computer system

S

sshafer

Member
I am a media teacher who needs help. I have to recommend the appropriate computer purchase for the CS3 suite that will last for the next 5 years. This is my only chance, I need something that will stand the test of time. I need your input. Currently I am thinking of the following system. Do you see any problems? What I buy will be used by hundreds of film students over the 5 years.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium

Computer System-computer system is designed to last 5 years, with the expected transition to HD as the standard video format.

HP xw8400 Workstation
Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5160 3.0 GHz 4 MB L2 cache 1333 MHz front side bus
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Two(2) -160 GB 7200 rpm SATA 3.0-Gb/s NCQ
16X DVD+/-RW Dual-Layer
Graphics Card- NVIDIA Quadro FX 1500 (256 MB, Dual DVI or Dual VGA)
 
That sounds like a pretty good setup for what is required. The school I'm attending currently at the moment has a vary similar setup in one of our labs and they work quite well. Although they don't quite compare to our mac pro lab, but it sounds like you're going the PC and adobe route. I remember my high school last year had a similar PC setup, but with Pentium 4's and only half a gig of ram and they were quite frustrating working with Premiere. So I'd say the system you've got planned sounds pretty good at this stage. But it also depends on what they are going to be primarily used for. Is it for high school students? university? film school? Will it mainly be used for dv/hdv editing? Will there be much work done in after effects?
 
I was in the same boat as you. I had to build a system that would last a while. I have built three editing systems before this one and used a flawed strategy. I almost did it again this time when my boss told me “This time build one that can be upgraded”. Well that is easier said than done. I was trying to build an ungradable machine every time. The problem is the technology keeps changing. Every time I built one to upgrade by the time I could upgrade that particular tech-route was obsolete.

This time I decided to do it differently this time I built a machine that was ahead of the game. I chose a dual socket Xeon mother board with two quad-core processors and three 10,000 rpm drives one for the C-drive and two in a raid configuration to capture HD from an intensity card. I also put in two more drives as storage and a hot swapable hard drive bay for long term storage and a Blue Ray burrner.

I know that Adobe only uses four of the cores but that is OK I can set the affinity and use the other quad-core to do other things in the background. And when the software is written to take advantage of all eight cores it will be like an automatic upgrade to my hardware. Not to mention that I am early enough that there will be newer faster quad-core chips made before they decide to switch to a new technology altogether. Uh I think!
 
sshafer,
Sounds like a good setup that all youll really want to upgrade in the future will be RAM. 2Gb is plenty but after a year we begin to want more when going back and forth from heavy applications.

If I may suggest something though, I would say only get one 160Gb drive. Then get like 3 x 400-500Gb HD's and put them in a RAID array. If you want it to last 5 years the first thing that will go wrong is you will run out of room, and if you plan on moving into HD, the second thing that will go wrong is your HD's won't be fast enough to do HD so youll need them in a RAID.

Best of luck.
 
Thanks

Thanks

Good suggestions. What do you know about the 64bit future of Premiere? Should I go with Vista or XP 64bit? Do you recommend getting a separate sound card?
 
i am not a fan of HP comptuers or any prebuilt units-but it is convenient to just order from hp and pick and choose.

i would probaly
get a dual core Intel
Asus mobo with SATA
top of the graphics card
stand alone sound card
stock up on Ram
dvd/writer
etc etc
firewiere/usb2

http://pc.ncix.com/ncixpc/
 
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