New computer specs for best performance?

I may be able to get a new computer this summer, and if I do I am wondering how best to optimize my purchase to get the best performance for backing up my DVDs.

I won't need to get a monitor, keyboard, etc. If all goes right, I should have about $600-800 to spend. I am hoping I can get opinions (with rationals) for what I should look for.

I basically back up my own DVD collection (always increasing in size), and occasionally make a DVD from VHS tapes using my JVC DVD writer and TMPG DVD-Author. Once in a great while I convert VCD's to DVD, but only a couple times a year, I mainly re-encode using DVD-RB onto DVD-5's. I have a DL burner, but have never used it to make a DL backup disc (don't even own any of those discs, waiting for the price to come WAY down).

Where would I get the most bang for my bucks? I'll probably order from tigerdirect.com or someplace like that (I personally can't build my own).

I already figure a huge HDD (160GB-250GB) of course, maybe even 2 if I can afford it, and a 16x DL-DVD burner (those seem pretty standard now anyway).

What about a processor and/or motherboard though (no idea what I should consider)?

And how much of what kind of RAM should I get?

Should I get a dedicated video card instead of just relying on what's integrated on the motherboard?

Please, any thoughts/opinions on this are appreciated - thanks all!

Go with msi motherboard , solid performance over lifetime of pc , asus have issue's .
Or gigabyte .

Ps : Try getting one using sis chipset , not via (very reliable) , should you want to use linux (lack of via sound support) .

512 minimum memory .

Amd 64 cpu's for ALL round performance (use xp now , 64bit later) ... p4's have serious flaw's in processor code which could cause pc crash if triggered .

Sata hd's by seagate , better than maxtor , western digital .

Dvd burner's - lg (support's all media type's) , sony next best , third is pioneer (can have issue's) , liteon is bottom of pit when it come's to cross compatability .

Onboard video will save money , and prevent you from playing the dreaded "catchup" game , as these card's change frequently .

Go with a standard case blank , one that is strong in constructional design with plenty of expandability for drive configurational option's , like those mac cases's (filtered air passthough's)

Power supply , the best you can afford from antec or other , 500 watt and up .

Last , consider after market cpu and case fan will prolong the life of the unit (never overclock) .

================================

Considering what is listed here , I build system's this way , and have never had any customer complaint's ... I see these people all the time and ask how the pc is going ... most ask me how to do thing's in program's .

I think what is being referred is the known hyperthreading issue with certain intel branded boards that causes crashes. There is a report on the intel forums about this.

What I would really question here is the false statement that Intel is a better video encoder or a faster encoder. I have found just the opposite to be true unless you purchase the top Intel chips and compare them to an Athlon64 for encoding times. Intel has really fallen behind AMD in the last 6 months.

I have avoided using Intel boards for Intel Chips preferring to use third party boards. I wonder if Intel ever released a BIOS update or other fix that corrected this issue? I believe it was only a few makes that had this issue. Then again, I might be referring to something completely unrelated to what Bjs is talking about.

Originally Posted by nathanaa

I may be able to get a new computer this summer, and if I do I am wondering how best to optimize my purchase to get the best performance for backing up my DVDs.

I won't need to get a monitor, keyboard, etc. If all goes right, I should have about $600-800 to spend. I am hoping I can get opinions (with rationals) for what I should look for.

I basically back up my own DVD collection (always increasing in size), and occasionally make a DVD from VHS tapes using my JVC DVD writer and TMPG DVD-Author. Once in a great while I convert VCD's to DVD, but only a couple times a year, I mainly re-encode using DVD-RB onto DVD-5's. I have a DL burner, but have never used it to make a DL backup disc (don't even own any of those discs, waiting for the price to come WAY down).


Where would I get the most bang for my bucks? I'll probably order from tigerdirect.com or someplace like that (I personally can't build my own).

I already figure a huge HDD (160GB-250GB) of course, maybe even 2 if I can afford it, and a 16x DL-DVD burner (those seem pretty standard now anyway).

What about a processor and/or motherboard though (no idea what I should consider)?

And how much of what kind of RAM should I get?

Should I get a dedicated video card instead of just relying on what's integrated on the motherboard?

Please, any thoughts/opinions on this are appreciated - thanks all!

///////////
Hi,
my opinion...
I pay attention to the speed and ram if your going to do video editing and vhs copying...
for example rendering... the faster your cpu speed the better.... rendering is very cpu intensive... and if you do a lot of manulation of a video file.... then a lot of ram come into play...
Now along with a fast cpu chip..... the motherboard bus speed become important also.... i would make sure you get a mother board that has bus speed of 800 mhz... So for a few dollars more yo can gain a lot of performance that you need....

I would maybe get at least a 3.0 gig cpu chip.... with at least 1 gig of ram and the motherboard has buss speed of 800 mhz ...... and depending on how much money.... left... on the graphic card.... right now... there appears to be general agreement the ati 9600 series is very good.... and a good sound card.......
note: I stay away from embedded grphaic chips and sound chips that in the motherboard itself........ there seem to be a lot of issue if the components is embedded versus seperate card..
well those are my thoughts...
I haven't check the component prices for a while but a lot of those things have really come down in price and I think you can stay in that 800 dollar range fairly easy...

Looks like you're getting a lot of useful AND conflicting information. So allow me to add my 2 cents worth. The best peice of advice you've seen here is to get a good power supply. 50% of the unstable computers I repair are because of a faulty or underpowered PSU. Go with a PSU that is at least 400+ watts from a reputable manufacturer (any reputable manufacturer will most likely work). My personal favorite is Fortron, followed by Thermaltake and Codegen, but Antec has always been the Cadillac. For the most part, a case is a case is a case. If you spend $40 or more on a case, it'll probably do the job just fine. Asus is not better than MSI and vice versa. Every manufacturer has problem boards and great boards. It's best to decide what processor you're going to use and then choose the motherboard. Any of the better known manufacturers will probably serve you will, although they each seem to serve different niches, Asus is the Cadillac in this group, but MSI, GigaByte, Abit, Epox, DFI, even Asrock are all good manufacturers. There's a lot of anti-VIA chipset sentiment, but I've used them 4 to 1 over everything else and never had a problem with them. Get 1GB of RAM, I too use Crucial almost exclusively, mostly for its lifetime warranty. This is the one place you do not skimp. Get good RAM; Crucial, OCZ, Kingston, Kingmax, Viking, Corsair, Geil, Mushkin are all good brands. Video cards only really matter if you are going to be doing much gaming. Otherwise, anything over $75 from nVidia, ATI or Matrox will be great. Avoid having to use onboard video, it slows down your system and makes your motherboard obsolete when newer more demanding programs come out. Get a HDD(s) that gives you the most storage for the buck. They're all pretty good right now. I would suggest at least a two HDD setup for DVD-RB. Put the ripped and encoded video on one disk and put the temp folder on another HDD, it will speed it up. SATA is cleaner, but offers no real performance advantage. For video/audio encoding, mHz are what matters, period. This is the one arena where Intel can still beat AMD, but not by much. A 3.0 gHz Intel processor will encode faster than an AMD 3000+, because the AMD is actually running at 2.2 gHz. For just about anything else, an AMD will give you much more bang for your buck. If the mHz are equal, the AMD is going to slaughter the Intel. Dual core would be nice, but will probably be price prohibitive in this price range.

Anyway, decide whether you're gonna go AMD or Intel and when you're gonna do it and I'm sure we can get you a sweet system for $600-$800. Good luck.
-Brett

My new computer will primarily (almost exclusively at first) be for video re-encoding and rendering-type activities. I don’t think I even own a computer game, much less play them, so I don't need that type of system or performance. My old computer will work fine for email and surfing the web, word processing, etc. If I can get this new one, it would be primarily for video work. Heck, I’m even planning on using some *old* keyboard, mouse, monitor, etcetera stuff I have laying around with it, as I don’t plan on actually *using* it for much else.

With that in mind, these are the specs recommended by you folks so far:

- case: average quality case (I don’t care what it looks like)
- cooling: CPU fan and several other cooling fans (brand??)
- CPU: Intel P4 3.0+GHz
- DVD burner: 16x DL DVD+/-R/RW (Pioneer)
- HDD: dual SATA drives (160-250GB+ Seagate)
- memory: 1GB RAM (Crucial)
- motherboard: ASUS or Intel, w/ 800Mhz FSB
- power supply: 500w + (Antec TruPower or Enermax brand)
- sound card: ??
- video card: nVidia with DirectX 9 support

The video and sound card are if I choose a motherboard that does not have them onboard. It sounds like that would be a good idea, am I correct in assuming because it would speed up the re-encoding process?

Are there any other specs or considerations I should be thinking about? Oh, and any recommendations about the sound card?

Another thought I had - exactly what *kind* of RAM should I be looking at? I don't know what all that DDR, DDR2, EEC etcetera stuff means. When I did a search for Crucial RAM at tiger there were a couple dozen choices, and I have no idea what would be my best option.

And is a higher mhz better there too?

Originally Posted by nathanaa

Another thought I had - exactly what *kind* of RAM should I be looking at? I don't know what all that DDR, DDR2, EEC etcetera stuff means. When I did a search for Crucial RAM at tiger there were a couple dozen choices, and I have no idea what would be my best option.

It depends on the motherboard and chipset,IMO DDR2 isn't worth the cost.ECC=Error Correcting Code,it's better to have but it also depends on the motherboard.
I also recommend ASUS boards but stay away from VIA chipsets(bad experiences)!

"And is a higher mhz better there too?"

Yes,that's where you will get the best "bang-for-the-buck".Always use the same speed as the CPU,you can use slower RAM but performance will suffer.

I'd suggest you get a good aftermarket heatsink and fan for that HOT INTEL processor. Thermaltake, Zalman and Swiftech are good brands for heatsinks. Vantec has good case and cpu fans. AMD 64 processors don't need the aftermarket heatsinks because they run cool on stock heatsink and fan. I have a AMD 64 VENICE 3200 that runs at the temp of 42c when using DVDRB-PRO. My P4 Northwood 3.00c runs at the temp of 54c when using DVDRB PRO. If you want fast encoding get the P4 INTEL processor but get a good heatsink fan because the P4 processors that came after the P4 NORTHWOOD's have high heat temps. Just my 2cents!

or a dual core AMD.......as you can see, there's a lotta varying opinions on the processor...if you go amd, stay away from semprons...same thing with intel, if you go intel, stay away from celerons.....those are their base level garbage that they shovel out to the masses....my main gripe about intel processors (other than the fact that they spend a ton of money on advertising instead of properly investing it into their actual processors) is the heat factor....your gonna definately want extra cooling for a p4 rig, especially if it's gonna be running heavy loads such as video encoding on a regular basis.....AMD rigs can generally speaking, do okay with the standard fans that are included with the processors....personally, i run an AMD 3700 myself and it's been going for around 3 solid days, it's running at 38C right now, but i have seen it top out at around 50-55 during very CPU intensive stuff, as opposed to p4's which idle at around 45-50 and can top out at like 65-70C......needless to say, heat isnt a good thing, it can (under improper cooling circumstances) start to cause damage to parts of the computer that and if the processor continually runs hot, it can actually burn out your processor faster as for brands of ram, personally, i'd recommend OCZ just cuz they lifetime warrenty their ram, so IF for some god forsaken reason, your ram would act up, ya just send it to them and they either fix it or replace it outright....as for the harddrive, i'd have to disagree with those that said seagate.....i've had better luck personally with WD and even maxtor (i know im definately in the minority with maxtor) but i do agree with the opionions given so far to use SATA not only cuz it looks cleaner, but then you dont have to deal with jumpers and that type of thing...as for the video card and sound card, if this is gonna be used EXCLUSIVELY for video encoding, it wont make a huge differance except maybe playback if your intending on doing any of that, it wont make any significant differance in your encoding (unless you use that ATI video encoding thing, but im not too sure about the quality of the results, or if a vid card that actually does use that would be within your price range...i dont keep up on price ranges of vid cards unless im specifically shopping to replace mine) memory cooling....personally i havent found that it makes a significant impact, but feel free, i dont see that they would cause any harm...dvd burner...personally i stick with lite-on myself and they have worked great, others have reported NEC work pretty good as well......(though i've appearently had some bad luck with the one i had)

i've had better luck personally with WD and even maxtor (i know im definately in the minority with maxtor)

I'm another Maxtor & WD hard drive buyer as well.
I still have a little old 6gb WD from my first computer and it still works.

Nathanaa buy what you can afford. Personal preference for me is the BENQ 1640 & 1650 dvd burners. LITEON just acquired BENQ's optical dept. so it will be interesting to see what kind of dvd burner will be released with the new merger.

Originally Posted by budz

LITEON just acquired BENQ's optical dept. so it will be interesting to see what kind of dvd burner will be released with the new merger.

whoa...i must be a bit outta the loop, i didn't hear about that....should be interesting to see though..

Well, I looked at the Pentium D processor, and it does sound like it would be a much better choice for what I plan on using the computer for (mainly). It's a bit more expensive, but sounds worth it.

However, matching it to a mobo seems like a problem. If I plan to get an 800mhz FSB processor, and 800mhz DDR2 RAM, I need to get a mobo that will *take* that kind of RAM. I'm having a problem finding an ASUS/Intel mobo that fits all those criteria. Unless I'm just missing something. I'll keep looking, but anyone got any recommendations?

Oops, forgot to mention - I'm looking for a board with both USB and Firewire on it (so I don't have to buy the cards). Or would it be cheaper that way maybe, hmm....

I bought two of these recently.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131589

Yes, onboard audio will do this, but will not sound great. For spoken word stuff from portable cassette recorders, though, this is a moot point. You can use the 1/8" stereo line in jack for this, and freeware such as Audacity or Wavepad work very well (and Audacity even has a noise reduction function to kill a bit of the hiss you'll have).