Building Dedicated Machine

[izzi]

Hi all,

Having just gotten started with capturing and editing I've realized that my current machine will soon become bogged down so I want to build one for Vid only.

I already have quite a few parts that I would like to use so if I can find the "missing" pieces I should be able to do this without a huge outlay.

I already have 4x256MB of Mushkin PC2100 DDR and I have 3 WD 120GB drives and 2 80GB drives, one Seagate and one WD. I'll still need a CPU, and a board so I guess I don't want to let the 266 DDR hold me back.

266 FSB boards are getting hard to find.

I know the ideal thing (I'm sticking with AMD) would be an A64 or dual core but I'd like to keep the cost down by going with an XP chip.

What are your thoughts/recommendations about this?

Any input is greatly appreciated!

iz

[redwudz]

You might consider one of the 754 Sempron AMD 64 CPUs. The prices are reasonable for these processors. You can get a 3000+ for about $90US including CPU cooler.

I haven't seen that much difference with video processing speed between this and the Athlon 64, 939 CPUs. The A64s also run a lot cooler than the 462 socket Athlons. This helps keep the computer quieter with less fan noise.

The Nvidia Nforce3 250 boards are often recommended for best performance. Here's some MB info if you are interested. http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=1247&cid=6&pg=1

VIA KT800 MBs are a little slower, but cheaper.

[studtrooper]

Only problem there is that 754 support will dry up completely within 6 months from now. Upgradability would be dead in that instance.

[redwudz]

While the Sempron support may be disappearing, there are a lot of them around, along with 754 MBs at present. I rarely upgrade CPUs without replacing the MB anyway, so at least for me, not really a problem. It will last the 2-3 years until I upgrade the whole system again.

[pchan]

You may want to consider an Intel based system. It tends to have a edge over video encoding. Another point to consider is hard disk, cache size and speed is very important. Slower hard disk will choke encoding. I experienced this when my P4 3Ghz had a slower hard disk.

Firewire connection ? TI or NEC chipset is fine. Aviod VIA chipset as it tends to have compatibility issue with some video cam.

[arcorob]

If you want to put that hardware to use most efficiently, find an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe board and an Intel 2.4 Pentium 4. I say that for several reasons:

1) With the DDR memory you have, having a faster Northwood capable of 800mhz FSB will not be possible because the memory doesnt support it. Your stuck at 533

But dont worry, it will be fast enough and I'll tell you why

2) The board in question supports two raid sets (1 SATA and the other IDE raid) and here is your big gain. The board does this awesome and one of the only ones that can do this.

Setup 1 120 gig drive as the C: drive

Setup the two 120's and the two 80's as Raid 0 arrays, striped

That gives you a 240 Raid 0 drive and a 160 Raid 0 drive

SO when you capture , capture and edit from the two 120(240 drive) set

From there, RENDER to the 160 (2 x 80) drives

The speed bonus is awesome as most of this work is very IO driven

Your IDE drive (C is free to do its work

The reads and writes are going to seperate drives and since it is RAID 0, it writes two chunks at a time.

Been running this config flawlessly for 2 years

Recently upgraded the box (same board)

P4 3.2 HT Northwood (had prescott and sold, runs too hot)
ASUS P4P800 Deluxe
2 Gig (4 512's of PC3200 DDR)
1 C: drive 80 gig

2 SATA 320's (640 total) running Raid 0 Striped on the Intel Promise Controller

4 120's Raid 0 on the VIA Raid controller (480)

Total storage 1.2 TERABYTES - YIKES


If you buy the board, IT MUST BE P4P800 DELUXE , Not P4P800 E or VM or any other subset because this is the only one with two onboard Raid controllers

Hope this helps

[studtrooper]

I'm sorry, but that's just not right. NO ONE captures raw video with a bit rate higher than what a new single HDD model today could achieve. Wasting your resources on RAID-0 purely for a capture drive doesn't seem logical... Not to mention you'd be processor bound from encoding, not bandwidth starved

[izzi]

If you want to put that hardware to use most efficiently, find an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe board and an Intel 2.4 Pentium 4. I say that for several reasons:.......snip

Wow, what an awesome response.

Thanks for the taking the time to write this response and feel free to throw in any after thoughts.

iz

[rallynavvie]

I'm sorry, but that's just not right. NO ONE captures raw video with a bit rate higher than what a new single HDD model today could achieve. Wasting your resources on RAID-0 purely for a capture drive doesn't seem logical... Not to mention you'd be processor bound from encoding, not bandwidth starved

Werd. RAID 0 is for leet-kiddies. If you actually require striping then you will probably want to build a nested array instead of just striping between two or more drives.

[Soopafresh]

Whatever. You're hosed with PC2100 as far as choices are concerned. You'd better be darned sure your motherboard will support it, and find examples of people actually running the mobo with PC 2100. You're talking 4 year old technology here.

[izzi]

Whatever. You're hosed with PC2100 as far as choices are concerned. You'd better be darned sure your motherboard will support it, and find examples of people actually running the mobo with PC 2100. You're talking 4 year old technology here.

Yep, I'm going to have to use upgraded CPU, mobo and ram, that's pretty much for sure at this point.

iz

[izzi]

I've been doing some research and I have a question. This machine will not be a "production" machine in the way most of you know them. I will not being doing project daily so capturing speed and rendering speed is not critical for me. My main goals are to use the drives I have to increase storage capacity.

How critical is RAID for me?

iz

[redwudz]

I'm afraid I'm one of the anti-RAID 0 people also. I ran it for a couple of years. Yes, it is fast and yes, if you have RAID 0 and it crashes, it takes all data with it. But also, no, it made little or no difference with encoding or file transfer between drives. It looks good on paper, but little difference in usage.

With the drives now on the market with 7200 RPM and ~8ms access times average, I see little use for it. Just my opinion. Go for a 10,000 RPM drive if you want fast. There are other RAID options, but they are more for data protection, not speed. You can do similar with separate drives.

When I separated my RAID drives, I gained more usable space on my system. I was able to make a BOOT, EDIT, ARCHIVE and a BACKUP drive and that made the whole system more efficient.

I would rather have a bunch of separate drives, similar to the partitioning in early days of computers to separate my data. Even if you have to install a PCI IDE card for your extra drives, it's still better. At least for me. I use a 4 hard drive system on two different computers.

[izzi]

Ad I've said, if I were looking for a "dream" vid system that would be one thing, I think I'd have a fairly certain idea of how to go about it. But in this case, I'm hoping to be able to use some of the new parts I already have and come up with something that would be better than trying to do this on my main machine.

So I've pretty much learned that I'll need to start fresh with mobo, CPU, ram and I should be able to use the drives, cases (I have 7 brand new ATX cases), power supplies and other smaller parts I all ready have. And, I've noticed that non-RAID boards are substantially less expensive.

Not looking to build a VidMonster, just something that will save me some money in new parts and give me reasonably good performance with what I need to do.

iz

[redwudz]

Kinda, like I said before; for AMD look to the Semprons for economy and reasonable performance. The 64bit processors are the way to go in the future, IMO. I have a 939 3200 CPU. A great processor. But if you are looking for economy, the faster Semprons, even though they are 754 pin processors are a great value. I have a 3000 754 CPU also in my multimedia computer.

For fast, I would go with the newer CPUs. The 939 AMD CPUs are very good. If you want more, the dual CPU AMD processors are better, but at a cost. Dual channel memory is also good. It makes the most of your memory speed. You need matched memory modules for it to work. Two 512Mb Modules work the best for me. I believe PC3200 is the best compromise for speed/performance at present. I've used Corsair Value Select memory with good results on two machines and it is fairly low priced.

Now that the average high end CPU is up in the 3Gz range, there is not a lot of difference in encoding times between a 3Ghz CPU and a 3.4Ghz CPU. The motherboard. the hard drive controller and the memory setup makes a bigger difference.

I would spend a lot of time exploring the different options. It costs you nothing. I like AMD 64 CPUs as the price VS performance is good. Go for a CPU that includes the CPU cooler. The CPU warranty is longer and the included coolers are pretty good.

Still, spend some time looking around for what is available.