Comments On Potential Build

[Kreij]

Build will be used almost exclusively for editing home-made underwater (SCUBA) videos, and no gaming at all.

CASE : NZXT LEXA S LEXS  79.99
PSU : Thermaltake TPG-605M 650W Gold Modular  159.99
CPU : Intel Core i7-2600 3.4Ghz LGA 1155 95W Quad Core  299.99
COOLER : XIGMATEK Gaia SD1283  29.99
MOBO : Asus P8P67 LE LGA 1155  144.99
GPU : Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB  169.99
RAM : Corsair 2GB DDR3 x 4 (8GB Total)  163.94
SSD : OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD  109.99
HDD : Seagate Baracuda 2TB 7200RPM  169.99
BLURAY : Pioneer 12X BD/DVD Burner  109.99
OS : Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OEM  99.99
MONITOR : Asus ML249H 24” LCD  249.99
					
Total : 1788.83

Comments appreciated.

 

[_Zod_]

Looks like overkill for video editing, the video card, CPU and case. I would do I5 and a 5770 instead, a cheaper Antec case and smaller power supply. Also you might want to go Win7 Pro instead of Home. Of course this all depends in whether you just like to throw money away, in which case disregard my comments

 

[Kreij]

Looks like Adobe is in the tank with Nvidia and only recommends their cards for Premeire. :/
They recommend a GTX570

The case was chosen for the style. They have a rather modern home.
I chose the i7 as he's doing full HD movies and thought it would be him from A to B quicker.

Not sure why you would recommend Pro instead of Home Premuim. ?

 

[Fourstaff]

I have absolutely no idea how a graphics card will improve the speed, but I think it might render faster for your eyes and that's it. Processor, you would want the fastest you can get your hands on, so i7 is good. Personally I would get 2x4gb ram, leaving enough room for more ram down the road. One thing I know about rendering is that it loves ram. The rest looks fine, probably drop PSU accordingly in relation to graphics (honestly speaking, 400w is more than enough imo for 6870+SNB). Cooler is probably also not necessary as SNB processors are nice and cool.

 

[garyinhere]

Build will be used almost exclusively for editing home-made underwater (SCUBA) videos, and no gaming at all.

CASE : NZXT LEXA S LEXS  79.99
PSU : Thermaltake TPG-605M 650W Gold Modular  159.99
CPU : Intel Core i7-2600 3.4Ghz LGA 1155 95W Quad Core  299.99
COOLER : XIGMATEK Gaia SD1283  29.99
MOBO : Asus P8P67 LE LGA 1155  144.99
GPU : Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB  169.99
RAM : Corsair 2GB DDR3 x 4 (8GB Total)  163.94
SSD : OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD  109.99
HDD : Seagate Baracuda 2TB 7200RPM  169.99
BLURAY : Pioneer 12X BD/DVD Burner  109.99
OS : Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OEM  99.99
MONITOR : Asus ML249H 24” LCD  249.99
					
Total : 1788.83

Comments appreciated.

I'd save some on the PSU and get the Corsair Enthusist for $80 it's not modular but it is 70 bucks cheaper
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V ...
Then you could also save on 8gb of ram and get 4 since you'll be having an SSD IMO
Do you think he'll see much of a differnce in the HDD if it is the green Seagate that cost $90 less?
Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM 6...
jst a few trims on it

 

[Kreij]

@4Staff : Are you saying to use the st.. stt.. stock cooler?
I've never done that before and it scares me. (Cooler is only $30 and it got good reviews)

I'm not sure the SSD will get him much benefit either. I could rework the drives and put in 16GB of RAM.

My rule of thumb when designing a build is pick expensive stuff and then prune to make perfect.
I really don't want to skimp on the PSU as that is one component where trying to save money can get you in a world of hurt in the future. Overkill is better with PSUs IMO.

@Gary : The case is not known to be great with non-modular PSUs. I had originall picked that one and changed to the TT for the modularity and gold rating.

 

[garyinhere]

I'm not sure the SSD will get him much benefit either. I could rework the drives and put in 16GB of RAM.

I honestly think they will notice an ssd more than upping the ram

 

[Kreij]

I'm not sure the SSD will help the editing process though. If the app will gobble up RAM to do it's think he would be happier than if he can get into windows a minute faster.

 

[Fourstaff]

@4Staff : Are you saying to use the st.. stt.. stock cooler?
I've never done that before and it scares me. (Cooler is only $30 and it got good reviews)

You can give me an infraction for that suggestion, but I maintain that stock cooler actually works, as tested by our brave Canadian friends.

I think 8Gb of ram + SSD is better than 16GB + no SSD, but I have never seen a benchmark to back my statement. SSD will dramatically improve boot times and things like that though.

 

[Kreij]

Consider yourself infracted 4Staff. I will take that into consideration if I want to shave off another $30.

I don't know either , but once the app is loaded into RAM I don't know how much disk access it will do when converting or encoding or whatever video programs do. I assumed (maybe mistakenly) that it would prefer more RAM.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

it depends on the resolution of the video is it raw footage, HD quality? etc etc if so get the extra ram

i can tell you right now just using Adobe Premiere pro with 4gigs Ram with raw digital HD from FRAPS takes ages to work with.... borrowing extra ram helped but i still managed to spill over into the page file.... for video editing its much like 3D modeling RAM + CPU are most important, that and lots of HDD space for raw footage.

id grab a samsung F4 320gb 7200rpm drive for the OS as its close to 160mb/s read write pretty much fastest 7200rpm drive you can grab

then use a 2tb green drive to store the raw footage. or work in a 3tb drive
Hitachi 3TB 5400rpm for $129
HITACHI Deskstar 0S03230 3TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache S...

Samsun F4 320gb $43
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ/U 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB...
both drives are about the same as the 1 seagate you were looking at. and will offer better workflow. the SSD would help in responsiveness but wont do next to anything in terms of the actually editing or how long it takes for it to spit out the final Video file

set page file and footage storage to the 3tb use the 320 for os apps, should keep things running smoothly overall and work in extra ram minimum 8gigs. id suggest more if hes using raw HD material. as some cameras shoot footage higher then standard HD getting into the 3840x2048 range or higher so yea all depends on what the raw footage and material is. that said i7 2600k good choice.

 

[Kreij]

So the wisdom would be to lose the cooler, lose the SSD, get a fast OS drive and a green for large storage?

He is currently using a 19" CRT, so I could probably go with a 22" monitor and shave a bit too.
(He completely nixed the idea of a 27" monitor. lol)


@Crazy : Why not put the pagefile on the faster OS drive?

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

because windows is using that drive, OS background services etc are already running from that drive and going to ram, example Photoshop 101 put the page file on an hdd that photoshop is not running from this applies to most apps from adobe, and other system intense apps,

 

[micropage7]

it looks well or maybe over kill little bit, but i guess if you have more why not
for multimedia editing you need more ram and powerful processor, it would help much
and for hdd the bigger is better coz youll save raw version of it often
ssd could be taken especially when you want faster boot and load
after market cooler could be considered but it aint must except you want it and your processor is kinda pretty hot
for psu 650 watt is enough for daily usage

 

[_Zod_]

Looks like Adobe is in the tank with Nvidia and only recommends their cards for Premeire. :/
They recommend a GTX570

The case was chosen for the style. They have a rather modern home.
I chose the i7 as he's doing full HD movies and thought it would be him from A to B quicker.

Not sure why you would recommend Pro instead of Home Premuim. ?

Longer support cycle and gpedit is available among other things such as RDP. It is possible that Premiere can use Cuda for encoding which would be why they recommend nVidia. This would take load off of CPU considerably allowing for a lesser CPU. But I doubt an I7 would give enough of a boost to encoding time for the money. Might even be better off with an AMD Six core actually. Start looking at video encoding benchmarks for the I5/7 and AMD six.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

from what i remember encoding with Nvidia is about equal to i7 encoding meaning theres no real benefit to either with the nvidia card using more power to get the job done. but that may have changed.. as for i7 2600k at least in adobe will be the superior chip it beats out the AMD x6 1100T rather handily, overall those apps still tend to favor intel especially with anything X264 based

 

[Kreij]

because windows is using that drive, OS background services etc are already running from that drive and going to ram, example Photoshop 101 put the page file on an hdd that photoshop is not running from this applies to most apps from adobe, and other system intense apps,

Okay, I may get schooled here after a long day at work and a couple of beers but I'll risk it...

Once the OS and Premeire are loaded, and sitting idle, there should be little to no paging happening, no? Remeber, he is doing nothing else on this computer, no internet, nothing.

If that is the case, once the editing starts would it not be better to use the faster drive for the paging (if it's even needed) than the slower green drive where the raw footage and the results are stored?

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Never buy a bottom of the barrel asus board, particularly on their mainstream lines like the P8P67. Here's a few cheaper, far less bios crippled options http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157230
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138317

You can take that savings and switch to a k, throw it up to 4 GHz which is 99.95% guaranteed to be stable on stock settings. With speed step it won't really use much more juice and the little speed boost certainly won't hurt.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

its better to put it on a drive that dosent have the app simply due to writing and reading of data, as most info from the program and if it crashes or atempts to auto save will be on the main drive so in respect to setting the app up properly your loading and saving work files from 1 drive and using the other drive as a page file / storage. it evens the load a bit.

 

[Kreij]

its better to put it on a drive that dosent have the app simply due to writing and reading of data, as most info from the program and if it crashes or atempts to auto save will be on the main drive so in respect to setting the app up properly your loading and saving work files from 1 drive and using the other drive as a page file / storage. it evens the load a bit.

So if I put the pagefile on the drive that the application is reading all the raw data from, and writing the resultant data to, during its execution it will be better?

You're going to have to show me benches to convince me on that one.

 

[bostonbuddy]

go for 12+ gigs of ram for video editing, its only a little more and editing will eat it up.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

look go consult adobe on it but every time you install there apps first thing it tells you is to put the page file somewhere else for best results, ill take there word for it since there the ones coding all the tools im using, and its been faster that way not a whole lot faster but enough that ive noticed it, i dont know the whole basis behind it, I just know that when in college for 3d modeling and animation mandatory rules were to have app on 1 drive page file on another and data saved to another different drive to keep things moving smoothly this applied to Maya 3ds max nuke, shake, and most adobe products i had to use.

I dont know why or how this works or why its done this way but ill take the word of adobe my former teachers and those who make 15x-30x my pay lol

 

[Kreij]

So keep the pagefile separate from both the app and the data (use 3 drives). That I can understand. I thought you were saying to put the PF on the data drive. That didn't make much sense to me as I would assume the data drive would get hammered when transfering a lot of data.

 

[Zyon]

How about getting two identical drives running RAID-0 and get a large storage third as backup device?

 

[silkstone]

I'd drop the SSD drive, go overkill on the ram and setup a ram drive for the cache file location. If there was enough spare cash left over, i'd go for a raid steup also.
A 6850 is a bit overkill for video editing, i'm sure you can get away with a card that is maybe 2 generations old, that's save you a big chunk of change too.