUS PA279Q Black 27" WQHD LED Backlight True Color Professional Monitor


Any feedback would be awesome! Anyone see any issues with these components? How stable is mavericks on these new haswell builds?

 

[trs96]

A socket 2011 build will do a better job with 5K than a Haswell 4770k and Z87 board will.
All depends on what your budget is and how soon you need it. The CPU I would use would
be at least the six core Xeon E5-1650 V2 or the I7-4930K. The new Mac Pros will have the
Xeon E5's and dual firepro gfx cards. Price will be over $3000 at the entry level Mac Pros.
What the cost will be for a CustoMac that can handle 5K isn't known yet as we just got
Mavericks 10.9 recently. Looks like December until Mavericks will support the IB-EP V2 Xeons.
So if you can wait a little, definitely consider a socket 2011 build. As far your hardware
choices, a 4770K would be your bottleneck, spend more on the CPU and don't get more
than 1 Titan, add another SSD for a scratch drive, 32 GB of ram is perfect.

Here's an example of some HP PC specs for their RED edition Z820

http://www.promax.com/s-172-z820-red-tech-specs.aspx

A 16 core Xeon and a Quadro video card would not choke on anything you could throw at it

Here's some Red Raw 5K real world testing by Dave Dugdale. His PC has an I7-3930K over clocked
to 4.2GHz. Watch this to see how his computer handles Red Raw.

http://youtu.be/xq65Mc5Ew10

 

[sixbyseven]

Is there a chance for speedstep and working sleep on socket 2011 builds because of the new Mac Pro? So finally an i7 9390k with sleep etc? Would be awesome

 

[geminii]

As a film editor, I am also interested in a similar setup to the one you have detailed. I would love to upgrade my current hackintosh to the specs of the new MacPro coming out and be able to take advantage of multi GPU processing in Adobe and the new FCPx being released.

But I am on a serious budget. So I am not looking to break the bank here. If I could get a new CPU, Mobo and 2 graphics (or 1 that is significant improvement) for under 1200 that would be great!

 

[kundica]

Is there a chance for speedstep and working sleep on socket 2011 builds because of the new Mac Pro? So finally an i7 9390k with sleep etc? Would be awesome

Speedstep currently works on 2011 boards with 2 states(max and min multipliers), although, not natively. Many of us expect it to work natively as soon as the new mac pros are released. Sleep on my Rampage IV Extreme works fine.

 

[trs96]

As a film editor, I am also interested in a similar setup to the one you have detailed. I would love to upgrade my current hackintosh to the specs of the new MacPro coming out and be able to take advantage of multi GPU processing in Adobe and the new FCPx being released.

But I am on a serious budget. So I am not looking to break the bank here. If I could get a new CPU, Mobo and 2 graphics (or 1 that is significant improvement) for under 1200 that would be great!

As of today the following choices would be the BBFYB (Best Bang For Your Buck) $1200 budget.
Can always add a 2nd video card later for CrossfireX when it becomes supported in OS X likely
to happen after the new Mac Pros are released.



The best CPU you can afford is the most important choice followed by the graphics card(s). A general rule
of thumb is to spend at least as much on your CPU as the GPU. If Pro grade SSDs can be added to the
build that will also greatly speed up the workflow for HD video processing / editing.

If the 4930K is overclocked for better performance then a closed loop liquid cooler is the best
choice along with adequate air flow from 2-3 case fans to cool the VRMs. (see Buyer's Guide)

 

[sixbyseven]

Well that’d be awesome, kundica. I’ll wait till December or January then and hopefully build a kickass 6-Core-Hackintosh with all bells and whistles to hopefully last me 3 or 4 years

 

[geminii]

Hey trs96,

Thanks for the recommendations! Awesome! I happened to be checking out stuff on the 6 core cpu last night. I am not familiar with ASUS, and it seems that Gigabyte are more easily supported for Mobo. Would you recommend going that route with the Mobo?

I also am not clear on whether or not USB3 has been easily and fully supported now in Mavericks and that is actually starting to be a major necessity for me since some of my editing clients give me everything on USB3 drives now.

I currently have a Sandisk 512 SSD so it is not Pro grade by any means but it will save me money by just keeping it for now. I also am not comfortable with Overclocking and Water Cooling so not sure if I want to go that route. I understand that Adobe actually already takes advantage of multiple GPU processing which would greatly help my efficiency with After Effects, and I am anxious to know if Mavericks already supports dual GPU.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[trs96]

Hey trs96,

Thanks for the recommendations! Awesome! I happened to be checking out stuff on the 6 core cpu last night. I am not familiar with ASUS, and it seems that Gigabyte are more easily supported for Mobo. Would you recommend going that route with the Mobo?

The Deluxe is one of the few X79 boards built for Ivy E chips, with an updated bios for Ivy E CPUs so it makes installing with the 4930K easier. I would expect Gigabyte to come out with some newer X79's shortly. Those will also be a good choice paired with the 4930K. (They'll also have more USB3 ports) Watch the Buyer's Guides each month on the 15th or so. Support for USB3 should be no problem for current hardware and Mavericks which will also support dual GPU but only after the new Mac Pros are ready to start selling, it's not there yet. You don't have to use liquid cooling if you use an adequate 3rd party air cooler / heatsink that does the job. Here's a short video on installing a Noctua air cooler. If you will use dual video cards make sure it's not one that is so big it blocks the 1st PCI-E slot. This one in the video (NH12US) or the Hyper 212-Evo are great choices.

http://youtu.be/XlvrBicEtX0?t=16m12s

 

[geminii]

The Deluxe is one of the few X79 boards built for Ivy E chips, with an updated bios for Ivy E CPUs so it makes installing with the 4930K easier. I would expect Gigabyte to come out with some newer X79's shortly. Those will also be a good choice paired with the 4930K. (They'll also have more USB3 ports) Watch the Buyer's Guides each month on the 15th or so. Support for USB3 should be no problem for current hardware and Mavericks which will also support dual GPU but only after the new Mac Pros are ready to start selling, it's not there yet. You don't have to use liquid cooling if you use an adequate 3rd party air cooler / heatsink that does the job.

You have got me seriously thinking about pulling the trigger on this right away. I might go ahead and buy the mobo, cpu, new heatsink first but then just use my current HD 6870 video card until MacPro is officially released (and hopefully making it easier to setup dual video cards in Mavericks at that time).

So here is a novice question regarding upgrading/swapping out mobo/cpu... I currently have stable Mavericks installed on my system. If I build a new rig with this hardware, do I need to do a clean install of Mavericks or can I simply boot up and re-run Multibeast?

Thanks.