comp build for vegas

[Fred Foronda]

What do you guys think about this build I am about to do. I am gonna run Vegas 7 and the latest DVD architect. My main goal is to deliver in blu ray. Anything I might be lacking or don't need? Again take in consideration I don't do this for a living like 99% of you folks, this is strictly a hobby and preserving family moments in High def.

Thanks

Your d5000t series
-Operating system Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
-Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Quad processor Q9450 (2.66GHz)
-Memory 6GB DDR2-800MHz dual channel SDRAM edit
-Graphics card 1GB NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT, 2 DVI, HDMI adapter
-Networking 802.11 b/g USB Wireless LAN card edit
-Hard drive 1TB RAID 0 (2 x 500GB SATA HDDs) - performance
-Primary CD/DVD drive Blu-ray writer & Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD burner
-Secondary CD/DVD Drive 16x max. DVD-ROM edit
-Front Productivity Ports 15-in-1 memory card reader, 2 USB, 1394, audio
-Sound Card Integrated 7.1 channel sound w/front audio ports
Security software Norton Internet Security(TM) 2008 - 15 month
-Productivity software Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
-Speakers HP stereo speakers (2.0)
-Keyboard and Mouse HP keyboard and HP optical mouse

[Mike Kujbida]

Save the Raid drive for video editing only.
Add a 100 GB (or so) SATA drive as your drive C.

Don't install Norton as it's well known to be a huge resource hog.
Look into anti-virus apps like Trend Micro's PC-Cillin or Kaspersky's Anti-Virus.

Not too many folks I know are big fans of the Lightscribe burners.

[Harold Brown]

Whats the monitor? I too am not a fan of Lightscribe...toooo slow.

[Jeff Harper]

It is a nice system, but it is not configured properly for video as it is described. For your drive C run a pair of smaller drives, preferably 10K rpm drives. The two 500Gb drives are a waste of space for your OS...they should be used as your video storage drives.

You don't want to put video files on your primary (Operating System) drive, period...that is why we're suggesting the large drives are not needed or desired there. You actually don't need more than 36GB or so for your OS drive, as your OS and other software will barely take up 12GB in space. Two 80 GB drives for your primary would be perfect.

The thing is for OEM sytems, often the on-board SATA controllers located on the motherboard will not support RAID for secondary drives alone...you must run RAID for the OS in order to run RAID for secondary drives, which means you must run 4 drives to get RAID for your video drives. This may or not be true for your system, but it will be hard to determine this without asking a tech for the company....the sales people may likely not even know the answer...now that I think about it, if the company website allows you to configure a single drive for your OS and then a RAID 0 for a secondary drive, you'll be fine. If it won't you likely must run two sets of RAID 0 drives. This is more expensive, but it will work very well.

In summary, I suggest (as Mike did) that you choose two smaller drives for your primary RAID 0 drive. They are usually offered in 80GB sizes and larger.

Then, either order the computer with an additional two 500GB drives configured in RAID 0, or order them yourself and install them yourself. By ordering them separately from NewEgg or someplace and installing yourself you will likely save $100 or more.

The Lightscribe wont' hurt anything, but will be useless with blank Blu-Ray discs, I think. You can't even buy ink-printable blank Blu-Ray, as I understand it. If I'm wrong and you can buy printable Blu-Ray discs, order an Epson R280 printer and you can print beautiful DVDs with that.

[Michael Wisniewski]

These aren't necessary for your purposes, but might be nice to have:

1. Two LCD monitors
2. A set of professional level audio monitors
3. A 1394 video converter, like the ADVC-110, if you decide to preview your video on a TV and you don't want to use your camcorder.
4. A headphone amp for with multiple outputs, not normally necessary, but comes in handy once in awhile.
5. A second DVD drive
6. A hot-swappable SATA / eSata hard drive bay.

[Jon McGuffin]

Okay, I have a few suggestions here...

#1) Vista Home Premium is *not* a 64-bit OS. The only (I'm 95% sure) Vista flavor that comes in a true 64-bit version is Ultimate. That OS can be had via OEM channels for about $195. I, frankly, given your inexperience would recommend actually sticking with Windows XP Pro first. Remember, you don't use your OS, you use your applications. All the applications you are wanting to run at this point and the forseable future (and likely the life of your computer) will run on XP Pro. Also note, Windows XP Pro is typically anywhere from 3-8% faster.

#2) Do not install any security software on this machine. The posts saying this software is a hog is absolutely true. There are, of course, some risks with this but it doesn't take a brain surgeon to stay clear of 99% of viruses. Basically, don't play with Bit-Torrent type of file sharing stuff, don't go to websites that are suspect, and don't ever open an attachement from anybody other than somebody you know. You do those three things and I like to think you've reduced your chances of catching a virus down significantly.

#3) I don't think you'll need more than a 9600GT video card. There is no video processing benefit to the 9800 series of cards.

#4) Your 6GB of RAM is an odd amount. Unless you get the Windows 64-bit Ultimate version, your computer won't see more than about 3.5Gb. Go with 4 Gb of good, fast RAM.

#5) The data somebody in here posted saying you can't run RAID 0 unless your OS is running off it is not accurate. Most motherboards have plenty of channels dedicated to SATA and seperate controllers. I am on a computer right now that has a primary hard drive for my OS and applications, and two 320Gb drives running together in a RAID 0 configuration. I *DO* 100% agree though that you should consider a Raptor 10K type of drive for your primary OS drive, and then RAID up those other two 500Gb into a 1TB RAID 0 for the storage and retreival of your video files.

That's about it, good luck!

[Garrett Low]

Fred,

That's not a bad system overall. You'll love the Q9450. I just got done building an editing machine off of it and it screams. I've got mine OC'd to 3.2Ghz and it runs rock solid. I've got a mongo Zalman 9700 fan on it so it runs supper cool even OC'd.


As already been mentioned you will actaully realize better performance for video editing if you have two separate drives (rather than one RAID drive). Do not run your OS on a RAID 0 and definately do not have a RAID 0 as your only drive. RAID 0's are more prone to catastrophic failures since thye have no parity or mirrroring. That means if one drive fails you loose all your data. Also, on board RAID controlers (0, 1, or 0+1) do not really have much of a performance boost over running strait SATA's. A better solution would be to get a 500GB for your main drive to run OS and longer term storage of data, go buy a SATA RAID card and two smaller drives (500GB drives run around $59 OEM now).

Like others said you don't really need that much space for your OS drive but since a smaller drive would cost just about the same you might as well get the larger size. It is actually a waste to have your application drive set up as a RAID of any type unless you're running it to ensure you have no downtime in case of drive failure. In that case you'd probaby want to run a RAID 5 so you could hot swap the bad drive when it fails. And, since your apps won't require much disc swapping you wouldn't be getting much benefit from a RAID. Most systems would only run data drives on a RAID.

I take it you're ordering a spec'd machine from HP. Unfortunately I am not a big fan of HP's as they tend to use a lot of lower grade parts (mostly their power supplies and RAM). Speaking of RAM you can save a lot of money and gain a more stable and faster running machine if you take the least amount of RAM offered from the Builder and buy and install your own. DDR2 2GB sticks are cheap now, even the semi performance memory from reputable makers (Crucial, Corsair, etc.). BTW SDRAM isn't DDR. Right now Fry's has 2 x 2GB Corsair Twin2x memory on sale for $75. This is low latency (4-4-4-12) which is another factor in your memory speed.

Depending on what type of material you're editing you may want ot upgrade to descrete audio. Onboard audio has come a long way but it doesn't compare to a high end card if you're working with concerts or some other sound critical footage. I also like using a pair of cans for most of the editing so my wife and kids don't have to listen to the same passage over and over again. Then I have a pair of decent speakers so I can listen to the final product.

There probably is already a eSATA port but if you could get it on the front it would be nice. eSATA drives blow away even Firewire 800 drives and no they are the only external drives I use for editing.

I'm another who isn't a fan of LightScribe drives. I have two and I actually have had more trouble with them (non readable discs on certain set top boxes) than any of my other drives.

And, I agree with most not to install Norton. If it comes with it you should uninstall and clean the Registry of it. Norton and McAfee are resource hogs. There are much better solutions out there and most of them are free.

Fianlly, I would definately recommend dual monitors. After having working with dual monitors you'll wonder how you ever did with only one.

[Garrett Low]

Hey Jon,

Vista Home Premium does come in a 64 bit version. I agree that the 6 MB is a little odd and if you're gonna get 64 bit go with the full 8GB.

The main advantage of getting the 9800 over the 9600 cards are that you get HDMI out. That's kind of nice. Michael mentioned a 1394 converter but with the HDMI out you can just plug it into an lcd TV. That's what I do. Also, when you start getting larger dual monitors the extra horespower of teh 9800 chipset over the 9600 is noticeable.

I have a nother take on the drive situation. I would get a larger apps drive, maybe a 750GB to use for storage and apps, then get two Raptors to use as a scratch drive. Anything on a RAID 0 should only be considered as a scratch drive. My current editing machine has a main 500GB, two Velociraptors in RAID 0 for scratch, and one 750 for additional storage.

I'm trying to get my hands on an HP server with 6 x 36GB 15K rpm SCSI's. That's a lot of spinning but it should swap data at lightning speed. My friend has a spare server and I just want to see what it'll do for fun.

[Jeff Harper]

Originally Posted by Jon McGuffin

#5) The data somebody in here posted saying you can't run RAID 0 unless your OS is running off it is not accurate. Most motherboards have plenty of channels dedicated to SATA and seperate controllers.

Jon, to clarify, I said "for OEM systems OFTEN (I didn't say always) the on-board SATA controllers located on the motherboard will not support RAID for secondary drives alone." This is the case with my Dell workstation. His configuration is an HP, as Garrett pointed out. I see that HP doesn't offer a secondary drive when configuring this particular model. Fred, you would have to configure that yourself, but being an OEM board you cannot know what kind of flexibility you will have configuring Raid with this model, though it very likely accommodates up to three or four drives.

I personally don't buy HP, but my personal opinion is that they make fine PCs, especially their workstations, which are among the best in class. I only buy workstation class machines, which are overkill for you. HP's consumer models are fine, particularly for editing home movies.

Your choice of an Quad Core is very good and will work perfectly.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Jon, to clarify, I said "for OEM systems OFTEN (I didn't say always) the on-board SATA controllers located on the motherboard will not support RAID for secondary drives alone." This is the case with my Dell workstation. His configuration is an HP, as Garrett pointed out. I see that HP doesn't offer a secondary drive when configuring this particular model. Fred, you would have to configure that yourself, but being an OEM board you cannot know what kind of flexibility you will have configuring Raid with this model, though it very likely accommodates up to three or four drives.

I personally don't buy HP, but my personal opinion is that they make fine PCs, especially their workstations, which are among the best in class. I only buy workstation class machines, which are overkill for you. HP's consumer models are fine, particularly for editing home movies.

Your choice of an Quad Core is very good and will work perfectly.

Their xw8000 and xw9000 systems are amazing. I've used them for actual work station use and software compiling but not video editing.