Hey guys

For the pasy 4-5 years i have been doing all my rendering on my laptop. And while it is an excellent laptop, it is just a laptop. I finally had time/money to put together a decent system for rendering. It is all together, it works great but I have some questions

First the build.

Intel I7 4770K Processor
ASRock LGA1155 motherboard
16gb Corsair RAM "Vengance"
SanDisk Ultra II 480GB SATA III 2.5-Inch SSD
(and of course fans, cpu cooling fan, normal junk)
Acer 27 inch K272UL 2560x1440 montior <- this thing is the shit!

For the graphics I got a killer deal on a pair of NVIDIA Quadro 4000. I know they are not cutting edge, but the price was legit and they are in excellent shape.

So the questions.....

The graphic acceleration is quite present. Rendering has sped up at least 5-10x. I have not had time to play around too much, but this is a clear performance upgrade. I can run 4k footage in the program monitor while adjusting color and stuff on the fly and it is killer. However, if i dump 1000 jpegs into a sequence and play it back in the program monitor, even at half and 1/4 resolution it gets awfully jumpy. I was not sure if this is still normal? do I have unrealistic expectations?

When I monitor the GPU load while rendering a 4k file, GPU 1 never goes over about 10% load. GPU 2 never goes above 20% load. Is this normal?

I realize that the NVIDIA 4000's are probably one of the weak links in my system, but i did have a budget and i figured a pair of these would be better than a single newer card of equal cost. I plan to get another 16gb of ram in the next month or so.

ALSO, NVIDIA Quadros sure run hot. If at idle they are around 50-55c, under load they go up to about 85-90c. From the reading I have done this appears to be normal. But i am open to any suggestions on how to knock the temp down. I really dont want to mess with a water cooling system. I plan to add 2 more fans, freshen up the thermal paste between the GPU's and internal heatsink, and possible paste a large heatsink on the case(which is a heatsink) of each one to get it down a few more degrees.

The graphic acceleration is quite present. Rendering has sped up at least 5-10x. I have not had time to play around too much, but this is a clear performance upgrade. I can run 4k footage in the program monitor while adjusting color and stuff on the fly and it is killer. However, if i dump 1000 jpegs into a sequence and play it back in the program monitor, even at half and 1/4 resolution it gets awfully jumpy. I was not sure if this is still normal? do I have unrealistic expectations?

Yes you do. You should render your sequence first before playing it.


When I monitor the GPU load while rendering a 4k file, GPU 1 never goes over about 10% load. GPU 2 never goes above 20% load. Is this normal?

I dont know about this stuff. But, are you using After Effects to render your sequences? Best way, in my opinion.

I realize that the NVIDIA 4000's are probably one of the weak links in my system, but i did have a budget and i figured a pair of these would be better than a single newer card of equal cost. I plan to get another 16gb of ram in the next month or so.

I dont know, man. I would go for 32Ram instead of 16.


ALSO, NVIDIA Quadros sure run hot. If at idle they are around 50-55c, under load they go up to about 85-90c. From the reading I have done this appears to be normal. But i am open to any suggestions on how to knock the temp down. I really dont want to mess with a water cooling system. I plan to add 2 more fans, freshen up the thermal paste between the GPU's and internal heatsink, and possible paste a large heatsink on the case(which is a heatsink) of each one to get it down a few more degrees.

I guess you should adress this kind of question to this tech guys who knows everything about hardware.

Cheers!

Thanks for the reply.

You mean i should add 32 more gb? or add 16 for a total of 32?

Glad to know about the previewing timelapse. I was thinking this might be the case but i was hoping.

Yes, get a 32 total.

Frank built my render machine in an old server case, so I have ten drives and a RAID controller so I have the space needed for running the camera like a 4K movie camera when timelapsing turtles. It gets real hot. Everything you put in there adds heat. The graphics cards add a lot. You can probably see all the heatpipe and fans in them. My machine has this insanely loud fan that soulds like a learjet idling inside my house but keeps the machine cool. It dumps so much heat into the room, it heats the place without having to use the regular heater. I have no idea how many watts it eats. So heat is normal.

Frank builds one-off computers for video gamers and render engines. (As well as all the electronics for our focus/zoom motors) Too bad you didn't consult him before the build. he has done a lot of research on how to squeeze the most performance per dollar. You can always contact him and ask a question. You can use the form on the contact tab at stepoutmoco.com or use the shop tab, scroll to the bottom and there is a phone number and company email.

Anyone interested in a custom computer should definitely consult Frank.

Here is an article you might find interesting: http://www.videomaker.com/article/17135-editing-in-4k-minimum-system-requirements