Jay, can you let me know what you discover re: gfx cards? Guy at work is building a video editing machine using Scan and asked the same question re: gfx cards! Thanks.
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Will do. Having done just a quick bit of research, it seems the cards to different things for different programmes and, oddly, Adobe seem to suggest they don't do much for After Effects unless you are using raytraced effects. But for editing in Premiere, they say supported cards give a vague 'GPU acceleration'. The list of supported cards for Premiere is on this page (and quick glances show similar lists for After Effects and Photoshop): https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro...uirements.html
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The main effect in Premiere and AE is improving speed and quality of applied effects and during final rendering. The improvement in rendering speed is tangible, more than twice in certain cases for me (using a FirePro W7100 and Open CL).
GPU acceleration when working really comes to life with multiple effects applied or 3D cameras in AE.
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Okay guys, here is what I'm looking at on the Scan site. Can you have a look and let me know if I'm missing something?
It is a custom 3XS Evolve NLE HD Plus.
CPU: Intel Core i7 6700K, Skylake, Quad Core with Hyperthreading, 4.0GHz, 4.2GHz Turbo [Overclocked - CPU professionally overclocked up to 4.4GHz.]
Motherboard: Asus Z170 Motherboards [Asus Z170-DELUXE Intel Motherboard ] (with wifi)
Memory: 32GB (2x16GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black, 2666MHz, CAS 16-18-18-35, 1.2V
Graphics card: 4GB AMD FirePro W5100, 768 Streams, Supports 4 Displays (4xDP)
Drive 1 (OS): 120GB Intel SSD 535 Series, SATA 6Gb/s, Engineered for durability and reliability. [Single drive.]
Drive 2 (Project or swap): 400GB Intel 750 PCI-E SSD. Ultimate project drive with 2200MB/sec read, 900MB/sec write
Drive 3 (storage): 2TB Western Digital Black, SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache [Single drive.]
No hardware RAID card.
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDR-209EBK Blu-ray Writer Quad Layer 16x
Sound card: Asus STRIX RAID Pro, 7.1 Gaming Sound Card + Control Unit
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Pro 64bit, Supports 16GB RAM and above.
Monitor: 23" Asus VC239H LED IPS, 1920x1080 [23" Asus VC239H LED IPS, 1920x1080] (just basic)
Price: ?2220
What do you reckon?
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120 GB are not that much for the system drive, go for twice that.
Do you really need an optical drive?
The motherboard already has a soundchip, unless you absolutely need special inputs/outputs or need to do some high level sound editing, this seems a waste of money.
Why Win7? Can't comment on Win10, but I'd very much prefer 8 over 7 now that I'm used to 8.
[edit] I now notice that the "project drive" is a PCI-E SSD. Knocking it down to a SATA SSD should reduce the price a lot, and I doubt you'll notice much difference between the two. Going for a M.2 drive for the OS would be more beneficial IMO.Last edited by briareos_kerensky; 18-01-2016, 12:57.
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Thanks! 120GB not enough, really? Man, back in the day... Being honest, yeah, the sound card is probably overkill. I can lose it. As for Windows 7, I know it works for what I do and I didn't get on with Windows 8 at all. I haven't tried 10 yet but my old experience with Vista has made me reluctant to switch unless I have a good reason to. Would I be missing anything with 7?
With the PCI-E vs SATA, what's the difference?
Edit: Oh, the optical drive. I get clients sending me material on blu-ray and DVD quite a bit and, while I don't have to have it integrated into my computer, it is really handy to have while I work.Last edited by Dogg Thang; 18-01-2016, 13:24.
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SATA is actually slower than what SSDs can achieve, PCI-E allows for much faster data rates. The downside is that PCI-E drives need a PCI-E slot, and they cost more. M.2 is an interface for card-sized SSDs using either SATA or PCI-E (though you might be limited to PCI-E only on the motherboard chosen), and is quickly becoming the standard for very fast, not so large SSDs that work best for OS and programs.
Win8 boots in a fraction of Win7, and I like the GUI more; it's also less lighter than Win7's Aero IMO. There're more options for multimonitor setups by default (like the startbar on all screens instead of only the primary), and I've found it faster to update.
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Windows 10 is fine, much better than 8. I see no reason not to go with 10 these days. That said, 7 is also fine!
Regarding the cost, there's more to the cost than the cost of the components. There's value in a system that's been put together for you and the ability to say to Scan "My PC is broken, fix it". If you've built it yourself then you have to diagnose which component is the problem and that isn't always easy. So, you're paying a premium to make any potential problems someone else's problem. How much you're willing to pay depends on your own ability and whether you're more cash rich or time rich.
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Definitely check compatibility. Here's what I like in Windows 10:
Virtual Desktops - Ctrl+Windows and left/right arrow keys switch between multiple virtual desktops. Windows + tab brings up desktop overview and allows you to drag windows form one desktop to another.
Snapping windows to the left or right of the screen. When two are side by side you can drag the middle divider to allocate the space they each have in one go.
Cortana actually works quite well (like Siri on an iPhone)
Boots mega quick
Built in mail client supports Exchange
Probably more that I've forgotten.
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Okay, so looking at it I will bump the OS drive from 120GB to 240GB. For the project drive, I could go for an SATA 512GB SSD drive but it seems the write speed is considerably lower than the PCE-I (520MB/sec vs 900MB/sec) so, if I'm spending all this money anyway, I'm probably better sticking with the PCE-I? The saving to go SATA would be about ?75.
Will have to look into Windows 10 more. Although 7 comes with the option to upgrade.
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@Dogg-Thang - Mate at work is building a machine same as you so I've been sharing these discussions with him. He just noticed that the AMD 5100 card has no HDMI out and is not HDCP compliant apparently. That probably means you couldn't play commercial blu-ray movies on it and he noticed on your spec that you had a Ble-Ray drive so he just flagged it with me. Not sure if that'd be a problem...
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