Gonna buy a new dedicated encoding PC, help!

[Fragetecken]

Hello! I'm a new member here, but I've been reading here for years, and have had alot of help from it, so first of all, Thanks!

I'm gonna buy a new PC dedicated to encoding, but I need some help.
I'm going to encode MPEG/AVC (.ts) to x264 on Win 7 system.
I'm using DGIndexNV and dont need a new nVidia card. But I want some help and suggestions with CPU, m-board and stuff.

This is the stuff I'm thinking of.
M-Board: GIGABYTE GA-H87-D3H (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128603)
CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116901&Tpk=bx80646i74770k&IsVirtualParent=1)
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233147&Tpk=cmz8gx3m2a1600c8&IsVirtualParent=1)
Cooling: CORSAIR Hydro Series H110 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181035)
And a SSD Drive (cheap one, 128GB, I'm gonna store the files later on a NAS).

Or should I go for Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116492&Tpk=BX80619I73930K&IsVirtualParent=1)?

My budget is around 1000 USD. But that include case and PSU, which is 160, so 1000 - 160 = 840 to spend on the rest.

[paradoxical]

I'd hesitate to say the 3930K purely because you're going to be paying a ~63% premium from Newegg for what is probably far less of a performance jump than that and with higher TDP to boot. My opinion is it would be smarter to go the Haswell and just overclock as neeed to make up the performance gap and save yourself the money to put towards other things that will have a greater impact like more and faster RAM and/or a higher-end SSD with better speed and reliability.

[Fragetecken]

I'd hesitate to say the 3930K purely because you're going to be paying a ~63% premium from Newegg for what is probably far less of a performance jump than that and with higher TDP to boot. My opinion is it would be smarter to go the Haswell and just overclock as neeed to make up the performance gap and save yourself the money to put towards other things that will have a greater impact like more and faster RAM and/or a higher-end SSD with better speed and reliability.

If I am going to use faster RAM I'll have to look for another m-board too, or go for 16GB insted of just 8GB.
About the CPU, that was my idé too, to go for the less expensive 4 core with HT and just overclock.

Any SSD you suggest?

[Asmodian]

Both the Samsung 840 pro and the OCZ Vector are nice SSDs in my experience but I have only used the 256 or 512 GB versions.

I also suggest getting a Haswell quad core vs a Sandy Bridge six core. Being two generations behind knocks down some of the advantage of having 50% more cores. Also x264 seems to like AVX2 (new with Haswell) quite a bit.

I don't think faster RAM or a SSD would help encoding speed very much but they are quite nice to have, especially the SSD.

Oh, I would also suggest getting the Z87 chipset, that one allows better overclocking fun and since you are going for the "K" chip you might as well. :)
Maybe this board instead:
GIGABYTE GA-Z87MX-D3H (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128601) or the Z87M-D3H for $10 less but that one only has one PCI-E 3.0 slot.

[paradoxical]

I don't think faster RAM or a SSD would help encoding speed very much but they are quite nice to have, especially the SSD.

My suggestion was merely to state that if they are still going to spend the same amount of money regardless of the CPU, buying a faster SSD and/or more, faster RAM (the larger amount of RAM obviously more of a benefit than simply buying a piddling CAS latency decrease) will be much more beneficial to the system, as a whole even if not specifically just for encoding, than spending it on the more expensive CPU.

[Blue_MiSfit]

If this is purely for encoding, basically all that matters is the CPU.

For anything else, having a nice SSD is an amazing benefit. I just upgraded from a 2 year old Patriot Inferno 128 GB to a new Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB, and am shocked at how fast it is.

No point in having more than 8 GB of RAM if you're only ever going to do 1-2 encodes in parallel (which should be more than enough to saturate a single socket, even with 8 cores if you went the AMD route). Speed and latency doesn't matter much.

[Fragetecken]

Both the Samsung 840 pro and the OCZ Vector are nice SSDs in my experience but I have only used the 256 or 512 GB versions.

I also suggest getting a Haswell quad core vs a Sandy Bridge six core. Being two generations behind knocks down some of the advantage of having 50% more cores. Also x264 seems to like AVX2 (new with Haswell) quite a bit.

I don't think faster RAM or a SSD would help encoding speed very much but they are quite nice to have, especially the SSD.

Oh, I would also suggest getting the Z87 chipset, that one allows better overclocking fun and since you are going for the "K" chip you might as well. :)
Maybe this board instead:
GIGABYTE GA-Z87MX-D3H (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128601) or the Z87M-D3H for $10 less but that one only has one PCI-E 3.0 slot.

Yeah, ofc it should be the Z-board. I was abit tierd when put it together.

If this is purely for encoding, basically all that matters is the CPU.

For anything else, having a nice SSD is an amazing benefit. I just upgraded from a 2 year old Patriot Inferno 128 GB to a new Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB, and am shocked at how fast it is.

No point in having more than 8 GB of RAM if you're only ever going to do 1-2 encodes in parallel (which should be more than enough to saturate a single socket, even with 8 cores if you went the AMD route). Speed and latency doesn't matter much.

Yes, it will purely be for encoding.
Will it be smarter to go for an 8 core AMD or stay with the 4 core HT Intel?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Will it be smarter to go for an 8 core AMD or stay with the 4 core HT Intel?

If you are looking for a "high performance" CPU, I'd definitely go with Intel Core-i these days.

AMD's Bulldozer with 4 modules (8 "cores") can hardly keep up with an Core-i5 of the current Ivy Bridge generation (4 cores, no HT) - while consuming more energy.

The Core-i7 (with HT) even is out of range for AMD at the moment. And that's with multi-threaded software, where the Bulldozers are "good".

With single-threaded software, the difference is even larger...

(IMO the most interesting chip AMD has to offer at the moment is Jaguar, but that one plays in the league with Intel Atom. It will also power the PS4/XboxOne)

[paradoxical]

If this is purely for encoding, basically all that matters is the CPU.

Except that the cost difference between the two CPUs is around 63% with a speed increase that is far less between them. Sure, he could spend that huge premium but he's not going to see much of a gain by doing so which is why upgrading other parts of the system, such as more RAM or a faster SSD, are much better use of the saved money if the money must be spent. Obviously just pocketing the savings would be better.

[Asmodian]

+20% total system cost might be worth it for +25% encoding speed, I do think the 3930K would be faster, clock for clock, even though it is older. 50% more cores is hard to beat for pure encoding.

I don't know how well the 3930K overclocks but I would expect it to very well given Sandy Bridge.

[Dodgexander]

The high end AMD cpus are definitely the best value for tasks such as encoding.

To beat them you have to get an i7.

Also, with Haswell. The higher your cpu clock the lower your memory will clock so if you opt to go down that route I would just get slower ram.

Sent from my Crescent using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[QBhd]

LOL... this is an interesting link:

Intel-Core-i7-3930K-vs-AMD-FX-8350 (http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-3930K-vs-AMD-FX-8350)

As an owner of an 8350 I can say it is a better bang for your buck. MB and CPU combined is much much MUCH cheaper. Allowing for money to be spent on other hardware.

QB

[paradoxical]

+20% total system cost might be worth it for +25% encoding speed, I do think the 3930K would be faster, clock for clock, even though it is older. 50% more cores is hard to beat for pure encoding.

I don't know how well the 3930K overclocks but I would expect it to very well given Sandy Bridge.

Take this with a grain of salt but Anandtech's benchmarks of "x264 HD Encode Test" have the 3930K at 52.3 fps and the other at 42.2 fps on the second pass. So that's around 25% encoding speed, but is that really worth 220 extra dollars? Especially when you factor in that the 3930K has a 46W higher TDP. You could probably easily overclock the Haswell to match the 3930K in performance and still come out ahead in power usage and cost.

[mastrboy]

Is your usual avisynth scripts the bottleneck or is x264 the bottleneck when encoding?

If x264 is your bottleneck i would go for more cores, 3930k probably (or wait for ivybridge E version), but if avisynth is your bottleneck i would probably go for 4770k for better single-thread performance.
Though this assumes you don't use SetMTmode.

Whatever you choose, I would at least make sure to get a CPU with AVX2 support.

[Asmodian]

Isn't AVX2 new with Haswell? I think it will be 2015 before we get a CPU with more than 4 cores with AVX2.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Either way, Intel or AMD, fastest CPU you can afford or want to pay for. Nothing else matters unless you're encoding uncompressed sources (in which case SSD helps), or do anything else with the machine.

Something tells me AMD might have a sweet bang for your buck CPU, but I haven't done the research. I've been pretty much sold on high end Intel CPUs for years now.

[Fragetecken]

Either way, Intel or AMD, fastest CPU you can afford or want to pay for. Nothing else matters unless you're encoding uncompressed sources (in which case SSD helps), or do anything else with the machine.

Something tells me AMD might have a sweet bang for your buck CPU, but I haven't done the research. I've been pretty much sold on high end Intel CPUs for years now.

Yes, in my ears it sounds like I should go for the 4770k.
I have other PCs to games and stuff, so this one will only be for encoding. May be the 3930 will do it a bit faster, but its ~200+ and I think I'll spend that on a Samsung 840.

Thanks to all replys so far!:thanks: