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natsibley

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Apr 3, 2009
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I'm building my first rig and I need advice, loads of it. I'm pretty tech savvy and I've done quite a bit of research, so you don't have to start from the beginning.

Purpose: Video editing, HD playback and possible future HD editing, dual monitors (1680x1050 or so), plus all the other standard stuff. Possible future transition to HTPC. I'm not much of a gamer.
Budget: $1000 +- a little

Mostly decided:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo, either the E7400 or E8500 depending on budget after everything else


Thought about:
Motherboard: P45 chipset seems to be the best fit for me
I'd like to go with an ASUS or GIGABYTE motherboard, the biggest question mark for me here is whether to go DDR2 or DDR3. Once I figure that out I can narrow my options significantly.

Video Card: I like this one, BFG Tech BFGEGTX260MC896OCBE GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit. Is this more video card than I need? I don't want to not go far enough though. I'm partial to BFG because they are American, plus the lifetime warranty.

Hard Drive: Not hard to pick these, but I do need to know more about the possible need for striped disks for better speed in video editing (especially if it's ever HD). I almost always use Seagate, with WD as second choice.


No idea (mostly due to unmade decisions from above):
Memory (have to decide DDR2 or DDR3 first)
Power supply
Case
 
There is no advantage to DDR3 on a P45 chipset.

Given your intended uses and possible future uses, I have to think you'll benefit more from a quad core. If not now, in the future.

A GTX260 would be overkill.

This BFG 9600GT will drive two monitors for what you need:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143161&Tpk=BFG%209600GT

MB:
Gigabyte UD3R
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358

RAM:
PI Black
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231209&Tpk=PI%20Black

PSU:
Corsair 550VX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004&Tpk=550VX

Case:
CM 690
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119137

Perhaps I have saved you enough now to get a decent quad:
Q9650
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115130&Tpk=Q9650

Or, with 1K you can actually build an i7 system.


 
I've got concerns about going i7. The biggest one being the heat issues. I haven't found anyone who thinks the stock heatsink and fan will do for the i7 and you did not include replacements in your build. :)

I suspected that the 260 might be overkill but I wanted to make sure I didn't have to upgrade that thing for a long time. You think the 9600 will be plenty of power for video editing and HD playback?
 
I prefer NVIDIA.

Thanks for the advice. Any chance you want to add some options to that list? I'd like to work through some of the decisions myself.
 
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=I7-920 $265.99
Intel Core i7 Processor i7-920 2.66GHz 8MB LGA1366 CPU, OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233029 $39.99
XIGMATEK Dark Knight-S1283V 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186020 $6.99
ARCTIC COOLING MX-2 Thermal Compound - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128386 $209.99
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R-SLI LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
 
+1 for core i7. especially since it seems well in your budget. as long as your room stays at what most people consider room temp (25 c) you should be good with the stock cooler. But even with a core 2 you would want to get a aftermarket cooler to be on the safe side.

all the above suggestions are great.
 
My only concern with the suggestions so far is that neither of those motherboards seems to have great reviews. To those who suggested them can you tell me if you've actually used these? If so, can you tell me about how things went?
 
Keep OpenCL in your mind while buying for video editing. Since most of it is data parallel, most of future work would be done by GPU's. The current generation of video cards SHOULD support opencl soon. Since AMD does more Gflops, I recommend HD 4870 if you can't wait (for 40nm or perhaps maybe larrabee(don't know how well larrabee would do stream processing, but it can do amazingly well (2x +) than current video cards at same wattage. Also there's lynnfield at around August this year. Just telling you all so you don't regret it later). So here's the build:


Core 2 quad Q9550:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041
It's enough for your tasks and has SSE4 so if you use open source software than you can easily compile and have around a 25% speedup.
USD $ 274.99



Asus P5Q Pro :-
A nice mobo for the price with SLI / Crossfirex
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131299
$119.99

4GB Kingston DDR2 1066
Got a recommended at Tom's. nice one and will help in Oc'ing if you choose to do so.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104073&Tpk=Kingston%20HyperX%20KHX8500D2K2%2f4G
$47.99

Sapphire HD 4870 1GB
Nice 1.2 Gflops and only 15$ more than the 512 MB one. I don't know if the price cuts will hapen though, If they happen then you should definately buy this one. Keep the OpenCL thing in mind and buy a powerful GPU as you might feel sorry later on when opencl enhanced video editors release...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102801
$189.99

Hard Disk Drive
Western Digital Carviar Black 500GB
A fast and reliable hard drive. Get the 1TB version if you need more space.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320
$69.99

Rosewill R5605-BK
I think this one's better than the Antec 300. More feature rich.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147083
$59.99

BFG GS 550
A very efficiant power supply very nice bang for the buck
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817702010
$54.99



Total :-
USD $817.93

A nice rig for the price...




Note :

OK this is a bit long and funny story.

I don't think buying core i7 is an excellent idea if you want to keep all parts of your machine for the next five years. First of all, core i7 920 is only about 15 -20% faster than the Q9550 and that only in multithreaded apps. And for this you would spend +$110 for a decent mobo (DFI Lanparty), +$43 for 6GB DDR3, +$14 for i7 920 i.e $167 more for the whole thing. I think it's an overkill. The only reasonable offer should be Lynnfield. More so if The coming of i7 975 and the 3.06 ghz one make space for a 2.93 ghz lynnfield at around $300. It might be about okay if you have plenty of money and would want to buy the hexa core 32 nm Gufltown processors coming next year which would offer around 30% more performance than i7 i.e around 1.5 x the performance of Q9550 but I don't think you'd do so. And anyways the hexa core gulftown prices shouldn't come down $200 so that would be costly.

Also, in the near future we can expect rapid development in gfx cards compared to processors and more and more work shifting to GPU like devices (especially video editing) and they are becoming more programmable , like in larrabee. A highly multi core processor like a GPU can speed up things like video editing at least 5 - 10x .Then theres raytracing too, so I don't think you would do very well with a GPU for the next 5 years so you can save your $167, make more out of it in a bank and use it to buy a better gfx card in the future. In terms of CPU, I think there should be a max around 3x improvemnent per dollar. And after 5 years you should be able to make a system with a six core i7 like performance for around $250. And it should be the same task parallel design, so we can't expect anything much revolutionary from CPU's and there can't be that high a jump in clock frequency. So i think you can comfortably keep your core 2 for around 5 years more.
 
What about this build? https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=10390372

It's over my stated budget some, but it's got a few combos in it. I can justify spending the extra money because I feel like it has a lot of flexibility for future add-ons/upgrade so I should be able to use it for longer. I'm looking for opinions about the build overall as where as places where you think I might be wasting or skimping.
 
:bounce:

This build is in your budget range, and the case on here allows you to expand as far as future SLI unlike the Antec 900 in your build. These cases say "refurbished" but they are usually sent back to the manufacture for simple fixes such as missing hardware, loose wires, untapped screw hole, etc....virtually they are new cases in every sense. This mobo will let you run SLI or Crossfire.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-nvidia-sli-motherboard,7463.html <=== Gigabyte: Enable SLI On X58 Boards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119137 <=== Pics, specs, and customer reviews on the case in this build

http://cmstore.coolermaster-usa.com/product_info.php?products_id=109 $45.99
CM 690 Black SECC/ATX Mid Tower, W/O window, W/O PSU - Refurbished

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006 $119.99 ($99.99 after $20.00 Mail-In Rebate) Free Shipping*
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128375 $199.99 ($184.99 after $15.00 Mail-In Rebate)
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=I7-920 $265.99 Free Ground Shipping
Intel Core i7 Processor i7-920 2.66GHz 8MB LGA1366 CPU, OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233029 $39.99
XIGMATEK Dark Knight-S1283V 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186020 $6.99
ARCTIC COOLING MX-2 Thermal Compound - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143161 $79.99 ($69.99 after $10.00 Mail-In Rebate)
BFG Tech BFGE96512GTOCBE GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231247 $94.99 Free Shipping*
G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284 $109.99 Free Shipping*
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136152 $24.99 Free Shipping*
LG Black 22X (CAV) DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 16X DVD+R DL 22X (CAV) DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 22X DVD±R DVD Burner - OEM

Total: $988.90 *(not including shipping and rebates)
 
I like that case, and for $45.99 that seems like a steal. I am curious as to why SLI wouldn't work in the Antec 900 though.

Have you/anyone else ordered from that ewiz site before? How was the experience?
 


It's too tight of a fit for large heat sinks, dual vid cards, etc... from what Iv'e read on the reviews and this forum, but I haven't owned one personally. Hopefully someone that has one or has had one will see this thread and let you know. But if you do decide to go with the Antec case, check this price down below.

http://www.securemart.com/SMA0092053?mv_pc=196&mv_specials=&mv_stock=y $74.48
Antec Nine Hundred Chassis - Mid-tower

 
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