New Video Editing Rig

[ericgcollyer]

Currently I am in Africa for the next few months and will be heading back to the US in September. I have been here for 2 years in September and when I get home I am planning on building a new system when I get home. To be quite honest I have been out of the tech world for the last two years so I really cannot be very specific when it comes to the parts that I want to put in the system. To give you some sort of an idea of what I mean, last time I built a machine I built an AMD x2 rig.

Anyways I am planning first and foremost to use this machine mainly for Adobe CS4 (And cs5 whenever it comes out). I will be starting a Media creation company when I go home to do things like weddings, corporate events and even filming educational music videos and what not. But understand that this machine will mainly be used to create media. And I will NOT be overclocking by the way (At least not at this point)

I have a computer case (The antec p180b), and a keyboard and mouse. But that is really the extent of my hardware. I have a monitor, but would prefer to upgrade it when I get home anyways. So basically I need the following:

Motherboard/Processor/RAM:
With these ones I will leave it up to you as to whether I should go with intel or AMD. I hear the Core i7 is pretty much the way to go with media editing, but I am open to suggestions. Also dont forget

Video Card:
Should I go with a good gaming card? Are the Quadro FXs really worth the price difference?

Hard drives:
At least with Western Digital, they have an enterprise edition of their 1TB hard drive, but is the price differential worth it? Also, I am planning on having a RAID 5 array with 3 TB hard drives. But I also want a seperate system drive. Should I go with another RAID 5 drive, or what about SSDs? Or what about the 300GB Raptor? Whats my best option here? Anyways your input would be greatly appreciated.

Power Supply


CD Drives:
Blu-RAy burners for sure. HD is the way to be!

So thanks in advance. I am looking at about a $2000 - $3000 budget so happy planning!

 

[Pauliedc]

Hi Eric,

A couple of us "talked" about this last night... we have the same budget and the same video editing needs. Here's the link to that thread:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/267992-31-system-recommendations-complete-ordering-soon

In the thread I list the system I'm about to build (maybe this weekend!), but there are a few other replies that have very good info too, including pros/cons of SSDs.

In a nutshell, though, to give you a quick shopping list, here's A suggestion (not THE suggestion, to avoid arguments! ) :

i7 920 (you can OC later, and you will want to).
Stock cooler is fine if you don't OC.
EVGA GTX 285 video card is about $350 but is great for video (I use two GTX 260s to achieve roughly the same power, but one GTX 285 will do the job, you can always add a second one later).
6GB of DDR3 1600 ram (that's 3 x 2GB sticks). OCZ is a good brand, I use Patriot because of a great deal at the time. The OCZ Gold 6GB kit is only $99.99 at Newegg.com right now.
There aren't many motherboards for the i7, I have the EVGA 132-BL-E758-A1, that's quite popular. Others insist on Gigabyte and Asus, and they're good too, but I find EVGAs Customer support to be superb, and when you register this mobo online you get a lifetime warranty!
As I write I forget if you said you have a PSU. I use the Corsair 850TX, many folks like this one.
Hard drives: I use the Western Digital 300GB 10Krpm Raptor for my OS and Adobe Production Premium installation. My assets will go onto two Western Digital 1TB RE3 drives, set up in RAID0 for super speed. You don't get redundancy, so you must backup your assets as soon as you're done editing. Or you could get four RE3 1TB drives and do RAID 10, and you'll have speed and redundancy. The EVGA mobo supports this.
Blu-ray internal drives are coming down in price, getting one for under $200 is fairly common now.
As you'll see in the thread, you'll want to download Windows 7 RC 64-bit, then buy the real Windows 7 when it comes out in October. Most gamers are using the free 7 RC download because it's that good. It's what Vista should have been.

Enjoy!