Video production computer

[Entity]

Setting up the following computer which will do a fair amount of the following tasks:

1) WMV/AVI production from Screencasts done in Camtasia.
2) Audio editing (basic, no album production or anything)
3) Photo editing (mostly Photoshop).
4) Development in VMWare (often running 2-3 clients at once).

Here's what I've purchased so far:

Badaxe2
E6600
4GB Corsair CAS4 800mhz Memory
2x SATA150 10kRPM Raptor HD's
GeForce 7900GTO Upgraded/OC'd to GTX

Looking at:

Coolermaster CM Stacker STC-T01 Case
Tuniq Tower for CPU cooling
Corsair CMPSU-520HX 520w PSU
1x 500GB SATA 3.0 HD
1x lower-grade dualDVI GeForce for powering 2x2001FP monitors
1x SATA DVD-Burner

The system will be hooked up to 1 3001FP and 2x2001FP's, so I need the video cards to work nicely together, but I probably won't be doing a ton of gaming on the rig overall. Ideally I'm looking for a case with good airflow that will remain relatively quiet and cool. I know it's a lot to ask for, but if anyone has comments on the system as configured above, I'd appreciate it. Watercooling is not really an option and I'm at the reaches of my budget so spending much more than I already have is tough, as well.

Comments? I will be attempting overclocking once the system is setup and stable.

Rob

 

[MichaelD]

Nice system specs! Love the 30" Dell! I really can't improve any on it; but I have some observations.

I'm assuming that the lower-grade video card will be PCI-E too? No AGP slots on that board. I'm not sure how well they will work together; they both use the same driver (as opposed to a GeForce 8800 and a 7900 together), driver shouldn't be an issue...definitely worth looking into though.

For video editing you definitely want your video on a separate drive from your OS/Programs. Ideally, (in the absence of a massive RAID array) you want three separate HDs; one for OS/programs, one for raw video/temp files, one as a destination ("render to") drive.

How were you intending on setting up those three drives? The two Raptors in RAID0 for the OS and the 500GB for the video?

That would be OK too; the system will read the video, render and write back to the same drive. It will be slower than two separate Source and Destination drives, but definitely better than having the video on the same drive as the OS and Proggys. That is one fast system you're building and 4GB of memory will most definitely be nice. What OS are you running? With WinXP, you'll only see 3.2GB of memory (or some number close/like that). With Server2K3 you'll see all of it.

BTW: You definitely don't want to be running virtual machines while you are encoding! You'll be waiting awhile, even w/that setup.

Side Note:

I have an EVGA 7900GTO and can't get it to overclock for crap using Coolbits. What are you using? But, the 7900GTO is an AWESOME card; nice choice!

 

[MichaelD]

Bump. I'd like to see how the build is coming. As well as maybe a little info conerning my "Side Note."

 

[Entity]

Still waiting on the parts to arrive. I actually bought a Seasonic 650w PSU and an Antec P182 case from Fry's today, along with a few extra Vantec Stealth 120's as fans. I'm also reconsidering how I configure my overall setup (I will have two computers in the office -- one is an AMD X2 4400+ with 4gb of RAM and the other will be the new rig -- and based on the VMWare needs, some needs of my DB Server (PostGRE SQL hosting some semi-large databases that I do data analysis on) and my media usage (iTunes MP3 server + fileserver for bittorrent), I'm still trying to figure out what will be ideal).

There's going to be a lot of computing going on so I'm trying to balance it as best possible. Will post when I have everything completed. Most of the parts should be here tomorrow, so I'll be starting the build soon.

Rob

 

[Entity]

Here's a relatively full list of the parts I have assembled so far, and how I'm planning on using them. I'm debating what to use as the System drive in Computer Two (which will mostly be used as a fileserver+will be running multiple vmwares and will be a PostgreSQL server on an active internal database as well). Overall I hope to have ~6+ OS's running concurrently between the two computers, except when I'm producing videos -- then I'll only be running straight video production on the E6600.

Computer three I'm probably going to give to my dad or one of my sisters. The unclaimed SATA drive will probably go into an enclosure to be used for portable VM clients in the future, but I'm not certain about that.

Parts come in tomorrow so I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing. Right now I know, for sure, that I don't have the right cooling setup fully and don't have an ideal HD setup for Computer Two.

Unclaimed parts
230GB 7200RPM SATA [Western Digital WD2500JS-00MHB0]

Computer One:

Intel D975XBX2K 975X Chipset
Core Duo 2 E6600 Processor
4GB Corsair TWIN CAS4 (4-4-4-12) memory
2 WD 150GB SATA Raptor Drive
Antec P182
SeaSonic S12 Energy Plus SS-650HT ATX12V / EPS12V 650W PSU
2x Dell 2001FP
1x Dell 3007FP


Computer Two:

AMD X2 4400+
4gb RAM
34gb 15kRPM U160 SCSI Raptor (Databases)
Adaptec 29160N U160 SCSI Controller
Powercolor ATI X800GT PCIe 16x
2005FPW
IDE CD-Burner [Lite-on SOHR-5239V 52x]
IDE DVD-Burner [NEC DVDRW ND-3540A]
300GB 7200RPM SATA [Barracuda 7200.9 SATA]


Computer Three:

160GB 7200RPM IDE [Seagate Barracuda ST3160023A]
80GB 7200RPM [Western Digital 0BB-75CAA0]
Northwood 3.06ghz
2GB RAM
Radeon 9800
IDE DVD-Burner [IDE1008]
IDE CD-Burner [Lite-on LTR-48246S 48x]