Need new Video Editing PC - Help!

[Jay05]

I have an old PC I bought a while back which is very slow for Adobe.

 

I need something suffice to edit some video footage daily? I'm lost on technology these days so all help appreciated!

 

Thanks!

[steveg]

Are you planning to use it with adobe cs5? If so i'd go for a core i7, 8gb ram and a cuda compatible graphics card. At work my machine is the following spec:

 

Quad core athlon

8gb ram

Some pretty expensive nvida graphics card i cant remember the model of

4 1tb hdd's in raid 5

 

This runs it pretty well, could do with a quicker cpu. The graphics card is great for previewing effects - renders very smoothly even with hd video.

 

Basically it depends on what software you are planning to use, how long you're prepared to wait for things and what your budget it. Near enough any new pc these days will do video editing to some extent.

 

Steve

[plexer]

HP Z210

 

Ben

[Jay05]

My budget is about £1500 to spend on it all minus monitor and extra bits; just the base system. Need an upgrade! The new i7s look the way forward and 8GB will be enough?

[dayzd]

If that's your budget, get as much memory as you can fit in the machine you get. I read an article somewhere (can't remember where) that recommends minimum of 2GB ram per processor. If you're going the i7 route you effectively have 8 cores (4 hyperthreading) so you'll need a minimum of 16GB for Adobe video products to use the cores effectively. If you can fit more, go for it - you should only see benefit.

 

When it comes to graphics cards, current top-spec gaming cards are very capable, but as @steveg suggested, a properly supported CUDA card will be best. nVidia's range of Quadro cards are designed for just this sort of thing and offer OpenGL/CUDA support with hardware accelerated playback during editing plus they accelerate a range of effects within Adobe video software (colour filters, blurs, scaling is just the start - see here for more on CUDA acceleration).

 

Again, similar to @steveg's machine, a RAID array will do you all kinds of good for keeping disk speed up. Most motherboards I've looked at that support i7 processors have the Intel Storage manager type stuff in them to do arrays on board - some/most do RAID5 (I know my Gigabyte P67-based board does) and Windows 7 supports it out of the box without additional drivers. I imagine the controllers support SSD-based RAIDs that would be astonishingly fast, but my personal opinion towards SSDs based on other articles I've read is that SSDs have too short a lifespan for this kind of thing. (But I won't go into all that here as there's other threads discussing SSDs on Edugeek! E.G. Crucial C300 64Gb SSD)

 

Hopefully that helps point you in the direction of what's worth looking at!

[Jay05]

Thanks mate, great advice!

 

I must point out i'm not going to be building this especially with this budget as i don't trust myself. Looking around various etailors, Aria seem to offer the best value for money. I was looking at - Gladiator Xpress Pro NLE - Aria PC

 

What do you reckon?

[dayzd]

I built my machine (i7 2600K, Gigabyte motherboard, 16GB ram and Quadro 1800FX) for about £600, but I already had graphics card, case, hard drives, cd drives, Windows 7 license etc. I totalled up the build and from scratch it would have cost around £900 (but doesn't have such a high-spec motherboard, blu-ray drive, SSD or such large hard drives in the first place, which would add at least £300 to be roughly comparable to the above linked machine).

 

I would have said that's pretty good, assuming the warranty/support is good. The pluses of the pre-built machine are obviously, as mentioned, warranty and support, and known component reliability. I also had a pig of a time building my machine because it has a massive heatsink!

 

Personally I prefer to build my own machines, but if you're happier buying one, I'd say you're not doing bad on that offer!

[Arthur]

What do you reckon?

Poor choice of motherboard and the SSD is too small IMO. According to the disclaimer at the bottom of the page, updating the BIOS will also void your warranty!

[Jay05]

What's wrong with the motherboard in that build? Yeah i saw that but it should be OK if i ring CS or their tech support to explain and it will be noted.

[Arthur]

What's wrong with the motherboard in that build?

• The PC costs £1,400, yet Aria have chosen the cheapest Z68 motherboard possible for their most expensive video editing PC. If I was spending this amount of money I would expect something decent. e.g. Asus P8Z68-V Pro, P8P67 Pro or P8Z68-V.
   
  
• No UEFI BIOS.
   
  
• FireWire is not integrated on the motherboard, so Aria have opted to use an expensive £42 PCIe FireWire card instead. Not only does this take up one of your PCIe slots uncessarily, but they could have used that £42 towards a better specced motherboard which actually had FireWire onboard in the first place. If you don't need FireWire, then this card is obviously redundant and a complete waste of money.
   
  
• Parallel and serial ports!!! WTF is going on here? It's 2011, not 2001.
   
  
• No DVI, HDMI or DisplayPort ports on the motherboard. This means you can't take advantage of Intel's QuickSync technology for encoding videos (which is one of the best things about the Z68 motherboards).
   
  
• The motherboard lacks an internal 20-pin USB 3.0 header which means the two USB 3.0 cables coming from the Icybox IB-863-B will have been routed out the back of the case and into a couple of USB 3.0 ports on the rear of the computer. Messy!
  

Several other things I noticed...

 

• The case pictured is a Coolermaster Silencio 550, but the description says it uses the Fractal Design Define R3.
   
  
• The Coolermaster case has a glossy black plastic door. It won't take long until this is covered in fingerprints, dust and scratches -- making your £1,400 PC look like s***!
   
  
• As with the Icybox, the cable for the USB 3.0 port on the top of the Silencio 550 would have to be routed out the back of the case and into one of the ports on the rear of the PC because there aren't any USB 3.0 ports internally.
   
  
• The descriptions states it has eSATA, but the motherboard doesn't even have an eSATA port.
   
  
• According to Aria, the Transcend TS-PDU3 USB 3.0 card isn't compatible with the Icybox IB-863-B. Not sure why though? See the comment by "jorged" dated 06/05/2011 here.
   
  
• The PNY Quadro 600 graphics card (which costs approx. £150) is essentially a rebranded nVidia GeForce 430 (~£44). Neither are officially supported by Premiere Pro CS 5.5 for GPU acceleration. A GeForce GTX 470 or 580 on the other-hand would be, not to mention significantly quicker because they have more cores (448/512 vs 96).
   
  
• The parts themselves cost £1152.05, so you are paying an additional £247.94 for Aria to build the PC and support it for one year. As to whether it's worth it, I'll leave that for you to decide.
  

[Jay05]

• The PC costs £1,400, yet Aria have chosen the cheapest Z68 motherboard possible for their most expensive video editing PC. If I was spending this amount of money I would expect something decent. e.g. Asus P8Z68-V Pro, P8P67 Pro or P8Z68-V.
   
  
• No UEFI BIOS.
   
  
• FireWire is not integrated on the motherboard, so Aria have opted to use an expensive £42 PCIe FireWire card instead. Not only does this take up one of your PCIe slots uncessarily, but they could have used that £42 towards a better specced motherboard which actually had FireWire onboard in the first place. If you don't need FireWire, then this card is obviously redundant and a complete waste of money.
   
  
• Parallel and serial ports!!! WTF is going on here? It's 2011, not 2001.
   
  
• No DVI, HDMI or DisplayPort ports on the motherboard. This means you can't take advantage of Intel's QuickSync technology for encoding videos (which is one of the best things about the Z68 motherboards).
   
  
• The motherboard lacks an internal 20-pin USB 3.0 header which means the two USB 3.0 cables coming from the Icybox IB-863-B will have been routed out the back of the case and into a couple of USB 3.0 ports on the rear of the computer. Messy!
  

Several other things I noticed...

 

• The case pictured is a Coolermaster Silencio 550, but the description says it uses the Fractal Design Define R3.
   
  
• The Coolermaster case has a glossy black plastic door. It won't take long until this is covered in fingerprints, dust and scratches -- making your £1,400 PC look like s***!
   
  
• As with the Icybox, the cable for the USB 3.0 port on the top of the Silencio 550 would have to be routed out the back of the case and into one of the ports on the rear of the PC because there aren't any USB 3.0 ports internally.
   
  
• The descriptions states it has eSATA, but the motherboard doesn't even have an eSATA port.
   
  
• According to Aria, the Transcend TS-PDU3 USB 3.0 card isn't compatible with the Icybox IB-863-B. Not sure why though? See the comment by "jorged" dated 06/05/2011 here.
   
  
• The PNY Quadro 600 graphics card (which costs approx. £150) is essentially a rebranded nVidia GeForce 430 (~£44). Neither are officially supported by Premiere Pro CS 5.5 for GPU acceleration. A GeForce GTX 470 or 580 on the other-hand would be, not to mention significantly quicker because they have more cores (448/512 vs 96).
   
  
• The parts themselves cost £1152.05, so you are paying an additional £247.94 for Aria to build the PC and support it for one year. As to whether it's worth it, I'll leave that for you to decide.
  

 

Thanks for the advice! =)

 

It seems they have noticed there mistake and do use the Silencio and not the Define R3. Not too worried about cleaning as it will be under my desk away from my hands most of the time.

 

I gave them a ring about some of the specs and eSATA is present on the Icybox card reader at the front of the case with the two USB3.0 ports. I asked if it would be messy buy doing some googling myself and it doesn't bother me with the cables out the back of the case a bit. As i said the case will be on the floor and its actually handy to have those two back panel USB3.0 ports at the front instead so saves me crawling under my desk lol! They also said the case features 1x USB3.0 as well so a nice 3x USB3.0 ports at the front for me!

 

Choice of motherboard isn't an issue for me. It has plenty of expansion ports which is great for me. Not interested in an OverClocked machine as theres always that risk of failure and I don't want that editing my stuff. The FireWire card is very handy for me. I have 2 external FireWire hard drives. A lot of motherboards don't even have FireWire, and those that do only have just the one and those are on the higher end boards.

 

Lol yeah Parallel ports wth ay? =P What can you actually use with them today?

[synaesthesia]

We went the safe route with ours.

i5 2500K with Intel motherboards (with USB3 and Sata 6Gbps)

WD Velociraptors

Antec ASK cases

8GB DDR3

More than enough juice on their own for video editing, don't even need a discrete graphics card. Photoshop CS5 fires up instantly, Premier within 3 seconds.

Job's a gooden.

[Jay05]

We went the safe route with ours.

i5 2500K with Intel motherboards (with USB3 and Sata 6Gbps)

WD Velociraptors

Antec ASK cases

8GB DDR3

More than enough juice on their own for video editing, don't even need a discrete graphics card. Photoshop CS5 fires up instantly, Premier within 3 seconds.

Job's a gooden.

 

I suppose there is a danger of going too OTT with too much spec. Yours sounds simlple and more cost effective. Would I really need those expensive Velociraptors? Seems people say not to bother anymore and get SSDs and use a fast HDD alterntive like the WD Blacks or RE4s.

 

If i go for their cheaper spec PC instead, would this be a better solution? Gladiator Vegas Pro NLE - Aria PC

[RTFM]

What about the Seagate Momentus Hybrid hard drive?

 

Seagate 500GB Momentus XT 2.5" Hybrid SSD/HDD.. | Ebuyer.com

 

i've heard some positive things from a few people on these.....

[SmellyLlama]

I agree with a lot of what people are saying here, I would go for

 

intel mobo, western digital drives, antec case/psu as all of these get 3 year warranties. Try and get a gfx card with a lifetime (10years usually) warranty too, then if it starts whistlingat you in 3 years you can get another. An 80gb SSD will be plenty for your OS and editing software. Have a raid for storage and backup. DDR3 ram is silly cheap at the moment so get some with a long warranty and get as much as you can, 16gb is more than enough. Ahhh, always fun building a shiny new PC!!