Building PC....What should I get?

[madmallard]

Yes, it is my first PC....to build. I am also gonna use it for gaming, image creation and web design.

a heh. lemme get this before Quu sees it. ..

heh. . .piece of advice. If you wanna build a computer to make videos with, great. If you want a computer to play games, build another computer.

Never shall the twain meet without a 10/100/1000 hub between them.

Can you build one pc to do it? yes. . .do you want to run the risk of tinkering with it all the time to get it to run? most video editing equipment, at least anything from pinnacle or matrox, tends to be finicky on the collection of hardware/software it will work/share a hard drive with.

so, my advice, build another pc for gaming.

<-----building a 4th pc as he types. . .

[klinky]

Premiere and Games can co-exist.

Really Flakey cards from Pinnacle have more to do with it not liking the motherboard, you can still build a system JUST for editing and still not have it stable. Then you can also build a system for editing/everything else and it can be perfectly stable.

What you said just seems really untrue, since most people here are editing on the same machine they surf and game with. :\


~klinky

[shadow-the-hedgehog]

Okay thanx for da help... ^_^

[SiberWolf]

Premiere and games work perfectly fine on the same system for me (and I also have a DV500 that works flawlessly). It's not always the case, but with a little research beforehand and a little tuning after, you can usually make it work out just fine.

As for the Klipsch 5.1 setup, I highly recommend avoiding it. I personally had 3 sets go bad before I gave up on em. A friend is on his 5th set now, and I know others with problems as well (amps keep failing for no reason, except shoddy manufacturing). Can't really recommend what to get instead though. I persoanlly moevd up to a home theatre setup (harman/kardon receiver and sub, JBL studio series center channel and floorstanding fronts, running from digital optical output of a Hercules GTXP). It gives me impressive sound, but the pricetag is quite a bit steeper. Used to highly recommend the GTXP as a great soundcard as well, but I'm starting to see some strange problems with it recently...

Hard drives are quite cheap these days, as are motherboards with RAID configs. Got a pair of WD 120gb 8mb cache drives in a RAID 0 array, which works beautifully. It's not necessary, but the speed boost is quite nice for editing, and the cost increase is somewhat minimal. Can still toss in a seperate system drive too.. or go RAID 0+1, perhaps with a few smaller drives.

Oh, and skip the Geforce FX. Radeon 9700 is a much better product all around (at least in my opinion).

[RadicalEd0]

yeah the FX didnt deliver after all did it :\ I posted that before all the articles came out on it.

As for kilpsch I've got a 2.1 set that works perfect, had it for a few months now, and my friend has a 5.1 set that hes had since who knows when and it works fine.

[madmallard]

Premiere and Games can co-exist.

What you said just seems really untrue, since most people here are editing on the same machine they surf and game with. :\

~klinky

yes. well. . .maybe its just that we put more of a load on our computers than the average editor/creator. What is it up to, 6~8 cons a year? and 3 computers. . .i think rebuilt about 10 times in the last 6 months alone. At least 3 of those out of 'not working' issues.

umn. . .we have 4 computers total with a copy of the AWA otakuvideo archive; a-ko, b-ko, c-ko, and a private computer. we're working on a 5th to keep at someone else's house. Why? Tornados.

Most everyone else here looks for a more balanced blend of reliability/cost/performance. For us, its all reliability, and we've acheived that through many trial and errors, sleepless nights, tweaking and configuring and swapping out stuff. So after all this, i build a machine to work on vids, and our own experience has taught us, fewest possible parts is generally better on reliability. Its only paranoid when nothing really does go wrong.

and. . I didn't say it wasn't possible. in fact i said it could be done "at a risk." i just said it would save you headache. and its not just premier/software. Hardware issues can get pretty bizzaro too.

[hackerzc]

I am building a PC what video card/audio card should I get? As well as monitor and HDD?

For Video I would go with an ATI All in Wonder card. It has inputs and outputs like you woulden't believe (RCA/Composite/RCA, Coax/TV, Component/RGB on the 9700 model). Here is a link to the 9700: http://mirror.ati.com/products/pc/aiw9700pro/index.html

Right now I use the 7500 (got it about a year ago) and it does the job fine.
You will however want to use different capture software like Virtual Dub instead of the software it comes with because it sucks.
Also, the audio is quite low when I output to VHS. But that might just be the way my settings are.

As for audio, i use my mobo's build in ac-97 (5.1 channel) sound, because I am not picky when it comes to sound with my PC (no AMV contests suppot dolby 5.1 so I'm not worried about it except for my TV). But I would go with something from creative labs. i always hear good stuff about there products.

HDD's can be tricky. I prefer IDE because of price and size (up to 300GB drives available), but they are considered to be the least reliable though(the worst problem I ever had was with a 10GB drive I had for 4 years that started to develop bad sectors, which wasn't that bad). SCSI are more reliable but also more expensive and the drive sizes available are not very large (20GB is the largest I have seen lately, but I have not really been looking). Whatever you get, make sure it is 7200RPM. A faster HDD is always better for editing video with it's large files.

I don't know what else to tell you except get an Athlon. The clock speeds are not as fast as pentiums but you can do more instructions per clock cycle (pentium[2Ghz) is like a garden hose shooting 1 gallon per second, where an athlon[1.7] is a 5 inch [diamiter] fire hose shooting 1 gallon per second. While the pentium does the work faster, the athlon does the same work in the same time with less effort, in effect making them equal even thought the clock speeds might not bee the same). Plus with an athlon you can use DDR ram which kicks ass!

[hackerzc]

get this:
AthlonXP 2700
200gb 7200rpm 8mb cache WD hdd
1024mb pc3700 DDR ram
Geoforce FX Ultra 128mb video card
SoundBlaster Live Platinum 5.1
Pioneer A05 DVD-R burner
24" LCD monitor
Kilpsch THX 5.1 speakers

that should only set you back a few k

Ack! Thats one solidly kick ass system u have yourself there. Ye gads!! Ill never look at my PC the same way again!!!

But what you have to remember is a year after you spend all years income on that PC, it will be so old, and cost a fraction of what you payed for it to get the same exact thing.

[hackerzc]

Barton CPUs will be out soon, maybe wait a week or two...

Barton CPU's? Never heard of this, could you give me alittle more info please?

I'm always looking for a new piece of computer technology to dream about getting but then realizing how much I actually make and shooting myself down.

But if anyone is interested what other people use, here is my setup. It's not top of the line, but it does the job well.

WinXP Home
17" monitor (15.5 viewable I believe) at 1024x768 @ 32bit color (yes I can see fine)
2000+ Athlon XP (1.66Ghz)
512MB PC2100 DDR ram (just the one chip mind you)
two 40GB 7200RPM IDE HDD's (one for my apps and one for capture and storage of video files) Did have an external 60GB hdd but having a problem with it)
8x DVD-ROM (from my previous PC)
External USB2 CD-RW (40x40x8 or something like that)
All in Wonder Radeon 7500 (only 64MB DDR but I have never dropped frames) I have everything of mine interconnected, TV/VCR/DVD/PC/Game Systems, it all works as one. I have wires EVERYWHERE! I AM LAIN!)
No fancy audio card. But I'm using the Microsoft Digital Sound System 80. It uses USB for digital sound.

Like I said it's not the most high tech, but I have never had problems with anything and besides, what is the use of having a super computer, if it is not going to be uses properly. I do everything I need (which includes some really complicated multi layers rendering) and still have some spare processing power. I could however use a bit more Ram. I regularly peak out at about 400MB when I render stuff, and only having 100MB free to do other stuff get's on my nerves.

[SiberWolf]

SCSI are more reliable but also more expensive and the drive sizes available are not very large (20GB is the largest I have seen lately, but I have not really been looking).

More expensive... yes, a bit, especially as you go up in drive sizes and speeds. 181.6GB SCSI drives are available, but outrageously priced. Around 50gb is much more reasonable, and worth considering if you want the fastest setup possible (Ultra320 RAID array).

I don't know what else to tell you except get an Athlon. The clock speeds are not as fast as pentiums but you can do more instructions per clock cycle (pentium[2Ghz) is like a garden hose shooting 1 gallon per second, where an athlon[1.7] is a 5 inch [diamiter] fire hose shooting 1 gallon per second. While the pentium does the work faster, the athlon does the same work in the same time with less effort, in effect making them equal even thought the clock speeds might not bee the same). Plus with an athlon you can use DDR ram which kicks ass!

Persoanlly I'm much more of an Athlon fan, but still your data is not quite accurate. DDR solutions are coming for the P4s. But technically, RDRAM is faster than DDR. Also, although the Athlon will prove to have higher gaming performance, a properly tuned P4 system will have better video encoding power than a comparable Athlon, due to SSE2.