Building a new Computer for Editing & General use

[Murrelet]

I have been looking at some pretty nice components, and since I was a gamer, tend to look at the hottest stuff I can barely afford. But when I was going through the latest components it suddenly occurred to me I may be barking up the wrong tree.

I think I ought to invest in a fairly fast CPU (Intel E 6600)and good mobo (MSI P965 Platinum), get a load of ram (2gigs minimum), but the graphics card is a mystery as I'm not sure editing relies on what the new and very expensive cards are capable of.

So that's my first question, just what should I be looking for in a graphics card for editing purposes?

The next is 2 HDD storage. Fast, expensive SATA HDD's abound, figure I should get as big as the budget would allow for the "D", and slightly smaller for the "C", the idea being to store the edited clips on the "D" (WD Caviar RE2-WD5000 YS)

Any advice?

[Murrelet]

This for a design of a computer set up:

http://www.videoguys.com/DIY5updateNAB07.html

This one for a discussion of graphics cards:

http://www.videoguys.com/DIY-GPU.html

[Vicne]

I think I ought to invest in a fairly fast CPU (Intel E 6600) and good mobo (MSI P965 Platinum), get a load of ram (2gigs minimum)

Exactly my setup :-)
Power is excellent - SuperPI 1M in 21.3 sec without any overclocking - and I'm very satisfied.
Only drawback : I (and many others) have encountered issues with the PATA controller. MSI integrated a JMicron controller (as the P965 chipset doesn't have a Parallel ATA anymore) and it's a source of problems for many (search "jmicron problem" on Google for an idea). Asus also use JMicron and it seems the Gigabyte PATA controller is a rebranded JMicron one too :-(... So my advice is : do not rely on PATA if you can.

but the graphics card is a mystery as I'm not sure editing relies on what the new and very expensive cards are capable of.
So that's my first question, just what should I be looking for in a graphics card for editing purposes?

NVidia is generally considered a better choice than ATi for HD. I wanted a fanless one and settled on a 7600GS. With Media Player Classic, I can decode and play four MPEG2 1080i TS files in parallel without a glitch.
Today, some fanless 7600GT are available - notably the Gigabyte NX76T256D-RH Silencer - so I'd probably go for it...
Of course you can use higher-end cards, but they are targeted at gamers and are much more expensive (and noisy).


The next is 2 HDD storage. Fast, expensive SATA HDD's abound, figure I should get as big as the budget would allow for the "D", and slightly smaller for the "C", the idea being to store the edited clips on the "D" (WD Caviar RE2-WD5000 YS)
I'm still running with a 300 Gig PATA "D" + new 250 Gig SATA "C+E", but want to get rid of the buggy PATA controller.
I think the sweet spot currently is 500 Gig (Samsung Spinpoint HD501LJ is one of the quietest and also rather cheap), so I'm thinking of upgrading to 250Gb "C" + 2x500Gb "D" in RAID-0 (1Tb capacity balanced on the two drives). I think that should give excellent performance at a very reasonable price

Hope it helps.

Vicne

[Murrelet]

It is a big help, thanks.

Today a seller in GB posted 4 Epox 8RDA+ boards, so I got one to replace mine, whew...now I can coast....probably should have got 2....lol

The new computer:
To cut costs I decided on a WD Caviar 250GB "C", and for the the "D", until some of the 500's come down in price and the volume of my editing increases (I'll look at the Sammy). The graphics card will be a GeForce 8800GTS, or "GTX" if it drops in price by the time I'm ready to purchase. Power will be a 650w or 700w Fortron or something similar. Then there are all the goodies like cooler, case, opticals, and ram.

I found it interesting that Vegas 7 didn't use opengl, wonder why.

[Murrelet]

The PNY series of Quadro FX cards 541/560/1500 look interesting and dedicated to visual media, but as Vegas 7 doesn't use OpenGL, seems it's built for the higher end editing programs.

http://www.pny.com/products/quadro/fx/1500PciEx.asp

Up here the 1500's a special order at around $700.

And again the link to an article discussing which card goes best with which NLE


http://www.videoguys.com/DIY-GPU.html

[Murrelet]

Man alive....okay, I received the first mobo that would take my Athlon Barton 2800, installed it, but of course the HDD and all files are set up for an Epox 8RDA+, so it would have meant a complete re-installation of everything. Not a bad idea for the long run, but I had no recent backup of some fairly important stuff...ya, I know, just shoot me....

I happened to be on eBay looking for some other boards as I wasn't really impressed with the one I got, and found a new post from a guy in England selling the Epox mobo I needed, and ordered one. It arrived 2 days sooner that it took for the mobo from the States to arrive. I installed it, got it up and running with no problems other than it wouldn't recognize the opticals, IDE 2 being a dud connection. Emailed the seller and he had another board in the mail, the service being just excellent.

The new board arrived, got it installed, but the BIOS was out of date and wouldn't recognize my 2G of twinned ram, an Epox problem with the early releases of the various BIOS's. I flashed the BIOS with an updated file (back from 05) that would handle the Corsair ram. Still nothing, post stopping at some weird post sequence that made no sense.

Removed the board, figuring I would pop the BIOS chip out of the board with the hooped IDE 2, and pop that chip into the new board. I was looking at the IDE 2 hooped board on the back, to see if I could pop it from there when I noticed a weird little solder job on the IDE 2 pins. It flashed in the sun, looking like it might be touching another pin. It was so small I had to go find a magnifying glass to see it properly. Sure enough, the solder crossed the gap, not even trace width or depth. I took a kitchen paring knife and scraped away the solder, loaded all my boards, ram, cpu, fans, and cables onto the mobo, slid it back in, and fired it up.....voila!! ....she works....perfectly!

Yesterday afternoon I ghosted the 60GB "C" to my 120GB slave ("G"), man did that take a long time. 200,000 files to copy. Today I switched out the "C" moved up the "G" to "C" and added a new 300GB "G" drive that I will now format...wonder how long that will take!

Whew!! Nice to be up and running again.....know what time it is?....:hv20-smilie71:

[SuperSean23]

I just built a new pc, and so far im pretty pleased.

Specs (all bought from newegg)

Intel Duel Core e6600
320gb 7200 hard drive
2gb ram
XFX GeForce 7600GT 256mb
20 inch lcd screen

cost after rebates...$900

Let me know what you guys think of my new rig. So far i love it, although i'll definatly want to update my video card, add another hard drive, and i'd like a hd tv tuner.

[sp8ce07]

My advice is to steer clear from anything Western Digital. Especially their larger hard drives, one's that are above 250 gig. I have had several friends and family members, including myself experience those drives falling apart after about 1-1.5 years of consistent use. Since then I have purchased, SEVEN, Seagate hard drives - which all come with incredible warranty support and stability.

So, if you still have the option choose Seagate.