building a system for video editing..

[dan_]

Hey, just joined here.

I am interested in building an extremely cheap computer for video editing purposes.
You see, right now I am doing my video editing on a 5 year old compaq system with a 2.0ghz northwood and 512mb of ram... it's pretty slow.

So here's my question:

Say I build an extremely cheap computer with a processor like the amd athlon 64 x2 3600+. That processor is finally in my price range on newegg (about $90).

How much of a performance increase would I see using adobe premiere pro and adobe after effects? Would it be a dramatic increase?
Enough to justify building a new computer?

I'm not really able to compare them because whatever benchmarks I found of one, the other wasn't benchmarked with.

 

[cattbert]

Welcome. I can sympathize with your desire to upgrade for video editing ... I finally bit the bullet and built my current system after getting a digital camcorder and taking six hours of video on my last vacation ... my P4 2.8 ghz/1.5 gig ram computer was choking on such large files. Video editing speed depends on cpu, memory and hard drives (not just how fast, but number of drives as well) ... video cards don't have any impact.

I am sure you will see a dramatic improvement from the cpu upgrade alone, but without your overall budget and list of items you can carry over from your old computer, it will be impossible for anyone to give you advice on what your best options are.

If your budget is extremely tight, then your best bet is to come up with a plan, but pick up parts here and there when they are on an especially good sale. For example, right now you could pick up an Ultra mid-tower case for free after a $40 rebate (including free s&h) at Fry's:

http://shop2.outpost.com/product/5124886?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

I have used this case before for a budget build and it is quite good ... no sharp edges, both sides come off for easy installation of the drives, has front USB & firewire. It will not stack up to $100+ cases, but on a tight budget it is a great deal.

 

[alcattle]

Checking Tom's CPU 2005 charts, they had a 64 x2 3800 and the pent 2.0 and the AMD ran 3-4 times faster on graphic type apps. Add to that you will add more memory and it should just fly compared to the current rig. I would think about a $500 system unless you have anything usuable in the old box

 

[dan_]

ok. That computer has a 2ghz p4, 512mb of ram, two 80gb hard drives and one 120gb hard drive, and two external drives: a 60gb one and a 250gb one.

My budget is extremely low (due to the fact I am 15 and have no job.. lol) so I'll probably be trying to build this system for around $400 or less.


So I could probably take a couple of those drives and put them in a new computer.

 

[alcattle]

I threw together a bare bone system, $303 hope link works
Cheap system

 

[dan_]

link doesn't work

 

[alcattle]

Hate when that happens, we will do it the hard way :?
Rosewill R604-P BK 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower $29
GIGABYTE GA-M61VME-S2 Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 / nForce 400 $59
COOLMAX V-500 ATX 500W Power Supply $28
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Windsor 2.0GHz 2 x 256KB $80
A-DATA 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) $73
LITE-ON Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X $29
Subtotal: $303.96