Specs for a video editing PC?

[Mike Barnard]

Hi.

A colleague at work (here in the UK) wants a new PC which he will
mostly use for editing family stuff from a camcorder and compiling
DVD's. My immediate thoughts are a powerful processor to work on the
rendering, lots of RAM and lots of storeage space. Basic graphics
card and onboard sound is fine. No need for RAID or other bells and
whistles.

Looking at Dabs.com I've come up with the following as a possibility.
What do you all think?

Case. Black with 400w PSU. Powerful enough?
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...ey=11145,373350000,351080000,4294957139,50010

Or as recomended elsewhere...
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...=11145,50882,4294957139,44110000&v=1#infoarea

Mobo. Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9. nForce4, not many extras, known brand.
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...geMode=1&NavigationKey=11143,4294959021,50509

CPU. Athlon64, 3500+ or higher.
http://www.dabs.com/productlist.asp...egorySelectedId=11147&PageMode=1& #Paging

Memory. 2 gig Crucial pc3200. 2x1gig dimm's. But what cas etc?
http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=3PYD

HDD. 1x300gig WD caviar 7200rpm. Reliable, affordable.
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...473,4294960494,41610000,4294963789,4294960493

Graphics. Raedon 300. Good enough.
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...e=1&NavigationKey=11137,43990000,11,43280000#

or Raedon 700 for some basic 3d games if the kids get a look in?
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...=1&NavigationKey=11137,43990000,12,4294956471

Many questions though...

DVD writer. Which one?
No floppy?
Which reasonable 17" TFT? About £150?
Internal card reader.
XP pro or multimedia edition?
Anything else? We've looked at DELL, but this is an alternative. Got
to look at all the options.

Your input is really appreciated. Thanks.

 

[philo]

Hi.

A colleague at work (here in the UK) wants a new PC which he will
mostly use for editing family stuff from a camcorder and compiling
DVD's. My immediate thoughts are a powerful processor to work on the
rendering, lots of RAM and lots of storeage space. Basic graphics
card and onboard sound is fine. No need for RAID or other bells and
whistles.

Looking at Dabs.com I've come up with the following as a possibility.
What do you all think?

<snip>

the specs you had listed should be fine...
if you really want to get fancy (expensive) an AMD X2 would be nice (even
the 3800)

 

[Mike Barnard]

<snip>

the specs you had listed should be fine...
if you really want to get fancy (expensive) an AMD X2 would be nice (even
the 3800)

Hi.

Thanks for the minireview! Thats was really all I needed to know.

Re the X2, reviews on places such as http://www.devhardware.com/ seem
to say that there is no real gain from a dual core yet. As it's not
my money I'd rather spend £139 on an athlon64 4400+ than £160 on an
X23800+. (prices and sizes from memory.)

 

[millt]

Hi.

A colleague at work (here in the UK) wants a new PC which he will
mostly use for editing family stuff from a camcorder and compiling
DVD's. My immediate thoughts are a powerful processor to work on the
rendering, lots of RAM and lots of storeage space. Basic graphics
card and onboard sound is fine. No need for RAID or other bells and
whistles.

Looking at Dabs.com I've come up with the following as a possibility.
What do you all think?

Case. Black with 400w PSU. Powerful enough?
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...ey=11145,373350000,351080000,4294957139,50010

Or as recomended elsewhere...
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...=11145,50882,4294957139,44110000&v=1#infoarea

Mobo. Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9. nForce4, not many extras, known brand.
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...geMode=1&NavigationKey=11143,4294959021,50509

CPU. Athlon64, 3500+ or higher.
http://www.dabs.com/productlist.asp...egorySelectedId=11147&PageMode=1&amp; #Paging

Memory. 2 gig Crucial pc3200. 2x1gig dimm's. But what cas etc?
http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=3PYD

HDD. 1x300gig WD caviar 7200rpm. Reliable, affordable.
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...473,4294960494,41610000,4294963789,4294960493

Graphics. Raedon 300. Good enough.
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...e=1&NavigationKey=11137,43990000,11,43280000#

or Raedon 700 for some basic 3d games if the kids get a look in?
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...=1&NavigationKey=11137,43990000,12,4294956471

Many questions though...

DVD writer. Which one?
No floppy?
Which reasonable 17" TFT? About £150?
Internal card reader.
XP pro or multimedia edition?
Anything else? We've looked at DELL, but this is an alternative. Got
to look at all the options.

Your input is really appreciated. Thanks.

--
Regards from Mike, Jan and Master Alex Barnard.
South Coast, UK.

[To reply by email remove ".trousers" spamtrap from email address]

Well I do loads of video editing on what most people would call a very
low spec machine, so is there any real need to spend a ton of
cash(unless money is no object of course)

2.4 celeron 400 FSB
768 Mb RAM (crucial)
ASUS VR800 MoBo
80Mb master/ 160 Mb Slave Drives (7200)
128Mb AGP card
XP Pro (but Home would be as good)
Pioneer 11D DVD-RW ( a recent addition), Pioneer drives are VERY good
indeed.
Memorex 24X CD-RW

Plenty of good 17" TFT's in your price range now

I would go for 2 smaller sized Drives rather than 1 large drive & I
always prefer Seagate, never let me down.

www.ebuyer.com is a great place to start

Built the machine myself & is the best PC that I've ever had, no probs
editing at all, & If you're confident about building a machine, its
the way to go believe me !


I hope I didnt baffle you too much & hope you can get something from
this input.

Regards

Rich

 

[philo]

Hi.

Thanks for the minireview! Thats was really all I needed to know.

Re the X2, reviews on places such as http://www.devhardware.com/ seem
to say that there is no real gain from a dual core yet. As it's not
my money I'd rather spend £139 on an athlon64 4400+ than £160 on an
X23800+. (prices and sizes from memory.)

Well post back when you bet it built...
the reason I went with the X2 was because when i did the analysis of my old
machine
(an XP2200 with 1 gig of ram) the bottle neck was the cpu ...
during editing the cpu would max out at 100% for 2 -3 minutes

running the same task on the X2-3800 with 2 gigs of ram...
though the cpu still maxed out at 100%...it was for only about 8 seconds or
so!
not too shabby i thought

 

[Gary Hendricks]

Hi Mike, Jan and Alex,

You've got some good specs there. With regards to your choice of
motherboard and graphics cards, I've some comments.

1) The rage nowadays and in the future will be about PCI Express (i.e.
takes over AGP), SLI (i.e. dual graphics cards) and dual core CPUs
(i.e. 2 CPU processing powerd). You may want to ensure your motherboard
has at least support for PCI Express.

2) I'd recommend a slightly better video card if you want your kids to
play games. The truth is, games are now serious business and you do
need some heavy duty graphics power to get through.

If you want to learn more, then check out the following links:
http://www.build-your-own-computers.com/how-to-choose-a-motherboard.html
http://www.build-your-own-computers.com/how-to-choose-a-video-card.html


Best Regards
Gary
http://www.build-your-own-computers.com