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Ok. I've gone insane (i.e. I think I’ve posted something similar to this like 4 times now lol). Anyways, I've been working my ass off to save up cash for my new video editing (and sometimes gaming lol) PC. This is it so far (All prices are in Australian Dollars):

CPU
AMD ATHLON 64 X2 4400+ (ADA4400DAA6CD) Toledo Core (Retail Box) - $735.00

MOTHERBOARD
ASUS A8N-SLI - $165.00

RAM
Corsair 2GB Dual Channel CAS2 (2 x 1024MB) TWINX2048-3200C2 - $385.00

HARD DRIVE (System Drive - OS & APPS)
Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB Hard Drive 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA150 - $164.00
(RAID 0 – Stripe Array 32K)

Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB Hard Drive 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA150 - $164.00
(RAID 0 – Stripe Array 32K)

HARD DRIVE (Video Editing Drive - Cutting and Saving Video)
Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB Hard Drive 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA150 - $164.00
(RAID 0 – Stripe Array 32K)

Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB Hard Drive 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA150 - $164.00
(RAID 0 – Stripe Array 32K)

VIDEO CARD
MSI NX6600GT-TD128E Nvidia Geforce 6600GT 128MB PCI-Express - $195.00

SOUND CARD
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music - $215.00

OPTICAL DRIVE
Pioneer DVD Burner DVR-A10XLB Retail Box (Black) - $95.00

FLOPPY DRIVE
Sony 1.44Mb FDD144SONYBLK Floppy Disk Drive (Black) - $12.00

MONITOR
Philips 17” 107P Professional Aperture Grille CRT Monitor - $300.00

CASE
Antec P180 - $209.00

PSU
Antec NeoHE-550 550W ATX & EPS12V PSU - $169.00

SPEAKERS
Logitech Z-2300 2.1 THX Speakers - $176.00


The video card and motherboard are temporary. I'm gonna hand them down to my brother once the 90nm 7800 or 90nm 7600 come out, and a decently priced 32xSLI mobo to go with it. Though for now, they should do me fine.

My main concern is RAID 0. Some ppl have told me not to do it, but not having RAID 0 for video editing is a sin (supposedly). Was thinking of getting a Maxtor "One Touch II" 300GB to back all my crap up in, but I don't really trust these external Hard Drives, they all (Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor) only come with 1 year warranties...so something doesn't feel right...

What do you guys reckon about my whole setup in general? And plz, nobody suggest "you should go Intel", cause I can't stand Intel CPU's lol.....the Pentium M is alright though....anyways, any opinions/suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks heaps

I'd respectfully suggest that you moderate your hardware purchase and focus more on software.

Without knowing what you're rendering, it's difficult to day whether or not you've got the "best" or even and "appropriate" hardware plan.

For example, if you are working HD, the processor speed is absolutely crucial to your workflow, but if you are staying at 720x480/24 bits/30 frames or less, you might not even be able to tell the difference between a 3800+ and the 4400+, assuming the dual-piped 4400+ does lend some advantage to video rendering (I have noticed some question on the matter here and there).

If you are doing a great deal of Flash or even 3D Flash, the processor speed will be less critical yet and the software itself will be your fundamental asset.

If you are doing a great deal of full-blown 3D rendering (such as a bridge or automobile) the video card will be critical-moreso if you are doing large scale 3D productions (such as segments of downtown...).

I own a multimedia studio (I'm a technical photographer by trade) and have just begun phasing out my beloved Silicon Graphics workstations with big AMD's. Buying 5 computers and software can be a big step for a "small" studio, so I did quite a bit of research before making the move. It kept coming back to software for me.

Presently, I'm modeling a bacterial flagellum for a group of doctors, in 3D Flash and outputting to .avi...even the old SGI's with Matrox 450 PCI's can breeze through that.

My gut instinct is that you have quite a number of fairly noisy components in that system. To my mind, that is a concern in a rig designed primarily for video editing.

If I was doing a similar system I would work on reducing noise. Some things I would think about:

- the P180 is lovely but you are loading it with noisy components. If budget is a factor, consider Sonata II, which includes 450W PSU (one of these just arrived on my doorstep this morning ...). Also, I've seen some concerns about compatibility with the NeoHE PSU's .. might be wise to avoid those right now

- find a mobo with passively cooled northbridge (performance difference well worth the tradeoff for lack of noise, IMHO), and ignore SLI ... could save money with e.g. Asrock 939DUAL or something like that.

- consider a Thermalright XP90 + Nexus 92mm for more powerful but quieter-than-retail cooling

- switch to Samsung P120 SATA 200G or 250GB HDs ... current quiet leader, short of dropping to notebook drives

- consider a passive version of the vidcard (although lately I find that with various utilities, when not gaming, active fans can be slowed to acceptable noise level, YMMV)

- if any of this pushes the price up beyond limits, consider pulling back a bit on CPU and O/C to regain performance ... esp. with the Thermalright cooling setup the odds should be in your favour

Just thoughts in case they help. Enjoy your new comp, whatever you decide !!

- K

Four disks in RAID 0? = Four times more likely to lose all your data with no warning. Try going for RAID 1+0. Or, as you mentioned, get another disk to back up onto (although I'd get two and run a RAID 1 mirror.)

that motherboard DOES have a firewire header right? how can you possibly build a video editing rig without firewire??

on a more serious note.....I'm tech. advisor for my amateur film production crew(Irrational Logic, have a couple sample films on Google Video </shameless plug>, and we've never used RAID0. Not that we don't WANT to, but the guy who does most of the cutting together owns a notebook and we don't ahve the cash to buy a desktop yet. So it's all done using 4 or 5 firewire/usb enclosures. It's slower yeah, but hasn't affected us THAT much. We have no problems capturing, burning or anything, it just takes longer to render sometimes. So I wouldn't call it a sin not to have RAID0.

Now that we actually have enough stock of equipment tho, and I have a spare desktop rig now, I'm going to try to make a dedicated storage box. Put all our HDs into the box in RAID5, and trying to see if I can make the whole thing show up a firewire drive when connected to another box. Anyone know if that's possible? I'd use gigabit lan, but again, alot of our editing boxes don't have it, and PCI addon gb-lan cards are silly.

Thanks for the feedback guys!! Really appreciate it!!

Ok, at the moment, I’m editing/rendering PAL (720 x 576) at 25fps. But will go up to 720p once I get my hands on HDV cam.

I’m using Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects 6.5.

Every so often I use Flash MX and Director MX to create websites and interactive CD’s.

Noise isn’t to big a problem for me. I don’t think the system is too noisy though, only noisy components would be the hard drives, the 6600GT video card, and north bridge fan on the mobo. Eventually, when I have the funds, I’ll get passively cooled components. From all the reviews I’ve read, the 3 layered P180 design should kill a lot of noise anyways.

I dunno if “Ghz” are playing a big deal these days in video editing. From what I’ve seen, Opteron and X2 CPU’s are powering a lot of the high-end editing suites. I guess, technically, an X2 4400+ is two Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego, so 2 cores that can out run a P4 3.4Ghz/3.6Ghz…

I’ve read about RAID 0 + 1, where it’s stripping, but backing up at the same time…I think that’s what it does…maybe I’ll consider that, dunno how many hard drives it needs though, gotta read up on it…I think it’s 4 drives…?

Yeah, that mobo’s got firewire, but I got a firewire card anyways, so no probs there.

Thanks again for the feedback guys

Anymore opinions/suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks.

I think you meant 2 RAID0 arrays, one for OS+Apps and one for the videos?

I actually think RAID0 will help video capture but probably not too much on editing (though it may help). RAID0 on OS+Apps won't help you much. If anything using a single Raptor will be more helpful.

Don't know about the Maxline drives, but Maxtor+nForce4 don't seem to mix at this moment.

To me your video editing system doesn't benefit much from SLI, so really no need to get an SLI board?

Yeah, I was thinking of RAID on both, but I think RAID on editing/rendering drive is enough......if I RAID at all that is.


What's the story with Maxtor not mixing with nForce 4? Any links?


I was gonna go the SLI board, cause there is only around $15 seprating it from nFroce 4 Ultra boards, so just thought "might as well...". And this one comes with 3 PCI slots instead of the standard 2 on SLI boards.


Thanks again for the feedback

Try here and here.