Last request - Promise

[HappyHaggis]

First of all, I’d like to apologise to the kind folk who gave me their advice last year, circumstances rather overtook me I’m afraid. My mother-in-law was diagnosed with a terminal illness and then I spent 5 weeks in hospital during the latter part of the year - 2018 will not go down as one of our best years!
Anyway, I think I’m about there with a spec for my new PC and not a moment too soon as the old machine is beggaring about.
The PC will be used for 2 main purposes: photo editing and streaming TV shows, movies and music to our TV.
The photo editing will be with Lightroom and Photoshop and involve large files from Nikon D850 and D810, hence the 32Gb RAM. My plan is to put the current images on the 500Gb M.2 SSD and archive to the mechanical drives.
The large amount of storage I have chosen is to handle not only the photo archives and some documents, but also to store all the shows, films and music. I’m optimistic that it will cope for a few years growth.
I am unsure about the graphics card, wondering if it is still a good choice and also wondering whether the fans in the R6 are adequate? I did consider getting an 8Gb HD, but the fact that it is only 5400RPM rather puts me off as it may be a bit on the slow side, on the plus side of course, is that it would free up a connection for further expansion in the future.
I hope that you good folks will be inclined to give me some more of your time and look at the spec for me.
Many thanks.

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE R6 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor i7-9700K (3.6GHz) 12MB Cache
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Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME Z370-P II: ATX, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050 Ti - DVI, HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
5TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 128MB CACHE
2nd Storage Drive
5TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 128MB CACHE
3rd Storage Drive
3TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3400MB/R, 2300MB/W)
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PCS FrostFlow 100 V2 Series High Performance CPU Cooler
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Price £1,756.00 including VAT and Delivery

 

[Stephen M]

Sorry to hear of your family troubles, hope 2019 picks up for you.

I agree about the 5400rpm HDDs, they are fine once loaded with films music etc but take an age to fill up, I have a 5400 2TB on my laptop as I have a vast music collection. It is fine now as i do not add much to it but it was a chore transferring all the stuff initially. If the cost of going to a 5TB from the 3TB you have ordered is not too much I would go for it, I have three 5TBs on my desktop and was wondering within a month whether i should have added another.

Worth noting with storage though, if you have time to do it the H 265.mkvs are excellent HD files and take up little space but do take a while to transcode, whereas using MakeMKV will copy a Blu Ray very quickly but give you a 30+GB film.

 

[HappyHaggis]

Thank you Stephen for your kind wishes.
I’m really stretching our budget as it is, so have to make a concession for storage, my thought is that I can add another HD at a later date, if required, or if push comes to shove, I’ve got a few external drives I can use, some of which are USB3, so not too slow.
It’s interesting what you say about video file sizes, I was wondering if there was any way to reduce the size of my Blu-ray movies and still maintain high quality. I do use MakeMKV, can you suggest something I can use to transcode to H.265?

 

[Oussebon]

Handbrake would be the obvious one I guess.

What exactly is the thinking behind all the HDDs? What are you using each for specifically?

 

[HappyHaggis]

Hi Oussebon, thanks for the suggestion, I’ll take a look at Handbrake.
The 2 5Tb HDD are for TV shows, films and music and the 3Tb is for documents and archived images. Currently, I have around 8Gb of shows etc. and 1Gb of archived images and documents. I suppose that if I can reduce the file sizes for my Blu-Ray movies, I could forego the 3Tb HD.

 

[Oussebon]

The motherboard has only 4 sata ports and you've filled them all. So adding more storage in the future becomes more complicated.

Perhaps you should look at network storage for your media.

And also a mobo with 6 sata ports like the AORUS Pro, which has some other features like USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C that could be worth having in the future.

 

[Stephen M]

I really must get "I agree with Oussebon" put on a hot key to save typing time but I agree . . .

Handbrake is a great bit of software and will give you really good HD copies of your Blu Rays and DVDs. It is also not really that slow but slower than MakeMKV and I am really impatient.

If you have some external USB drives there is not a lot of need for any more internal space as playing films music etc is fine with them.

 

[Stephen M]

In case you have not already been here: https://handbrake.fr/

 

[HappyHaggis]

I’ll have a look at the Aorus Pro, but I think it was quite a bit more expensive than the one I have listed. What about the Asus Tuf Z370 Plus?
Stephen - thanks for the link and I think you are right, I’ll probably do away with the 3Tb HD.

 

[Lez501]

Hi Happy Haggis - I'll speak to you about Photoshop. Do you do extreme editing of your RAW files (Multi Layers (50+), Multi Row HDR Pano's and the like). If not, you could drop the ram down to 16GB and it will be more than enough.

 

[lilmortymoz]

Agree. If you don't need video rendering, montaging or use Photoshop for a lot of layers 16gb will more than enough.

 

[HappyHaggis]

Hi Happy Haggis - I'll speak to you about Photoshop. Do you do extreme editing of your RAW files (Multi Layers (50+), Multi Row HDR Pano's and the like). If not, you could drop the ram down to 16GB and it will be more than enough.

Agree. If you don't need video rendering, montaging or use Photoshop for a lot of layers 16gb will more than enough.

Thanks both for your advice.
I regularly go over 500Mb with my D850 images when focus stacking or blending different exposures and read over at PugetSounds that files of that size really process better with 32Gb. I need to look at all the suggestions I’ve received and try to decide where I should economise.
Thanks again to all of you for your time and suggestions, they’re much appreciated.
Trevor

 

[Oussebon]

The TUF is £23 more than the Z370-P. The Aorus Pro is another £37 but has USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C, better onboard sound, better VRMs, and in short just a much better board.

If you're intending to store all that stuff on the internal storage, I think you should look at fewer, larger drives. 8TB of stuff onto 2 5TB drives will nearly fill them in one stroke. Perhaps drop the HDDs, keep the material where it is now, and gradually look to move it to network storage down the line or somesuch.

Another thing to consider is an AMD R7 2700x build. While the performance is lower, it's still more than adequate and a lot cheaper. And the motherboard will support Zen 2 coming out later this year, which is expected to equal or possibly mince Intel's current offerings (at CES they demoed an 8C/16T Zen 2 engineering sample beating a 9900k in cinebench with much lower power consumption...). The CPUs are rumoured to go upto 16C/32T as well.

 

[HappyHaggis]

The TUF is £23 more than the Z370-P. The Aorus Pro is another £37 but has USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C, better onboard sound, better VRMs, and in short just a much better board.

If you're intending to store all that stuff on the internal storage, I think you should look at fewer, larger drives. 8TB of stuff onto 2 5TB drives will nearly fill them in one stroke. Perhaps drop the HDDs, keep the material where it is now, and gradually look to move it to network storage down the line or somesuch.

Another thing to consider is an AMD R7 2700x build. While the performance is lower, it's still more than adequate and a lot cheaper. And the motherboard will support Zen 2 coming out later this year, which is expected to equal or possibly mince Intel's current offerings (at CES they demoed an 8C/16T Zen 2 engineering sample beating a 9900k in cinebench with much lower power consumption...). The CPUs are rumoured to go upto 16C/32T as well.

Thanks Oussebon, that’s really helpful. I was thinking of dropping the 3Tb HDD and using external USB 3 existing drives for the overflow. I have stored a configuration using the Aorus Pro as I think your advice is, as usual sound. I really need to look into network storage in more depth.
I hadn’t considered an AMD CPU, I need to look at that too.
Thanks again for a lot to think about.

 

[HappyHaggis]

Here’s a spec for an AMD build. Even allowing for the loss of a 5Tb HDD it is still a lot cheaper. This makes me wonder if I’m missing something! Could I ask for thoughts on this configuration please? Bear in mind that I want it to process large (500Mb+) Nikon D850 images in Photoshop.
Many thanks.

FRACTAL DEFINE R6 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
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5TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 128MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3400MB/R, 2300MB/W)
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[Oussebon]

If it helps I did some specs here in Oct of similar Intel / AMD systems:
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...e-lake-refresh&p=424800&viewfull=1#post424800
Just checked now and price difference between R7 2700x and i7 9700k is ~£130

There's a Puget performance comparison here:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...2018-Core-i7-9700K-i9-9900K-Performance-1248/
9700k wins out thanks to single threaded performance I guess. Though the 2700x is still not far off an 8700k or a 7900x 10-core, so you'd still have a better CPU than what the great majority of other PS users have. With a viable upgrade path, unlike (probably) Intel. But you may feel it's worth it for the extra performance out of the box with the 9700k.

Edit: I didn't see you post before posting this, but maybe it goes some way to answering re: price and gives you some info on performance.

For the mobo on the Ryzen system I'd probably suggest the AORUS Ultra Gaming for the type C USB and various features.

 

[HappyHaggis]

Thanks again Oussebon, I’ll take a look at your comparison. I did see the Pugetsystems comparison a while back. Bearing in mind that my old system is 5 yo technology, I am sure that whichever configuration I choose will be a considerable improvement.
Your help is greatly appreciated.

 

[HappyHaggis]

At last!

I thought I’d just let you know my final spec and that I placed my order last Monday. I decided on the Intel CPU as it does have the edge in terms of speed and given the large size of my files (500Mb-1Gb+) it would be better. I’ve also opted for just 1 5Tb HDD as I’m in the process of transcoding my larger media files in Handbrake to reduce their size and intend to make use of my existing external USB 3 drives. I can always add an extra drive or 2 later on.
I’d just like to thank everyone for their help and advice, with a special mention to Oussebon ans Stephen for the time they were prepared to give, it was greatly appreciated.
I’m now in the process of producing a ‘to do’ list of things I need to setup, I hadn’t realised how much was needed. I use Directory Opus as my file manager and the interface is customised and that will need revisiting on the new PC as drive letter designations will change. Add in Adobe products, Wacom tablet, wireless mouse and keyboard, etc. and I’ve got my hands full! I’ve opted for the fast track service as I don’t want to go through the agony of waiting too long, ironic really, given how long it has taken to actually place my order!! [rollinglaugh]
Kind regards.

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE R6 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor i7-9700K (3.6GHz) 12MB Cache
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050 Ti - DVI, HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
5TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 128MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB WD Black™ M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3400MB/s R | 2500MB/s W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 100 V2 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
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