Hey computer guys...advice please?

Russell Moore

Well-known member
Not sure where else to put this. Hopefully this works.
I have about 600$ to spend on a computer, a friend of mine sent me this. Does it look worth 600$? Could I run any decent edit software on it?

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

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BIOSTAR A785G3 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Item #:N82E16813138182
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

$64.991
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AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Processor
Item #:N82E16819103652
Return Policy: CPU Replacement Only Return Policy
-$5.00 Instant
$109.99
$104.991
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SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 5770 100283VXL Video Card
Item #:N82E16814102868
Return Policy: VGA Standard Return Policy
-$10.00 Instant
$10.00 Mail-in Rebate Card
$184.99
$174.991
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Cooler Master Intel Core i5 compatible Hyper TX3 Socket 775/1156/AMD 130W 92mm CPU Cooler RR-910-HTX3-G1
Item #:N82E16835103064
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
-$5.00 Instant
$19.99
$14.991
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G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory
Item #:N82E16820231277
Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy

$84.991
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Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #:N82E16822136073
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

$55.991
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Sony Optiarc DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA Model AD-7240S-0B
Item #:N82E16827118030
Return Policy: Limited Replacement Only Return Policy

$24.991
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APEX Vortex 3620 SGCC / ABS ATX Mid Tower Gaming Computer Case
Item #:N82E16811154098
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
-$20.00 Instant
$54.99
$34.991
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COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power Plus RS-500-PCAR-A3 500W Power Supply
Item #:N82E16817171031
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
-$10.00 Instant
$49.99
$39.99Grand Total:$600.91
 
Personally, I wouldn't buy a WD hard drive. I'd get a Seagate. WD Caviar drives are notorious for crashing, from what I've read.

And you'll need an operating system.

Firewire card? Or multimedia card reader? How will your video get onto the hard drive?

For editing you need a 2nd hard drive -- programs on the main drive, video storage on the 2nd drive.
 
Personally, I wouldn't buy a WD hard drive. I'd get a Seagate. WD Caviar drives are notorious for crashing, from what I've read.

I disagree, about 5 years ago seagates were great, supe reliable. Then their QC fell off. Recent models have proved less reliable. Honestly HD reliability tends to vary model by model, do a little googling, there are tons of nerds out there that do all kinds of crazy tests on hard drives, but silentpc review and toms hardware are good places to start. I've had good results with Samsung and WD high capacity drives.

on an editing system you want at least two drives. Get a 2.5" laptop drive for you System and a larger drive for your media, make sure they're both 7200 rpm and you'll want the system drive to have a high cache (16/32mb. For the media drive it doesn't matter becuase it's mostly sequential reads / writes).

the motherboard your friend pointed out is sufficient but not very scalable you only have 2 ram slots, 2 pci slots and 4 sata ports. If you plan on adding storage (and you are going to NEED to add storage) you're going to need more drives. You're going to need a firewire card if you're going to control a deck so there goes one of your pci slots and an i/o card or some other random peripheral you're going to end up wanting for video stuff is going to take up the other.

I'm not up on the current graphics cards but I don't think any NLE on the market takes advantage of graphics acceleration so if all you want to do is edit video you don't need too go bust on the video card. One Caveat to that though is that some plugins do offer gpu rendering. If you're thinking about doing any kind of 3d that's another story but most consumer grade cards will only really offer a significant performance boost to games.

Don't buy an inboard graphics card. M-Audio makes several integrated monitors that have built in sound cards. The cheapest one is like $100, hooks up through usb and has stereo i/o. If you're thinking about doing serious sound work these won't cut it but for video editing they're plenty.

So your original question "Is that computer worth $600" well yes it's worth $600 but it's not ideal for what you want to do. I'd say get a motherboard that's decently expandable, a fast processor, a decent video card and some ram and upgrade the system as you can afford it.
 
I am going to disagree with almost all of the previous comments and say that you don't need a mac, a sound card or a Seagate hard drive. At this point in time HD brand choices a purly a personal preference there is no giant difference between different brands. I would definatly not get an AMD Phenom though. I have 2 reccomendations:
Build 1:
CPU - Core i5-750 2.66Ghz Quad Core ~$200
Mobo - Asus P755D ATX ~ $135
Ram - Corsair XMS 4gb (2x2gb) DDR3 ~ $80
Optical - LG Black Sata Optical Drive ~ $24
Case - Antec Three Hundred Black ATX Tower ~ $60
Power Supply - Corsair 650w ~ $90
Graphics - XFX HD4650 1GB ~ $65
Hard Drive - Samsung 1TB 7200rmp ~ $85
This comes out to $739 so a little more than your original budget but this is an awsome rig.

Build 2:
The 1st combo on this page. ~$552
As well as:
Graphics - XFX HD4650 1GB ~ $65
Optical - LG Black Sata Optical Drive ~ $24
Coming to $641 for another awesome rig.
 
if you have money buy ssd ram and computers are overated lol

and if you wanna pc i3 and i5 series maybe i7 if you have $1000 for pc
all over the place very good power for money add a SSD maybe and WOW

you can find them all over from $500 up to $750 for 17" laptop i5 fully loaded
 
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