[SOLVED] Mac Pro 2009 12 core 64g ram for Video Editing a good idea now?

[ferboturbo]

Hi there. So i will be moving to Australia for my Undergrad and I will need a new computer there.
I am a youtuber and a photographer. I do A LOT of video editing. I do daily vlogs which means i have to edit over 10 gigs of video files everyday. I use sony cameras and the video files are AVCHD which are terrible to work with in Premiere Pro so I almost ALWAYS have to transcode them to DNxHD to be able to work with them smoothly and more easily.

I also use Lightroom heavily with raw photos, but thats really not a problem even for this computer.

My current system that i use to edit has

Cpu : Core i5 2400
Ram : 2x2 + 1x8 = 12Gb
Storage : 120Gb Kingston SSD Boot Drive, 2TB Toshiba HDD for video
Graphics : 1gb Sapphire 6850
Mobo : z68 gigabyte

This takes around 20-30 Minutes for encoding and about 1-2 hours for exporting as 1080p. Sometimes I Upscale the video to 4k for youtube and that takes 3/4 hours to export.

Its impossible to work like this if after the end of the day i have to work for 4 hours on a video.

SO i was looking into new computers that could do it faster and be portable and have a color accurate screen.

After a long time of seraching, i was pretty set on getting a Late 2013/ Early 2014 Fully specced out Macbook Pro 15.
It would have 512gb ssd, 16gb ram, quad core i7, gt 750m, great screen for editing and great battery for other uses and on top of that i will be able to edit my videos anywhere.

BUT recently I came across a video by TekSyndicate where they take a mac pro from 2009, stuff 2 xeon x5650 cpus, 64gb 1333 ecc and amd 7950 and pci e ssd for a very very cheap price.
This got me veryyy interested since obviously 12 slower cores will get video editing done faster than 4 fast cores (right??)

Now I have been looking around in Ebay and Gumtree AU and the prices for 2009 mac pro is still quite high. around $500. other than THAT,
2x Xeon X5670 would cost $230
64gb 1333 samsung ecc ram around $130
new GTX 970 around $350
storage for abput $500 more

I could cut down price from the graphics and the storage if necessary.

Now looking away from the mac eco system im seeing other dell hp workstations with same cpu for less. Im also seeing newer sandy bridge 6/8 core cpus for around $300 a pair. these would be beastly machines!

I need my videos to be rendered much much more quickly and i need this pc to handle 4k editing for when i upgrade to 4k camera or upscale. I currently use Premiere Pro but I am keen to learn Final Cut pro x and ive see that it shoots out better looking video efficiently.

So my budget is around $1400/1500 and i want a pc that would last me for the next 4 years or so for editing videos almost everyday. I understand newer is better but there are so many new Xeons i feel lost and dont know which 'old' cpu has the best value for performance. Ideally I want a 12 core PC but if 16 core is somehow possible than YES PLEASE! and I am not tied to the mac pro idea. Also I dont need it to be gaming oriented to if there are different 'workstation' grade GPU that can get it done better for same money or less then im open to that too!

Thanks in advance

 

[iamacow]

BUT recently I came across a video by TekSyndicate where they take a mac pro from 2009, stuff 2 xeon x5650 cpus, 64gb 1333 ecc and amd 7950 and pci e ssd for a very very cheap price.
This got me veryyy interested since obviously 12 slower cores will get video editing done faster than 4 fast cores (right??)

Those X5650 is just a i7 960 so a Skylake 6700k is nearly the same speed as 2 of those CPUs (for video rendering). Tech can change fast or slow. So it really depends. If are have your heart set on a Xeon, the best you can do is go on ebay and pick up a Xeon E5 2670. Those are 8 Core. 2.6ghz and nearly identical in performance to a i7 3930k. They are $70-100 no ebay right now.

 

[ferboturbo]

Im sort of set on older Xeons because I realize the old ones have dropped in price, have HUGE number of cores compared to I series, I can have two of them for more computing power and the geekbench scores are veryy high. My current system gets around 9k multicore. And dual x5670s get close to 30k. And since my main task is to edit videos and not play games i figure xeon is the way to go?

 

[iamacow]

I have a feeling you are looking at some old benchmarks, because no way a single or possible even dual x5650 would beat anything modern.

I was getting 1000 in CINEBENCH R15 with a E5 2670. About the same as a i7 3930k. Here is a list which peoples inputs http://www.overclock.net/t/1431032/top-cinebench-r15-cpu-scores. I'm guessing some i7 system overclocked but some of those numbers are higher than normal. A single 4 year old chip is faster than dual x5650 lol. Run the benchmark on your current computer and see how it compares.

I just sold my spare 2670 system last month for $400. Its extremely cheap to build them right now because it's old tech. I'm not against old tech, but those x5650 is not worth a penny.

 

[ferboturbo]

I have a feeling you are looking at some old benchmarks, because no way a single or possible even dual x5650 would beat anything modern.

I was getting 1000 in CINEBENCH R15 with a E5 2670. About the same as a i7 3930k. Here is a list which peoples inputs http://www.overclock.net/t/1431032/top-cinebench-r15-cpu-scores. I'm guessing some i7 system overclocked but some of those numbers are higher than normal. A single 4 year old chip is faster than dual x5650 lol. Run the benchmark on your current computer and see how it compares.

I just sold my spare 2670 system last month for $400. Its extremely cheap to build them right now because it's old tech. I'm not against old tech, but those x5650 is not worth a penny.

so ive been looking around on ebay a lot for the past few days now and what i have found is that the mobo for e5 2670 will set me back about $500 AUD and 2x Xeon E5 2670 around $400 AUD. then Ill only have about 600 left for everything else. Now after looking i found that for about the price of GTX 960, I can find used GTX 780 TI which has more cuda cores than even 980 Ti so cuda for cuda this is a better deal than even a GTX 970. Or so i figured.
This will be around $350. I dont know what type of psu i should be looking at. The motherboard is a Asrock Ep2c602.

this with ssd, psu, cpu coolers should set me back about 2k AUD. which is quite a bit more than my budget. but if I can edit 4k on this as in ACTUALLY use this for the next 3/4 years then i might save up enough for it.

OR am i better off with a newer system?