New Computer question

[fatty4ksu]

Building a system that will be constantly used to encode football games (these take a longtime) so I am looking for ways to make a system that speeds up the process.

Processor: I've settled on Intel. Does the EE help that much in terms of encoding? Is it truly worth it?

RAM: Higher frequency or tigher clocks? Which is better?

Video Card: How much of an impact does it make?

Cooling System: Should I go all out on this?

Thanks all.

[rallynavvie]

Are you encoding on the fly or capturing in another format and encoding later? What are you encoding to? Need more info on what you want to do specifically. You could actually get away pretty cheap for a TV capture box.

[redwudz]

On the processor, that's up to you. The fastest you can afford would be good. Also a good motherboard, 512 to 1024 DDR400 memory, a good power supply ~400watts.

I would also recommend if you have the space a small server case. They have lots of room for extra fans if you need them and better ventilation than the smaller cases.

Video board, depends what you want to do with it. Really not much effect on encoding, but for playback, that's different.

Cooling. Depends on the processor and if you want to overclock. Case fans help considerably. I like at least one in the front blowing over the HDs and one or two in the back for exhaust.

And one other important part, large harddrives. Preferably two. A really fast drive helps a little, but the CPU speed is the most important factor for encoding, next is memory/motherboard speed and finally HD speed. IMO

[fatty4ksu]

Rally, I bring to the computer as DV, edit, then re-encode to Mpeg-2. Most football gams are 3:30 hours long, so encoding takes around 24 hours.

Thx for the reply above. A few follow-ups.

So, get the faster memory? I've seen a few people talk about this 2-2-2-5 Boulcrap, but the MHZ is only 500. While others are 4-4-8-12, but the MHZ is 675 and it is ddr-2. Go with the latter (disregard cost)

Also, I plan on buying a few raptors, the ones that are 10K RPM.

What is the best Intel Chipset? The 925 (latest)?

Thanks all.

[rallynavvie]

OK, so it's going to be a general video workstation. Now how much money do you want to spend on it?

[fatty4ksu]

2.5K

[shelbyGT]

hijack here: but you wouldn't happen to go or be an alumn of Kansas State would you?

[fatty4ksu]

current student

[shelbyGT]

Your name looks familiar, are you on kstatefans.com (scout.com or whatever it is).

I'm on there occasionally. I just graduated this last May and currently work in OP.

Sorry, back to your topic...