The great big fat hunt for a new machine

[General Mortars]

Hi, guys,
I wonder if you could help me out here, I´ve decided that I need a new machine, I can´r rely anymore on that piece of junk I have at home, not when computers are the cornerstone of my freelance life.

Unfortunatelly, I´ve been out of the loop for far too long and don´t know what´s out there anymore.

Here´s my present machine:
Asus P4P800
Intel P4 2,4GHz
Radeon 9550
1 Gb RAM DDR

I know I´d like one with at least 2Gb RAM, two 200Gb hardrives, a TV capture card, a DVD recorder/player.... a machine designed for intensive Photoshop and Vue d´Esprit 4 use but also some ocasional Half Life 2ing around once every blue moon.
I want a good, solid but also cheap (under 1,000 bucks).silicon servant.

Is it viable?
If so, what would you suggest in terms of components?

[budz]

What's wrong with what you have? Why not just upgrade your CPU to a 3.2 Northwood chip. Your motherboard supports up to 3.2ghz. What is the brand name of your 1gb ram?

Are you keeping this pc you have or just want another one? In my opinion I would just upgrade the CPU & perhaps get the fastest memory your mobo supports which is PC3200 & is also dual channel capable. You have 2 SATA connectors which you can add in (2) 200 gb hard drives instead of using the 2 IDE connectors Just my 2 cents!

[jollyjohn]

http://www.pcmech.com/build.htm

[normcar]

I agree with Budz, your mobo is fine, and I would get good Cosair memory (or another good memory) which is dual channel. 1GB of memory is more than enough (2 515MB dual channel sticks) for video editing. Upgrading to 3.2 CPU will get you the biggest bang for your buck. Also make sure you are encoding from 1 hd to another. I would put your $$ into larger HDs at least (2-250GBs). I also recommend you put your OS and programs on a small HD (120GB or smaller). If you are doing intensive gaming or video encoding, I would also get the XP-90 CPU cooler.

P.S. If you get new memory, always be sure to do a memory test.

[rallynavvie]

Yeah, just upgrade to a faster Northwood processor, get some Patriot or Mushkin memory (running Photoshop may actually utilize 2GB otherwise it's a waste of money to go past 1GB). Probably upgrade your video card to the latest nVidia or ATi cards (they're both great performers these days) or perhaps a Quadro or Fire if you're really serious about DCC (the Quadros do game pretty decent).

You may also want to upgrade your power supply to a better one depending on what you've got. The latest Antec TruePower 2s look good, and I know the NeoPower 480 is a great performer.

If you get a Northwood P4 you probably won't need any better cooling than what you've got now if your current rig is keeping things cool and quiet.

Depending on which P4P800 you've got you should have SATA. If you want an edge on performance I'd get a 74GB Raptor for your boot drive, then a 200+GB monster for your storage and projects drive. Maybe keep your current hard drive for scratch space.

As for the TV tuner/PVR I'd definitely recommend a Hauppauge.

[Soopafresh]

Just to stress it again - get a NORTHWOOD proc. DO NOT get a Prescott, unless you have bacon and eggs to fry on top of it.

[normcar]

How true Soopafresh, I burned out 2 ASUS MBs with the 3.2 1MB before I got the XP-90 cooler. Now it runs cool.

[rallynavvie]

Apparently the Northwoods are still getting better performance than their Prescott counterparts so they're worth it for more than just the thermal issues. Only problem is they seem to be more expensive than the newer chips.

[General Mortars]

Heya, guys,
thanks a lot for your repplies, I´d really love to hear your thoughts on these specs I´ve managed to gather so far.

- ASUS P4P800 478 pin mobo
- Iintel P4 Northwood 3.2GHz 478 pins processor
- two HD Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 200GB
- Thermaltake 420W output PSU
- Radeon 9800 Pro

- TV tuner card (?)
- 2 Gb SDRAM (?)
- DVD Burner (?)

[budz]

I'd get a ANTEC TRUE POWER 430 or 480 watt PS, make use of the 2 SATA connectors by getting a WD 36gb or 74gb RAPTOR HD to house your operating system & a SATA 200gb HD, BENQ 1620 DVDRW, LITEON COMBOCDRW/DVDROM for ripping, 1gb of MEMORY would be more than enough. Just my 2 cents!

[Soopafresh]

Move fast on those 3.0 and 3.2GHZ Northwoods. They're already hard to find.

[alsyed]

just to add a question here about those hdd.

wouldn't it be better to have the scratch disk the raptor, and just keep the boot disk on the original disk? I mean, once you are up and running on the system, wouldn't you want your swap and temp files to have the fastest access time when using app's that are already loaded?

then again, why not have 2 raptors if possible

[normcar]

Get the dual channel Corsair (2 - 512 MB) or other major brand memory. You only need 1 GB unless you use Photoshop or some other high memory usage program. Always run a memorycheck to ensure that you do not get bad memory.

I agree with Budz on the Benq, and the Antec powersupplies. I have 3 Benqs and 3 Antec powersupplies in by 3 systems, and they have given me no problem.

The difference in HDs is neglible, but I would have 3 HDs. 120GB or smaller for the C drive, and this should only have programs, and OS, so if you have to reinstall, you do not lose any data. Also get 2 Data drives so you can encode video from 1 drive to the other. Encoding using 2 drives and the fastest CPU you can afford, is the best way to lower encoding times.

I have the Hauppage USB2 external box for capturing video. If you want to only capture video, which you do not have to highly edit, capture using MPEG. If you want to capture video for editing, like a wedding, you should get a good AVI noncompression capture card. The Hauppage will encode the MPEG video for you, so the CPU is available for other small tasks like net surfing.

[rallynavvie]

No, SCSI RAID all the way for scratch disks 8)

You'll want the OS on the smaller faster drive for everything to be generally faster. I don't notice any faster times using DCC apps with fast scratch disks, just video editing apps really take advantage of that.

[Soopafresh]

Alsyed-

It must be me, but the Raptors on the machines at work aren't that much faster than the 7200RPM drives, even in Raid 0. I'd spend the $ on larger capacity Seagates.

[normcar]

Drive speed is not significantly different in any of the current drives, and even the new SATA II drives aren't that much faster, except in RAID 0. Usually I find that more space is more important. SCSI drives are very nice, but very expensive, and you need a SCSI card, which isn't cheap either.

[alsyed]

i think 4 drives as a video and dvd system, all on independant channels (if still using PATA, obviously it will be independant using SATA).

1. system disk
2. project and source files
3. scratch/temp/swap files
4. destination disk

The slowest disk in the system would be used for destination disk, and fastest would be 2 and 3. I used tmpgenc and cce for my video encodes, so the destination disk would be used for my video encoding output.

With dvd authoring, i use dvdlab pro, it is creating the temp files on the temp file disk then the output video_ts folder gets created back on the source. So i might even think of a raid setup for the source.

it gets me in headaches trying to work out the best system, and as such is a reason why i haven't bothered to upgrade yet.