Having a custom PC built: What are the considerations for parts?

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Please bear with me as I continue trying to fine-tune this adventure & thanks for pitching in with valuable contributions as things progress.

Can’t but help wondering why Adobe certifies so few cards considering all the models that Nvidia makes by themselves which leads into the following questions:

1) Do all of their cards (except for a select few) require the hack, can a relative novice/non techie do it themselves or is there a software program that one can launch and let it roll? Do the 4xxx and 5xx series require the hack too?

2) Is it mandatory to have a GPU accelerated card to effectively use CS5 or can a non-certified or hacked card successfully run “software” only mode? What is the difference in rendering/ encoding speed between those 2 modes?

3) Even within any given card model, if you type it into Amazon.com for example to compare prices, dozens if not hundreds of choices pop-up. How do I know which variation to choose? What are the considerations here?

4) Which of these 3 CPU’s would you buy and why? What is the prime advantage?

a) i7-2600k-3.4 Ghz
b) i7-930 at 2.8 Ghz
c) i7-950 at 3.06 Ghz

Which of the above offers the best price to performance ratio? Is there much of a material
difference?

5) Where can I find the so-called “long Nvidia card” thread?

6) How much maximum should I pay for 12 gigs of DDR3 memory? Preferable brands or specs to keep in mind??

7) In regards to the power supply and PC case/housing what recommendations and suggestions would you make that are reasonably priced, reliable will have enough room for air circulation and could handle 3 internal hard drives, firewire card and a burner?

8) Is it essential or a luxury to have a video card that has dual cooling fans and is
overclocked? How much more performance is squeezed out by overclocking?
Not to be omitted is the motherboard. What did you buy and what factors are important?

Sorry for the question barrage however I’m still negotiating the learning curve. Thanks!!

[redwudz]

Let's start over. What do you want to do with the new PC? That would determine what specs would suit the applications.

You seem very interested in video cards. Are you a avid gamer and want to have the most FPS? Or are you planning to do video conversions? Or are you just planning on editing? Then, what format do you plan to edit? Most high end video cards are for gaming.

GPU acceleration is still in in it's infancy. Usually a fast, multi-core CPU will give you better performance for encoding.

For CPUs, it depends on what you want to do. If it's working with high definition video in H.264 format, lot of CPU cores and a fast CPU is good.

Why do you want 12GB of DDR3 RAM? Not many programs can use that anyway. And you would also need a 64bit OS to recognize that much RAM. Again, what do you want to do with the PC? For RAM manufactures, depends on your selected MB and CPU.

For PC cases, spend a few $$. I favor Lain Li, but there are a lot of good cases out there.

For a power supply, depends on what's in the PC. If you have dual SLI video cards, 700W may be good. For an average PC, 500W is more than sufficient. Whatever you buy, go with a good name brand. Corsair, PC Power and Cooling, Thermaltake, OCZ, Coolermaster and many others.

JMO, but I would start with the CPU selection, then the motherboard, case, PS, and drives.

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Hi Redwuz,

No problem! I need a higher end video/graphics card to run Adobe Premiere Pro 5 on a 64 bit machine which I'm cuurently looking to have built once the parts are finalized on. The card may be GPU accelerated or hacked to make it work. I plan to render, encode and convert .m2t (HDV) video to other major formats such as blue-ray & high quality MPEG-2 for starters. May be exporting using Cineform and other fine codecs intermediatory or otherwise. I'm told 12-24 gigs of ram is needed to take advantage of the Mercury playback engine in CS5.

I'm trying to ascertian which motherboard would most be suited for either or any of the i7 cpu's listed above.

Thanks for any direction and tips you will give.

[edDV]

Hi Redwuz,

No problem! I need a higher end video/graphics card to run Adobe Premiere Pro 5 on a 64 bit machine which I'm cuurently looking to have built once the parts are finalized on. The card may be GPU accelerated or hacked to make it work. I plan to render, encode and convert .m2t (HDV) video to other major formats such as blue-ray & high quality MPEG-2 for starters. May be exporting using Cineform and other fine codecs intermediatory or otherwise. I'm told 12-24 gigs of ram is needed to take advantage of the Mercury playback engine in CS5.

I'm trying to ascertian which motherboard would most be suited for either or any of the i7 cpu's listed above.

Thanks for any direction and tips you will give.

Most of those requirements don't require the level of cutting edge hardware you list. A Core2 Quad will get you going and an i5/i7 would be luxury for HDV.

To bring this down to earth, what is your budget including computer, monitors, camcorders, etc.? It always comes down to budget.

Is your target still cable community access or other?

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

Hi edDV,

Actually, I have both feet firmly planted on the ground and been doing a lot of reading online. Yes, one of my end users remains a cable audience, however I plan to stick to a 16:9 HDV master indefinitely and to either export,encode,render or down-convert as needed to meet a particular need. If you can spend a lttle time reading the requirements of CS5 and the technology behind it my post may make more sense. My budget is around 1.3k at most because I still need the upgrade to CS5 too. I'm also set for HD monitors as I have 2 already.

I'm told by CS exports and users that a GPU accelerated card increases processing speed by approx a factor of 10.

My choices are to buy an NVIDIA card that's Adobe cerified or a Nvidia card that needs to be "hacked".

For starters I need to buy a motherboard that's compatible not only for the graphics card but also a high end I7 processor.

It would really be helpful to me to be guided in the parts selection process so I get the best preformance for the buck.

You help is always appreciated.

[DarrellS]

I was going to recommend the I5 2500K for price to performance since you can overclock to 4.5GHz but the motherboards for these CPUs seem to be lacking compared to the MBs for I7 CPUs. There are only 6 SATA connectors on the Gigabyte boards and two e-SATA connectors on the back unless you spend $330 then you can get 8 onboard and 2 e-SATA. The Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R has 10 SATA connectors (4 SATA III and 6 SATA II) on the board and 2 e-SATA on the back for $210.

Here is my affordable build and my wish build...

[edDV]

Hi edDV,

I'm told by CS exports and users that a GPU accelerated card increases processing speed by approx a factor of 10.

My choices are to buy an NVIDIA card that's Adobe cerified or a Nvidia card that needs to be "hacked".

...

Factor of 10 !! ?
Any reference for that?

Hacking GeForce cards may be an interesting hobby but I'm suggesting this isn't necessary to get acceptable render/encoding performance. These machines are already fast. I'd stick to the Adobe certified NVidia GeForce cards for your budget range. The Quadros would be overkill unless you are getting into highly layered effects rendering. There will be fast obsolescence in these cards as GPU render assist develops. No need to "buy for the future", just cover your immediate needs.

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/search_result.html?manuSearchVar=1&modelSearchV...&buttonSubmit=
The only listed GeForce cards that support CS5 GPU rendering are the GTX-285 and the GTX-470.

[Canon GL-2 Guy]

edDV,

Sorry to make your heart beat faster and get the adrenaline pumping.

Please let me clarify and explain.

I should have stated that the 10 times increase in performance processing and speed by using a GPU accelerated card was within Premiere Pro CS5 as directly compared to using it in MPE/"software only" mode !!

There now, you can rest easy Sir!

Would you care to help me find the right motherboard?

If I may ask, what is your system comprised of?

Thanks

[edDV]

edDV,

Sorry to make your heart beat faster and get the adrenaline pumping.

Please let me clarify and explain.

I should have stated that the 10 times increase in performance processing and speed by using a GPU accelerated card was within Premiere Pro CS5 as directly compared to using it in MPE/"software only" mode !!

There now, you can rest easy Sir!

Would you care to help me find the right motherboard?

If I may ask, what is your system comprised of?

Thanks

No pumping going on.

I'm fine with what I have currently (4 Windows machine mix of Core2 Duo/Quad + Macs, each with a job to do). Like you I'm monitoring GPU acceleration for the next purchase which will be later this year if needed.

Currently I'm following CPU and GPU trends, not focused to the mobo level so I'll follow your progress.

[deadrats]

@Canon GL-2 Guy

how does "none of the above" sound?

of the cpu's you mentioned, i would choose none, you are only going to be working with mpeg-2 primarily, so as was pointed out you don't need a top of the line cpu. likewise, gpu accelerated encoding is primarily relegated to avc at the moment and the mercury engine included with premiere is avc only as far as i know, and even if it wasn't you need a certain class of quadro for it to work, so that's out of the equation.

as far as sandy bridge cpu's are concerned, though i was really big on them when they came out, and in some limited cases i still think they are the way to go, i have come to the conclusion that much of their much vaunted performance advantage is due to very aggressive turbo modes, which effectively significantly overclocks the cpu so that it operates at speeds well past what is advertised. basically their performance advantage is a head fake.

ad to the the fact that supporting motherboards no longer support much of the legacy hardware still out there, for instance they no longer have pata connectors so if you have a pata optical drive you'll need to buy a sata optical and it certainly does make it less of an attractive option.

i would probably go with either the slowest clocked phenom 2 X6 (95w) cpu coupled with the cheapest supporting motherboard i could find (about $50) or an i7 860/870 (95w, HT) and again the cheapest supporting motherboard.

as for ram i would pick up 2 sticks of 4 gig each ddr3 for about $80 and call it a day.