Buying an editing computer

USNFilms

USNFilms

Hi,

Right now I've been editing all of my videos on a laptop with 2gs of ram and things have been slow.

I really want to buy a PC desktop for under $1,000 that will be quite fast for after effects and premiere pro cs5 that won't lag to bad when I edit and do effects. If you could recommend any computers that'd be great, as I don't know anything about computers and what they need to be fast for video editing.

Thanks
 
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Yeah, I ain't that "handi" (AKA nerdy) myself, either.
I was just gonna see what their minimal specs were and see if I could match that and better with something off the self from my local big box retailer.
 
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I wrote down a list of equipment, which is optimized especially for Premiere. Loots of research for nothing. Got convinced by FCP X.

So here it goes.. Not sure what the prices in the US are..

Intel core I7 990X, if money is tight, Intel Core I7 980X
Nvidea GTX480.. Perfect with its cuda engine for Premiere.
Asus P6X58D-e, supports lots of RAM and SLI configuration for future
WD Caviar Black 2TB Harddrive, or two 1TB drives, one for software, one for DATA
24GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-10666 1333Mhz Ripjaw

the rest is up to you, but this is TOP NOTCH!
 
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Phil_UK said:
I wrote down a list of equipment, which is optimized especially for Premiere. Loots of research for nothing. Got convinced by FCP X.

So here it goes.. Not sure what the prices in the US are..

Intel core I7 990X, if money is tight, Intel Core I7 980X
Nvidea GTX480.. Perfect with its cuda engine for Premiere.
Asus P6X58D-e, supports lots of RAM and SLI configuration for future
WD Caviar Black 2TB Harddrive, or two 1TB drives, one for software, one for DATA
24GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-10666 1333Mhz Ripjaw

the rest is up to you, but this is TOP NOTCH!
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Hey man, thanks for this information!!! I trust your advice and skill in this area, esp. with your recent purchase ;)
 
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CamVader said:
I personally don't think there is such a thing as too much RAM.
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I agree, I just think for a $1000 machine, he'd get more usage out of more drive space. There's no one correct answer, though.

Also, the i7 990x and 980x are going to be far too expensive for a $1000 machine. I've been very happy with the 920x which now comes in at a 1/4 of the price of those chips.

For the video card, I'd save a few bucks and go with the GTX 460, it should come in at about half the price of the 480.
 
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I edit on a 15inch MacBook Pro, 2.0 Ghz processor, 8GB of RAM and a 500GB SATA drive @ 7200. When buying a computer RAM and drive speed matter. If your drive isn't fast enough, while editing you can drop frames. I work with two peripherals. A Verbatim 500GB USB drive and a LACIE SGI, (Standard Government Issue), 250GB IEEE 1394, @ 800 MBS. Now what I've noticed, is that RAM and drive speed is the most important. The LACIE and Verbatim are slow and drop frames when I stream into FCP on three or more layers in standard def. Now when I go off of my local HDD @ 7200, I can go to 10 layers of 1920x1064, or 7 layers of 1440x1080 without any issues of dropped frames. Now this varies computer to computer, and editing software to software. For CBS here in Reno, they have two hexa-cores with 96GB of RAM running premiere. So I guess the architecture of the program matters, and the way it interfaces with the hardware.
 
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USNFilms said:
What's dell's b stock?
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On the Dell site there's a store that sells, refurbs, open box, stuff like that. Good place to save. I got mine a year ago and it works great, I added a second drive and a blu ray burner. Only bad thing about a Dell is you can't overclock them. I don't know how to do that any way so I don't care. But you can easily add drives and stuff, I did all that myself, and if I can do it, ANYONE can do it.
 
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brianluce said:
On the Dell site there's a store that sells, refurbs, open box, stuff like that. Good place to save. I got mine a year ago and it works great, I added a second drive and a blu ray burner. Only bad thing about a Dell is you can't overclock them. I don't know how to do that any way so I don't care. But you can easily add drives and stuff, I did all that myself, and if I can do it, ANYONE can do it.
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Thats cool, I love saving money on refurb gear so I'll check it out. Do you know if other brands like HP have the same deal like that? I'll try to look myself to see, for I love HP computers
 
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OK, so looking around, is it better performance wise to get a DUAL SOCKET XEON (8 REAL cores and 8 HT cores) but at the slower speed, or get 1 i7 at highest speed available (4 real cores, 4 HT cores) ??
 
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BUILD one ! simple.. get a MOBO that will handle a i7 4 core processor and a RAID configuration. Get i7 CPU, 8GB of ram, 3 - 2TB 7200rpm SATA drives, 1 smaller drive for OS, 700w power supply, 1GB Nvidia Graphics card, a case w/ plenty of fans, DVD drives and build it. Set up 2 of the drives for RAID 0 and go! If you are going to be editing on the computer, you should know exactly how it is built and then you will be better able to maintain the rig.


AND if you want to save and be brave..Install Ubuntu Linux, all software is free.
 
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