Best Workstation for Adobe CC 2014 for under £3,500 ($6,000)

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1

Hi all,

I work for a small Video Editing company, we're looking to buy new workstations and I've been given the task to persuade my boss to move to PC and not get the new Mac Pro (as this is my personal preference), so I'm asking for advice on the best workstation for the money.

We edit HD video and produce some graphics, all within the Adobe CC 2014 suite, so the workstation will be tailored towards Premiere Pro and After Effects. We're looking at a budget of £3,500 ($6,000) and of course the machine will have to out-perform an equivalently priced Mac Pro.

Let me know if you need any more info. Thanks in advance. 

2

Hello!

heres a link to a computer that will preform well with adobe CC.

It uses a singe quadro for graphics, and a GTX 780 for CUDA acceleration.

if you need a RAID card, bigger hard drive, or a gigabit ethernet card, or anything else tell me and ill adjust the part picker link

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/put_usernamehere/saved/cGTzK8

Please, PLEASE, overclock the i7, and after, it will definitely out preform the mac pro.

you're probably going to want some Noctua fans as well, to keep the silence down.  And even a Fractal design define XL would be a better case the the 750d for silence.

If i missed anything please, don't hesitate to tell me!

Cheers!

 

3

Just a few questions:

  • How much AE do you do?
  • What resolution/codec is your source material?
  • What's your disk setup currently, or are you pulling from a file server?
  • Are you running a lot of plugins?
  • Any peripherals still being used (ie. optical drives, etc.)?
4

agreed with izam, you need to define those stated parameters.

also to add to izams list, do you do multicam editing?

There are some things I would change out from experience on Putuser's list,

1.dont go with the 3960x, the increase in over all performance is not worth almost double price for the 3930k, go with a 3930k it will serve you well. I have it and run cc for video and photo. it eats everything i throw at it with out even breaking 47c.

for the adobe programs to run anything smooth it is all about hard drive speed and delegation. If i remember when i did my build adobe recommends a minimum of 4 hard drives, or raids. your system performance hinges on this factor so much. A good setup it one ssd for OS and Adobe only. Raid for video material, export drive/raid, drive for audio and a drive for your audio/video preview files. no spinners under 7200rpm, and if you have the cash use ssd for everything! mandatory for your OS and programs though, it makes everything so snappy.

this is more personal, you said you are a small video editing company, going off that if your doing graphics and such in PP and AE you dont need a workstation graphics card the 780 will do great by itself. Raytrace in AE will tax your gpu memory so get a card with a decent amount. again, that is going off the statement that your a small company and depends on what your doing.

for reference, here is my workstation.

3930k @4.5mhz

noctua u14s in dual fan mode

sabertooth x79 MBO

64gigs gskill z memory

gtx680 4gb

coolermaster 1200w gold+

intel cherryville 128gb ssd, for OS and adobe

Intel 520 ssd for export only. ( i dont recommend this as I have been battling with a problem to export quick time files, everything else works, and qt exports on any other drive just fine.)

WD black 2tb raid0, for visual media only

wd black, 1tb for video preview files

wd balck 1tb for audio files

wd black 1tb for audio preview,

wd balck 1tb for emergency storage, cache and page file.

coolermaster haf 932 adv, with bit fenix fans.

i can handle red 4k single track at full rez, but when i multicam 2 or more red i have to go down to half rez as my system stumbles to keep up.

for ae my raytrace and track works smoothly, speedgrade is also smooth and a pleasure to work with.

render and export times are decent, but i never measured because when i render/export I leave, and go to the store, play a game or take a shower.

so long winded, you need to fill in those parameters from izam.

in summary,

I would for sure ditch the 3960 in favor of the 3930k, and then put the money into hard drives for raid and other purposes.

to save more cash, you could either keep, the workstation graphics card and loose the 780, or keep the 780 and drop the workstation graphics. its up to you and your work really. either way then you could shift money to memory next, adobe will eat all the memory you can throw at it. especially AE ans SG.

a mac pro with comparable specs to mine, when i built it, was something ridiculous like $13k. my system plus 2 proart monitors, adobe cs6 production premium, windows 7 was around $4500.

that is my experience, hope  it helps.

esr

5

Thanks for the reply. I'll answer your questions in order as best I can to help those following this question help!

  • AE is used a reasonable amount, but our main focus is on video editing in Premiere Pro. Most of what we do in AE are simple graphics, such as name tags, titles, etc. and it gets used for motion graphics, so overall, nothing that really makes use of the Ray-tracing renderer to take advantage of the GPU acceleration.
  • 95% of the video we work with is 1920x1080p in .MOV, .MTX and .MTS, I don't recall their codecs off the top of my head.
  • We are actually in the process of updating a disk setup, but we're about to spend around £10,000 ($17,000) on a server solution, so the material won't be stored locally to the machine.
  • We often use plugins such as Film Convert, Neat Video among others, but limit the use of these due to the speed of our current machines. Once we've upgraded, we'll be using the Red Giant Color Suite fairly extensively in PP, which from my understanding also has GPU acceleration. For the sake of this question, also assume the Red Giant Keying Suite in AE.
  • Minimal to no peripherals are being used other than monitors, card readers and speakers.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you need to know anything else. Thanks!
6

Hi there Esr, thanks for the helpful advice. I've answered Izam's questions above if it helps you at all add anything else. Either way, thanks a lot for the help!

7

Based on your feed I'd recommend this build (http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Izam/saved/Lb9tt6) which is also coming in 500 under budget.

  • CPU: A 4930k, the successor to the 3930k, is a great choice because it provides slightly better performance to its predecessor. Because this is going to be used in a workplace environment I wouldn't recommend overclocking unless you have time to keep an eye on it to prevent it from going down mid-production.
  • Motherboard: The P9X79-E WS has a strong reputation for a being a feature packed and reliable workstation motherboard. Might be a bit more than you need right now but better to have room to grow than none at all.
  • RAM: A full 64GB at 1600/CAS9, you could get 1866 or any other high rated sticks but to be completely honest most users will only see a few seconds shaved off their render time, that's not worth the price.
  • Storage: Even though you said you were working off an internal server I still kept the basic 3 disk OS/Cache/Media setup just in case anything were to happen. If you want to upgrade the 750GB to a larger HDD or a faster SSD for larger/faster cache you're free to do so.
  • Video: Titan Black, this thing is honestly overkill but if you're going to spend £10,000 on a server upgrade then you might be growing fast enough to see 2k and 4k in the coming years. Precise calculations over the 600/700 series, 10bit color support, and enough power and ram to chew up 4k and plugins alike.
  • Case: A Cooler Master Cosmo II, large enough for everything to sit comfortably, great air flow, and plenty of space to expand into if needed in the future. Also allows for large radiators should you want a colder CPU.
  • Power Supply: Its more than enough right now and it would allow for storage to be expanded effortlessly and some overclock should you take the leap. However if for some reason you'd want a second Titan Black it'll fall short and would recommend an AX1200i.