Editing Computer i'm about to purchase - Comments welcome...

[brian_rounds]

Below is a computer i'm about to build. I've looked at a lot of posts here and believe this is a solid build. Let me know your thoughts.

Two questions I have are:

1. The ASUS X99 has one slot for a M.2 SSD - how do I add another M.2 SSD drive?

2. I have 2 GeForce 1080 video cards - how do they work as 1 card for CUDA core acceleration in Premier Pro and After Effects? Is there something additional I need to buy?

Thanks all.

Intel Core i7-6900k Processor

ASUS X99-DELUXE II Motherboard LGA2011-v3

Samsung 950 PRO Series 512GB PCIe NVMe – M.2 – x2

Kingston 128GB kit – 2400MHz DDdR4 Ram (32GB sticks)

EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 – x2

LG 27UD68-P 27-inch 4k UHD IPS monitor – x2

Thunderbolt 3 ASUS Expansion Card

Corsair Graphite Series 760T Full Tower

Corsair AXi Series, AX 1200i Power Supply

[Alan_Craven]

The X99 deluxe II comes with a riser to fit one M2 drive vertically onto the motherboard, and a PCIe card to take the second M2 drive.

I gave this same information recently in another thread on this board.

The information is clearly stated in the User guide which can be downloaded from the Asus web site.  If you are spending that sort of money on a new computer, it pays to do some research beforehand!

You may run into problems with PCIe lane speeds and/or lost USB3 or 3.1 sockets if you try to run two graphics cards, a PCIe card for the M2, and the included thunderbolt card.  In fact you will have trouble finding enough slots - there are only 5, and your graphics carsds will take two, and probably block another two.  Plus if you fit cards in the slot close to the graphics cards, you will likely compromise the graphics card cooling.  All this is covered in the User Guide too.

To fit that quantity of PCIe hardware, you need to look at the X99E-WS boards, wtith their extra PCIe lanes and PCIe slots.

[brian_rounds]

Alan, given the equipment I have can you give me a solid option for an X99E-WS board - there are a few to select from. I'm a video editor and want a system that is very smooth with expandability. I'm looking for a recommendation.

Thank you.

[Alan_Craven]

I use the Deluxe II myself. but I do not need the range of harware interfaces that you do.

I previously used th X79E-WS, but its successor the X99E-WS does not have all the  gen 2 improvements, bells and whistles.  Since I bought my board, Asus have brought out a Gen 2 X99E-WS variant - the X99-E-10G WS. That is where I would look.

It has seven PCIe slots, rather than the 5 of the Deluxe II (with slot 4 disabled as default). and a specialised chip which effectively doubles the available PCIe lanes.

X99-E-10G WS | Motherboards | ASUS Global

I am in the UK, you may not have access to the same motherboards.

[RoninEdits]

i think the asus x99-e 10g WS doesn't have a thunderbolt header

[Alan_Craven]

So it is the devil and the deep blue sea - the X99E-WS has thunderbolt but no USB3.1!

[Bill_Gehrke]

I guess you have to make a choice as the"X99-E WS/USB 3.1" has the 10Gbit/s USB3.1 but no Thunderbolt

Apparently the current x99-E WS-10G also does not have Thunderbolt either and that X99-E WS is no longer on ASUS web site.  There seems to been having problems with Thunderbolt and that motherboard.

[Richard van den Boogaard]

Well Brian, your system requirements appear to be almost identical as to what I'm looking into right now.

I am thinking of doing a similar setup. Initially, I want to work with two 4k monitors: one dedicated for my GUI and one for a separate 4k reference monitor.

I want to use a dedicated GTX 1080 card for rendering of accelerated effects in PPro (not connecting a monitor to it) and use a dedicated 10-bit output BlackMagic DeckLink Mini Monitor 4k for my reference monitor. However, for my GUI monitor, I am wondering if I should get a 2nd GTX 1080 (seems a bit overkill) or use an on-board GPU of the CPU to connect the GUI monitor.

However, in a separate thread I read that PPro will only maximize the weakest of two installed GPUs...

In short, will PPro work with and benefit from having two GPUs - one for rendering effects and the other one for driving video output to the GUI monitor? Also, how do you set this up in the software?

[brian_rounds]

Great questions on the GPU's.

My feeling is PPro will only take advantage of one GPU. One GPU for everything. I have messed around with a few of the preference hardware settings and don't remember being able to specify anything for the GPU. Maybe someone knows more - i'm hoping.

Like you said, if a second GTX 1080 is overkill and not going to be used - i'll send it back.

If anyone knows options - please reply.

Thanks everyone.

[Bill_Gehrke]

It

brian_rounds wrote:

Great questions on the GPU's.

My feeling is PPro will only take advantage of one GPU. One GPU for everything. I have messed around with a few of the preference hardware settings and don't remember being able to specify anything for the GPU. Maybe someone knows more - i'm hoping.

Like you said, if a second GTX 1080 is overkill and not going to be used - i'll send it back.

If anyone knows options - please reply.

Thanks everyone.

It depends much on the CPU power and what you can do is test it.  With my i7-5960x at4.5 GHz when I install a second overclocked GTX 1060 the first one is 100% in my PPBM GPU stress test but the second one occasionally hits 100% but typically is less used.  So two GTX 1080's would be an overkill for me.  If you had a high end dual Xeon system with more CPU power then dual GTX 1080's might be called for.  Of course Adobe keeps adding GPU accelerated items all the time so only they know the future of GPU acceleration.