mcurtin

Getting ready to commission a build for system primarily to be used for home hobby type video editing (also high def video) but my adult sons will no doubt want to try their high end games on it and, who knows, maybe even teach me how to play them. I'm located in Illinois, USA.

From various sites, forums and friendly folks I've learned a lot and I'm moving toward acting on the system below. Would appreciate any comments, especially as below:

Many thanks

[color=darkred]Intel E6600[/color]
[color=darkred]Asus P5W DH Deluxe[/color]
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[color=darkred]*** for sure need advice on best memory (2GB) to use for this board[/color]

[color=darkred]Raptor 74G for OS and executables and then [/color]
[color=darkred]2 x 250 G SATA II WD Caviar SE 7200 8MB cache for my data (RAID mirrored for backup)[/color]

[color=darkred]nVidia GeForce 7950 GX2 (do I need a heat sink on this?)




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pr0digal jenius

First off, for video editing, if you aren't afraid of spending a few more dollars, there is no substitution for a Xeon based system. Granted $700 worth of processor may be a lot to swallow, if you think about it, it's still cheaper then an Extreme edition intel or FX series AMD.

So 2 of those, and 2 GBs of RAM is good, but get 2x 1024MB sticks, so that A - it keeps yer latency down, and B - down the road you can go 4GBs, especially if you're serious about doing High Def Video Editing.

2x DVD Burners is pointless, believe it or not, as is lightscribe. Get a $40 liteon and be done with it

24" WS LCD is delicious

Powersupply wise, I'd lean towards OCZ myself

GX2 will be fine with stock cooling if you aren't a hard core overclocker

Here is a beast of a motherboard. NOTE - if you are going to use a lot of PCI cards ["a lot" = more then one] Xeons are not for you, as boards with PCI slots and dual xeon sockets are few and far between....in fact, boards with both PCI sockets and PCi Express slots are even harder to find still, with built in gigabit LAN, and a PCi Express for a GX2, all you'd ever really want PCI, IMO is a X-Fi sound card....or maybe a TV Tuner, but to be honest, i'd reccomend the X-Fi not going with a TV tuner as my audigy and tuner dont like each other...but thats another story




Your setup you have there looks nice, but I would strongly urge you to atleast consider the Dual Xeon alternative if youa re serious about video editing. Yea, a dual core machine may do a lot of work....but a dual processor machine, with each processor having 2 cores, and each core having HT, you get EIGHT PARELLEL THREADS......which is bordering on "ridiculous"

BlueMak

I would advice in favour of getting 2 (even if smaller) monitors than one 24". Serious video editing with one monitor sucks (experience talking unfortunately).
Also, if video editing is more than a hobby, you might want to invest in an Apple system dedicated to that and leave the gaming either to a PC or an Xbox or something.
Get another large HD for storage of files, 74GB is not going to be enough for regular windows usage, storage of files (video related or not) and gaming. Also, what about your soundcard? Sound is very very important for videos, even if you do not do the sound editing but leave it to someone else, you will still going to need some good sound. Get a decent pair of speakers too, not the $20 ones, but neither the 80.1 supper duper surround 3D deep voice aqua man speakers either.
Getting 2 DVD drives, I don't see how that will help. Lightscribe? What for? Regarding fans, I use Thermaltake's case with its fans and it works fine without much noise.

Last December I was buying a new PC and ended up buying what I have now (sig), 9 months later I wish I had went for an Apple and a dedicated gaming console. But, that might be just me. And yes, video editing is part of what I am doing

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Necrosis

Xeons are nice but imagine the heat coming out of those things, never mind in about 6-8 months he can drop a quad core processor in this setup. If he would go Xeon I would only suggest using the Woodcrest cores. Also you have think about the quad cores that be available in 6-8 months.

I agree on the ram. Corsair, OCZ, Team Group, & Gskill.

HD Video you should think about getting even bigger HDs, regular video is bad enough about sucking up drive space.

You really don't need the heatsink, but I do have to say love mine. It's up to you if you want to spend that money. It would sure keep your processor cool in FL though.

Scythe makes great fans, and also makes a cooler similar to the one you're looking at.

PangingJr

pr0digal jenius, can you give me an estimated price of the system that you recoomended it to him?

hackerx

for cooling u might wanna get the thermalright ultra 120 instead of the noctua.It looks better and performs better too according to neoseeker.
For ram,corsair 2x1gb ddr2-800 kit(cas4-$250 or cas3,cas3 is very expensive-$450)
PSU can be from any of those companies.I'd go with either enermax or pc power and cooling.
And if that much editing power isn't enough,u could always rop in a kentsfield(quad-core)when it comes out.As for case fans sycthe,silverstone and aerocool are good manufacturers.

Necrosis

I like the way the TR U120 mountes on 775 processors.

pr0digal jenius

A good Xeon system will set you back about $2500 for the guts, then add in monitors, cases, speakers, peripherals, etc.

Mainboards...plan on $4-500
CPUs...plan on the total for both ranging from $700-1500 depending on what route you go
RAM...$250-500 depending on how hardcore you get
Optical Drive...$50
Hard Disks....$200 on up depending on how much space you want acorss how many drives with how much cache

PangingJr

let take the highest price of the estimated, and the system hardware components that is recommeded by you,
based on newegg's price the supermicro workstation board is around $550, with Intel Xeon's dempsey (or perhaps woodcrest) , you're recommending a couple of Xeon's 5060 which is around $700... and seems to me that rest of hardware components that you want to use on the system and with the workstation board would be no different..., i mean in terms of hardware components cost ($), not the components themself, which is also depend on the quality of these components...
now, let's focus on this, you are basically recommending anyone who wants to build a video editing computer to use Xeon server processors based over C2E, Pentium EE (and even C2D's processors?)... yours reason to it was: "it's still cheaper...", and it seems to me that you think the Xeon's will work wonders for any video editing system as i see you kinda mentioned something like that at the closing on your message earlier.
what if i can save a bit of the money (say $200) that i have to spend on the $550 workstation board and i still get to use a lot of PCIx cards,
but i like to use a C2D processor E6700 which is worth around $580. then the rest of money that i can save from not using the Xeon's and the workstation board goes to a good RAID PCI-X card, more fast hard drives and/or more large hard drives... or just adding to original budget for the other and the rest of hardware components... seriously, do you still recommend that i should use the Xeon's server processors over the C2D processor...?

Tipstaff

mcurtin, 2 things to note:

1) A lot of articles on the net suggest putting your swap/scratch file on a seperate partition to increase speed. While this is true in almost every situation, in the setup you are suggesting, you don't want to relocate your swap/scratch file to the mirrored set. In the case of video editing you will most likely be capturing your videos directly to your mirrored drives, and editing off of them. So, if you put your swap/scratch file on the mirrored drives, not only will you be mirroring any changes you make to your video, but you will also be mirroring a temp file that will increase and decrease as you do that editing.

So, best thing to do is setup your OS, apps, and swap file on the Raptor drive, and capture your movies directly to and store them on the mirrored set.

2) Due to the design of the 7950GX2 you won't be able to do much with changing the coolers due to the proximity of the second card to the first. Think of the card like a sandwhich. Heatsink, card, a couple millimeters of space, heatsink, card. Your best bet would be to find a way to bring in cooling directly to both cards either by getting a card cooler such as the Turbine XT or Sunbeam Anywhere PCI rack (I have a couple of these in various systems, and it's just amazing how configurable it is), or some type of venting (you can buy one from Sunbeam like THIS one, or do what I did, and make your own).

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mcurtin

1. Budget won't support Xeon system
2. Remain with :
[color=sienna]Intel E6600
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
OCZ Platinum 2x1GB Latency 4 DDR800 PC 6400 (Got for $185 after rebate)[/color]
[color=black]*** Revised thinking on HDDs[/color]
[color=sienna]2 x 150G Raptor 10,000 in Raid 0 (which is the default on the ASUS board and is plug and play) for OS, executables, and data [/color][color=black]This should really improve through put for video editing[/color]
[color=sienna]1 x 400 GB Caviar 7200 set to be internal backup of my data[/color] (builder of system told me he would install software that would automatically do backups to this drive.)

[color=sienna]EVGA's iteration of the nVidia GeForce 7950 GX2 [/color]
[color=sienna]
Dell 24" widescreen (had purchased this previously) [/color]
[color=sienna]Also have old Viewsonic GS 790 which has been languishing in basement but now could also be used with this system. [color=black]However, I think I was just reading that if you go with 2 monitors with this card, you first exit the SLI mode -- is that correct?[/color][/color]
[color=sienna][color=#000000][/color]
Enermax Liberty 620 W
Lite on 16 x DVD burner (yes, found for $36.90)
XP Pro [/color]
[color=black]I will get some mid-range speakers unless I can get my home theater speakers connected to the PC (they will be close). Also will decide on sound card after I see what the on board audio sounds like on this ASUS.[/color]
[color=#8b0000][color=black]3. Components are slowly arriving (gads, the verification process for Newegg and others is maddeningly tedious; once you decide on these things, you want them yesterday).[/color][/color]
Thanks for various helps with this system as it evolves...any other thoughts??
MJC

pr0digal jenius

looks good....excellent call on the Lite On drive, and the HDDs

Tipstaff

Most likely the builder will use something like "Second Copy". Very simple program, but very, very useful, and full of features.

Inside the drivers control panel is a section that referes to "Multi-GPU" and
"Multi-Display". As you guessed you have to disable SLI ("Multi-GPU"), and switch to "Multi-Display" in order to use multiple monitors.

If you do decide to get some mid-range speakers I'd suggest the Logitech X-230s. You can usually find them pretty cheap (they even sell these in whitebox OEM too), sometimes as low as $20-$25 US. One thing about these speakers is that while they have a mid-range price they sound more like higher range ones. A customer of mine (an audiophilest, btw) turned me onto these speakers last year. He took the time to review almost 50 PC speaker systems for a forum he's part of, and these were the best (at the time) even beating out $400 speakers. The only drawback is that the headphone jack doesn't passthrough the bass as it should (for some reason the speaker system still directs all the bass to the sub thinking that it's going to handle the bass frequencies, but technically sub is off).

As for the sound card, the onboard audio is actually a pretty decent chip. You'd be hard pressed to find a reason to go with a stand alone sound card after playing around with the onboard for a while. If you do go with card I'd recommend going with an Audigy 2 ZS (stay away from the X-Fi at all costs).

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BlueMak

Care to elaborate on this one please?

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

hackerx

@tipstaff-Whats wrong with the Xi-Fi's?They are supposed to be better than the old audigy's.(aren't they?)

Necrosis

No doubt, what is wrong with the X-fi? Honestly though if he's building this thing for video he should be using some thing else.

mcurtin

Thanks a lot for the info on second copy...I'll research it.
Also will look for those speakers.
MJC

Tipstaff

Granted, the X-Fi is a better card than the Audigy 2 Zs (music sounds damn good on it), and the X-Fi XtremeMusic is finally priced low enough to make one consider getting it (about $30 more than an Audigy 2 ZS), however, given the repeated issues posted about the X-Fi all over the net (including here on DH), can you blame me for recommending against getting one.. at least for now? As it stands the Audigy 2 ZS is a rock solid card thanks to the latest drivers, and has almost no real issues any longer. I can't say the same for the X-Fi.

That said though, the onboard audio for the Asus P5W DH is pretty good on it's own, so he may not even need to get a standalone card. Even if he does then I'd still recommend getting an Audigy 2 ZS until Creative can fix, or at least get a handle on the issues with the X-Fi.

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BlueMak

There are issues with the X-Fi? I use mine since December 2005 and don't remember having any issues with it. In fact it is the first soundblaster product I truly like since my first SB16. I use drivers that I think are dated mid-end of December.
In fact since a couple of days ago I like it even more for being able to connect my xbox360 audio through the front panel. So, am I one of the few lucky ones not having problems with them?

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

hackerx

I still remember my SB16.That was awesome while it was there in my old(really old) comp.
It made crusader:no regret sound so good.
But anyway back on topic.

@tipstaff-The issues with the creative xi-fi are there.But it's not as bad as u think it to be.
Its mostly limited to a couple of applications.
And like u said,the onboard audio of the ASUS P5WDH might be good enough.

Tipstaff

One of many articles.

Another more recent one in which Creative blames nVidia (which they are full of since this is happening on other chipsets too).

Just keep Googling, and you'll find a ton more (even check here on DH).

It's not that it's a bad card (with the exception of 2 cards I had issues with, and that belonged to customers, I personally had great dealings with the one I used for a while), but given the fact that there are issue with the card I would look elsewhere for the time being until they get it worked out.

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Necrosis

Hmm, I haven't had any issues with mine on my nforce 4 setup or this one.