Advice needed for a new PC

[spoRv]

As problaby you all know, I need a new PC, and I think it's time to buy one, because, if I will not decide, I will never buy one!
Frankly, the "revenant" actual PC works quite well, but I can't stand to spend another week just to encode lossless a "simple" project like Waterworld - I can't think how much will take to encode other, more heavy, projects...

I would choose between two interesting models, and I need an advice - even know if prices are good, as I think:

Workstation - 420€ (maybe shipping included) (reached this price from 550€)
CPU: Intel Xeon E52620 6 Core 12 Thread 2.0 GHz, 2.5 Ghz Turbo, TDP 95 W
Mother board: Gigabyte X79 UD3, Quad channel
Memory: 4x8 (32) GB DD3 1333 GHZ
Video card: AMD Radeon HD 6850 2 GB GDDR5
HDDs: 2 HDD Seagate 1 TB 7200 rpm +1 SSD Samsug 850 EVO 256 GB +1 SSD 110 GB
OS: Windows 10 pro 64bit

Mini Desktop - 360€ + shipping (maybe 20€)
CPU: Intel Core i7 3770 (should be 3.4GHz)
Motherboard: Intel Mini DH61BL
Memory: 8GB (2 x 4GB ddr3)
Video card: none - Intel 4000
HDDs: SSD 120GB
OS: Windows 7 pro 64bit

Workstation PROs:
Great CPU, great motherboard, plenty of RAM, very good video card, a LOT of HDDs (even if small)

Desktop PROs:
Higher CPU clock than the workstation, price is a bit lower, has 6 months warranty

I searched a lot on the net about the two CPUs, and even if the i7 has an higher clock, the Xeon should have quad channel memory Vs dual, more cache, higher bus speed); plus, the workstation has more memory, has more HDDs, has a good video card, has a better (I think) motherboard... this lead me to think to buy the workstation, that has a very good price, and, eventually, in the future, upgrade the CPU,

Last thing: of course, they should work perfectly with VirtualDub and AviSynth, and MUST be a lot faster (I'd like to be 5x fast) than my actual Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86GHz, both with AviSynth, and also with x264. Other speed improvements are not that important, apart 4K fluid play, even if with those video card, no more than a "mere" 1920x1080 resolution is possible, that is good for now with my plasma HDTV set, and for the near future, where I would like to find a bigger, used, HDTV plasma set, waiting for a great UHDTV technology at good price...

Sadly, according to this page https://openbenchmarking.org/showdown/pts/ffmpeg-2.5.0 it seems that the speed increase will not be so high, as one could think following benchmarks score... indeed, the Xeon (with benchmark almost 8x the Core 2 Duo E6300) is "only" 3x faster, while the i7 3770 (benchmark almost 10x) is "only" 4.5x faster... still, faster than Xeon!

HELP!!!

[Chewtobacca]

Advice needed for a new PC

I would advise your new PC to be patient (after all, it'll be serving Andrea), to take things one filter at a time, and to offline whenever it can (because it'll be worked pretty hard and will need to avoid a burnout).

[Feallan]

Yeah and tell him that he needs to be careful when his CPU is under 100% load, if it becomes too hot he should shut it down!

[spoRv]

Hints? Tips? Help?

Well, workstation's seller will not wait for a long time, so... I think price is good for its features, and could be sold for the same price in the next future, if I would/could upgrade to a more powerful PC.

So, at the end... your opinions?

[Chewtobacca]

For editing, get at least 16GB of RAM and two 1TB HDDs: they fill up fast. Buy an NVIDIA card so you can use DGIndexNV.

[Feallan]

The workstation's video card is weak (it's from 2010) and the entire setup is about 4 years old - nothing really wrong with that, but considering how fast Intel is spitting out new chipsets, the only way you would be able to upgrade this PC in the future would be to change the video card.

[spoRv]

I'm aware that the video card is not that great, but better than the embedded Intel 4000, I think... also, it is not that important in a restoration rig - think I started with an old Nvidia 256MB GT 7600, one GB ram, one 250GB HD, and it worked quite well - slowly, but worked.

Now, I can't shell out thousand €€€ to buy a brand new PC just for restoration purposes - indeed, I could do everything I need with this old very computer of mine, that is 10 years old! So, a "fresh" 4 years old is a quite good compromise to me, I want just to be sure it will be powerful enough to be at least 3x/4x faster than my actual PC... I mean, I can spend only 30€ to upgrade my Core 2 Duo E6300 (passmark around 1000) to a used Core 2 Quad Q6600 (passmark around 2500) to obtain (on paper) 2.5x speed... but I'm quite sure it's not the case. If the desktop will mantain the promise given by the passmark (almost 8000), it *should* be 8x faster... and, if I can encode a project in "just" 18 hours instead of six days (OK, this is a worst-case scenario... but it's not unusual for me to wait two or three days for an encoding...), I think it will be a REALLY good compromise!


If not, it's still be possible to gain something with a new video card, and a better CPU - http://www.gigabyte.com/support-download...x?pid=4050 - albeit used... I mean, with an Intel Core i7-4960x with about 13500 passmark score, it could be more future-proof than my decade-old PC - even if I would like to use it for a very long time, I love it!


At the end, do you think 420€ is a good price/quality for this old workstation?

[DoomBot]

When you add it all up that's not a bad price for the workstation.

[spoRv]

When you add it all up that's not a bad price for the workstation.

Indeed, I've seen PCs with same CPU, at a double price, with only 8GB and one HDD...
Right now I'm encoding Waterworld (second pass x264) and it will take 48hrs... if, with the workstation, it could take 6hrs, I simply could encode 8x projects than now!

And yes, an Nvidia CUDA could speed up the process more... or not?

(How much I miss the z80 times! )

[DoomBot]

You really do need a faster pc and NOW, 48hours is super insane!