Building a nice video editing computer. Any suggestions?

ingeborgdot

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2005
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If you were going to build a machine that would be a nice machine for doing some AVCHD video editing what would you suggest? This is kind of a survey I guess as to what would you put in it? Budget is around $2000
 
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mnewsham

Lifer
Oct 2, 2010
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Waiting for socket R (2011) or waiting for the Z67 chipset to be released would be my first suggestion. However if just going for an 1155 build i would say go with:

P67 motherboard (~$150-250)
i5-2500k($230)
SSD 60Gb boot drive($130)
2xGTX 570($700)
1Tb spinpoint F3($70)
1000watt PSU ($200)
8Gb RAM ($100-$150)
Blu-ray burner ($130)
Case ($150)

Total = ~$2010

This is (obviously) not an exact build but a general guide line you can change parts depending on your needs. For example a blu-ray burner is not something a lot of people need however, i did not know if you needed it specifically so i included it into the budget.
 

ingeborgdot

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2005
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My biggest thing about only having a 60GB HDD boot drive is that with W7 these things fill up fast. What are some things people can to keep this from happening? I would have some other storage drives but it still does not keep the boot drive from filling up with shadow copies etc. Maybe you have something special that I am not doing right?

Also, are there any things a person should do that you would do to setup up this machine for doing the best possible video editing for speed? Thanks.

Also why not an i7 950 or something? Is there a reason you chose the i5?
 

mnewsham

Lifer
Oct 2, 2010
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428
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My biggest thing about only having a 60GB HDD boot drive is that with W7 these things fill up fast. What are some things people can to keep this from happening? I would have some other storage drives but it still does not keep the boot drive from filling up with shadow copies etc. Maybe you have something special that I am not doing right?

Also, are there any things a person should do that you would do to setup up this machine for doing the best possible video editing for speed? Thanks.

Also why not an i7 950 or something? Is there a reason you chose the i5?

you can go i7-2600 if you want but i think the i5 would work well, it isn't even released yet and looking at the benchmarks is doing a lot better then the current i7's. You can also enable TRIM support in W7 to help your SSD boot drive from filling up or becoming slower.
 

Davidh373

Platinum Member
Jun 20, 2009
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P67 motherboard (~$150-250)
i5-2500k($230)
SSD 60Gb boot drive($130)
2xGTX 570($700)
1Tb spinpoint F3($70)
1000watt PSU ($200)
8Gb RAM ($100-$150)
Blu-ray burner ($130)
Case ($150)

lol, horrible idea for a video build... you want heavy on the processor, light on the video, and have a lot of separate disks. You built an awesome gaming rig, not so much a video editing rig. This is what I would do for an editing box.

Case (Antec 300)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-042-_-Product

PSU (Seasonic 520W)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-094-_-Product

CPU (i7 970)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-066-_-Product

Motherboard (Asus Sabertooth)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...%20motherboard

GPU (GTX 450)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-342-_-Product

RAM (12GB Ripjaws 1333Mhz 1.5V)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-096-_-Product

SSD (120GB Vertex 2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-551-_-Product

HDD (3 x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-185-_-Product

Total: $1912.55
 

MisterDonut

Senior member
Dec 8, 2009
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lol, horrible idea for a video build... you want heavy on the processor, light on the video, and have a lot of separate disks. You built an awesome gaming rig, not so much a video editing rig. This is what I would do for an editing box.

Case (Antec 300)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-042-_-Product

PSU (Seasonic 520W)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-094-_-Product

CPU (i7 970)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-066-_-Product

Motherboard (Asus Sabertooth)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...%20motherboard

GPU (GTX 450)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-342-_-Product

RAM (12GB Ripjaws 1333Mhz 1.5V)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-096-_-Product

SSD (120GB Vertex 2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-551-_-Product

HDD (3 x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-185-_-Product

Total: $1912.55

He's right. You put together a really sick $2k gaming build...

+1 on this build for the $2000 mark (I would have skimped on a few parts to save some money, but your listed budget is $2000). Might go with the Corsair Force/G.Skill PP, but I just have a personal preference against OCZ.
 

HendrixFan

Diamond Member
Oct 18, 2001
4,646
0
71
i5-2500k($230)
SSD 60Gb boot drive($130)
2xGTX 570($700)
1Tb spinpoint F3($70)
1000watt PSU ($200)
8Gb RAM ($100-$150)
Blu-ray burner ($130)
Case ($150)

Total = ~$2010

Wasting a third of his budget on SLI'd video cards (and subsequent power supply) is a terrible idea. Please don't encourage people asking for an editing computer to go that route.

Op, personally I would hold off on the 6 core i7s. For 4 times the price you get a 20-30% boost in encoding speeds/time. It is a nice speed boost, but you are really losing out on cost/performance. Combine that with the notion that you will likely spend more time dealing with workflow in the editing window than actual encoding and it becomes a difficult expense to justify.

Do you need a monitor? A nice 27" high resolution monitor, or a 30" comes in very handy when editing. A cheaper route would be to run multiple smaller monitors.

I would get a nice speedy SSD drive to boot off of, and run your apps with. For the large video files, run a 4 drive RAID-0 array off of your motherboard with the Samsung drives Davidh linked to, or the 500GB model if you don't need as much space. You should get up near 600 MB/s throughput on a 4 drive array. Pick up a green 2TB drive or two for storage/backup.
 

Davidh373

Platinum Member
Jun 20, 2009
2,428
0
71
Op, personally I would hold off on the 6 core i7s. For 4 times the price you get a 20-30% boost in encoding speeds/time. It is a nice speed boost, but you are really losing out on cost/performance. Combine that with the notion that you will likely spend more time dealing with workflow in the editing window than actual encoding and it becomes a difficult expense to justify.

This is quite true.

You should get up near 600 MB/s throughput on a 4 drive array.

While this is true, it is better to have a drive dedicated to each file...

SSD - App
Drive 1 - Storage
Drive 2 - Scratch
Drive 3 - Assets
Drive 4 - Render
 
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mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
5
71
www.mfenn.com
Yeah, I agree with David, Hendrix, and Donut. Mnewsham put together a really sick gaming rig though!

The only change that I would make to David's rig is to swap out the Westmere i7 970 for the new Sandy Bridge i7 2600K. The 2600K is about as fast as a 980X and 1/3 of the cost. You'll need to change the motherboard as well, something like the recently reviewed ASRock P67 Extreme 4 would work great, though once more i5 1155 boards become available, I'm sure that there will be some cheaper options.
 

ingeborgdot

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2005
1,351
29
91
This is quite true.



While this is true, it is better to have a drive dedicated to each file...

SSD - App
Drive 1 - Storage
Drive 2 - Scratch
Drive 3 - Assets
Drive 4 - Render


Wow, do I have a lot to learn. When you say Drive 1 storage and 4 Render, I understand the terminology. D2 and 3 I don't.
My question as I am somewhat new to all of this for video, is how would I approach the drive setup. How do I get each thing to go to each drive? Ignorance on my part, sorry. I would definitely make my storage 2TB or more right? Is smaller better for the other drives?
 

IanWorthington

Senior member
Dec 7, 2001
249
0
76
Wow, do I have a lot to learn. When you say Drive 1 storage and 4 Render, I understand the terminology. D2 and 3 I don't.
My question as I am somewhat new to all of this for video, is how would I approach the drive setup. How do I get each thing to go to each drive? Ignorance on my part, sorry. I would definitely make my storage 2TB or more right? Is smaller better for the other drives?

Assets would be your shot video, additional audio tracks, stills, titling, etc.
Scratch is your editor's temp files

@David: why not scratch to the ssd?
 
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IanWorthington

Senior member
Dec 7, 2001
249
0
76
You could, but remember, that is running the OS and the App as well, so I would think (dunno this for sure) a dedicated drive would be quicker than running 3 things off the SSD.

With enough RAM to prevent paging and limited other apps running, how much activity would one see to the system drive?

(@OP: sorry to jump on your thread: I'm looking at a system with the option to do some video-editing too).
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
5
71
www.mfenn.com
With enough RAM to prevent paging and limited other apps running, how much activity would one see to the system drive?

(@OP: sorry to jump on your thread: I'm looking at a system with the option to do some video-editing too).

If you're not planning to do anything else with the once you click "Render", then putting the scratch on the SSD would be fine, and would in fact be faster than having it on a disk. However, it is going to slow your computer down to a crawl (relatively speaking) while the render is happening. Best solution would be to have 2 SSDs, but that is $$$.
 

Davidh373

Platinum Member
Jun 20, 2009
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If you're not planning to do anything else with the once you click "Render", then putting the scratch on the SSD would be fine, and would in fact be faster than having it on a disk. However, it is going to slow your computer down to a crawl (relatively speaking) while the render is happening. Best solution would be to have 2 SSDs, but that is $$$.

Technically speaking, video encoding does not lock the computer up as much as 3D Rendering does. I can actually play Crysis on my workstation while it's rendering video, 3D on the other hand limits my web browsing.