Build for Video Editing and Some Computation.

[tavis]

Hi.

I'm trying to put together a build for video editing (with CS5) and large statistical computations. I'd like to have it in an HTPC case that can go with my living room components. For both the stats and the video editing, I'm choosing a multi-core processor; for video, I'd like CUDA processor that's supported by CS5. I DO NOT INTEND TO PLAY ANY GAMES ON THIS SYSTEM. Here's what I've come up with:

Not needed: Video monitors, speakers, Keyboard, Mouse

Case: Silverstone LC10B-E $116
Mobo: ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 $240
Processor: Intel Core i7-960 3.2 GHz $570
Memory: Kingston HyperX 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) $392
GPU: ASUS ENGTX480/2DI/1536MD5 GeForce GTX 480 $500
Power supply: CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W $110
Drives: 4x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM $320
Optical: LG Black 10X Blu-ray Burner - Bulk SATA Model WH10LS30 $140

This works out to $2388, which is about my budget, unless I'm forgetting something. My main concern is whether the case can take the heat, and whether I'd need extra parts to dissipate it. I don't intend to do overclocking, only because it makes me nervous about part longevity, even more heat, etc. I'd welcome any suggestions.

Thanks,
Tavis

 

[gkay09]

Sticky - Would give us more info on your requirements, budget and such...
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261222-31-build-advice

As for the parts,
1. CPU - I would rather go with i7 930...You can easily set it to run at i7 960's speed without increasing the CPU voltage too...So you instantly save ~$300 there...

2. GPU - Go with GTX 465...that would suffice...GTX 480 is a very power hungry card and for such tasks, even the GTX 465 would suffice...

3. PSU - You wont need 750W for that setup...Get the Corsair 650TX instead...Or even better the Corsair HX650 as it is modular and for such a case, going with modular PSUs is better...

4. HDD - I would rather get the Samsung F3 1TBs...they are slightly faster, and mainly more reliable...

5. SSD - For such a budget, not getting a SSD?? Saving on the CPU, you can easily get a 100/ 120GB SSDs...

And as for overclocking, when done right with the right components, I dont think you would have any issues relating to longevity and heat...

 

[tavis]

Hi.

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't have an exact budget, but $2,000 to $2,500 seems right. I plan to buy in the next couple of weeks. My main usage is HD video editing, using CS5, and statistical crunching using Stata and R. Regarding the parts:

1. I certainly see that I would be paying twice the price for a 20% speed boost, which doesn't seem cost efficient. I'm nervous about overclocking, but I guess with the savings I could always buy a second one if the first one failed.

2. For the GPU, I'm looking for a card supported by the CS5 Mercury playback engine. So far they've only announced that the 285 and the 480, and probably the 470, will be supported. The 470 didn't seem that much cooler or less power-hungry than the 480; having looked at the 465, I can see that there is a definite drop in temperature and power consumption, so I'll give it a serious look.

3. For the PSU, I've seen benchmarks showing that the GTX 480 consumes up to 475 watts when loaded, and the i7 960 uses 130 watts when loaded. That leaves 35 watts for the memory, hard drives, and motherboard. Which seems like it might be pushing it. But maybe there's something about these power consumption specs I don't know.

4. I'll happily take the advice on the drives, as I don't know which ones are rated well these days.

5. Using an SSD (I assume for the system partition). My current plan is to partition this system half Windows 7 (for the CS5 work), half Ubuntu (for everything else I do including the computational work). I'd rather not split the system partitions across drive volumes, rather not put an SSD on the same volume as the drives, and rather (for the sake of future-proofness) have system partitions larger than 60 GB. But maybe there's a way of doing this that I'm not thinking of.

Thanks again for all of the suggestions.

Best,
Tavis

 

[gkay09]

This review gives you an idea of the actual power consumption of the system with an overclocked i7 and a GTX 480...
http://www.guru3d.com/article/zotac-geforce-gtx-480/9

And as for the card supporting CS5 mercury playback engine support, you might want to check it again...
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/performance/

Adobe is planning to support additional cards in the future, including some of the new NVIDIA solutions based on the upcoming Fermi parallel computing architecture.

So it might not be just 1 card...

And dint notice the RAM that you had linked...
Go with 3 or 6 RAM sticks as i7 9xx CPUs have Tri-Channel memory controllers and hence to take advantage of it, you must either populate 3 or 6 RAM slots...
So go with 3x 4GB kit...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231356

As for the SSD, you can use it just for the OS and CS5 suite...or get a smaller SSD to be used as a scratch disk...