Building the Ultimate PC - Your Suggestions?

[Priapism]

Budget: I'd prefer to stay under $3,000, but I could be talked into $4,000.

Goals:

* Zero system strain when editing HD videos in premiere.
* No choppy responses, lags, or video card struggling of any kind.
* Fastest possible encoding times when its time to encode.

Currently Im running premiere on a laptop - Core Duo P9600 2.55Ghz, 4 GB of Memory, 64-bit Vista. I currently run into the above problems.

A huge plus for me would simply to see a 1 minute HD video clip encode in less than 20 minutes. If I could knock that in half or more, that would be good. Not sure how hardware plays a role in the encoding speed.....

I am going to use NewEgg.com.

Can you guys help me build a sweet screaming fast system?

Suggested CPU: ?
Suggested Video Card: ?
Suggested Memory: ?

Anything else that plays a role?

-P-

[redwudz]

Probably one of the newer quad core i7 systems would be a good start. If you plan to continue with a 64bit OS, 6 - 8 GBs of RAM. For a video card, use one that can assist with hardware encoding. The Nvidia ones with CUDA are popular.

Add to that a good quality power supply and a decent motherboard and a case with efficient cooling. I still like the Gigabyte MBs. Lots of hard drive space. I like the 500GB drives, Western Digital black drives. Three HDDs would be a good start. You should be able to put all that together for less than $3000.

The main gain with encoding is increased CPU speed. That's where I would spend most of the money. A hardware assisted video card can also help with some encoding, depending on the format. A quad core will also make a big difference with formats like H.264 that can use multiple cores. Quantity of RAM, not a big difference, but it helps.

Fast hard drives, again not a big difference for encoding, but it helps with editing. Don't use the boot drive for editing or encoding, just for archival storage if you need it. That's why I suggested three drives. The boot drive is accessed by the OS too much and that can slow video operations.

I expect you will see quite a gain in encoding speed compared to a 2.5Ghz dual core in a laptop.

[Priapism]

Fast hard drives, again not a big difference for encoding, but it helps with editing.

Thanks for such a helpful response.

Would you say a Solid State Hard Drive would be faster than even the fastest non solid state?

Opinions on the benefit to (huge) cost difference?

-P-

[Bwizzy]

Hello,
I'm new here, but I just recently built my new Power House system. Here are my specs. It starts up in 10 sec and shuts down in 5, I Handbrake movies at about 9 minutes per movie. I mean like 2 hour movies:
i7 950
4 SSD in Raid 0 (64GB each)
12GB Corsair Dominator
4870 X2
LG BD-Drive
2X Acer 22" Monitors
Asus P6T Ver. 2 mobo
CoolMaster ATCS 840

I also run a server in my home. Whenever I rip a BD i keep it on my PC till i code it and them move it off my PC to the server. If you use a i7 920 and 6GB of RAM, instead of 12GB you'll be really good still. And you sure don't need the dual monitors. You'll come in at/under 2K

[deadrats]

Budget: I'd prefer to stay under $3,000, but I could be talked into $4,000.

first things first, there is no single cpu solution that will allow you to take a 1 minute HD and encode it in under 20 seconds, you're talking about an encoding speed 3x real time, basically it's not going to happen unless you either are talking about 720p at really low bit rates and i mean really low bit rates.

the fastest single cpu solution is the core i7 975, but at $1000 just for the cpu it's a watse of money.

personally i would pick up a core i7 860 for $220, a supporting motherboard (a socket 1156 motherboard can be had for $120), some OCZ ddr3 ram (you can pick up 4 gigs fairly cheaply and even 8 gigs won't set you back that much).

as for video cards i would wait until ati's new DX11 cards hit the shelves, a nice mid range variant in the $150 range would be the most i would spring for, a good power supply ( i use a 500 watt cooler master which was on sale for $35, nice ps and more than enough for the system i'm recommending).

honestly, i wouldn't spend more than $700-$800 no matter how much i could afford to spend, anything else is a complete waste when you consider that in less than 6 months a top of the line $4000 computer will be outdated, seeing how both amd and intel plan on releasing desktop 6 core cpu's.

[deadrats]

I Handbrake movies at about 9 minutes per movie. I mean like 2 hour movies:

i totally believe you when you say a core i7 950 can transcode a 120 minute movie in 9 minutes, because that's only an encoding rate of 13.3 times real time which means an NTSC movie would need to be encoded at 399.6 frames per second, well within the realm of possibility using modern hardware (<--please note the sarcasm).

i feel a sneeze coming on....ah ah ah ahbullshit.

[redwudz]

Would you say a Solid State Hard Drive would be faster than even the fastest non solid state?

Opinions on the benefit to (huge) cost difference?

I use a SSD in my Intel PC. It has some advantages for speeding boot time and launching programs, but I can't recommend one for most uses at present. I have a 60GB, about all I wanted to pay for at the time. That size is way too small and forced me to put my temp and page files on a second HDD, along with installing my larger programs on the secondary drive.

You want to keep SSDs about 50% full for best performance as the drive firmware has to move the files around regularly to avoid burnout of a particular cell. That limits their usable size even more. You don't ever defrag them, as the firmware takes care of that. And you have to turn off defragging for them in the OS or it will burn them out prematurely. A 120GB or larger would be a better choice, but the larger sizes get very expensive. A 10K RPM Raptor drive similar to this would probably give you as good of service: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296&cm_re=raptor_drive-_-2...-296-_-Product 150GB is plenty big enough for a boot drive.

Since I only use mine for boot, it has negligible affect on encoding. As mentioned, that's a CPU operation, so HDDs don't have a lot of affect.

EDIT: BTW, the SSD is fast. About 170MB/s transfer rate compared to a top rate of about 85MB/s with my SATA HDDs in AHCI mode. You do need Vista or newer to get native support for SSDs.

[lordsmurf]

Sorry, but some of what you ask probably won't happen.

Goals:
* Zero system strain when editing HD videos in premiere.
* No choppy responses, lags, or video card struggling of any kind.
* Fastest possible encoding times when its time to encode.

[victoriabears]

I do not know if the OP just wants things done in a hurry, but I have a dedicated pc just for video work and leave it running over night, and have one good basic pc for surfing, burning, email etc,,cheaper than 4k