new system build

Bro, does your rig even lift?
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mikekay
Met Resolume in a bar the other day
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2012 20:25

new system build

Post by mikekay »

I am planning on building a new computer for use with Resolume Arena. I'm finding this difficult. A little about what will be loaded. Along with Resolume, I will be running a software package called v-mix. Inputs in this system will include 1 blackmagic quad, and 1 blackmagic quad 2 - for a total of 12 hd-SDI inputs.

Was planning on using some form of the GTX980 TI for graphics.

Here is where I run into difficulties. I would LOVE to have a ton of processing power thus was mainly considering going with a dual processor Xeon with a minimum of 64 GB ram, most likely going to 128 MB. I would love to have Thunderbolt ability for storage. No Xeon board has built in Thunderbolt so an add in card would be required.

One reason I would like to go dual processor is due to limitations of the internal PCIE lanes. The GTX 980 requires 16 lanes clear, and each BM Quad requires 8, that's already 32 lanes, plus other internal uses and the lanes start to bog down. Not sure my logic here stands, but I only get one chance to get this right, so feel free to correct me.

There are some issues I'm learning about dual processors. Do the apps actually have the ability to use them? If the memory is not configured properly you might as well forget enhanced performance. I really need to get this right.

Talked with a gentleman today who I respect a lot, stated that I should just go with i7, maybe dual, with built in Thunderbolt - that the enhancements of going dual processor are not worth the investment. To put the money into a powerful i7.

Processing 12 HD inputs, recording each stream independently, output to multiple sources, including projector mapping, and my requirements are huge. And I need to get a few years work from this system.

1200 watt PSU, rackmout 4U server case, SSD system drive, a few other SSDs for storage. Dual network cards...these are all things I am planning on using.

Any comments, suggestions, links or other information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Joris
Doesn't Know Jack about VJ'ing or Software Development and Mostly Just Gets Coffee for Everyone
Posts: 5185
Joined: Fri May 22, 2009 11:38

Re: new system build

Post by Joris »

As far as Resolume is concerned, that extra money for the second CPU and extra RAM is wasted.

Resolume does most of the heavy lifting on the GPU. Although not idle, the CPU rarely gets pushed to the max. Similarly, until we go 64 bit, you can throw in all the RAM you want, Resolume is not going to access more than 4GB of it.

The question of the PCIe lanes and BM inputs is something better asked at BM support. They know their hardware and its requirements/limitations better than we do.

I'm not sure about vMix either, I can only speak for the Resolume part.

Anothertom
Is taking Resolume on a second date
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Apr 15, 2015 17:02

Re: new system build

Post by Anothertom »

My rambly thoughts reading your post:

Spending extra for a dual socket mobo is very rarely a good idea, an i7-5960X or comparable xeon (essentially an i7 minus the onboard graphics for cheaper) would be more applicable. Resolume won't take advantage of dual processors, and i doubt vmix would either. As Joris says, resolume only sips at the CPU resources, so it will be mostly free to be used by your other programs.

64GB ram is likely much more than you'll need already, so spending extra for 128GB would be purely because 'bigger is better'.

A GTX980 TI should be fine, if you can stump extra for a 1080 then that would be a better place to spend.

As with anything blackmagic (in my experience) if you can find someone else who has a working solution for dual decklink cards, then that's a good starting point for your system, as blackmagic's own support for windows systems using PCIE devices is poor. They haven't tested with any x99 motherboards, and of the ones they list (z97 is newest) very few are actually available anywhere before form factor is considered. This is likely to be the most troublesome bit of part hunting.

Motherboards might physically have full length PCIE slots, but likely the lower ones likely won't be wired at full x16 but rather x8 or x4. Luckily graphics cards still don't need a full PCIE 3.0 x16 slot to achieve their maximum performance, they'll perform just as well in a x8 slot and only have minor performance degradation in x4. So make sure the blackmagic cards get their required bandwidth then worry about placing the graphics card.

I would be hesitant to use any external storage as the source for any content for a production, rather an internal ssd / raid array. If you're recording your output directly from vmix then might be an idea to write to a dedicated disk to avoid read/write limitations. Although using a thunderbolt drive to import media would still be useful, but transferring over a wired network might be an alternative, depends on how you're going to use the machine.

1200W psu is overkill, you don't need that much, find something around 600W from a reputable manufacturer with a gold/platinum efficiency rating is still more than you'd need. http://www.jonnyguru.com/ is one of the best places for anything PSU related.

Hope this A) helps
B) makes sense.

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