The ULTIMATE Budget Workstation.

Video ID: mFdmYnr5fEM

YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFdmYnr5fEM

Added At: 13-06-25 21:16:11

Processed: No

Sentiment: Neutral

Categories: Tech

Tags: workstation, Dell Precision 7820, Xeon, editing workstation, upgrading

Summary

The creator is upgrading their editing workstation with a Dell Precision 7820, dual Xeon scalable workstation. They got it on eBay for $250 plus shipping. The system has two Xeon Gold 6138 CPUs, each containing 20 cores and 40 threads, giving them a total of 40 cores and 80 threads.

Transcript

I am so sick of seeing my ryzen 3700x
completely pegged out at 100% while
editing and animating my videos so what
do I do how do I fix this get a 3900x A
550x or take the jump to a newer am5
system maybe even thread Ripper well the
problem with that is I would need a new
motherboard and power supply and
potentially even Ram so what do I do
well I had a much bigger much cheaper
idea actually two ideas two ideas with
about 20 smaller ideas each and
technically each of those smaller ideas
can have a little idea of its own if you
really want to get pedantic about it but
either way this giant idea is actually
too giant for this set but thanks to
today's sponsor flexis spot I was able
to actually lower my desk to fit this
giant idea I was recently hit by a car I
was also in a car at the same time of
this incident but typically you actually
get more sympathy when you phrase it
like that so it kind of works out either
way I did get a little bit of an injury
with some fun things that come with that
and building computers while filming
standing over my set has been hurting my
back and neck a decent amount so I want
to give a huge thanks to flexi spot for
not only providing this absolutely
beautiful bamboo E6 standing desk and
upgraded oc6 chair put for also
sponsoring this video the dual motor E6
standing desk is extremely durable and
able to withstands impacts of
325 lbs which is great for how often I
tend to drop anything I touch this is
crazy and even crazier is the motors are
so strong you can actually sit on the
desk while it raises and lowers and it's
not jerky either it's still a smooth
upward and downward motion really
impressive and kind of fun it also comes
with wheels and make it easier to move
it around so even I can move it around
without hurting myself even further and
also a 15-year warranty that is insane
like actually almost nothing comes with
the warranty that long it's also really
pretty I mean look how great this thing
looks for filming flexi spot has also
launched a new ergonomic chair offering
an extended 10year warranty leveraging
the same high quality much material as
the OC 6 flexi spots chair can withstand
weights up to 500 lb while providing
excellent lumbar support and not only is
it extremely comfortable but it also
features adjustable y-shaped lumbar
support and most importantly for me it
serves as a great alternative to the
pricier steel case gesture chair costing
less than a quarter of the gesture's
price with a weight capacity actually
exceeding the gestures 400 lb they're
also both extremely easy to put together
which is important for someone like me
who requires close moderation to avoid
hurting myself if I can put this
together I truly believe that anyone
could anyways thank you again to flexi
spot this isn't part of the sponsored
segment anymore but this desk and chair
has really been helping me work on
videos and not be in constant pain so I
really really appreciate it thank you
again flexi spot and if you guys want to
get yourself a desk or chair use my
affiliate links in the description you
get a 10% discount and I get a 10%
Kickback which is pretty cool the
hardest thing about building a video
editing PC is well it's expensive you
can't just slap any random CPU GPU and
storage in there and have it perform
well not only do you need really fast
storage for editing but you also need a
lot of storage for holding all of those
giant video files typically for me
personally my videos end up being about
100 to 200 GB total per video which is a
lot of storage but storage isn't the
only important thing you also need a lot
of CPU power like a lot the good thing
about editing and animation programs
though is typically they do support a
lot of cores they're very multi-threaded
which is great because that really opens
up our options for cheap CPUs since
we're not just constrained to high
single thread performance if we were
basically the only option would be
high-end Intel I9 CPUs the last major
picky part besides Ram just get a lot of
ram that's fine the graphics card you
can't typically just get a
run-of-the-mill boring old graphics card
for gaming well you can but not just any
video editing doesn't just require pure
GPU power and Cuda cor it also requires
a lot of vram more than most people
would typically need for games at least
the games I play either way when playing
a game it's rare I'll use more than 8 GB
of vram even at 4K but when editing
video it's not uncommon at all for me to
max out my Titan XPS 12 GB of vram
crashing isn't an issue though like was
for the 8 GB of VM I had before so I'm
not really worried about Shilling
hundreds of dollars for something like a
Quadro with 24 GB of VM or an RTX card
with a similar amount right now the 12
gigs are fine there's our requirements
fast CPU fast and lots of storage lots
of RAM and a somewhat fast GPU with a
lot of vram initially my idea was to
move forward with an AMD Vega Frontier
Edition card because of the 16 GB of
hbm2 memory that they had and then I
would pair that with a dual Zeon 2698 V3
three system I was going to custom build
and water cool myself problem is that
would have been really prohibitively
expensive yeah that's going to cost as
much as upgrading my system to am5 not
going to happen I needed something
cheaper and better after some research
and getting some awesome advice from um
man I'm going to pronounce this so wrong
m m no I'm so sorry seriously though his
channel is a gold mine for workstation
CPU information go check him out after
some nice advice from him I decided on
this giant hunk of metal a Dell
Precision
7820 a dual Zeon scalable workstation
that I got on eBay for $250 plus
shipping
$250 it came with no storage CPU or ramp
but that's perfect all right so along
with this big Beauty I also got two Zeon
gold 6138 these each contain 20 cores
and 40 threads giving me a total of 40
cores and 80 threads oh my word then for
about $70 I got got myself 64 GB of ddr4
ECC registered memory I believe it was
2133 MHz one of those sticks also died
by the way great had to buy a new one
whatever the speeds aren't great but it
probably doesn't matter or something I
don't know then of course the classic
Titan x p I just can't seem to get away
from eventually I will I promise there
is a big problem with pre-built
workstations like these though the power
supply while it is cool and easy to take
out and swing around a pretend like
you're more of a man than you are you
cannot easily upgrade these or get the
exact power cables you want
however these D Precision workstations
come with two 8 Pin power connectors
more than enough for most graphic
Solutions and oh man I am getting really
excited for this and before I forget for
an SSD I got this brand new Intel 2 tbte
p4510 u.2 SSD I got it for $110 with the
generic u.2 to pcie adapter and this
thing is chunky it's literally just like
a block of solid aluminum oh my
word I got a good deal but if you want
you can find them pretty decently priced
like this one I found for
$200 you can get better deals on cheap
ssds or m.2 drives but this thing should
last basically forever and we'll see how
it performs later now let's put this big
bad boy together the really nice thing
about these workstations is there are
very few screws and most things are
toolless so we can just take the side
panel right off easily with this handle
and once the side panel's off right here
is the second CPU board it holds a
second CPU obviously and all the RAM for
it six dim slots total along with a fan
and if we press this button and pull it
out the handle we can see the main CPU
and both of these like I said support
six dims of ECC ddr4 for a total
supported memory capacity of 768 GB for
the whole system oh my God below this we
have a separator to divide the area with
the RAM and CPUs and our PCI expansion
area with up to five pcie 16x slots oh
my word not all of these can push a full
75 wats of power though which isn't a
problem for me taking my xpp and ramming
it in here the nice thing too is since
this area is separated with its own fans
you should in theory be able to throw a
passively cooled accelerator card in
here but I haven't been able to properly
test this yet though so don't don't rely
on that don't ever rely on anything I
say I'm very stupid assembling this
takes about 5 minutes though drop the
CPUs in with Intel's weird maning system
for these ships screw on the cooler and
put in the ram then to slower the board
with the second CPU on it in and lock it
in with the handle there after this
Mount the CPU fan and RAM then for the
GPU no crazy janky SATA to VGA cables
lose all your data or whatever the
saying goes just plug it right in oh and
for store that's simple if you're using
a SATA drive this actually has Drive
Bays you can throw your drives right
into or if you want is them.2 drives as
far as I'm aware you need to get a PCI
adapter like this for them not a big
deal they're like $15 tops and of course
after I bought all of this and set it up
I found out you can buy a .2 back plane
for a pretty reasonably cheap price if
you want to go all .2 anyways continue
with my original plan that had less
forethought once you have that adapter
it's just a matter of plugging it into
an empty PCA slot and uh we're we're
we're done that was kind of
anticlimactic this is probably one of
the easiest pre-built systems I've ever
had to build out since we have all the
power we need for everything and it
doesn't have any weird restrictions at
least any that I personally managed to
hit that's not all this is a whole new
editing workstation for a whole new
setup so I need more than just a new
standing desk and a nice chair I went
ahead and got an Asus Pro art 4K display
for my main editing monitor which didn't
really work out that great so while I
try and find another one for a good
price I have this old Samsung business
moderator I got it for $130 and I mean
it's 4K turns on can read good to go
then to go with that I got myself a
Logitech g305 wireless mouse because it
was cheap and I don't need a Wired Mouse
for editing video and a Kyron C3 Pro
with brown switches my reasoning for
this was that it was uh it was $32
including tax so that's kind of cheap
and I like cheapap this is actually a
great keyboard for the price though and
I am really shocked by just how freaking
amazing this thing is if you want to get
any of the affiliate links blah blah
blah whatever with that though we can go
back to the workstation getting
everything set up was pretty easy
honestly Dell doesn't lock these down
too hard the only problem I had as my
Tesla K20 wouldn't work at all and for
some reason when I tried to put anything
in here besides the gtx650 it just
wouldn't post at all so after some help
from the Discord which you should
totally join by the way I was able to
figure out that the first CPU just
needed to be receded and once I did that
it somehow fixed it and now I can put
any old regular GPU in here besides the
Tesla I went ahead through windows on
here and it installed perfectly fine and
got my testing going but since this
isn't really a gaming machine I didn't
want to test a ton of games especially
since this GPU really isn't that great
nowadays especially compared to the CPU
power we've got going on here but let's
just let's just try few for fun so Red
Dead Redemption 2 medium whatever power
settings work I don't know 1080p used a
really crazy 1 to 4% CPU usage and Max
GPU usage hilarious it got an average of
91.1 FPS with a 1% low of 52.9 about
what I would expect really with this GPU
to be honest for some reason I also
tested Minecraft and for some reason I
tested it in 4k I don't know well I got
an average of 147 FPS with a 1% low of
59 a lot better than I expected
considering how little power each core
has but you know what I'll take it also
Doomer 1080p medium settings that got an
average of 237 FPS with a 1% low of 146
Doom really truly runs well on anything
and beam and G I wanted to try something
different let's see how many cars I can
get spawned in and oh man this is this
is taking a little while uh this is the
is too many it's taking an entire 20
cores the unold we're getting less than
10 FPS okay 24 cars that okay that's not
great this is this is a great example
though of a major issue running two CPUs
if a program is not Numa aware or able
to take advantage of both CPUs this just
kind of happens you get one CPU
completely pegged out and struggling
while the other one's just chilling
hanging out on the beach with 12 cars
though it actually was somewhat playable
I don't know if I'd ever do this myself
though also Grand Theft Auto 5 why am I
testing game still
Max settings 1080p got a nice average of
132 this is boring let's just get to the
fun part after I tell you it's very
quiet under regular use even when you're
pushing it a little it's pretty quiet
but once you really work this to its Max
potential it gets pretty loud now let's
get into the pee and potatoes of this
now what I truly want it for editing
video when I'm using my main PC with the
ryzen 3700x and 32 GB of ddr4 maxing out
my Ram and CPU is basically a daily
occurrence while regular editing it's
not super common since I use prores
proxies and can pretty easily scrub
through basic footage just fine but once
animations and color grades are added
I'm not even getting half playback speed
my CPU is absolutely pinned and it's
just a horrible slideshow I hate it but
if I were to disable proxies for
whatever reason if I just wanted to
check how the original footage looks
with the color grade I don't know it's
basically a complete slideshow no matter
what yeah it's h.265 yeah I should
probably transcode the footage but shut
up this is my bad choice so that's how
it works on my previous system what
about our new beautiful dual CPU Beast
well it's perfect yep in the video this
is my Yu green Naas video timeline and
even animations play back beautifully
without any issues at all and I mean
well the entire video just plays back
perfectly and scrubbing is just amazing
even if I disable proxies to see how my
original footage looked it's still
really really smooth and just eats
through all of this stuff I was a little
bit worried about using a PCI through
poon SSD but the random rates are about
as fast as my Sab rocket 1 TB in vme
drive and it should last me basically
forever especially since it's brand new
with the 5-year warranty and if you want
one for yourself you can even get one
with the U2 adapter included for not
that much more I already did an
affiliate you know whatever for actual
testing and Premiere besides just how it
feels test I went ahead and exported the
ug Green video in 4k 40 mb per second at
30 FPS and it exported in just over 14
minutes that is less than the actual
length of the video itself oh my God
this is compared to nearly an hour it
took for my ryzen 3700x system to export
the same exact video and I had to export
it three times this is mostly probably
due to the CPU but I think the added Ram
helps a little bit also I have a GTX
1650 in here I put in for fun and forgot
about I don't know if that did anything
do any of these tests who knows whatever
also for your weirdos that work with
blender uh blender BMW turned out a
final image in 25 seconds which is
pretty uh insane I think after a certain
point it doesn't really render out much
faster once you have a powerful enough
machine so if have any suggestions for a
better blender render Riv let me know in
the comments and of course lastly C
bench are whatever I've been using I
don't know I'm tired right now got an
insane score of
27,41 that is so close to a thread
Ripper 2990 WX a $6 to $700 chip on the
used Market that requires a TR4
motherboard which are insanely expensive
and these Zeon Golds completely Eclipse
a thread Ripper 1950x which sells for
around $150 that is $46 more than the
cost of our two xeons yeah Power
efficiency whatever TR4 boards are
expensive okay and this is really really
great performance and with all these
fans too this was able to stay pretty
cool even if it sometimes got on the
little loud side the CPU stayed at about
70° for the most part although I did
notice the second CPU ran warmer than
the first I don't know this is a cool
system and I freaking love it and I
literally cannot wait another second to
edit video on