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Time for upgrade after 6 years, shopping list help needed

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 1:18 pm
by maalitehdas
Long time since I've visited this forum, still very thankful for all the people helping me out six years ago :)

I've built my current silent desktop PC removing fans from CPU, GPU and Case, adding passive cooling components, modding P182 case by blocking all grills except for those in the bottom, and adding a chimney for decent natural airflow. This PC has been running ever since with no issues, temperatures steady. There is just one fan left in this build, inside the PSU located on separated chamber which I call “the cave” in the case. Also that PSU is modded by switching its fan to a more quiet model.

But this is now six years old build… Time for some updates, wouldn’t you say? I’m looking for recently released silent components, passive models if available. I'm about to change everything except for the case (and its chimney). I need some GPU performance for video editing, not for gaming, and all the components have priority on low wattage. Good GPU/CPU underclocking settings would be nice to have for regular use.

So in general no need for awesome performance, the low temperature matters more to me, yet having an option for running it hotter while editing videos. The GPU might be the key issue… Today’s requirements on the performance have probabaly left behind all the passive cooled options(?), but I hope it’ll be the only noise source on my next build. I’ve been thinking about an #Asus with some nice underclocking settings.

I'm hoping that I still won’t need any case fans (natural airflow with chimney on this case has really proven its power to me). A huge copper cooler on top of my CPU could also be reused. No budget set, and this may take time. Any tips would be welcome, starting from a new low temperature motherboard.

Why I'm posting this help request here, and not just picking the recommended components, is that my case is quite special. I'm fallen in love with it, but it also matters for picking the right components as the airflow is only from bottom to upwards. I'd rather not use any hot components below the ones which can't handle heat (gpu is an issue again...). Any tips for me, please?

Re: Time for upgrade after 6 years, shopping list help neede

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 1:35 pm
by CA_Steve
Please detail the video editing requirements...is it 1080p, 4k, Handbrake?, etc... Do you need the GPU for GPGPU acceleration or what? It may be that you could just go with the iGP in an Intel CPU and be done. There's Quicksync after all.

Re: Time for upgrade after 6 years, shopping list help neede

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 2:02 pm
by maalitehdas
CA_Steve wrote:Please detail the video editing requirements...
Thanks for joining in! 2016 should still go with 1080p, but I'm after a build for few more years so 4K I guess. Well, another small upgrade later is an option too. My editing is mostly cutting 50-500 short clips from longer takes and combining them to 3-20 min products in h.264,ogg/mp4. On my current very old setup I already need to do this in small portions which I dislike a lot.

Re: Time for upgrade after 6 years, shopping list help neede

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 4:22 pm
by CA_Steve
Ok, so the questions are:
- does your software use hardware acceleration or does it just use the CPU and grind along?
- if it does use hardware acceleration,
- does it make use of Quick Sync?
- does it make use of Open CL or some other GPGPU acceleration?

If it's just s/w grinding along using the CPU, then here's a transcoding benchmark using x.264 v3.03 1st pass (1080p): Your e8400 underclocked at 1.8GHz would get about 30fps. An i5 6600 @ 3.3GHz (base) and 65W TDP would get about 120fps.

If you are using a tool like Handbrake, it can make use of Quick sync (hardware accel in Intel CPUs) and there's a significant boost in framerates.

The last few generations of Intel CPUs do a great job of having low idle freq/CPU voltage, crank up as needed to complete a task, and then throttle down to idle. So, you won't need to fiddle around with underclocking. Just have a decent CPU cooler (like the Scythe Kotetsu) and set the fan profile in your Asus BIOS. You probably won't need a separate gfx card.

Re: Time for upgrade after 6 years, shopping list help neede

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2016 11:22 pm
by baii
I guess it is a good time to get a new PSU, maybe a passive one.

NVENC or AMD VEC don't seem to get any love for x264, so you can probably dump the separate GPU if just for encoding. For editing, it will depend what the software package you like more, opencl or cuda.

Complete passive CPU cooling is not hard in 2016, but a really slow fan can give you a little performance boost if you intend to overclock.

Re: Time for upgrade after 6 years, shopping list help neede

Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 3:18 pm
by maalitehdas
i5 6600K w/o separate GPU seems like a solution for me, thanks a lot, so let's move along to other components.

Using a passive PSU would be lovely, but it would require opening the lower chamber upwards for airflow in this mod, possibly causing too much heat into the case - on the other hand, more heat causes also more airflow in my mod, and I could do some careful tests on that with my current PSU already.

What MB would you recommend then? Should support i5, fast mem slots, but no need for express card slots and no need for fan control in my case.

On the SW (side topic) I'm not familiar with handbrake, does it handle cutting & combining clips too? Might be worth a try in that case.

Re: Time for upgrade after 6 years, shopping list help neede

Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 3:40 pm
by CA_Steve
Asus H170 Pro Gaming is a nice mix of decent components (Intel NIC, upgraded audio chain) and features for a good price since you aren't overclocking and don't need the Z170 chipset.

RAM: Intel memory controller performance is very flat vs RAM speed. Very little performance bump beyond 2133. However, iGP shares the RAM and it may benefit a tiny bit from faster RAM. Still, wouldn't bother past 2400.

Handbrake - hopefully a Handbrake user will pipe up..just looks like a transcoder to me.

Re: Time for upgrade after 6 years, shopping list help neede

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2016 6:22 am
by quest_for_silence
maalitehdas wrote:I'm not familiar with handbrake, does it handle cutting & combining clips too?
No, it just encodes/converts, it has no editing capabilities.

CA_Steve wrote:Handbrake - hopefully a Handbrake user will pipe up..just looks like a transcoder to me.

Quite precise. :wink: