Recommended BMD setup for color grading

[Koopa Luath]

On BronzeTitan's recommendation, I decided to give my planned PC hunt its own thread, since it involves a certain something called Black Magic Design, or BMD for short.

Right now, I'm looking for the following specs in my next PC:

• An Intel i7 Kaby Lake processor (if I'm to future-proof for 4K Ultra HD, of course)
  
• An NVIDIA 1070 or 1080 processor
  
• At least 16 GB RAM
  
• At least 1 or 2 TB hard drive space
  

In addition, I'm going to need a second monitor and BMD output. Any recommendations for what the second monitor should be? And for the BMD output, as far as externals are concerned should I go with UltraStudio?

My goal here, in case someone hasn't figured it out, is to get myself a machine capable of top-notch color grading in Resolve for the projects I plan to release under the (tentative) Gold Standard Collection label, the first of which will be restorations of Sergio Leone's films. All GSC films I intend to release in at least 1080p HD, with maybe a DVD copy in the ISO format right along with each of them.

[spoRv]

Hope you could get it ASAP - a powerful PC changes everything!

Hint: a small SSD for the OS could help a lot (128GB will do).

[Koopa Luath]

Regarding the specific i7 Kaby Lake processor, would you recommend anything short of a 7700?

[spoRv]

If you want to buy a new CPU, just wait for the newer i7 family - they should be available soon.

At the contrary, if you want to buy an used CPU (and PC as well), a 4790K would be great, only if you can find it at a relatively lower price than the 7700K.

[Koopa Luath]

The i7-7700K is already available with the Alienware Aurora, for instance. And I won't need an internal optical drive, seeing I already got an external Blu-ray burner for my Sony after its internal Blu-ray drive (not a burner, by the way) died.

If I get the Aurora, I'm also planning to get it with Windows 10 Home, 460W liquid cooling, a single 1070 GPU, 16 GB RAM (upgradable to 32 GB) at 2667 MHz, 2 TB (for storage)... but what monitor(s) would you recommend? Dell, or third-party?

[spoRv]

Can't say which monitor you should get... there are so many, and every month a new one would come out... so, follow the reviews in most important websites, and then you would make yourself an idea.

About CRT: as much I like it, I don't know if a non-professional, old monitor would stand up in comparison to brand new LCDs... but, before going to buy one of the latter, study the TFT, IPS, VA and derived technologies to understand which one is the right for your use.

[Koopa Luath]

I think IPS would be most suited to my tastes... but now I've got to ensure that the size and budget are what I want for it.

[spoRv]

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/pan...logies.htm

Have fun!

[Koopa Luath]

I'm still going to look mainly at the IPS stuff (that's what's best for color-critical jobs such as color grading, after all), see what's good for gaming. Oh, since BMD's equipment is going to factor into this, should I also consider the video ports on the monitor?

[BronzeTitan]

I grabbed a few notes I've collected (info from poita). I haven't made purchases yet (must step on some banks and hope that paper money sticks to bronze), so whatever poita adds supersedes my notes:

"It’s great to see so many people interested in colour grading."

The recommendations were for cheap calibrating solutions (check eBay) -- the Colormunki Smile @ $60-ish, or the better option of the Colormunki Display @ $100-150 (details at http://www.colormunki.com/),  or the i! Display (details at http://www.xrite.com/categories/calibrat...-solutions) -- apparently all from the same company. The down side is that these eBay-2nd-hand probes drift over time. I guess usage wears on them.

And use the freeware DisplayCAL https://displaycal.net/ instead of the packaged software.

"The easiest thing to me is to buy a cheap BMD output card, a cheap i1 probe, and use the free DisplayCAL software, and use the free version of daVinci Resolve to look at colour on a separate monitor/TV and be able to know 100% that what you are looking at is actually calibrated ..."