Looking for advice regarding my new video editing rig

[mouks]

I just bought a new PC that I will mostly use for video editing. I initially wanted to build it myself but I came across a great deal for $1400 with the following specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7700X
Mainboard: Asrock X670E PG Lightning
GPU: RTX 4080 KFA2
RAM: Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 2x16 GB
Storage: WD Black SN850 1TB
Seagate FireCuda 530 4TB
WD Gold 6TB
CPU cooler: Coolermaster PL360 Flux
PSU: Thermaltake ToughPower GF3 ATX Gold 1200W
Case: Corsair ICUE 5000X

There are a few things that bother me for my use (aside from the Christmas tree lighting that I will turn off or set to a solid dim white if possible) I already bought 2x32GB of RAM to replace the 16GB sticks but there are a few more shortcomings that come down to the mainboard. First, there is no S/PDIF output and no WI-FI module. I also want to add a 3rd SSD for cache files but it would be limited to 4x2 gen4 speed ( not ideal but not a big deal ). And most importantly, the gen4x4 PCIe slot is blocked by the GPU and that's where I want to put my Decklink monitor output.

I could get an eternal USB to S/PDIF card and a M.2 WI-FI adapter but for the PCI issue, I didn't find any simple and cheap fix. I see that there are vertical brackets with riser cables but then I would have to buy two cables and add the Decklink to the side vertical port of the case. I'm not sure if it would fit and that means that I would have to spend at least $150 in parts. I also looked into liquid coolers for the GPU but there is no off-the-shelf solution for my KFA2 card, although I saw that some people are successfully using the Alphacool for reference 4080 cards but it's not officially supported. There is a KFA2/Galax specific backplate but I don't want to get into custom cooling stuff.

So I'm thinking of selling the motherboard or even the CPU+Mobo+RAM combo and get the 7900x as it's only $320 and it may even be cheaper once the new 9900x is available. Then I can get a board with a better layout and better connectivity. Having USB4/Thunderbolt would also be great.

I looked at all the AM5 models and it turns out that there is only one that would tick all the boxes... And it's the Asus Rog Crosshair X670E Hero. I searched for users feedback about this board and I came across so many horror stories that I can't consider buying it, especially for a workstation.

I saw the pictures and specs of the upcoming Asrock X870E Taichi Lite and it would be perfect as the PCI slots are further apart than on the X670E Taichi which would be great otherwise (except for the price). And there may also be good X870 offerings from other brands.

So to summarize, here are my 3 options as I understand it:

1: Forget about USB4 and get some WI-FI M.2 and USB S/PDIF adapters + 2 PCIe riser cables and a vertical bracket or the Alphacool AIO and hope it will work
2: Buy the X670E Taichi + 2 PCIe riser cables and a vertical bracket or the Alphacool ( definitely the most expensive solution )
3: Wait 2 months for the X870 boards

What would you do? Did I miss something that I should consider?
Thanks in advance for your insights!

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I think this is a case of you should have thought deep and hard about it before you parted with your money the first time. Now you've created a problem that you have to unravel and I personally think the best option is to sell off the board, CPU and memory as a combo and replace them with what meets your requirements.

Mistakes were made.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

If you can get even 250-350 usd out of selling the CPU/MOBO/Ram it was still a win....

1400 is pretty damn good for that PC.....

 

[thesmokingman]

I would keep that system and move to a 16 core cpu later. I would not swap the gpu, Nvidia is the most supported brand in editing in general.

 

[ir_cow]

You will want 32GB at least. It's easy to eat memory for video editing. Also nice to have multiple programs opened at once.

Like if you in Adobe for example, having After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop open at once saved me so much time. Especially since it has live saves which update instantly.

I understand you are on a budget, but at least consider 32GB if not 48 or 64.

 

[SL2]

Are the two lowest slots used? Can't you just put the Deckllink in an X16, if unoccupied?

I guess you've used this filter? Works great for finding models. Didn't get all you needed tho lol.

Mainboards AMD Sockel AM5 mit Formfaktor: ATX, Sonstige Header intern: S/PDIF-Header, WiFi-Modul: unbekannt Preisvergleich Geizhals EU

Preisvergleich und Bewertungen für Mainboards AMD Sockel AM5 mit Formfaktor: ATX, Sonstige Header intern: S/PDIF-Header, WiFi-Modul: unbekannt

geizhals.eu

Maybe just wait for 800. I can't see a reason not to, it's too close now.

 

[mouks]

I think this is a case of you should have thought deep and hard about it before you parted with your money the first time. Now you've created a problem that you have to unravel and I personally think the best option is to sell off the board, CPU and memory as a combo and replace them with what meets your requirements.

Mistakes were made.

I agree, mistakes were made... by Motherboard and GPU manufacturers which are often both, as they sell mainboards based on the current "extreme" chipset that are not capable of accommodating their contemporary GPUs without blocking the only other usable PCIe slot, unless it's watercooled or a special slim version like the Asus ProArt which doesn't have the same cooling performance. I was aware of the shortcomings before buying the PC, but as I said in my first post, I looked into all the AM5 motherboards on the market and only found one that would meet all my expectations at the expense of having big reliability issues. Most of the other boards don't have enough spacing between the slots, and the ones that do are lacking USB4 ports or need a $100 add-on PCIe card which would fill the second slot.

So the odds of finding a good deal on a complete PC that would not need any change for my setup were virtually non existant. I spent a few weeks monitoring the local used market and no offer came close to this one. The seller listed it on an auction website in such a way that without reading carefully, it was easy to assume that he was only selling the GPU. It seems like not reading carefully is a very popular trend nowadays and I ended up being the only bidder. And everything is still under warranty. Looking at the best deals on brand new parts, I wouldn't even get the GPU and the drives for that price, I would have to downgrade the Firecuda 4TB to something cheaper. So how can it be a mistake to basically get this CPU, mainboard, RAM, PSU, AIO and case for free?

If you can get even 250-350 usd out of selling the CPU/MOBO/Ram it was still a win....

1400 is pretty damn good for that PC.....


View attachment 357912

Indeed and you forgot the 4TB SSD and the 6TB HDD on your list, so it would be over $2500. Even if I keep the board as spare, that is still a win. Actually it would find a good home in my web browsing/content watching/occasional CS2 PC which is connected to my TV. It's an old Dell T3500 with Xeon w3690 which wants me to occasionally clean the CPU/socket interface to see all of its RAM again. That would be an overkill upgrade though.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Indeed and you forgot the 4TB SSD and the 6TB HDD on your list, so it would be over $2500. Even if I keep the board as spare, that is still a win. Actually it would find a good home in my web browsing/content watching/occasional CS2 PC which is connected to my TV. It's an old Dell T3500 with Xeon w3690 which wants me to occasionally clean the CPU/socket interface to see all of its RAM again. That would be an overkill upgrade though.

For sure, at that price it was really a no brainer.... I'm honestly am shocked it wasn't a scam lol....

I would have purchased it in an instant as well even though I don't need it....

 

[mouks]

I would keep that system and move to a 16 core cpu later. I would not swap the gpu, Nvidia is the most supported brand in editing in general.

Yes I never considered selling the GPU, maybe someday to upgrade to a 4090 as Davinci Resolve is VRAM hungry, but it's way too expensive at the moment. The 4080 / 4070Ti Super are definitely the best value now.

You will want 32GB at least. It's easy to eat memory for video editing. Also nice to have multiple programs opened at once.

Like if you in Adobe for example, having After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop open at once saved me so much time. Especially since it has live saves which update instantly.

I understand you are on a budget, but at least consider 32GB if not 48 or 64.

The PC came with 2x16GB but as I said in my first post, I already bought 2x32GB to replace them, I found a kit of Trident-Z DDR5-6000 for $125 from someone who bought the EXPO version while he needed the XMP one.

I'm not using Adobe anymore as I'm not interested in renting Software. Resolve can easily replace Première and AE for what I do and Sony Capture One is a good substitute to Lightroom but I still need to find a good alternative to Photoshop and Illustrator

Are the two lowest slots used? Can't you just put the Deckllink in an X16, if unoccupied?

I guess you've used this filter? Works great for finding models. Didn't get all you needed tho lol.

Mainboards AMD Sockel AM5 mit Formfaktor: ATX, Sonstige Header intern: S/PDIF-Header, WiFi-Modul: unbekannt Preisvergleich Geizhals EU

Preisvergleich und Bewertungen für Mainboards AMD Sockel AM5 mit Formfaktor: ATX, Sonstige Header intern: S/PDIF-Header, WiFi-Modul: unbekannt

geizhals.eu

Maybe just wait for 800. I can't see a reason not to, it's too close now.

Yes unfortunately the slot at the bottom is only a gen4x1 masquerading as a x16 and I need gen4x4 for the Decklink. The other slot would work but it's blocked by the GPU, I don't understand why the layout is not inverted on these two slots, it makes no sense.

I think you're right, the wise move is to wait for the x870 boards.

 

[thesmokingman]

If the speeds are similar on the ram use both sets together. Used them in matched pairs etc.. Btw could a pcie ribbon extender work?

 

[ir_cow]

I'm not using Adobe anymore as I'm not interested in renting Software. Resolve can easily replace Première and AE for what I do and Sony Capture One is a good substitute to Lightroom but I still need to find a good alternative to Photoshop and Illustrator

If good alternatives existed, people would have switched loooong ago. Capture One is a decent alternative to LR, but it comes with it's own quarks.

 

[mouks]

While searching for some info about the upcoming Gigabyte X870 boards, I realized that something flew under my radar... The newly released B650E Aorus Pro X USB4 which could also be sold as an X870. There is only one store currently selling it in my country but it's half the price of the Asus ROG Hero and It has everything I want. I'm going to sell my Asrock board and get this one with a 7900x or maybe 7950x

 

[dgianstefani]

Honestly, from the leaked benchmarks, Arrow Lake looks more interesting than Zen 5.

 

[mouks]

Honestly, from the leaked benchmarks, Arrow Lake looks more interesting than Zen 5.

I agree that Zen5 is not interesting at the moment, I'm looking at the Zen4 which have better value, the 7950x is cheaper than the 9900x. Maybe Arrow Lake will be great but we won't know for sure until they are released and I prefer to get something that works now

 

[Sarajiel]

While searching for some info about the upcoming Gigabyte X870 boards, I realized that something flew under my radar... The newly released B650E Aorus Pro X USB4 which could also be sold as an X870. There is only one store currently selling it in my country but it's half the price of the Asus ROG Hero and It has everything I want. I'm going to sell my Asrock board and get this one with a 7900x or maybe 7950x

Keep in mind that the B650E Aorus Pro X USB4 bifurcates the x16 slot into 8+4+4 for two of the M.2s, and uses the 4 general-purpose PCIe lanes from the CPU for the USB4 controller. If you want to wait for X870(E), keep your eyes open for the Aorus X870E Master, which is supposedly an upgraded X670E Aorus Xtreme with USB4 via the chipset, which would give you 4x M.2s connected to the CPU altogether.

Depending on the price difference, you will most likely be better off with a R9 7950X3D when working inside DaVinci Resolve, from my personal experience. The R9 7950X is usually better for dedicated render nodes, though. In any case, don't disable your iGPU, since DaVinci Resolve Studio utilizes Smart Access Video.

If you haven't tried it out, you can use the Galax/KFA2 overclocking utility to disable/set your GPU's RGB permanently without the need to use the ARGB of your motherboard.

 

[Harlow]

I looked at all the AM5 models and it turns out that there is only one that would tick all the boxes... And it's the Asus Rog Crosshair X670E Hero. I searched for users feedback about this board and I came across so many horror stories that I can't consider buying it, especially for a workstation.

Although Asus motherboards have received a lot of bad press, I haven't experienced any problems with either of my Asus video/photo editing rigs.

System 1) was built in 2019 on an Asus X570-F Gaming, with 3800X, 4 x 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3000, RX 580 8GB
System 2) was built in 2023 on an Asus Prime X670-P WiFi, plus 7950X, 2 x 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5-4800, GTX 3060 12GB

I chose the Asus motherboards for their "sensible" separation of PCIe x16 slots, so I could fit a GPU, a 10GbE NIC and an LSI HBA SAS controller in each machine. The NIC and HBA each require at least a PCIe x8 physical slot, but can run (albeit slower) at x4.

Maybe I've been very lucky. Perhaps I survived unscathed because I never invoked PBO on either CPU, or because I regularly updated the BIOS. The 3800X is cooled by an NH-D14 and the 7950X has an NH-D15. I overclock most of my other machines, but for video processing I value stability over outright speed.

All I can say is my 7950X has survived a number of 36-hour long video rendering sessions, with the CPU and GPU running flat out in Topaz Video AI, to upscale 2hr+ videos from 1080p to 4K UHD with full-frame stabilization enabled.

If money is no object, consider a Xeon or Threadripper motherboard. You'll get far more usable PCI x16 and x8 slots, plus quad channel ECC memory support. You might even consider a second hand Xeon/Threadripper workstation or server mobo.

Depending on what video editing software you use, the 7700X could be a bit "light" regarding core count. Puget Systems recommend the 24-core (32-thread) 14900K and the 32-core (64-thread) Threadripper 7970X for Adobe Premiere Pro. I find Topaz Video AI leans heavily on the GPU for OpenGL/CL, which is where your RTX 4080 beats my RTX 3060 hands down.