Appreciate advice/confirmation on choice of Photo-Video Workstation 'Future Proofed'

[Seeker2]

To replace my July, 2014 PC Specialist build that was based on a i7-2600 (quad) CPU I've put together the following spec. Is this overkill?
Supporting professional use the price comes to just under £4k.

A full workstation O/S with Xeon CPU seems sensible as my work is now for professional work use with much more demanding needs than I that back in 2014, the liklihood of working with 4k video a particular concern.

Went for a larger power supply than needed in case of any future energy hungry component. Having said that I picked Nvidea's RTX4000 card instead of AMD's WX 8200 as it uses a lot less juice for not so different results. The main memory is elsewhere, residing on a recently deployed NAS disk based system in RAID 10 configuration (Synology DS1816+).

Many thanks.

Case

COOLERMASTER MASTERCASE SL600M GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU)

Intel® Xeon® W-2265 12-Core (3.5GHz, 4.6GHz Turbo, 19.25M Cache)

Motherboard

ASUS® WS C422 PRO/SE (DDR4 RDIMM, 6Gb/s, CrossFireX/SLI)

Memory (RAM)

64GB Kingston DDR4 2666MHz ECC Registered (2 x 32GB)

Graphics Card

PNY QUADRO RTX 4000 8GB GDDR6, 2304 CUDA CORES - 3 x DP, 1 x DVI-D

1st Storage Drive

2TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)

1st M.2 SSD Drive

2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive

NOT REQUIRED

Power Supply

CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET

Power Cable

1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Processor Cooling

Noctua NH-U14S Ultra Quiet Performance CPU Cooler

Thermal Paste

ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND

Sound Card

ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Wireless/Wired Networking

2 x 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORTS (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)

USB/Thunderbolt Options

2 PORT (2 x TYPE A) USB 3.0 PCI-E CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS

Operating System

Windows 10 Professional for Workstation 64 Bit - inc. Licence (>4 Core)

 

[SpyderTracks]

the Xeon's have no place anymore with the release of Zen 2 from AMD, just destroys anything Intel offers at less price.

What's your max budget?

What applications do you use?

 

[SpyderTracks]

As an example for a brand new threadripper 24 core 48 thread, will literally offer about 2.5x the performance of the Xeon for very little extra cost, but with many benefits like much faster RAM, much better cooler:

Case
COOLERMASTER MASTERCASE H500M GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X 24 Core CPU (3.8GHz - 4.5GHz, 142MB CACHE)
Motherboard
Gigabyte TRX40 AORUS PRO WIFI: ATX, USB 3.2 - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
PNY QUADRO RTX 4000 8GB GDDR6, 2304 CUDA CORES - 3 x DP, 1 x DVI-D
1st Storage Drive
2TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H150i PRO Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Price: £4,149.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-trx40-pc/6E9VgyvqBN/

 

[SpyderTracks]

For some benchmarks on the performance:

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X and 3970X Review: 24 and 32 Cores on 7nm

www.anandtech.com

AMD Threadripper 3970X And 3960X Review: An Exercise In How To Dominate The Desktop PC Processor Market

I've rebuilt my test systems so they use cutting-edge components and also fully up to date versions of Windows 10 with the May 1903 update along with all the various security patches - both from motherboard manufacturers and Microsoft as these are known to have impacted on performance making any ...

www.forbes.com

 

[Seeker2]

Many thanks Moderator-Sir,

Will look into your interesting point on the rather significant AMD threadripper performance advantage. I'm a professional photographer who also shoots an increasing amount of video. Most of my processing done with various components of Adobe's Creative software suite, though I've also just taken up using Capture 1 as it's easier to get the results I want.

I understand that most of the photo applications have barely moved towards utilising multiple CPU cores properly, and that the size of available RAM can make quite a difference, particularly with rendering. My move to using ECC RAM was to reduce the chance of error artifacts occurring during processing with only a small diminuation in speed. Similarly the move to MS's Workstation was to move to a much more inherently stable file handling structure.

Cheers,

 

[Seeker2]

I've tried to find out more about AMD's new Ryzen 3960X CPU with very limited success. I guess a lot is still in the air, particularly on deployment wth a motherboard that supports the new chip's capability of using ECC RAM. A requirement for the CPU component of the system.

Unfortunately with the forthcoming demise of Windows 7 support I feel I need to replace my 2014 system fairly soon. This is my slightly revised specification, JUST comes in under £4,000:

Case
COOLERMASTER MASTERCASE SL600M GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Xeon® W-2265 12-Core (3.5GHz, 4.6GHz Turbo, 19.25M Cache)
Motherboard
ASUS® WS C422 PRO/SE (DDR4 RDIMM, 6Gb/s, CrossFireX/SLI)
Memory (RAM)
64GB Kingston DDR4 2666MHz ECC Registered (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
11GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
2TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H150i PRO Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
2 x 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORTS (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
2 PORT (2 x TYPE A) USB 3.0 PCI-E CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Professional for Workstation 64 Bit - inc. Licence (>4 Core)

I've decided that whilst it's a slight gamble on not going for a card that's licensed/validated for the media processing applications the 11Gb RTX 2080 TI is likely to be significantly faster for video rendering and Adobe's Premiere Pro than ether of the 8Gb AMD or NVidea Pro cards of similar budget.

Noticed on another thread the virtues of the latest CPU water coolers, so the bulky Noctuo cooling has been replaced by the sophisticated Corsair H150i water cooling system.

Comments appreciated, will be so much faster than what I'm used to...

 

[SpyderTracks]

Many thanks Moderator-Sir,

Will look into your interesting point on the rather significant AMD threadripper performance advantage. I'm a professional photographer who also shoots an increasing amount of video. Most of my processing done with various components of Adobe's Creative software suite, though I've also just taken up using Capture 1 as it's easier to get the results I want.

I understand that most of the photo applications have barely moved towards utilising multiple CPU cores properly, and that the size of available RAM can make quite a difference, particularly with rendering. My move to using ECC RAM was to reduce the chance of error artifacts occurring during processing with only a small diminuation in speed. Similarly the move to MS's Workstation was to move to a much more inherently stable file handling structure.

Cheers,

Rather than rush to update the hardware, you can just update to windows 10 legally for free.

 

[Seeker2]

True, that is a fallback, I suspect my hardware could support the change, albeit with a slightly clunky performance. Had waited for the next generation graphic cards and the Intel Q2-18 Xeon CPUs to be updated, could wait a little longer for an ECC compatable Ryzen-Threadripper chipset. The higher frequency RAM that the latest CPUs support might be standard by then too. £-$ rate post election another factor to consider, but eh, will sit on my hands a little longer and be optimistic.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I do think buying Xeon now just for ECC RAM is going to be a tragic long term investment. Both price and performance factors make AMD a much much better buy.