building lean pc: request wisdom!

  • Thread starter Thread starter muel
  • Start date Start date
M

muel

greetings compardres:

i am building a pc for the purposes of digital film editing and post
production.

i currently have the following:

a tower case
400W Leadman power supply
harddrive
4X AGP vid card
firewire (pci)
burner/dvdrom
monitor/mouse/keyboard
soundcard
floppydrive

i need to get the following:

motherboard
CPU (2ghz or over) *AMD*
CPU Cooler (if not included with CPU)
512mb DDR RAM
IDE cables

as far as i can see, this will do it (if have forgotten anything,
could someone pls let me know? ta!)

i was wondering if anyone could sugguest a config of compatiable parts
- i have been quoted aprox AU$400, but would really like to find out
what is BEST for the price and what works together most
harmoniously....

thankyou tech community, shalom.

mool
sydney aust.
 
muel said:
greetings compardres:

i am building a pc for the purposes of digital film editing and post
production.

i currently have the following:

a tower case
400W Leadman power supply
harddrive
4X AGP vid card
firewire (pci)
burner/dvdrom
monitor/mouse/keyboard
soundcard
floppydrive

i need to get the following:

motherboard
CPU (2ghz or over) *AMD*
CPU Cooler (if not included with CPU)
512mb DDR RAM
IDE cables

as far as i can see, this will do it (if have forgotten anything,
could someone pls let me know? ta!)

i was wondering if anyone could sugguest a config of compatiable parts
- i have been quoted aprox AU$400, but would really like to find out
what is BEST for the price and what works together most
harmoniously....

thankyou tech community, shalom.

mool
sydney aust.
Click to expand...

OK, unless you are looking to go straight to Athlon 64, the nvidia mainboard
chipsets are the best performing and most stable for the AMD processors.
There are a few different nvidia chipsets to choose from, but you will want
one that will support ram up to AT LEAST 333MHz, so that your CPU FSB and
your ram will run synchronously. That also brings up another important
point . . . make sure your RAM is matched to your CPU FSB speed for optimum
performance. (ie don't use 400MHz RAM with a 333FSB processor, as that will
actually degrage performace slightly) And since you should be looking at
the nvidia chipsets anyway, you might as well choose one that will support
dual channel memory mode. This won't cost you anything extra, and will
improve performance very slightly. So when you buy your 512MB RAM, go for
two similar sticks of 256MB each. Keeping that in mind, I'd offer the
following for possible suspects . . .

Motherboard:
Bargain priced but great quality: Biostar M7NCD Pro (note the "Pro")
http://www.biostar-usa.com/mbdetails.asp?model=m7ncd+pro
Top quality, still bargain priced: Epox EP-8RDA3I
http://web.epox.com/html/motherboard.asp?product=EP-8RDA3I&lang=1
Top quality and spend a little more: Asux A7N8X
http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?langs=09&m=A7N8X

CPU: AMD XP 2600+ or 2700+ or 2800+

RAM: (2 each):
Bargain priced but rock-solid stable: Kingston 256MB DDR333 (PC2700)
Possibly better quality but higher priced: Crucial 256MB DDR333 (PC2700)

Note I know that PC3200 RAM is available and supported by many fine AMD
motherboards. But unless you are willing to spring for a 400FSB CPU, you
will get best performance with PC2700 RAM.

-Dave
 
Dave C. said:
OK, unless you are looking to go straight to Athlon 64, the nvidia mainboard
chipsets are the best performing and most stable for the AMD processors.
There are a few different nvidia chipsets to choose from, but you will want
one that will support ram up to AT LEAST 333MHz, so that your CPU FSB and
your ram will run synchronously. That also brings up another important
point . . . make sure your RAM is matched to your CPU FSB speed for optimum
performance. (ie don't use 400MHz RAM with a 333FSB processor, as that will
actually degrage performace slightly) And since you should be looking at
the nvidia chipsets anyway, you might as well choose one that will support
dual channel memory mode. This won't cost you anything extra, and will
improve performance very slightly. So when you buy your 512MB RAM, go for
two similar sticks of 256MB each. Keeping that in mind, I'd offer the
following for possible suspects . . .

Motherboard:
Bargain priced but great quality: Biostar M7NCD Pro (note the "Pro")
http://www.biostar-usa.com/mbdetails.asp?model=m7ncd+pro
Top quality, still bargain priced: Epox EP-8RDA3I
http://web.epox.com/html/motherboard.asp?product=EP-8RDA3I&lang=1
Top quality and spend a little more: Asux A7N8X
http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?langs=09&m=A7N8X

CPU: AMD XP 2600+ or 2700+ or 2800+

RAM: (2 each):
Bargain priced but rock-solid stable: Kingston 256MB DDR333 (PC2700)
Possibly better quality but higher priced: Crucial 256MB DDR333 (PC2700)

Note I know that PC3200 RAM is available and supported by many fine AMD
motherboards. But unless you are willing to spring for a 400FSB CPU, you
will get best performance with PC2700 RAM.

-Dave
Click to expand...


Wouldn't argue with any of the above but would strongly consider 1Gb ram for
video editing and some big hard drives.

MikeT
 
I would make a couple of refinements. I would pick up an OEM XP 2500+
Barton $85. With the money you save get some artic silver 5;
a good fan (Kingwin CPU Fan, Model KCU-7025 -OEM ); a decent MB, either the
Epox or Asus. I have an Epox 8RDA+ board. It has magic bios support and
there is another program that allows you to adjust the board settings in
windoze.

Then go for 2 sticks of high speed ram PC 3200 or PC 3500. These
motherboards can easily overclock the Barton to 2.2 GHz or higher.
If you are satisfied with an XP 3200+ performance get the PC 3200 RAM. If
you want to play with going beyond that you should get the higher speed ram.
There also is not a large difference in price between low latency RAM, so I
would go for the pricier and faster RAM.

In many benchmarks there is not much of a difference between fast and slow
ram, but video editing which is memory intensive, you may see a performance
gain.

I picked up two sticks of 256 MB Geil golden dragon RAM and have been quite
satisified. Geil Golden Dragon Dual Channel 184 Pin 512MB(256MBx2) DDR
PC-3500 - Retail $113


It even came with decals to stick on the computer case and flashy leds on
the sticks.

I would recommend the
EPoX nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU, Model
"EP-8RDA3+" -RETAIL for $86.

It is not much more, but it has a northbridge fan which improves
stability at high fsb speeds.


Happy computing,

Pete
 
muel said:
greetings compardres:

i am building a pc for the purposes of digital film editing and post
production.
Click to expand...

<snip>

I built a machine for a friend of mine who is a professional photographer
and just spent *two* days recovering 70gigs of edited images...or three
months of work in photoshop.

Although he had all the original data backed up...all his editing was pretty
close to lost when his 5 week old drive developed a S.M.A.R.T. error.

I tried every trick in the book to try and recovery the data...then gave up
and called a data recovery service and was given an estimate of $800 -$2300
to recover the data... So I had to try a few tricks that were not in the
book...
and finally did a 99% recovery. (wipes the sweat off his face)

My point? Look into a system, that employs RAID 1 (or any other *mirrored*
array) . Although I've never used RAID before I'm quite sure the next
machine
I build will be RAID!

BTW: your 512megs of RAM should do the job...but a full gig would not hurt


and finally...if you decide not to go with RAID be sure to use your DVD
burner often!!!!
 
<snip>

I built a machine for a friend of mine who is a professional photographer
and just spent *two* days recovering 70gigs of edited images...or three
months of work in photoshop.

Although he had all the original data backed up...all his editing was pretty
close to lost when his 5 week old drive developed a S.M.A.R.T. error.

I tried every trick in the book to try and recovery the data...then gave up
and called a data recovery service and was given an estimate of $800 -$2300
to recover the data... So I had to try a few tricks that were not in the
book...
and finally did a 99% recovery. (wipes the sweat off his face)

My point? Look into a system, that employs RAID 1 (or any other *mirrored*
array) . Although I've never used RAID before I'm quite sure the next
machine
I build will be RAID!

BTW: your 512megs of RAM should do the job...but a full gig would not hurt


and finally...if you decide not to go with RAID be sure to use your DVD
burner often!!!!
Click to expand...
Exacta mundo! I do professional video editing as well as still work
and use a DVD burner and dvd-rw's to back up everything.
The sonic dvd program I use has a file check program to ensure a
perfect backup everytime. Much safer than relying on just the HD for
safe storage.
And a full gig of ram is a necessity, 512 just won't cut the mustard.
In fact a gig is kinda slow once you really get into it.
I'm studying up and plan to build a cluster farm with several 1gig
socket A boards that I have.
The total ram I'll have with the completed cluster will be around 5
gigs with 1 to 1.2 athalon tbirds cpus on each node.
 
Exacta mundo! I do professional video editing as well as still work
and use a DVD burner and dvd-rw's to back up everything.
The sonic dvd program I use has a file check program to ensure a
perfect backup everytime. Much safer than relying on just the HD for
safe storage.
And a full gig of ram is a necessity, 512 just won't cut the mustard.
In fact a gig is kinda slow once you really get into it.
I'm studying up and plan to build a cluster farm with several 1gig
socket A boards that I have.
The total ram I'll have with the completed cluster will be around 5
gigs with 1 to 1.2 athalon tbirds cpus on each node.
Click to expand...

Hello...
my photographer friend is not yet ready for me to build a new machine
with RAID but he has *definately* given me the green light to replace his
regular cd burner with a dvd burner...
Do you know of any mfg's that include the sonic dvd software with their
dvd burners...or if it needs to be purchased seperately...
what's a good dvd burner to get?

thanks

Philo
 
muel said:
greetings compardres:

i am building a pc for the purposes of digital film editing and post
production.
Click to expand...
snip...

If the machine is specifically intended for digital media work then going
directly to 1gB of RAM (or more?) would be of great help. There is probably
no other task that eats up memory faster than digital video. After that, the
fastest disk subsystem available and the fastest CPU you can afford.
--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]

Return address will not work. Please
reply in group or through my website:
http://johnmcgaw.com
 
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