Stupid girlfriend! 1300$ Video Rendering System

Sorry guys but this one is urgent and it would be fantastic if you could help me out.

My girlfriend forgot to close the balcony door, a video project that got to be done by this Wednesday (deadline) was rendering, we left the house for some shopping, a thunderstorm came, wind blew the rain inside so my computer got soaked and screwed. Arrgh!

I keep my girlfriend but I need a new computer to finish my work (at least I had a backup) and I got to get the system tomorrow. I bought my last computer 1.5 years ago so I do not know what would be best right now but here are some details:


What do I want this system for?
I will render some video projects via Premiere CS4, some of them in HD. This is pretty much all I want to do with this machine besides some general stuff like Photoshop, surfing and maybe sometimes gaming but that doesn't really matter. I know I won't get a killer HD rendering monster for 1300$ but it would be good to get one that's just as good as possible and I could upgrade well during the year.

Things I need for 1300$
- The system should be a raid system with 2x500gig hard drives.
- I need everything besides the OS, keyboard, mouse.
- If possible I would love to get a 22" monitor that is able to display HD along with a HD capable gfx card.

I know some of you here are up to date and can suggest a great system. It would be great if someone could help me out. I will try to do as much research as I can today as well.

+1 to WR2's list.

Maybe with 2 of those 4GB RAM kits, if you have a 64-bit Windows and your video projects are large.

Maybe a GA-EP45-UD3R instead of the GA-EP45-UD3P. That saves you $15 and gives you an additional PCI slot. On the other hand, the GA-EP45-UD3P has two PCI-E slots. If you want to use 3 or 4 monitors eventually, then get the GA-EP45-UD3P, and add a HD 4650 or HD 4670 in the second PCI-E slot when you buy the third monitor.

Thank you. Some things changed.
I realized I do need a i7 system so I will have to go for a cheaper gfx card that is supported by Adobe which will be the ATI 4850 and a regular 22" monitor (no HD resolution).

I also realized I have two 500gb hard drives in a shitty NAS and I can use them as file storage and get a faster boot drive instead and a 1TB harddrive.

So this is my idea now:

i7 - 920
Asus P6T DELUXE X58 Socket 1366
OCZ 6/1333 TRIPLE 6GB (3x2048MB) 1333 MHz CL 9-9-9
SAPPHIRE ATI HD 4850
Some 650+WATT PSU
Some decent case
Some 22" monitor

What kind of bootdrive should I get? Will every 7200rpm / 32mb do?
Any other recommendations to the specs I posted above?

With a 4850 as your video card (and the rest you listed) you only need a good quality 450W PSU. 4850 PSU recommendation look under System Requirements.

WD Caviar Black 640GB or 1TB is about as fast as you'll get unless you step up to the WD Velociraptors.

I probably just play save and go for a 600W psu. I will also just get one 1 TB WD Caviar Black like suggested and make a clean startup patition.

Then I put the other two 500 gb hds in as raid.

I also found this cheap monitor that could display HD video. I might try to squeeze that in my budget.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6824001314

A big thank you to all of you. I was already worried I would end being confused and have to buy some shitty system tomorrow but now I'm quite confident I have a decent build.

I don't get the difference between the Asus P6T and the Asus P6T Deluxe.
Which one should I get?

http://asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID= [...] templete=2
http://asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=vXixf82co6Q5v0BZ

I do not plan to overclock the system and got to save some money.

if you don't plan to tri-sli either .... consider teh gigabyte ex58 ud3r - it's 185$ at newegg and at microcenter, and would save u $100 on the mobo. Also if you don't plan on OC'ing, the aluminum heat sink (vs copper on the asus) for the cpu should work fine.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128375
http://www.microcenter.com/single_ [...] id=0304422


The OCZ ram at newegg is now 77$ with free shipping. Save $13.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product


The WD Caviar Black 500 is 70$ on amazon with free shipping. That should save $20. You can get the 640 as well for 5$ more each.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digi [...] 836&sr=1-5



Total saved: $123

No the regular P6T will handle the ram just fine. Get the ram that jackbravo suggested. Its first rate, I will vouche for its performance and quality.

i didn't see you didn't need the hd's anymore...

if you want a high def monitor (this may be a bit overkill) but it's a sweet deal for $230

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produ [...] lang=en-US

More options:

(btw - the 500gb caviar black are also 32mb cache)

Monitors:
Sceptre 24" 1080p $220
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produ [...] lang=en-US

Prebuilt:
CyberPower PC i7/gts250/6gb ram $1100
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produ [...] 71&topnav=

Dell XPS 435 i7/3650 $1000 + upgrade the gfx card for $150
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produ [...] 71&topnav=

Dell XPS WITH High Def Monitor - i7/HT 4670
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produ [...] 71&topnav=

that may be true however, he can pick up a prebuilt comp TODAY vs. wait till the end of the week for his parts to ship. Didn't he say the project was due on Wed?

I have the system now next to me and its awesome. Thanks guys! It's damn fast even though I hate the switch from XP 32 to Vista 64. Can't wait until Windows 7 comes out.

I also bought a 23" 1920 x 1080 samsung monitor so I can finally watch some HD stuff. Great great great and I wouldnt have such a dope system without you guys. Thanks!

deltakid, here is one of the best recommendations yet: MAX out your ram to 12GB. I use PPro CS4 too and read a great article on DigitalContentProducer.com discussing PPro CS4 and its ability to use more than 4GB of ram in Vista x64. Encoding times were 50-800% faster with 8GB+ of ram vs 4GB in 32bit, and this was for HD encoding too.

I hope you didn't waste any money on faster ram because most, if not all of the X58 boards go down to 1066 or 1333 MHz when all 6 slots are full. I know this due to another thread where someone asked if the ASUS P6T manual was correct in stating this. With enough Ram, PPro will actually be able to use a higher % of the 4 cores. And if you use After Effects and/or Dynamic Link, you will need at least 12GB of ram. The test at DCP showed D-L using over 8GB of ram.

Good Luck(not with your PC, but with your GF

It still wouldn't have been a waste if he had gotten the faster ram. If he did, that ram will downclock to the max supported speed, but you will be able tighten up the timings since it will be running at a slower speed, which will give you better performance still, just make sure its stable by running some passes of memtest. If you do decide to get a full 12gigs, get the same kit you did so that when you overclock the timings one of your kits isn't bottlenecking the other one.