• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Building a nice video editing computer. Any suggestions?

I

ingeborgdot

Golden Member
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
 
Last edited:
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.
 
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?
 
ingeborgdot said:
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?
Click to expand...

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.
 
mnewsham said:
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)
Click to expand...

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
 
Davidh373 said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
mnewsham said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
HendrixFan said:
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.
Click to expand...

This is quite true.

HendrixFan said:
You should get up near 600 MB/s throughput on a 4 drive array.
Click to expand...

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
 
Last edited:
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.
 
Davidh373 said:
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
Click to expand...


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?
 
ingeborgdot said:
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?
Click to expand...

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?
 
Last edited:
Davidh373 said:
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.
Click to expand...

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).
 
IanWorthington said:
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).
Click to expand...

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 $$$.
 
mfenn said:
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 $$$.
Click to expand...

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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top