I've got £5000 ($7700) to build a 4K editing machine. Would like advice please

B

bosharpe

Active member
Hi everyone,

I'm building a mega PC for editing a feature film around 2 hours long. I'm using Dave Dugdale's 'Beast' PC build as a starting point. Parts are obviously more expensive in the UK in comparison to the U.S which is something I've got to bare in mind.
If anyone can spot something I've left out or knows a better component that will do more for more or less the same money then I'd really appreciate a comment below. Any further advice would also be extremely useful and I would be very thankful.

I've got £5000 (Or $7700) to play around with.

Many thanks!!

The part list is as follows:
Intel i7-5960X 8-core Haswell-E
Asus X99 Deluxe Motherboard
Asus GTX 780Ti DCII
Crucial DDR4 64G 2133MHz
NZXT H630 CA White Case
NZXT Krakan X61 CPU Water Cooler
NZXT Hale 1000 Watt 90+ Gold PSU white
NZXT Aperture M Card Reader
Thunderbolt PCI Adapter about
NZXT FN120 V2 two addition fans
Samsung 840 EVO SSD 1TB drive (Media Drive)
Corsair Force Series GT CSSD 240GB SSD (OS Drive)
WD 3TB HDD (Two Backup Drives)
Kingston 480GB SSD (Scratch Drive)
Windows 8.1
Asus PB287Q Monitor
 
For 4k I would go with dual Xeon and about 12 to 16 cores, great big Quadro series video card (maybe 2 or more), and more than a single 1TB drive for the media because you will probably need it. I would also use ECC registered RAM to keep ram errors from causing issues.

In truth, I would probably stick to all one brand of SSD if possible, and go with the Pro series of Samsung drives. The cache (swap) drive might be the exception because you don't really need a 256gb cache drive (normally twice system ram for swap space).

To save money, I would probably investigate many spinning hard drives in a stripe for the media drive, could probably build a 4 drive stripe with 4TB or 8TB (total raw) for the price of the single 1TB SSD. I'd have to sit down and check everything though.

For keyboard, one of the Logic brand painted to match the software you will be using.
 
With that list you can build 2 pc's.

Another choice is an industrial motherboard (fujitsu) and dual xeon.
And one or two nvidea 970 cards.
And buy a second monitor

succes!
 
Buy an iMac 7 or PC equivalent with 32g ram and save yourself $$$$$$. You don't need a "beast" to edit 4k . Why are you editing in 4k anyway ? What is your deliverables? Why don't you edit in HD or SD then upgrade the timeline to 4K when it's complete?
 
Many thanks for the comment and suggestions! They've been very helpful and I REALLY appreciate it. Taking in to account what you guys and others have said I've amended the list slightly. Storage for the mass amounts of footage from our feature film I'll come to at later point when we've got an editor onboard. For now we are looking to get a company computer we can edit the feature on and that'll last for a few years before switching out components or updating. Feedback welcome! :) Here's the list:

Case COOLERMASTER CM STORM TROOPER - GAMING ENTHUSIAST CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® Xeon® 10-Core E5-2687Wv3 (3.1 GHz, 9.60 GT/s, 25M L3 Cache)
Motherboard ASUS® X99-E WS: SOCKET 2011-V3, DDR4, USB 3.0, SATA 6 GB/s Memory
(RAM) 64GB HyperX FURY DDR4 2133MHz
(8 x 8GB) Graphics Card 12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX TITAN X - DVI, HDMI, 3 X DP
1st Hard Disk 2TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 2TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
M.2 SSD Drive 512GB SAMSUNG SM951 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2150MB/R, 1550MB/W)
1st PCI-E SSD Drive 1.2TB INTEL® 750 SERIES PCIe SSD (up to 2400MB/sR | 1200MB/sW)
2nd PCI-E SSD Drive 1.2TB INTEL® 750 SERIES PCIe SSD (up to 2400MB/sR | 1200MB/sW)
RAID RAID 1 (MIRRORED VOLUME - 2 x same size & model HDD / SSD)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW & SOFTWARE
Power Supply CORSAIR 1200W PRO SERIES™ PLATINUM AX1200i DIGITAL MODULAR PSU
Processor Cooling Corsair H100i GTX Hydro Series High Performance CPU
Cooler Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Extra Case Fans 1x 120mm Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof)
Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster ZxR 5.1 PCI-E Soundcard Wireless/Wired Networking
2 x ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORTS USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Asus PB287Q Monitor
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top