Robo - 10:35 am on Sep 4, 2011 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the coments so far, keep them coming. I was out of reach for internet for a few days, hence the late reply on my own thread.

First, we do a project in which we have $1,700 for a computer SPECIFICALLY FOR VIDIO EDITING as described in my first post. No gaming going on, some design work (adobe InDesign, photoshop). Al the other things we do we can do with what we have, but not the video editing (too old and slow).

This $ 1,700 we have to spend; savings will not end up in our pocket but will be divided over other project posts or get lost for us. Therefore, we always try to get maximum hardware for our money, since that out-lives the project duration. We can shave something off other project posts to get into the computer, but not much (max $ 200 or so). We can write a better monitor in our next project proposal, so for me at this moment that is of lesser concern.

As said, I am a newbie. So I googled and found Videoguys. They also test hardware and give recommendation on what they think is a good DIY home-build budget or top-end editing computer. They go for what they think is the best combo of hardware and software components for a very specific job. They test their own DIY builds against the newest editing software and check for the best compatibility. For example, for adobe they recommend nvidia GTX470 or 570 as optimum graphic card, while other software might run better on other graphic cards.

Their arguments sounded balanced, and I used their Videoguys budget DIY 8 as starting point (see my first post). Since it eats up our entire budget and I always like second opinions, I asked for comments. I know that we can get cheaper, but then I would have to figure out what combo to make, or go with something cheaper off-the-shelf where I have no idea what to choose for this specific job of video editing and recoding video to work good as mobile content versus video for high-speed internet connections.

Now some reply to individual posts.

Intel versus AMD and motherboard. Short google action seems to show that Intel on this still beats ADM, but is more expensive. In our country, the AMD X4 965 is about $ 180 cheaper (ouch). The discussion is also about i7 950 or i7 2600K (sandybridge) with the Asus P8Z68-V PRO motherboard (about $ 100 cheaper). Videoguys still holds off on the latter combo, but they are conservative in their advice until something is thoroughly tested and proven for the given job of video editing.

I also asked our local computer shop; they also repair and do custom builds, so they know a bit what they are talking about, although more in gaming and less in video editing. They advised a Gigabyte Z68 Motherboard instead of the older Asus X58. Using the X68 motherboard with an i7 950 saves about $ 130 as well.

HDD. My mistake, they recommend a 1.5 TB 7K disk as well. As second disk, we are now considering using a 120 Gb SSD disk as dedicated OS disk. We already have a new 1 Tb 7K HDD as back-up disk in our old computer, so that one will switch to the new editing computer as well, so there will be three HDDs on that machine.

The noise: I definitely want a quiet computer, so I will spend some extra on low-noise power supplies and other cooling solutions. SSD as OS disk should help as well.

Prices: the $$ has a lousy exchange rate, so it should be cheaper for us. Unfortunately, the market does not work like that. Below also the price of the original set-up in US $$ now including an SSD as dedicated OS drive. We use an exchange rate of 17 CZK (Czech Koruna) for 1 $$ (when we started in 2000, we still got FORTY CZK for 1 $$). Part of the project is that as policy we buy local (Czech companies) so Amazon etc are out.

$ 265 Motherboard Asus P6X58D-E intel X58
$ 320 CPU intel i7 950 (the 970 would set us back another $650)
$ 130 RAM Kingston 3x 4 GB)
$ 420 Nvidia GTX 570 (470 or 480 are alternatives similar in price)
$ 110 HDD Hitachi 1.5 Tb 7K for editing work
$ 250 SSD 120 GB as separate OS hard disk
$ 110 CD Rom Blue-ray RW
$ 125 Power 850 watt
$ 150 Tower Antec ninehundredtwo or similar

Total $ 1,880 with todays prices I can get in the Czech Republic.

Again, when replying, please keep in mind that this computer is dedicated to video editing and is our one shot at getting something decent for this. Cheap computers we can write into many projects, but this kind of high range not. I should have asked for more money, but I settled too much for off-the-shelf fitting the “minimum requirements”.