OK, Panic mode, or ( My wife is gonna kill me...)

[A10guy]

I have just ordered the parts to build a new PC. I thought that I had a general idea of what we needed, but having a newborn baby crying in the background and a testy, anxious wife calling for backup in the foreground, I have to admit that I may have overlooked a couple of things. Here is the list of what is coming in the mail, and then I will list what my concerns are. I am mostly looking to build a PC for video editing from our camcorder and storing digital pics the baby and of us, and maybe for the occasional game. I currently have Studio 9 and am hoping that it's adequate. Here is the list.

CPU: Q6600
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4
Case: Thermaltake Kandalf LCS
Ram: Patriot Viper 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1066
Video: EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768MB
Drives: 2x WD1500ADFDRTL 10,000 RPM
PSU: PC Power & Cooling S75QB EPS12V 750W Power Supply
DVD: LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner
OS: Windows XP SP2

My panic questions are these. If I do the drives in a RAID 0 for speed of compiling and rendering the video, should I have another drive for the OS or should I get another drive and do everything in another RAID array? Should I get another larger and slower drive for pictures and things that don't require speed? If I were to put a game on the drive, does it matter if it is on a slower drive or should it be on the RAID drives for the best game play? I am coming up with more and more doubts now that the order is final and I am second guessing myself. All thoughts are welcome and any help is greatly appreciated..

 

[Conumdrum]

Those are 150 gig drives? Do them in raid for the operating system and the converting. Get a 750 G for storing the files once they are done.

 

[Conumdrum]

You got a Thermaltake case with watercooling? Please say no. Thermaltake in the WC real world is absolute crap. The make some nice cases, but their WC stuff is junk. I know, I WC, and have learned whats good and bad, besides the guys who have WC for 10 years.

 

[rwayne]

I think an 8800GTX 768MB video card is beyond overkill for the casual PC user who plans to do video editing & digital pictures. The 8800GTX is the ulitmate gaming card but is really not suited very well for multimedia at all. The 8800GTX off loads almost all (if not all) multimedia duties to the CPU instead of processing it itself. It is purely a gaming video card. The newer 8800GTs are far better oriented for multimedia than 8800GTX which costs about twice as much.

(Considering that you are using XP instead of Vista) ATI cards such as a 2600XT or HD3650 would be better suited for Video Editing and digital pictures. For some reason Nvidia's 8 series (or at least the 8600GTS) is not geared towards XP and performs poorly in comparison with ATI's cards where as with Vista it's performance is closer to par with ATI.

Read this article and look at the benchmarks:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/26/avivo_hd_vs_purevideo/index.html

ATI's Avivo does far better than Nvidia's Pure Video on Windows XP. From what I understand Nvidia should soon be releasing an updated and improved verison of their Pure Video software however I doubt they invested much time in drivers for a (previous generation) operating system like XP.

That is a very expensive build for a "family computer". I think you could had built an adquate machine for 1/3 the cost (or less).

 

[0gab0ga]

i wouldnt mind that computer if i had the cash, but its top of the line and not *the* best value for your money. anyway if i were you i would use evga's step up program to get the new 9800 series. that way you get your moenys worth. either way if there is anything you really wish you hadnt bought make a call and see if you can get your money back or if you can exchange it into something else. i know newegg are cool about this, specially if its unopened

since you are going to store picture and video i would definately get another drive just for that. find a way of backing it up (raid?). losing pics and vids is tough to swallow