I know you must be asked this many times but I have looked at the site and did not come away with answers to some of our questions so I have posted this note. My daughter and I are considering building a high-end PC for her use in collage. She is a film major with focus on film editing. She will be using Avid Xpress Pro (http://www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/). We are on a budget for this system, so we would like to stay under $2000.00 if possible. Some of our high level requirements are: Lots of Memory, 4Gb Minimum, Avid likes memory Lots of disk space, video files takes a lot of room. 32bit XP OS, Avid can only run in a 32bit system and is not certified for Vista HD Video 1080i & HDMI out. Fast processors, It takes a lot of processing to render a movie She would like the setup profiles for over-clocking when video editing. Below is our research including the components (in bold) we have been looking at. We are open to change in any or all of the components or some of our thinking. So, please make any recommendations you feel will get her to the best system for what she is trying to do within a reasonable cost. Processor We are not sure if a fast two core is better then a slower quad core. We are hoping that Avid will use the multi cores in the next release but we do not know if it will. Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor - 2.40GHz, SLACR, Stepping G0 Motherboard – Audio – Cooling The board below will support CrossFire video card which looks like our best choice. Is CrossFire best for Video Editing? We also have not added a cooler to the configuration. What do you think we need? Asus Maximus Formula Motherboard - Intel X38, Socket 775 Or others??? Memory We need as much memory as we can get. Should we be going with a Motherboard the can support faster memory? When Avid can support the 64bit O/S she will move up to 8GBs of RAM OCZ Platinum 4GBs PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Dual Channel Memory (4 x 1024MB) or OCZ ReaperX Dual Channel 4096MB PC8000 DDR2 1000MHz (2 x 2048MB) Will this be worth the money??? Video Card It looks like there are many more choices in the CrossFire architecture with HD 1080i. We need HD video output up to 1080i/p and HDMI from the card. What is our best bet for video editing? Do we need 2 cards and/or 512Mbs? HIS Radeon HD 2600 XT, 512MB GDDR3, Dual Link, Dual DVI/HDTV/HDMI, CrossFire Ready Computer Case & Power Supply Our only question is if 750w PS is good or should we go smaller? Or bigger? Xion II Silver ATX Mid-Tower Case with Ultra X2 with a 750-Watt Power Supply Hard Drives We configured the O/S drive with a 500Gb drive. We did this to get as much speed as we could for the O/S and the Avid program. Next we configured a possible RAID array of 4 750Gb drives for a maximum of 3 Tb of storage. Dose the setup make sense? 1 - Barracuda 7200.11 500GB, SATA-300 & 4 - Barracuda 7200.11 500GB, SATA-300 4 - Barracuda 7200.11 500GB, SATA-300 & 4 - Barracuda 7200.11 750GB, SATA-300 DVD Burners Looking for DL burning. Would like B-Ray but the cost is high. Lite-On Super-Multi Lightscribe DVD Burner Monitor We are looking to have 2 monitors, one which will be her main monitor and the other will be the DVI input on her current 22” LCD TV (not an HDTV). For the main monitor we are looking at: ViewSonic VA2226w 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 5ms, 2000:1, WSXGA+ 1680x1050, DVI Or Samsung 226BW 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 2ms, 700:1, WSXGA+ 1680x1050, DVI Or others??? The system above system comes in over our $2,000 budget. It looks like a lot of system for the money but where should we reduce. Is there anything we missed? I know this is a long note but I hope you can help us sort thru all of the choices and get to a system that she can use well into the future. Thanks for all of your help Rich & Amy Lemieux
Go quad core, as the vast majority of video editing/encoding/rendering programs are either capable of handling 4 cores or are slated to use 4 cores and above soon. If she will be working with SD or HDV the raid array may not be needed quite yet. Each of those have data rates of 25Mbps which is not only relatively small but it's also easily workable without the increased data output of a raid array. If she will be editing uncompressed HD then she will need a raid array. When it comes to drive space I always say buy how much you need in the short term, then buy more as it's needed. A 3TB array will hold roughly 266 hours of SD or HDV footage. It is highly unlikely she will need even a quarter of that in her first year of school. On a budget, it is wise to buy the space as time goes on, as it will be far cheaper in the future. I would advise against either one of those monitors as they use TN type LCD panels. TN panels have the worst colour reproduction, viewing angle, and contrast of all, and with video editing, all of those are extremely critical. Go HERE for an explanation on panel types. Personally, I would take the money saved on the raid array (assuming once again she will NOT be editing uncompressed HD) and spend it on a good monitor. If this isn't possible then I'd consider even getting a good CRT monitor. Video cards are not a big problem. The only requirement for you sounds like HDMI. Get any card with this and you should be fine, as there is no need for a workstation type card (FireGL or Quadro) unless she will be doing and 3D work.
For video editing, Quad core is definitely a solid investment. The ASUS Maximus is a gaming board. You could easily get the same performance and specs from the ASUS P5E and pay less for it. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131219
