PC editing system

[Ryan Szulczewski]

I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions or critiques of this build. I plan on using PP CS3 to edit. I have monitors, a case, fans and a cpu cooler. Any help would be appreciated.

I am going to use the bigger drive as my system drive and set the other 4 as a level 0 raid to use as my capture scratch drive.

https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion...iting+computer

[Mark Williams]

Ryan,

Most of what you have looks good. Based on my experience I would suggest the following substitutions:

Power supply: Enermax Liberty 500w. A great ps is the heart of a system.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817194003

Video Card: Radeon 1950. This is the card which most over on the Adobe forum recommend.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102075

Hard Dives: Raid 0 is great, may want to backup on another drive.

[Brian Brown]

The 1TB seems a bit $pendy compared to 2 500GB drives. You probably don't need much more than a few hundred GB for a system drive (OS + apps), which is why I went with a 150GB 10k rpm SATA Raptor when I built my new system last month. That drive is fast! Otherwise, not a bad setup... similar to mine. I got all my parts from NewEgg, too, and have shopped with them for years. Great selection, price, and service.

What OS are you going to run? I bit the bullet and went with Vista 64-bit Home Premium and a whopping 8GB of DDR2 RAM and it runs CS3 like a dream, along with any program I've thrown at it so far. The quad-core is a nice CPU for editing. After Effects really shines with the add'l. RAM.

Cheers,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

[Mark Williams]

Ryan,

Something else you might want to think about is whether you are going to use software or hardware raid control. The software raid on the Asus motherboards don't work well for some folks. This is well documented on their forums. You might want to consider the Abit IP35 Pro LGA motherboard. It has a excellent user record and good reputation for software raid. It also has a faster FSB.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127030

[Ryan Szulczewski]

I appreciate the feedback. I was looking at the 10000rpm SATA drives but couldn't figure out what the 'throughput' (if that is the correct term) is. The one I have is 3 G/s... am I thinking about this right?

Most of my experience is with Nvidia cards but I will take a look at the ATI card.

OS. I am not sure about 64bit Windows, it always seems like the programs aren't coded to take advantage of the extra memory addressing, but if it is working for you I might give it a shot. Are there bottlenecks with programs that are 32 bit?

I might overclock some of the stuff as well but haven't decided yet.

As far as backup goes I am going to stick with keeping only stuff I have captured on the Raid 0. If it does go down I can always just recapture it from the mini DV tapes (hopefully this never happens).

I will look at the other motherboard you suggested.

I really appreciate your thoughts and will update my list sometime later today and again would love to hear some feedback.

[Ryan Szulczewski]

So I have taken everyone's advice so far (except on the 1000rpm drive) and updated my build.

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/...Number=6084771

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Ryan Szulczewski

I appreciate the feedback. I was looking at the 10000rpm SATA drives but couldn't figure out what the 'throughput' (if that is the correct term) is. The one I have is 3 G/s... am I thinking about this right?

What you're referring to is the maximum theoretical transfer speed between an SATA hard drive and the motherboard, but actual hard drive performance is limited by the drive itself. In general a hard drive with a faster rotational speed (in RPMs) will yield better performance than ones with lower speed, so using a 10,000 RPM drive for your boot drive makes sense to improve OS performance. Such drives can also improve video editing performance, but for that large capacity may matter more than having the fastest possible drive.

[Ryan Szulczewski]

Ah, thanks. I will probably go with a 10000rpm drive for the system drive than.

Is every SATA drive 3 G/s then? I guess what I am asking is would I need to make sure I get a SATA 10000rpm with 3 G/s or all SATA drives that fast.

[Mark Williams]

The Raptor drives have an excellent reputation. I use one for my boot/system drive. Its fasttttttttttttttttt. Take a look....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136011

[Ryan Szulczewski]

Looks good to me. Alrighty so I feel like I am getting close. Any other suggestions?

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Ryan Szulczewski

Is every SATA drive 3 G/s then? I guess what I am asking is would I need to make sure I get a SATA 10000rpm with 3 G/s or all SATA drives that fast.

Early SATA drives used a bus speed of 1.5 Gbps and SATA II is 3 Gbps, but that doesn't matter much since the maximum actual transfer speed of today's best hard drives is probably <1 Gbps - and that only for short bursts. The point of having a faster bus speed is to handle faster future drives if/when they become available.