Best Desktop Under $750 For Editing HD

mb72378

mb72378

Well-known member
Before I start.....sorry for the long post......

I will be purchasing a computer for school here shortly - desktop. Funds are very strapped and $650 to $700 is all I have. I am looking for the best desktop that I can get for that much. Brand doesn't matter, and I don't have the time to purchase all of the parts to build it myself. I was looking at the intel quad core dell inspiron 530 and 519 both with 3 gb of ram. can someone please tell me the best desktop to purchase for that amount of moola and what sort of things I should look for that are important. :) Also, I only need the tower. I already have monitor, speaker etc. The final thing is that I need to be able to edit my HVX HD on it. What with the specs I was looking at earlier it didnt seem like a prob but I will let you guys be the judge. Please help!
 
What software do you intend to use to edit this footage? This would determine a lot too. SOftware costs $$$ too.
 
Oh, thanks. I just recently got the adobe production suite. Premiere, after effects, ect. (CS3)
 
Don't neglect the video card. At the very least, get an external card (ATI, nVidia, NOT the Intel series--that's internal!), and if you can, get at least 256 MB on it. You probably won't be doing crazy graphics, but it'll help take the burden off your system memory when processing video, as all internal cards use the system RAM as video RAM.
 
This is what I was looking at for $

This is what I was looking at for $

This is the computer I was looking at for $559

Dell Inspiron 530

- Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600 (8MB L2 cache, 2.4 GHz, 1066FSB)
- 3 GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4DIMMs
- 500 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM) w/DataBurstCache
- ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro 128MB
(UPGRADE TO ATI Radeon HD 3650 256MB is $40)

What do ya'll think?

check it out here.....
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...&oc=DDDEDA4&s=dhs&dgc=EM&cid=34495&lid=835972

I really appreciate the help.
 
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2 things:
1. Since it's only $40, definitely get the upgrade. It's a better card overall, and the extra RAM is worth it.
2. Don't get a large main drive. Your system will perform faster if you get a low-capacity, really fast drive (7200 to 10000 RPM) as the OS drive, and a separate, large-capacity drive for video files. It just does.
 
OK...well, since it's 7200 RPM, it should be ok, just try and keep it clear of large files like videos, put them on a separate drive.
 
What about everything else? Do you think I should be able to do 1080i stuff in after effects, premiere, etc. on it? Maybe a little gaming?
 
It looks pretty good to me. However, I would upgrade to 4GB of RAM, and, if you can, get the $100 processor upgrade--you get more GHz and a faster FSB. Other than that, it looks like a pretty decent system. (Don't take my word for it--get some other opinions, too. I may be underestimating the stress CS3 puts on a system.)
 
I was under the impression that unless you have a windows vista running on a 64 bit system, windows will not recognize anymore than 3 GM of ram.
 
Gaming is all about the video card.

Editing HD is all about the processor speed and the HDD speed (but other components, like a nice OpenGL graphics card, help, too).

You should be able to use this for almost anything. It won't be blazingly fast if you're doing complex things in AE, but you can use it for what you're talking about. You'll definitely want some external storage, though. DV tapes will eat your drive at about 12GB an hour, and DVCProHD 1080 will eat your drive at 1GB a minute.
 
Thanks a lot. I would still love to hear what everyone else thinks. Also, if you have any better ideas let me know.
 
I think that 3 gigs of RAM would be fine... On my Mac, I never go above 2 gigs, even though the salesman got me to spring for 4 gigs, you should be fine on that. The other thing you might want to think about would be an esata card or something to control an external harrdrive raid or such.. unless you are going to keep it all internal. Also make sure that you have a decent heat synch and fans to accomodate the internal temps.
 
Your system should do fine. I have an extremely similar configuration on an HP Desktop, and I used to play around with After Effects CS3 and it was pretty fast. I am running Vista as my main OS and then I put XP as a dual boot and the system was blazing fast, so maybe you should put XP on your system.... But overall that seems like it should be a good enough system to handle video from an HVX.
 
mb72378 said:
Thanks a lot. I would still love to hear what everyone else thinks. Also, if you have any better ideas let me know.
Click to expand...

I think that if your smart you will put 2 hard drives in your machine. Both of them have an OS installed and you can choose to boot either. 1 drive is used for premiere etc and the other is used for your everyday stuff like gaming etc. THe easiest way to screw up your editing computer is to install something. YOu might not see it immediately, but little gremlins get into the system when you install other stuff. Having your computer crash on you in the middle of that all night edit for an 8 am deadline sucks, and if you can avoid it with a $100 Hard drive, then you should do it.

Just my .02
 
Tim....I love that idea. Thanks a lot. I will prob. put XP on a separate HD and use just that for my editing. When u do that, can u still access the other hard drive? I.E. Edit/Finish video on one op sys HD then boot up the other. Can you work with the finished product (avi file etc) in the other boot op sys ? hope that makes sense.


R. Lang... that is what I was told too. This comp. that I will be buying doesn't sya whether or not it is 32 or 64, does that mean that it is 32? The only thing that makes me wonder is that they offer a 4gb ram upgrade. I heard that the 64bit vista cannot run many of our programs including CS3
 
ProfessorU said:
Gaming is all about the video card.

Editing HD is all about the processor speed and the HDD speed (but other components, like a nice OpenGL graphics card, help, too).
Click to expand...

Except for the graphics card-based acceleration offered in Premiere Pro. It's a big help when editing HD.
 
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