£600 PC - Please advise of parts for fast video encoding and quiet PC

[holygamer]

Just to be clear I don't have any parts at the moment apart from a Bluray drive and fanless graphics card (that's all I need) and I'm looking to buy all the parts mentioned here.

I'm encoding videos (doing restoration) and the scripts I use are pretty slow and need a fast CPU otherwise they take over 24 hours to encode a single video. I tried the FX 8120 but could only overclock it to 3.8 Ghz on a £30 Gigabyte motherboard (I think the motherboard limited the overclocking speed). That was OK but I need something a little faster such as a CPU I could overclock to 4.8 Ghz or more with a decent motherboard. I am also aiming for a low power consumption and low noise PC.

Please suggest parts from Scan.co.uk or elsewhere. I will be using Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit. If you have any comments or you think I'm using the wrong parts then please tell me.

Cat-The-Fifth - Your suggestions have given me a starting point so thank you. I've decided on the following parts which should come to less than £600 which is my budget.

Case

I would like the
Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced USB 3.0 ATX Case. I couldn't find this on scan. For the case you suggested I couldn't find any reviews saying anything about it being quiet so I decided on the HAF 932 case as I saw lots of reviews on Amazon.com (not the uk site) saying it's quiet. £96

Motherboard

You suggested the Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H Intel Z77 Socket 1155 Ivybridge Ready Motherboard with USB3 which costs £80. Would this let me overclock the Core i7 2700K? and will it be enough to overclock it to to 4.8 Ghz?

I will also have 4 Bluray writer drives. I will be burning 4 discs at the same time with all discs reading off a single USB 3.0 Hard Drive (not 4). I could only burn 1 disc at full speed with a USB 2.0 drive so presumably I could still burn at full 4x speed on 4 drives reading off a USB 3.0 Hard Drive? However it seems the Intel board only has 2 SATA III 6GB/s connections. It also has 4 SATA II 3GB/s connectors. Would SATA 2 be enough speed or would I need a board with 5 SATA III connectors (including for my SSD drive)?

CPU

I saw this test.

I no longer want the FX 8150 with water cooler for £196 as I've read that it uses a lot of power and is noisy. I'm looking for a CPU that uses less power and which is just as fast or faster than the FX 8150 (the FX 8150 can be overclocked to 4.8 Ghz and has 8 cores)..

From what I've seen the Intel CPU Core i7 2700K Quad Core Processor Retail seems to be the best option. It costs £227. Does it have a much lower power consumption than the FX 8150?

RAM

You suggested the 2 x 8GB Corsair Memory Vengeance Jet Black Low Profile 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 XMP Dual Channel Desktop. It's only rated 2 stars and the speed is only 1600 Mhz. I would prefer to get this because it is rated 3 stars and is 2000 Mhz so it should give better performance:

Corsair Memory XMS3 8GB DDR3 2000 Mhz Dual Channel Desktop. £45

Hard Drive

120GB Sandisk Extreme, 2.5" SSD, SATA III - 6Gb/s, Read 550MB/s, Write 510MB/s, 83000 IOPS Max. I don't need a bigger hard drive than that as I store all my videos on external hard drives. £60

Power Supply

You suggested the XFX Pro Series Core Edition P1-550S-UKB9 550W Power Supply (£48). It's modular and has 9 SATA power cables however it's only 2 stars and I don't see anything about it being quiet. £48. Is there a quiet energy efficient supply for around £70 or less you could suggest that has 3 stars?

Total £556

[dfour]

The scan rating only shows what class of product the item is. Ie

1 star is low range (like your old motherboard )
2 stars is mid range
3 stars is high range

Its not a review of the item and if its any good or not.

If you want a quiet case
Cooler Master Silencio RC-550 SILENT Mid Tower Performance Case with Sound Proof Panels £62:87

Or even better because it can mount a side fan to cool your passive card
R3 Black Case with USB 3.0 from Fractal Design New Version £74:87

You didnt mention a cooler as the stock one wont help you in your overclocking quest.
Gelid Tranquillo NEW v2 Quiet CPU Cooler with PWM Fan £24:59

The ram that Cat suggested is the better deal as there is it runs at 1600mhz which is the sweet spot for ram ATM. Anything faster makes very little difference for the money, google ram speed on intel chips and you will see. This ram is actually in stock though

Amazon reviews of the xfx 550 psu suggest its quiet
http://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-P1-550S-.../dp/B004RJ8EKI

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The FX8350 is being released in October,and this will have an IPC increase over the FX8150 and higher default clockspeeds. The second or third week of October is when it will be released it seems and the price will be under £200 - I suspect it will be around £190 looking at prices leaked in the US. It probably will be around Core i7 2600K or Core i7 2700K performance.

Next week,AMD will release Trinity which uses similar cores to that found in the FX8350. It does lack L3 cache will only be a 4 thread CPU. However,hopefully we should be able to get an idea of some of the improvements to the cores.

What encoding software are you using??

Overclocking any of the current CPUs past 4.5GHZ probably means you need to have a good chip, as overclocking is not guaranteed.

A few things:
1.)Looking at some forums like OcUK,supposedly the latest batches of SB CPUs seem to be not as consistently good overclockers.
2.)The latest IB CPUs tend to overclock worse than their SB predecessors due to the fact they run very hot when pushing an overclock,and hence need very good cooling. However,the IPC increase in IB negates this issue.
3.)IB consumes less power than SB but the heat issue at very high overclocks,means cooling is potentially noisier at high overclocks.
4.)The AMD CPUs do overclock very well,as long as the temperature is kept down but consume more power than their Intel equivalents.

More encoders are using the GPU to assist encoding. In many cases it leas to a quality drop. However,HandBrake is going to add OpenCL support in the next few months and this seems to not degrade encode quality unlike other encoders:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5835/t...ds-trinity-apu

http://techreport.com/review/23324/a...ng-on-the-pc/5

[holy god of nil]

Are these programs the kind of things that hog ram as well? Might be worth going over 8gb if so

I'm confused as to what you are saying/asking re: the bluray writers?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Are these programs the kind of things that hog ram as well? Might be worth going over 8gb if so

What software are you using??

I'm confused as to what you are saying/asking re: the bluray writers?

I lost you there!

[holygamer]

Dfour - none of the cases you suggested have four 5.25" drive bays for my Bluray writers. Is there something wrong with the case I suggested as it seemed to have lots of good reviews on Amazon.com saying it's quiet?



Ram

£26: Corsair Memory XMS3 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 Dual Channel Desktop

£30: Corsair Memory XMS3 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 Dual Channel Desktop

Cat - This was the RAM you suggested: £32: Corsair Memory Vengeance Jet Black Low Profile 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 XMP Dual Channel Desktop. What the difference between this Ram and the above Ram? I think I'll get the cheapest one unless there's a reason not to?

Power Supply

I thought you said the power supply you suggested was modular? I see reviews on Amazon saying it's not? I need a modular and quiet power supply.

Guys, with regards to the Bluray writers, I asked on the ImgBurn forums and they said that SATA II would work so forget my question about that.

CPU

Cat - I think I'm just going to go with the Intel CPU Core i7 2700K Quad Core. Just wondering what "IPC" means?. You said the FX 8350 may be around Core i7 2700K performance so I might as well just get the Core i7 now!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Cat - I'm using Avisynth (to do restoration) with Simple x264 Launcher which encodes to h264. The scripts I use ran at 11 FPS on an FX 8120 8 core CPU (all the cores were used) which I no longer have. I overclocked to 3.8 Ghz. I never even used all of a 4GB stick of RAM so 8 GB will be fine.

Cat - I think I'm just going to go with the Intel CPU Core i7 2700K Quad Core. Just wondering what "IPC" means?. You said the FX 8350 may be around Core i7 2700K performance so I might as well just get the Core i7 now!

The GPU is not used when encoding in Avisynth so I don't need to use the GPU.

IPC means Instructions Per Clock.

OTH,the FX8350 is likely to be cheaper and decent AMD motherboards tend to be a bit cheaper overall than the Intel equivalent. Moreover,it seems the next generation SR CPUs will also work with the current socket. The fastest socket 1155 CPU is the Core i7 3770K,and socket 1155 is being superceded by socket 1150 next year. It appears that socket AM3+ will also work with Steamroller too,which will have big changes.

I managed to find one review which uses Avisynth:

ht4u.net/reviews/2012/intel_ivy_bridge_core_i7_3770k/index38.php

This is why I wanted to know what software you were using.

The FX8150 does very well against the Core i7 2600K and is not far behind a Core i7 3770K. Most of your encode is going to be in the 2nd pass.The FX8350 has a 10% clockspeed bump and IPC improvements,so it probably will surpass even a Core i7 3770K in Avisynth.

The FX8150 is a £141 CPU,the Core i7 2700K is £227 and the Core i7 3770K is £257. The FX8350 should be under £200 too going by US pricing.

[holygamer]

I can't read that language so I've no idea what that test is saying!

I only do 1 pass when encoding. What does SR stand for when you were referring to the next generation of CPUs?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I can't read that language so I've no idea what that test is saying!

I only do 1 pass when encoding. What does SR stand for when you were referring to the next generation of CPUs?

Here is the translated article:

http://translate.google.com/translat...%2Findex38.php

SR stands for Steamroller:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6201/a...r-architecture

[holygamer]

Could you let me know if the power supply you suggested is modular or not and is it quiet?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Could you let me know if the power supply you suggested is modular or not and is it quiet?

The PSU is not modular. The PSU is meant to be reasonably quiet,although noise is subjective.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Regarding the CM690,the noise profile is not too bad:

http://www.v o r t e z.net/articles_..._review,8.html (remove the spaces)

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cas...-case-review/4

You can also get this foam silencing kit for the case too:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CA-047-OK

Remember,you were using a fairly cheap case before,so more expensive cases will probably fair better. Moreover,since you are only using a passively cooled graphics card,you can probably turn the cooling fans down.

[holygamer]

OK thanks. Am I imagining that you said the PSU you suggested was modular? I thought you told me that or it might of been someone else!

[holygamer]

Dfour - The Gelid Tranquillo NEW v2 Quiet CPU Cooler with PWM Fan £24:59 you suggested seems to be difficult to install (and the instructions are poor) from what I've read on Amazon reviews. Are there any guides anywhere which shows how to install it?

I'm looking to get the Core i7 2700K to at least 4.8 Ghz and I will be overclocking it as far as it will go. Will the cooler you suggested stay quiet under full load?

Do you think I would be better off getting a water cooler?

[holygamer]

Guys could any of you help me to find a motherboard with working USB 3.0 ports? as the motherboard suggested in this thread didn't work.