Recommendations -- on Spec for Media/Video Editing

W

welchb

Active member
Hi All,

Can someone please take a look below at the spec I'm thinking about. The main use for the machine will be to replace a 3/4 years old PC (running Win XP), that I use for Video editing and media editing.

I'll also use the PC, for general use, e.g. Web browsing, normal apps usage (Office), Skype, iTunes etc... however not too much gaming but cannot be ruled out.

I've included Firewire card and TV card as I have some exisitng external hardware that would need to connect, for the media part.

Any recommendations or changes, please let me know budget wise I can probably go up a little however want to keep things under 2k

Thanks in advance.

Case
CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES™ 500R WHITE MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
250GB INTEL® 510 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 500MB/sR | 315MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£79)
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£79)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£72)
Processor Cooling
TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Firewire & Video Editing
3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)
TV Card
HAUPPAUGE HI-DEF SATELITTE DVB-S2 TV RECIEVER (WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,788.00 including VAT and delivery.
 
L

liamnic2

Super Star
Im not going to make a spec, because Im not great at it, but for a budget like yours you should be able to squeeze a 580 in there.
 
Corfate

Corfate

Author Level
Do you really need two BLU-RAY drives? Could put the money from one of those towards a 580 :)
 
W

welchb

Active member
sorry a 580 what ? apoligies if I should know this I don't. --- Edit : I guess you mean graphic card ?

The reason I went for both blue-rays, is part of the video editing I burn to DVD currently, however will be burning to either BR or DVD and I like to always have a main drive and a 2nd for back-up, it's also quicker for me for any copies, of my own content, to copy from one to other.

Tkx,

Brian
 
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mantadog

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
That is already a beast of a system. If you were looking more towards the value end you could cut that back to somewhere about £1,000 and still have a cracking system.

As far as advice goes...

I would upgrade the motherboard to the P8Z68-VGEN3. Has more features and the ability to add in a 2nd GPU at a later date should you need to SLI your GTX 560 for better gaming performance.

If it was my system i would be tempted to downgrade the SSD for the 120GB version, and then go for the caviar black drive as the 2nd drive. That saves alot of money, and having a caviar black drive as your storage will mean even if you run out of space on your SSD you are still going to have a really quick drive to use should you need to.

Cooling should be downgraded to the tripple copper heatpipe, as the fenrir is more geared towards overclockers. It is also HUGE and can sometimes cause problems with casefans.

I presume you often need to burn from Blu-Ray to Blu-Ray?
 
Music Guy123

Music Guy123

Prolific Poster
Fair enough on the blu-ray. This is the spec that I would recommend, also how much space do you need, I'd get 120GB on the SSD as they are so expensive perGB then buy a good second hdd to store all the big stuff on. This is what I would suggest:

Case
CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES™ 500R WHITE MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics Good cpu, fine for your needs
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready Probably the best gpu out there, worth it for gaming and it will last a little longer. 1.5GB is fine unless you want multiple screens
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB INTEL® 510 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 450MB/sR | 210MB/sW) Very reliable SSD, 120GB should be enough, only put the os, boot programs and most commonly used programs onto it.
2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) Very fast, reliable, solid HDD. 2TB is less than £20 more than the 1TB so you might as well.
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£79) It is a good drive, you have a good reason to get two of them!
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£79)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£72) Good solid, reliable psu
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19) Fine for your needs unless you want to o/c which I really don't recommend
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Firewire & Video Editing
3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)
TV Card
HAUPPAUGE HI-DEF SATELITTE DVB-S2 TV RECIEVER (WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2) Don't know anything on TV cards so can't help you here!
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,760.00 including VAT and delivery.

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-sandy-bridge-pc/
 
mantadog

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
I am a little confused as to why everyone is pushing the GTX 580, yes its a beast of a card and would obviously give you top end gaming performance. Yet the OP said gaming wasn't a priority.

I understand that the CUDA cores will help with multimedia editing but i can't realyl see the advantage of a 580 over a 560 for the price increase.

Just my opinion and i don't want to confuse things!
 
Music Guy123

Music Guy123

Prolific Poster
With that budget, you may as well get a card that will play medium settings for longer, that is all! He doesn't have to go 580, but I would recommend it if he can afford it.
 
mantadog

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
I would go down a slightly different route of just suggesting if the OP gets into games at any time in the future, slot in the best GPU out at the time. Thats partly why i also suggested a PCI-E 3.0 ready motherboard.

That would be my advice anyway. I will shut up now and try not to confuse things more for the OP. Don't be put off asking any questions if you have any
 
W

welchb

Active member
Hi all,

Thanks all for posting and the recommendations it's much appreciated. At the moment all of the content I edit is standard defintion, as I don't have a BR to burn too -- I've recently upgrade video camera to HD.

The reason I went for a larger 1st HDD as SSD -- was video take alot of space, however the longest part of media editing is the rendering process which tends to be CPU/Memory intensive and then writing to disk as it goes.

In honesty I don't know how much space I need on the 1st HHD for this process, so I went larger to begin with -- appreciate it costs more so I can juggle that a bit.

Once the content is complete/rendered -- I intend to store the finished items, on the 2nd HDD drive, which will need more space overall but will mainly be used for playback and archive -- I also have a NAS storage to make backups.

Hope that makes sense on rational for large SSD

Tkx,

Brian
 
Music Guy123

Music Guy123

Prolific Poster
Feel free to go with the large SSD but don't get me wrong, the caviar black is a very fast drive. What do you say to the gpu and a possibility of sliing later? I will have a look and try and build a spec including everything for you! The Intel drive is good but at £550 or so, I don't think it is worth it! If you want a big SSD, I'd say stick to the kingston, you will save at least £100.
 
Last edited:
Music Guy123

Music Guy123

Prolific Poster
This just slips into your budget but it does mean you can add another gpu later when necessary. Here it is:

Case
CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES™ 500R WHITE MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V/GEN3: PCI-E 3.0 READY, SLI, CROSSFIREX
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
240GB KINGSTON HYPERX SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£79)
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£79)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1050W PRO SERIES™ HX1050-80 PLUS® SILVER MODULAR (£159)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Firewire & Video Editing
3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)
TV Card
HAUPPAUGE HI-DEF SATELITTE DVB-S2 TV RECIEVER (WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,987.00 including VAT and delivery.

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-sandy-bridge-pc/
 
W

welchb

Active member
Hi Music Guy,

Thanks for all the replies (and everyone) will up all your reps for the help. Will need a day to review these and pennies in the bank.

I might downsize 2nd HDD from 2TB to 1TB -- if cost diff is negligable then will still to 2TB -- as my backup NAS device is only 1TB might have to think about that too now :)

Cheers,

Brian
 
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