ULTIMATE EDITING SYSTEM advice

J

Jeremy7

Active member
I'm building a new editing system and want this thing to have some serious juice! Can some of you hardware guys give me some advice on better parts than what I have listed below?

THERMALTAKE MATRIX VD2000BNS BLACK SILVER COMPUTER CASE

(1) Seagate 1TB Sata SEAGATE 1 TERABYTE SATA 3G DESKTOP STORAGE 7200
RPM 32MB CACHE BARE DRIVE

(2) Seagate 160Gig 8MB ... SEAGATE 160GB INT 3.5-IN SATA 3G HDD 7200RPM 8MB

Asus P5K-E S775 ASUS MOTHERBOARD

INTEL CPU CORE 2 DUO Q6600 2.4GHZ

I really appreciate the advice! Thank you!
 
1TB HDD is dangerous for video. It'll take forever to format for one, and on top of that if you lose it due to a hardware malfunction (it happens, and don't think it won't happen to you) you're out of 1TB of important information. 1x500 for Storage, 1x500 for storage, 1x160 for Programs, 1x160 for music, personal.

You've left out memory. G-Skill or Ballistix DDR2-1066 if your board supports it. 800 is cheaper, you may not notice the increase, it may not make a difference.

You'll also need a GPU as well or Graphics Card. Do some more huntin! Then show us what ya got.

For reference, here's my current setup:

ASUS P5k-E Wifi Motherboard
Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz
Enzotech Ultra-X CPU Cooler
Ballistix 1gb DDR2-1066 x 4 @ DDR2-1200 (4gb)
BFG GeForce 7900GS 512mb G-DDR4
Extra Firewire 400 Card
And a whole lotta SeaGate 250gb INternal 7200.10 RPM HDDs and Seagate 750gb Externals
 
Yeah if you want a real powerhouse I'd go for at least dual dual cores, if the dual quads hurt your wallet. That and 4 gb of ram is pretty quick. I assume the two 160's are for a striped raid? The only thing I would add is that if you are going to spend that much on a quick machine, I'd put some money into a good backup scheme too. I just use a couple external drives and sync them up to my working files daily and take one home just in case the whole office burns down. An additional external backs up the boot drives on every computer too. Its the data that is most valuable to me though.
 
doh! I saw core 2 duo and thought dual core... Yeah then get two of those! Thanks Kholi! (I have to be nice so you dont get brash and combative :))
 
LOL I'm about to take that out of my sig. LuLlz

Yeah it's Duo Architecture. 2 x Core 2 Duos slapped together inside of one shell. Not a true quad core. Those should be out or coming soon.

Also, if he gets two of those he wouldn't be able to use the P5K-E and would have to go server board. Come to think of it, he wouldn't be able to use two of those anyway. 775 and he would need Xeon chipsets.
 
Sorry for the fanboy-ness, but get a mac. A Mac Pro with 4 to 8 GB Ram and a few drives in raid with be your "Ultimate Editing System". Throw a copy of Final Cut on there and your ready to run.
 
EDIT-XTREEM said:
Sorry for the fanboy-ness, but get a mac. A Mac Pro with 4 to 8 GB Ram and a few drives in raid with be your "Ultimate Editing System". Throw a copy of Final Cut on there and your ready to run.
Click to expand...

It was the best move I ever did.
 
Rob said:
It was the best move I ever did.
Click to expand...

I did pretty much the same, I'm using the MacBook Pro 17" High Res (1920x1200) with 4GB Ram and a 160GB 7200RPM Drive and FCS. Very good for editing and handles DV and HDV very well. I'm wanting a mac pro right now, but for me, first is a new tripod.

I say, 100% get a mac.
 
Kholi said:
For reference, here's my current setup:

ASUS P5k-E Wifi Motherboard
Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz
Enzotech Ultra-X CPU Cooler
Ballistix 1gb DDR2-1066 x 4 @ DDR2-1200 (4gb)
BFG GeForce 7900GS 512mb G-DDR4
Extra Firewire 400 Card
And a whole lotta SeaGate 250gb INternal 7200.10 RPM HDDs and Seagate 750gb Externals
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. Are you working on a 64 bit operating system or 32 bit? I assume you're using 64bit because you can do 4gb DDR2 with a 32 bit system. Also, why not use the 8800GTX graphics card? It's designed for HD footage playback and viewing.

My biggest concern is storage. I've shot a film with over 100 hours of footage and I need something to store it on. It will take up about 4TB of space. I was thinking of adding 4tb to my editing system where I can cut the film and then back it up weekly to four 1TB hard drives or a 4tb raid. Any suggestions?

Jeremy
 
EDIT-XTREEM said:
Sorry for the fanboy-ness, but get a mac. A Mac Pro with 4 to 8 GB Ram and a few drives in raid with be your "Ultimate Editing System". Throw a copy of Final Cut on there and your ready to run.
Click to expand...

Same here!! And if you really need windows for some reason you can run bootcamp and you will have both windows and mac OS on one computer.
 
EDIT-XTREEM said:
Sorry for the fanboy-ness, but get a mac. A Mac Pro with 4 to 8 GB Ram and a few drives in raid with be your "Ultimate Editing System". Throw a copy of Final Cut on there and your ready to run.
Click to expand...

Ditto. And right now ram is so cheap (from OtherWorld) - 8gb for $315!
 
EDIT-XTREEM said:
Thats designed for the older mac pro, (667 MHZ), the new one is 800 MHz, but that ram will still work, but just at the slower 667 MHZ.
Click to expand...

Good point. On a side note - how does FCS2 run? I am very interested in Color, but am not sure what the performance is like...
 
Okay, if money is no object, here's the configuration that I want.


* Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
* 16GB (4 x 4GB)
* 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 1.5GB (Stereo 3D, two dual-link DVI)
* Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel)
* Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel)
* One 16x SuperDrive
* Apple Mighty Mouse
* Apple Keyboard (English) + Mac OS X

I have always been a PC person for 20 years but I'm willing to switch over to Mac since it's able to support PC natively...best of both worlds.:D
 
siniarch said:
Hey, couldn't you get the memory somewhere else and save tons of money or is that just a rummor?
Click to expand...

Oh yeah.... ram is about 1/4 everywhere else (other than direct from Apple)... but OWC has great deals... and now with the 4gb sticks - you can get 32gb worth in the MacPro - yikes! But I think you could probably do half that - then spend the other half on a really good graphics card - Motion will really make better use of it...
 
At the risk of sounding fanboyish too, I switched about a year ago to a Mac Pro and never looked back. Since I'm a Premiere Pro user (sorry, I'm not THAT much of a mac fan!! :-P) I installed the mac version of the Production Premium suite and it works like a charm! After Effects never rendered this quickly on any PCs I've ever been on before.

Plus, if you prefer windows, you can always install Vista or XP with boot camp (which I did), and you get the best of both worlds if you need to run windows-only programs like Adobe OnLocation.

The only little problem you might encounter is if you're not familiar with a mac. I know it took me some time getting used to the different keyboard macros and interface, but it was really worth it IMHO.

From what I've recently seen, Mac Pros are now even cheaper than the powerful Dell workstations (dunno why), so might be a good idea to look more into that!

Good luck in your quest for the perfect workstation!

Gabe
Fotonik Films
 
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