Recommendations- computer for video editing

[Trophyman]

I need to build another computer that will be used for general home use and a little video capturing/editing. Can you guys give me some recommendations on Mobo, memory, and video card? Do I need SLI? Would like to keep it at a grand or less. I’ve been looking at some of the barebones setups on TigerDirect at
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?page=1&Nav=|c:333|&Sort=0&Recs=10
but not sure what video card I need. Any and all help is appreciated.

Thanx

[aedipuss]

unless you are going to buy and use adobe pp cs5 it doesn't matter too much what vid card you use. the faster the better but you can stay within reason. if you use a video camera with firewire make sure the computer does. quad cores are nice to have for encoding.

[edDV]

If you want to play HD video, get a video card that supports "Pure Video HD" or "AVIVO HD". Anything more is only for gaming*.

The CPU you need depends on the formats you want to edit. If AVCHD, you will want an i5/i7 quad and around 4 GB RAM.

What software will you be using?


* I wouldn't pay more for a 'cuda GPU now unless you want to use it now. By the time software is generally ready for GPU encoding or rendering assist, you will want a new display card anyway.

[deadrats]

I need to build another computer that will be used for general home use and a little video capturing/editing. Can you guys give me some recommendations on Mobo, memory, and video card? Do I need SLI? Would like to keep it at a grand or less. I’ve been looking at some of the barebones setups on TigerDirect at
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?page=1&Nav=|c:333|&Sort=0&Recs=10
but not sure what video card I need. Any and all help is appreciated.

Thanx

personally, i wouldn't build a new system now, i would wait until jan of 2011, intel's next cpu, "sandy bridge, will have dedicated hardware just for video trancoding (will handle nothing else) and amd's "bulldozer" will have 2 integer units per core, each capable of handling a separate thread (for smt goodness) and two 128 bit floating point units per core, which behave as one 256 bit fpu, which means, in theory, that it can handle eight 32 bit floating point operations per cycle or four 64 bit floating point operations per cycle. for comparison, simd instructions (mmx, sse, etc) are 128 bit instructions, which means in theory, "bulldozer" should be able to process floating point instructions and data faster than either it or "sandy bridge" can process sse/2/3/4 and as as fast as "sandy bridge" will be able to process its exclusive 256 bit avx simd instructions.

in short, wait.

[Trophyman]

Hearing that, I would love to wait but my current old config is going south quickly and I need to do high shcool video every week so it needs to be now. I use Adobe Premiere Pro and CS5 but I don't normally do HD. I will need fire wire to feed in video.

[redwudz]

Most times, a fast quad core, Intel or AMD will work well. With a 32bit OS, 4GB RAM is maximum. I currently use a 3.5Ghz six core AMD, 4GB DDR3 RAM, a fast WD 150GB 10K RPM boot HDD, and two 1000GB WD HDDs. Most important with editing is lots and lots of HDD space.

If you are just editing SD DV, then a dual core CPU would work fine. Video cards aren't usually important for editing, more for playback.

The MB I use has FireWire onboard and on-board video with digital audio out and HDMI out. Works very well. And is somewhat future proof: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128435

[Trophyman]

Here is the setup that I've come up with so far. Could you guys please give me some feedback/suggestions. Do I need a video card as well? Been a while since I've built a box.

1 GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H AM3 AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
2 ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM
1 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
1 Rosewill RV2-700 700W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V SLI Ready Power Supply
1 CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX4GX3M2A1600C9

I've got a full size ATX case, a dozen or so HD's keyboards, mouse, etc. Any extra cables??

Thanx

[Anonymous30]

Here is the setup that I've come up with so far. Could you guys please give me some feedback/suggestions. Do I need a video card as well? Been a while since I've built a box.

1 GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H AM3 AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
2 ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM
1 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
1 Rosewill RV2-700 700W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V SLI Ready Power Supply
1 CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX4GX3M2A1600C9

I've got a full size ATX case, a dozen or so HD's keyboards, mouse, etc. Any extra cables??

Thanx

And this CPU???
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103851

[redwudz]

I'm a bit hesitant to recommend Rosewill PSs. It's a good company for really economical devices, but a power supply is a very important piece of hardware. If it dies, it could take the whole PC with it. I would probably go with a major brand PS, such as Thermatake, Coolermaster, Silverstone, Antec, Power and Computing, OCZ or a few others. Generally, ~500W is sufficient unless you plan to run dual SLI video cards. If you have a bit of time, major brand PSs have discount deals if you watch for them.

I have a couple of Seagate 1.5GB HDDs and they have been OK, but I prefer WD HDDs most times as they have been more dependable. The Corsair RAM should be fine, just make sure it's compatible with the MB, though it probably is.

[elmuz]

Depends on how much you want to spend... in case you have possibilities try consider a Matrox RTX2... http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/pc/rtx2/
I saw it at work... really powerful!