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Capybara  
#1 Posted : Thursday, September 10, 2020 10:01:24 AM(UTC)
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Hi all:

We're building our biggest, most capable vMix Live and Call system. I noticed that on the Obsidian Reference system page,
vMix is suggesting liquid CPU cooling. This will be our third vMix system and we mainly use it with vMix Call from our
studio but we do haul the entire system out on location, often shooting with 3-8 cameras.

We really are pushing vMix to it's limits so we want the best system we can afford. I am honestly pretty paranoid to
have a liquid cooled CPU system that is being hauled in and out of cars and carted on location. A leak could be disastrous.
Neither of our other two systems are liquid cooled and we have not had too many overheating issues but this system
has a bigger motherboard, faster and beefier CPU and GPU.

We are not overclocking like gamers would though. I am thinking of the https://www.amazon.com/g...A3KGNLL200UCI2&psc=1 case that will have three fans, two up front and one in the rear of the case.

We will be using:

X299 Motherboard
The Corsair Obsidian Case
Intel Core i9 10900X
NVidia P5000 GPU

So we will be generating some heat, of course.

For those of you have built a few higher end vMix systems, if you were hauling a system around on location and in and out of cars,
would you risk liquid CPU cooling? With this configuration, would you add additional case fans? CPU dedicated fan if we can find
one that fits this case?

FWIW, we like quiet while in the studio obviously, don't like a high dB noisy system but concerned about liquid leaks from
a system that may take some jarring in transport.

New here, your recommendations and advice are appreciated. All of my research seems to point to gamers
and we are not gaming/overclocking but are pushing the hardware with multiple 4K cameras, occasional 4K
live streaming, etc. Advice?
Capybara  
#2 Posted : Thursday, September 10, 2020 10:33:34 AM(UTC)
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Sorry mods, I should have posted this in the hardware builds thread. Feel free to move it there.
Peter1000  
#3 Posted : Thursday, September 10, 2020 8:48:30 PM(UTC)
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The risk with a liquid cooler is even smaller than with a huge mechanical fan. The pad that comes on the CPU is small, the fan is mounted on the "ceiling" of the case.
We use these ones.
cooler
thanks 1 user thanked Peter1000 for this useful post.
Capybara on 9/11/2020(UTC)
Capybara  
#4 Posted : Friday, September 11, 2020 12:47:20 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Peter1000 Go to Quoted Post
The risk with a liquid cooler is even smaller than with a huge mechanical fan. The pad that comes on the CPU is small, the fan is mounted on the "ceiling" of the case.
We use these ones.
cooler


Thanks for your feedback Peter. Do you move your computers around a lot? Over the years, even withh grip, lighting and cameras, we have seen damage and lots of things coming loose with the
repeated cyclic vibrations that happen in vehicles. Do you think with our configuration we even need additional cooling beyond the three case fans?

mtone  
#5 Posted : Friday, September 11, 2020 1:22:19 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Capybara Go to Quoted Post
Over the years, even withh grip, lighting and cameras, we have seen damage and lots of things coming loose with the
repeated cyclic vibrations that happen in vehicles.



im curious what have you seen come loose ? also what sort of conditions created the problems ? was it people still being careful in a normal car or was it roadie throwing stuff around a trailer ?

Ive always used laptops when out and about but im looking at buiding a desktop in a rack case to move around.. i have been wondering how robust it would be..
Capybara  
#6 Posted : Friday, September 11, 2020 1:43:37 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: mtone Go to Quoted Post
Originally Posted by: Capybara Go to Quoted Post
Over the years, even withh grip, lighting and cameras, we have seen damage and lots of things coming loose with the
repeated cyclic vibrations that happen in vehicles.



im curious what have you seen come loose ? also what sort of conditions created the problems ? was it people still being careful in a normal car or was it roadie throwing stuff around a trailer ?

Ive always used laptops when out and about but I'm looking at building a desktop in a rack case to move around.. i have been wondering how robust it would be..


Hey Mtone.

Over the year, I've seen all sorts of things come loose and or break. C-stand knuckles always come loose, no matter how hard you crank them down before driving.
Have seen screws vibrate out of the PC case, the retaining screws that hold PCIe cards in the CPU. I had a Mac G5 tower back in the day that had an internal 4 drive RAID
and an Aja Kona card and the card would come loose. I used to drive from home to my work with it quite often, it was heavy and pretty built out and while nothing
ever "broke" from being transported, things definitely came loose and fell out internally. It's scary when you hear loose screws rattling around your case when you pick it up.

This is taking very good care of the gear, placing the CPU on towels and blankets. No rough handling, but cars hit potholes, speedbumps, edges of curbs and driveways.
Just riding in a car, for a piece of electronic gear, can be tough. Our bodies and the car's suspension make things that could be harmful to gear feel not that
significant to us.


mtone  
#7 Posted : Friday, September 11, 2020 1:15:43 PM(UTC)
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no probs... i'll look to be careful as i can then i guess.. use something shock absorbing under the case in the car, was also thinking no mechanical hard drives would prob be a good idea..

i was looking at air coolers the other day.. some of the noctua models look like they do a decent job compared to water cooling. my concern with transporting water cooled system is any problems such as a leak could be a major thing whereas an air cooler problem can probably be fixed a lot easier. the main concern with air cooling is a large fan/heatsink is top heavy and only has motherboard screws for support.. i was thinking to maybe macguyver an extra bracket attached to the top of the fan and then to the case for extra height support.. there are also some air coolers with less bulky heatsinks/fans which still seem to do a decent job..
Capybara  
#8 Posted : Friday, September 11, 2020 1:29:23 PM(UTC)
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I just spoke with a local builder who put together another vMix build for us today. He builds all kinds of systems.
In his opinion, he doesn't think we need liquid cooling unless we are overclocking. He (and I agree with him, I think?)
feels that if you buy the right case with a decent amount of case fans, we may not even need a dedicated CPU fan.

It's just tough to know without hands on experience with a specific build, case, to know what a particular build is going to perform like
and it seems like all of us are using different i/o, streaming resolutions (Yes, we have a repeat client we are streaming 4K for!) I just want to spec this next build so that it just works well and reliably for a long time to come.

I would seriously consider liquid for a stationary studio build because having a QUIET system is so important when you
are wrangling eight callers and a lot of roll ins. That obnoxious fan noise is a detriment in the studio. But this particular
system will get carted in and out of the studio so I think I am off of liquid cooling.
mtone  
#9 Posted : Friday, September 11, 2020 5:58:07 PM(UTC)
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if you buy an air cooler that is compatible with the CPU and you arent overclocking i wouldnt expect too many problems with temperature, my concern is how well does it hold up to being moved around regularly. which probably comes down to how heavy/bulky it is and how well the bracket is designed..

also.. have you seen nvidias 3000 series cards are about to be released ? if you are building from scratch, the 3090 is listed as having large performance increases over the previous generation cards.. might be worth checking out if you dont already own the P5000..
Capybara  
#10 Posted : Saturday, September 12, 2020 12:40:00 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: mtone Go to Quoted Post
if you buy an air cooler that is compatible with the CPU and you arent overclocking i wouldnt expect too many problems with temperature, my concern is how well does it hold up to being moved around regularly. which probably comes down to how heavy/bulky it is and how well the bracket is designed..

also.. have you seen nvidias 3000 series cards are about to be released ? if you are building from scratch, the 3090 is listed as having large performance increases over the previous generation cards.. might be worth checking out if you dont already own the P5000..


I did see that new series, not sure if it allows the same unlimited encoding (not even sure what you guys call it) of multiple streams though, that's why we have put the Quadros in all of our vMix builds to date (three so far)

mjgraves  
#11 Posted : Thursday, September 17, 2020 4:00:19 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Capybara Go to Quoted Post
I would seriously consider liquid for a stationary studio build because having a QUIET system is so important when you
are wrangling eight callers and a lot of roll ins. That obnoxious fan noise is a detriment in the studio. But this particular
system will get carted in and out of the studio so I think I am off of liquid cooling.


I use an Airptop PC from Compulab. It's a fanless custom workstation. The entire case, which is quite small, is a metal array of heat pipes & sinks. The case dissipates 300 watts

https://fit-iot.com/web/products/airtop3/

Mine is older, with an i7-5775c and GTX 750 TI. There's a ton of I/O but only one PCIe 16x slot for the GPU.

The third generation Aitrop can handle Core i9 9900K 8-core CPU + Quadro RTX 4000 graphics. There are options for various CPUs, GTX, RTX or Quadro GPUs.

No TB3 yet (bummer!) but there's an optional built-in 4x Gbit NIC with 802.3af PoE on all ports.

These are designed for industrial applications. Very rugged. 5-year warranty.
Capybara  
#12 Posted : Thursday, September 17, 2020 4:24:21 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: mjgraves Go to Quoted Post
Originally Posted by: Capybara Go to Quoted Post
I would seriously consider liquid for a stationary studio build because having a QUIET system is so important when you
are wrangling eight callers and a lot of roll ins. That obnoxious fan noise is a detriment in the studio. But this particular
system will get carted in and out of the studio so I think I am off of liquid cooling.


I use an Airptop PC from Compulab. It's a fanless custom workstation. The entire case, which is quite small, is a metal array of heat pipes & sinks. The case dissipates 300 watts

https://fit-iot.com/web/products/airtop3/

Mine is older, with an i7-5775c and GTX 750 TI. There's a ton of I/O but only one PCIe 16x slot for the GPU.

The third generation Aitrop can handle Core i9 9900K 8-core CPU + Quadro RTX 4000 graphics. There are options for various CPUs, GTX, RTX or Quadro GPUs.

No TB3 yet (bummer!) but there's an optional built-in 4x Gbit NIC with 802.3af PoE on all ports.

These are designed for industrial applications. Very rugged. 5-year warranty.


Very interesting. Unfortunately that wouldn't work for this build as we are putting in a Quadro RTX5000 GPU, a BMD Decklink Quad 2, a BMD four input HDMI interface,
we will have cards galore and will need lots of slots and lanes. I bought an air CPU Cooler and the case will have five or six fans it it. I will be building another vMix system
in the coming months that will be centered around traveling for live streams. It will be in a small SilverStone or other mini case. At that point, the big system I am
building now may get relegated to staying in studio, although we really like to have two systems on location for large corporate live streams where everything HAS to work
and there is no option for failure/computer problems.

At that point, I may convert this build to liquid cooling but we'll see how the Noctua Air CPU Cooler I bought works out.
Are there popular apps or tools for measuring case internal temps? I see people post results but I don't know how
they're getting those numbers? I spending $2K on my GPU alone so I really don't want to fry it or my CPU of course.

Peter1000  
#13 Posted : Thursday, September 17, 2020 9:38:24 PM(UTC)
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I would prefer water cooling in a portable system. The pad on the CPU is very small. The 3 fan cooler (Corsair H150) on the top of the case is connected with 2 very stable flexible tubes.
A cooler like the Noctua Air CPU Cooler has a very large mass and the danger of the heavy cooler breaking during transport is higher.
Our system travels a lot and without any problems. GPU is a GeForce® RTX 2080 Ti. About the same size as the RTX5000. 1x BM8k, 1x BM Duo2, 1x BM HDMIRecorder.
mtone  
#14 Posted : Thursday, September 17, 2020 10:39:55 PM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Capybara Go to Quoted Post
At that point, the big system I am
building now may get relegated to staying in studio, although we really like to have two systems on location for large corporate live streams where everything HAS to work
and there is no option for failure/computer problems.



do you use vmix exclusively for those corporate jobs ? have you ever had any major issues with it in that environment ? id be curious to hear how it holds up over time in situations where expectations are always high..
Capybara  
#15 Posted : Wednesday, January 13, 2021 11:23:07 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: mtone Go to Quoted Post
Originally Posted by: Capybara Go to Quoted Post
At that point, the big system I am
building now may get relegated to staying in studio, although we really like to have two systems on location for large corporate live streams where everything HAS to work
and there is no option for failure/computer problems.



do you use vmix exclusively for those corporate jobs ? have you ever had any major issues with it in that environment ? id be curious to hear how it holds up over time in situations where expectations are always high..


Been away from the forums for a while over the holidays but getting back to you, we mostly use vMix for corporate and broadcast work even and it's been pretty solid. We occasionally use LiveStream Studio
as vMix isn't really optimized for the live TV/event workflow where you get hit with constant last minute changes that can be impossible or difficult to implement into vMix.

LiveStream Studio is much more like a traditional video switcher and it can be more flexible if there are a lot of last minute changes. That said, we generally like vMix much better, it's just that when you build a show with
150 to 250 events in it in vMix and then a producer wants to you insert a spare 55 title cards five minutes before air, vMix isn't the right tool. That's stressful no matter what you are using but moving stuff around at the last
minute isn't vMix's strong suite.

vMix is amazing when we have a show where we have done a live rehearsal and tech rehearsal and the show it SET and we are going to broadcast it. Not as good when producers have a million last
minute changes like on fundraisers, galas and telethons, I am starting to budget for an extra graphics person and workstation to handle last minute changes to L3s, new title cards, inputting
into live scrolls, etc. It's not even vMix, it's that that kind of workflow demands a TV control room model where you have a director, TD, VTR, Sound Mixer and graphics person, each on their own
workstations. Expecting one person on one vMix station to handle all of that at once is physically impossible.

Overall, after using the crap out of vMix in 2020, which was our first year using it, huge thumbs up, it's an AMAZING tool and overall, has been very reliable although we did have it totally
crash in the middle of (thank goodness) a talent tech rehearsal with 8 vMix callers and not the show. Still don't know why it did that but that could also have just been a Windows/PC issue and
not a vMix issue.

I say to any who are on the fence, there is really nothing else like vMix on the market. But you have to put some serious bucks into your build it you are going to use it professionally for paying clients.
Our latest build was about $12k all in and there plenty of users on here who have sunk even more into their builds. if you're using it at a low, undemanding level, you don't need that. But when you are doing eight live cameras, revolving groups
of 8 vMix Callers, tons of graphics and overlays and lots of events, you need a monster system.
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