What's everyone using for a coding box?

[zazon]

I thought it might be interesting to see what everyone is using to code video. I built my machine a few years back with the following parts:

CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 1055t 95w
Motherboard: ECS IC780M-A
Memory: 4GB(4x1GB) DDR2 800 PC6400
Graphics: nVidia 520GT(for the dual DVI connectors)
Hard Drives: 120GB OCZ Agility III SSD/500GB Western Digital 7200RPM Hard Drive
Optical Drives: LiteOn iHES208 BD-ROM/DVDRW, Samsung SH-B123L BD-ROM/DVDRW
Case: Antec NSK 4482B with 380w Eco PSU
LCD: Two Dell 2007FP
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

When I built my box, it was a top performer, which is no longer the case. I got my board in 2009. It started with a dual-core, then a quad-core and finally a hexa-core CPU. I'd say I got my $40 out of it that I paid. A full encode using RipBot takes between two and five hours depending the input file. I thought about upgrading. A i7-3770 sure would be nice, but I only encode a few times a month, so it's not worth $500 to upgrade for me. I'll probably hang onto it for a few more years and then see what's available.

[Remicade]

Phenom II 920 2.8 Ghz 6GB DDR2 800 Mhz Mobo Gigabyte AM2, sometimes a small overclocking to 3000-3200 Mhz maximum (stock cooler :( )
Sapphire Ati4670
SSD Samsung 64 GB+1500 TB Seagate+500 GB Seagate+ 500 GB Western Digital + 500 GB Samsung + 320GB Seagate all SATA (+ PCI SATA Adapter Sil3512) NO RAID
Ripbot, StaxRip, MeGUI in this order

[Asmodian]

CPU: Intel i7 3770K @ 4.5 Ghz
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z77
Memory: 32 GB (4x8GB) DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000)
Graphics: 2x NVIDIA GTX Titan (SLI)
Hard Drives: 2x OCZ Vector 256GB Raid0/512GB Samsung 830 SSD/3TB Seagate 7200RPM Hard Drive
Optical Drives: LG WH14NS40
LCD: LG W3000H + Overlord Tempest X270OC
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

CPU: Intel i7 980 @ 3.3 Ghz
Motherboard: Asus P6T Deluxe V2
Memory: 24 GB (6x4GB) DDR3 1600
Graphics: nVidia GT545 GDDR3
Hard Drives: 128GB OCZ RevoDrive SSD/4TB Seagate 7200RPM Hard Drive/1.5TB Seagate 7200RPM Hard Drive
Optical Drives: LG UH12NS29
LCD: Acer S211HLbd
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

[Blue_MiSfit]

I don't do much encoding at home anymore. At work we have about 100 encoders, most of which are 12 core Nehalem / Sandy Bridge Xeon boxes with 16 to 32 GB of RAM, in a mixture of 1U, 2U, and blade form factors.

We've got about 1.8 petabytes of spinning disk storage, for a variety of clients and workflows.

One of my rack rows:

http://i.imgur.com/Ldd4Y.jpg

[Fantasma]

Recently assembled a machine with the following components:

CPU AMD FX-8350 Black Edition 4.0 Gigahertz 8 cores
Motherboard MSI 760GM-E51 (FX), the cheapest I could find :(
8 Gigabytes of RAM Kington
Two hard disk Western digital SATA II 350 Gigabytes & 1 TB for storage and final product
600 Watts Power Supply (Generic)
DVD Burner LG

Unfortunately, the stock cooler is kind of noisy and cannot keep the temp below 51 Degrees, replaced using a Cooler Master RR-910-HTX3-G1 Hyper TX3. The noise is less, but the temp is still the same.

Still testing and configuring everything for optimal performance, took me 19 minutes to encode an MKV movie to DVD. Before, using an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66 with 4 cores it took approximately one hour 10 minutes.

[zazon]

I love to just pop one of those FX-8350s into my machine, but then I'd need a new board and memory too. My 1055t is as good as it gets until I build a new one. As much as I've been an AMD supporter over the years, using them in every desktop I built, if I were to build a PC today, I'd have to go Intel. If AMD had a 95w version of the 8350, it'd be a harder decision.

[Mounir]

Still with my Pentium 4HT 3Ghz since 2006 with a GT220 i guess it's time to upgrade !

What could i buy for about $180 second hand (cpu + motherboard only) not counting the rest

I'd love to get a 4 cores

[Fantasma]

Hi,

I have bought in the past from this online store http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=CPU, but I didn't buy any refurbished part before.

http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=MBB

[Mounir]

zazon would it be a good idea to invest in a AMD Phenom II x6 1075t + mobo GA880GM UD2H second hand (~ 130€)
I'm coming from far away with my pentium 4 3Ghz

How much logical threads can it handle (or any ?)

The new amd Fx series appears to perform worse then the previous gen of phenom 2 it seems, hence this choice

[SuLyMaN]

Stepping from the P4 to the phenom would lead to performance boost so massive, I cannot find the appropriate words... :-)

Sent from my GT-S5660 using Tapatalk 2

[turbojet]

In USA you can find amd fx 8320 for $130-140 used on ebay and a new microatx mobo from newegg for $45 or $35 used on ebay. You might want to try to find a cpu only for a few dollars cheaper an buy and aftermarket hsf, the 8320's come with a decent vapor flow heatsink but a loud fan. Overclocking to 8350's 4.2 ghz turbo is very simple and only a 200mhz bump from default, hardly worth it, especially considering the cpus are overvolted, 1.37v but mine is stable at 1.3v. Alternatively could undervolt to quiet the fan. They have a relatively low max temp of 61C, but it doesn't shut off, the cooler can barely keep it under that during an encode, it's roughly 4x faster than the athlon II x4 620 it replaced with x264 using --threads 2*cores --lookahead_threads cores/2.

[zazon]

zazon would it be a good idea to invest in a AMD Phenom II x6 1075t + mobo GA880GM UD2H second hand (~ 130€)
I'm coming from far away with my pentium 4 3Ghz

Well, the Phenom would certainly be an upgrade. I guess it depends on your budget, but if I were building today I'd most likely go Intel.