Video Editing PC - Will this do?

kiackbldr

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Any thoughts on the following setup for video editing? Are there any compatibility issues that I'm overlooking? I plan to throw in a firewire card (for vid transfer) and TV tuner as well. I've got the case and psu separate, based on the near universal recommendation in the forum not to buy a combo, but does anyone think the Antec Sonata II with 450W combo would be an improvement? It seemed to have pretty good reviews.

Also, I don't plan to overclock (I might, if I understood what that really meant :) ), but the memory I picked is supposed to be OC-happy. Any problems with using this memory without intending to overclock? It's priced right with the Patriot sticks right now. It should run cooler with the heat spreader, so that's a benefit either way, right?

So without further ado . . .

Case
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Computer Case

PSU
Rosewill RV450S-2 ATX 2.01 450W Power Supply 115/230 V UL, CSA, UV, FCC

Motherboard
ASUS A8N-E Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard

CPU
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2000MHz HT 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor

Memory
CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory

Graphics Card
eVGA 256-P2-N381 Geforce 6800XT 256MB 256-bit DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card

Hard Drive (qty 2)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
 

bweir

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Looks pretty kosher for a video editing rig. You might want to look into the 300Gb Seagate 16mb cache drives, they are selling for about $110 each and would yield slightly better performance than the 8mb cache drives for a nominal increase in cost.
 

yourmothersanastronaut

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I agree. If you can't afford the premium of high-RPM Raptor or SCSI drives, then get a couple 16MB cache drives. They're the next best thing.

The only other thing I would change is the motherboard. If you can afford an SLI board, you'll love it. Not immediately of course, but eventually. For your use, I would suggest using SLI not for the clock speed or processing power but for the video memory. The more video memory you have in video editing, the better.

Good RAM. Since you're not planning to overclock, Corsair is some of the best RAM you can get. If you were, I would suggest OCZ on a budget (OCZ Platinum is comparable to Corsair's XMS line, but better OC'ing potential), or Crucial Ballistix DDR-500 if the sky were the limit.

Dual-displays? Handy as hell to have. I know from experience that having two displays, or at least a windescreen, is invaluable if you're doing editing or coding. And it's just plain cool.
 

joefriday

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You could save a few bucks and get an entry level graphics card if you are sure you'll only be doing video editing on this computer. A radeon 9250 would be fine.

EDIT: I must not have been paying attention earlier...of course a radeon 9250 won't work for you. An entry level PCI express card would work fine though (as long as it's not using shared memory).
 

AloeDesign

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The biggest factors in performance for you (besides cpu which is a fine choice) will be HD speed and amount of RAM. You would do well to get 2 of the 7200.8 HD and configure them in raid0 to help pull the video frames up faster. You WILL use up your memory... It might be a better idea to get 4gb of ho-hum ram in 1gb chips, than 2gb of expensive RAM, unless you intend to use it for gaming as well. I have to disagree about the comment of SLI vid cards.. the comment suggesting you get a slightly cheaper vid card I think is the correct perspective. While the video frames do obviously get pushed through the video card and it's ram.. the frames are not STORED there, but rather in the regular RAM, so saying that you need to buy 2 video cards to have more on board video ram is incorrect. It may help to some extent, but the cost/performance ratio will not be worthwhile. I do this for a living.. we use single 6800 cards on our professional rigs, and they are plenty. Hope this helps.
 

g-paw

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It doesn't look the MOBO has Firewire, which you'd want for capturing from a dgital camcorder. MOBO designated as Ultra usually have Firewre or wiht SLI, although from what I read not sure SLI would do you much good with just video but may be wrong on this.
 

kiackbldr

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bwier - on the HD, would the same hold for the WD Caviar with 16MB cache? It's about $50 cheaper than the 300 GB Seagate, and had friendlier reviews... Could get a third WD for just more than the two 300 GB Seagates if I was hungry for disk space.
 

kiackbldr

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And with the Epox board I come out $10 ahead. Thanks for the pointer!

So no one told me to avoid the Antec case / supply combo... My wife likes it better than the Cooler Master case--dare I succumb to the pressure?
 

g-paw

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And with the Epox board I come out $10 ahead. Thanks for the pointer!

So no one told me to avoid the Antec case / supply combo... My wife likes it better than the Cooler Master case--dare I succumb to the pressure?

Antec makes good cases, have 3, the best being the Sonata, the newest iteration is Sonata II. I have the 450 Watt PSU and it works fine for video editing, home movie stuff, pretty much capture, light editing, and burning. Case is pretty quiet as well and because it comes with a PSU a little cheaper and the PSU can always be replaced later if necessary. Biggest Plus is it will make your wife happy and anytime you can make a wife happy when buying your toys, you're way ahead of the game. :p
 

kiackbldr

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Mesa - Looks like there are some 1394 / 800 cards out there. Prices aren't too bad, but I might wait until they cram some bonus USB ports on the cards. Most of them have 2 B ports and 1 A port, but no USB.
 

madtatanka

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If u want a video editing solution I'll make a few changes:

1. Video Card PARHELIA APVe 128MB PCIe x16, Dual 400 MHz RAMDACs, DualHead up to 1920x1440 per display, Dual-DVI up to 1920x1200 per display, Dual-display plus video output mode, HDTV component video output, XYSIWYG video output plug-ins for leading video editing and compositing applications, (DVI to-DVI - HD15 cable, HD-15 to s-video and composite cable, DVI to 2x HD-15 cable, HD-15 to YPbPr cable, DVI to HD-15 adaptor)

2. HDD HDD WDIGITAL 74 GB 10000rpm 8Mb Serial-ATA 150 5,2ms WD740GD + HDD WDIGITAL 250 GB 7200rpm 8Mb Serial-ATA II 300 8,9ms WD2500JS

that's all :d
 

kiackbldr

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Thanks a bunch for your recommendations. Now if only my order would get off of Step 3, I'd be just giddy... And so would my wife with that pretty Sonata II case! I'm getting a little jealous, the way she looks at that case... I think she might have saved it as a favorite.

Now I have to go scavenge a CD ROM from my old computer so I will be able to install XP! Hmm... I might also need a couple A/B switches for my mouse and keyboard until I break down and buy new ones.
 

kiackbldr

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I have a little external do-jobber. If it's a nightmare to deal with, then I'll look to put something under the hood. Cross your fingers for me...
 

clue69less

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The biggest factors in performance for you (besides cpu which is a fine choice) will be HD speed and amount of RAM. You would do well to get 2 of the 7200.8 HD and configure them in raid0 to help pull the video frames up faster.

If you can afford it, a similar setup works well and that is to have a working disc array in RAID0 and a save disc area in RAID1. I have this on my home video editing rig and it works great. I put two 74GB Raptors in RAID0 and have a partition there for current work product. Any time I get to a logical backup point, I copy to a RAID1 array of two 400GB drives. Even though this gives me about 1/2 TB of space, I think more will be needed. I'm trying to figure out what parts would make sense for a BIG NAS server. Video just flat out eats HD space.
 

kiackbldr

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Update:

Computer assembled and running. And the case is very pretty, too. I even stuck the little Antec logo on it. Lotsa extra cables. I think I might use them to decorate the Christmas tree this year.

Stared at "Verifying DMI Pool Data" several times for several minutes each time until I disabled the hard drive boot--I had the sequence correct, but it didn't help until I took the HD out of the picture... After getting Windows installed, I had only 23 BSODs, until I figured out that the old CD ROM drive (the one I cannibalized from my old PC) was causing the problem. Since abandoning that scoundrel, it's been smooth computerin'. I even made a couple of test DVDs tonight.