Updated: Let's build a QUIET HTPC like system for HD Video Editing

[DaviDaVinci]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.

Mostly Video Playback, Video Editing (Vegas/Premiere), Photoshop, Downloading Files. It won't be a dedicated HTPC but I'd like those entertainment features. I'll need Bluetooth and also wireless networking. No Gaming (maybe in the future).

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread

Under $1000 excluding monitor. I'll be using a DELL W5001C until I save up for a dedicated 24" monitor (sometime in May)

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.

USA

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.

None but I want to stay with ATI Video Cards (46xx/48xx series) as it seems like I might be able to do Audio over HDMI which would be a big plus with my monitor/tv.

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.

I've got an external 750gb Maxtor that I'll be using for backups. Other HDD's I have will be put on sale.

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.

Read too many.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.

OCing.

8. WHEN do you plan to build it?

ASAP

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The last system I built was with an Epox board. I've been using a crappy lappy the last 2 years and need something that won't be laggy. So far I've come up with the following

Pioneer Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-R 32X CD-RW 40X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner - OEM - $22.99

Antec P182 Gun Metal Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail - $118.99 (looking for a deal on this)

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply and bought it. $80.74 Shipped - $20 MIR (ALREADY BOUGHT)

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
Item #: $74.99 (OS/APPS)

ASUS EAH3450/DI/256M Radeon HD 3450 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Low Profile Ready Video Card - Retail $29.99 - $10 Rebate (ALREADY BOUGHT from Newegg)

OCZ OCZ3P1866C9LV6GK 6GB PC3-15000 (DDR3-1866) Triple Channel Memory - Retail - $119.99 - $50 Rebate (ALREADY BOUGHT from ZZF)


Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail - $279

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $269
OR
Foxconn Renaissance LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $249.99 - $50 Rebate

 

[fourdegrees11]

you can get a fanless (silent) 4670 for the same price

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102816

 

[Juddog]

You should really check out this site:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/

They are silence fanatics over there.

 

[DaviDaVinci]

I just posted there. What about the system build in general?

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: DaviDaVinci
Let's build a QUIET HTPC like system for HD Video Editing

Can we borrow it from you when we're done building it?

 

[0roo0roo]

p182 is better for quiet. sonata is better than standard, but thats a low standard considering how thin walled and sound leaking most cases are. sonata is steel which is good, but doesnt touch the p18x type multilayer case. tap that and its a dull thud.

 

[heyheybooboo]

The PhII 940BE / Gigabyte 790x is $85 cheaper and 10% faster in Vegas and consumes a good bit less power at idle.

For whatever reason MainConcept encoders in Vegas seem to favor AMD procs. The PhII 810 would save you a bit of money and perform similarly to the Q9550 (but you lose the unlocked cpu multi ...)

 

[DaviDaVinci]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
p182 is better for quiet. sonata is better than standard, but thats a low standard considering how thin walled and sound leaking most cases are. sonata is steel which is good, but doesnt touch the p18x type multilayer case. tap that and its a dull thud.

P182 looks like it'll work great. I'll add that to the list. Thanks.

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
The PhII 940BE / Gigabyte 790x is $85 cheaper and 10% faster in Vegas and consumes a good bit less power at idle.

For whatever reason MainConcept encoders in Vegas seem to favor AMD procs. The PhII 810 would save you a bit of money and perform similarly to the Q9550 (but you lose the unlocked cpu multi ...)

I'll go with the AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb, what about the GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard with the updated Bios ($79 free shipping)? It doesn't have eSata but i don't know if I will ever use that port....you never know i suppose.

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: DaviDaVinci
Let's build a QUIET HTPC like system for HD Video Editing

Can we borrow it from you when we're done building it?

Absolutely, our man cave room (where the pc will go) has a Kegerator with locally brewed beer!

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: DaviDaVinci


P182 looks like it'll work great. I'll add that to the list. Thanks.

cool, yea its amazing how most cases are still so lousy, all sorts of aluminum and plastic showy bits, no thought to noise, even on costly models. i guess the target market doesn't care. tap even a reasonably expensive aluminum case and it'll sound like the thin sound leaking metal box it is. i guess most buyers only go for flash looks or fans

 

[DaviDaVinci]

Is there a noticeable performance / noise difference between
Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
and
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
I'm assuming the Black is a better performer while the Green is quieter. But how much quieter is Green and how much faster is Black. Not sure which route to go.

EDIT: NM, seems like the Green has issues with Vista 64. Given that is it worthwhile to use Western Digital VelociRaptor for main OS/Apps or would the WD Black do just fine. I'm going to update my original list as I go.

 

[specialk90]

Do you use Premiere Pro CS4 or CS3 and do you use After Effects? What OS, Vista 32 or 64bit? Vegas x64? FYI, I use PPro, AE and Photoshop CS4.

I ask because I just finished reading some good articles over at DigitalContentProducer.com about PPro CS4, After Effects CS4 and 64bit Vista. For much faster performance, you will want Intel i7, 12GB ram and Vista x64. It is amazing at how much Ram Premiere will use when editing as well as encoding with AME. 8GB of Ram is the minimum for just Premiere while editing a single HD project. If you use Dynamic Link, have Photoshop open or use Vegas while using Premiere, your performance will drop quite a bit with 8GB of ram or less. I love how PPro CS4 is finally built to use more ram but I am stuck with 8GB max on my board and that sucks. I could spend $800 on 4x4GB ram or spend far less upgrading to i7 w/12GB ram and get much better performance. I'm just trying to save you current and future headaches because you will be limited to 8GB with your current setup.

P182 case is an excellent choice as I have the P180 and it is rather quiet. I also reconfigured the fans on the back & top with the back fan blowing in over the heatsink/fan and the top blowing up and I added a fan in front of the 2drive bay. I tested the normal fan setup and my current and my current setup kept the motherboard + cpu temps slightly lower. Also, you will probably want to see if the Sata cables that come with the motherboard are angled and if so, which direction. The angled connectors are very nice for the bottom 4-drive bay and keeping the cables uncluttered.

Another reason I recommend Intel is due to their Matrix Raid capability. Premiere really benefits from a fast media cache; so, using 2 identical drives, you can create a Raid 0 for the OS/Apps, media cache and scratch disk. Say you get 2-1TB WD Blacks - you can create a 100GB Raid 0 volume for the OS & other stuff and then you still have 950GB free for a Raid 1 volume where you keep your important files. This will speed up your system quite a bit from booting up, to opening programs and opening files. Only on Intel-based motherboards can you create 2 different Raid volumes; not even with hardware Raid controllers or AMD or Nvidia based boards either. This setup will also give you data security; so, if one drive fails, everything on the Raid 1 volume is fine. All you would need to do is recover/reinstall your OS + programs. Setting this up is rather simple and I could give you step-by-step instructions.

 

[Operandi]

I recently built a video editing rig around a PhenII 920, 790G Gigabyte board, and 8GB of RAM. I'm also all about building quiet machines so thats a pretty high priority with any home machine I build.

As far as your components....

I would stick with the PhenII unless you are gona go i7, but defiantly go with with X4.

If your not gaming I would go with one of the Gigabyte 780G boards as I don't think dedicated graphics is going to gain you anything. I went with the MA78GPM-DS2H.

I went with a 640 WD Black for the OS drive, no complaints about noise.

The case was a Lian Li PC-A05B. The hard drives and fans are all soft mounted. Fans were replaced by Yate Loon and further slowed down with SpeedFan, they turn around 800RPM when the machine idles (I didn't try the stock fans). I've used the case a couple of times now and I'm very pleased with it.

I used a Zalman 9300AT for cooling but I think I would go a different route next time. It performs great but the fan makes an audible "growling" sound that never completely disappears regardless of speed. I've had good luck with Thermalright heatsinks and JMC PWM fans in the past, just a more expensive route.

 

[specialk90]

Dedicated video cards play a HUGE role in Video Editing; for example, rendering Effects. Premiere Pro can use the video card to render effects which is far faster than the CPU. In After Effects, the video card plays such an important role that my 8800GT 512mb is barely enough. Also, depending on the program used, some offer CUDA encoding support, which means a Nvidia card is a must.

Also, during the course of editing video(especially HD), the CPU is hard at work. My Q6600 overclocked to 3.0GHz and can keep up with all formats EXCEPT AVCHD. If you will be editing this format, which I would put money on since it is the standard format in just about all consumer cams, you want the most powerful CPU you can get. For pros who choose to use AVCHD as their primary format, they must use a dual-CPU system for an efficient workflow.

 

[DaviDaVinci]

Originally posted by: specialk90
Do you use Premiere Pro CS4 or CS3 and do you use After Effects? What OS, Vista 32 or 64bit? Vegas x64? FYI, I use PPro, AE and Photoshop CS4.

I ask because I just finished reading some good articles over at DigitalContentProducer.com about PPro CS4, After Effects CS4 and 64bit Vista. For much faster performance, you will want Intel i7, 12GB ram and Vista x64. It is amazing at how much Ram Premiere will use when editing as well as encoding with AME. 8GB of Ram is the minimum for just Premiere while editing a single HD project. If you use Dynamic Link, have Photoshop open or use Vegas while using Premiere, your performance will drop quite a bit with 8GB of ram or less. I love how PPro CS4 is finally built to use more ram but I am stuck with 8GB max on my board and that sucks. I could spend $800 on 4x4GB ram or spend far less upgrading to i7 w/12GB ram and get much better performance. I'm just trying to save you current and future headaches because you will be limited to 8GB with your current setup.

P182 case is an excellent choice as I have the P180 and it is rather quiet. I also reconfigured the fans on the back & top with the back fan blowing in over the heatsink/fan and the top blowing up and I added a fan in front of the 2drive bay. I tested the normal fan setup and my current and my current setup kept the motherboard + cpu temps slightly lower. Also, you will probably want to see if the Sata cables that come with the motherboard are angled and if so, which direction. The angled connectors are very nice for the bottom 4-drive bay and keeping the cables uncluttered.

Another reason I recommend Intel is due to their Matrix Raid capability. Premiere really benefits from a fast media cache; so, using 2 identical drives, you can create a Raid 0 for the OS/Apps, media cache and scratch disk. Say you get 2-1TB WD Blacks - you can create a 100GB Raid 0 volume for the OS & other stuff and then you still have 950GB free for a Raid 1 volume where you keep your important files. This will speed up your system quite a bit from booting up, to opening programs and opening files. Only on Intel-based motherboards can you create 2 different Raid volumes; not even with hardware Raid controllers or AMD or Nvidia based boards either. This setup will also give you data security; so, if one drive fails, everything on the Raid 1 volume is fine. All you would need to do is recover/reinstall your OS + programs. Setting this up is rather simple and I could give you step-by-step instructions.

I'll be going with Vista 64 and Vegas/PPro CS4. I've also decided to go with the i7 920. I'm currently looking at the Foxconn Renaissance LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard so I can save on an audio card. Too bad I missed the recent Dell Biz coupons on the processors. Which RAM should I go with. From reading the ram should be 1.65v or lower for the i7. I'll be doing 12GB. On the Hard Drives, what if I went with a couple of SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB SATA 7200 RPM 32MB Buffer Hard Drive instead of the WD Blacks? The Samsung seems similar in performance but quieter.