nhvideoguy

I’m looking to build a system just as soon as I can (my old one is just about dead). I’m thinking of trying to buy everything during the black Friday / Cyber Monday sales. It’s mostly a video capture and editing system. The system I’m replacing is a single 3.20 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4

Don’t know if this matters but - this will be essentially my first build – the last one I did was a CPM system kit where I had to get components like transistors, and resisters, etc. in the early 70’s. So, if you can point me to any specific threads on this site or any other sites that sort of go step by step on how to build this system that would really be helpful.

Thanks so much for the help!

1. Budget: How much money are you willing to spend on the new build?
• $1,500 to $2,000 (less than that would be fine too). I’m hoping to get a beefy system because I will be recycling some components (for now).
1. Brands: Are there any brands of components you want or don't want?
• I want to stick with Intel for the CPU (I think they are in favor now anyway)
• I have almost all Seagate drives, I would like to stay with them – except for maybe a 10k RPM Veloci Raptor
• Want to make sure I have plenty of power and a good quality mother board
• I do sort of prefer nVidia for video cards – and I want a good one (I’ll be running dual monitors and running Adobe CS4 that takes advantage of the GPU).
2. Multitasking: Will you be multitasking with this computer and if so, how much?
• I am building this as a video editing system (mostly low-end stuff – converting old home movies, photo montages, etc.) If I have the bandwidth I’d love to be able to render or burn one project while working on another one.
3. Gaming: Will you be gaming and if so, how much and how new are the games?
• Not on this system, but if I can get this one done for <$1,500 I’ll be asking about a gaming system in January or February.
4. Calculations: Will you be doing any intense calculations or media encoding?
• Yes on the media encoding. I’m also likely to have several ‘large’ programs open at the same time – like Photoshop, my video editing application (NewTek VT5 - www.newtek.com if it helps)
5. Overclocking: Do you plan on overclocking and if so, how much?
• I have never done that. I want the fastest system I can get, but WAY more important than that is - it has GOT TO BE stable. So I’m willing to do it if the system can be rock solid.
6. Storage: How much storage will you need and what will you be storing?
• Oh ya lots of storage needed – video files mostly. I do have a external eSATA 4 drive storage box (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817994037) so I will need a way to connect it – it’s 4 separate eSATA ports. I think I will use this as backup in the new system
• For the new system I would like all (or all but the system drive) to be removable – and I would like at least 4 removable drive slots (would 6 be possible?) I should probably have 2 DVD drives – one R/W - don’t need blu-ray for now. It would be nice if they were tray-less (in other words the raw drive can be inserted) I will want to have the option of making these drives a raid – raid 0 is probably all I need.
• As for the actual drives, I have lots of raw drives now, all SATA Seagates. If there are suggestions beyond these, I would like to hear what you have to say.
7. Legacy Support: Will you need support for older hardware like parallel, serial, or PS/2 devices?
• Yes, this is important. The NewTek hardware card that goes with the NewTek software, needs (and I hope I explain this correctly), an older style PCI slot that has both 3.3V and 5V. If you look at this site: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...PCI_Keying.png
My board is keyed as “Universal (3.3V & 5V) 32-bit PCI card” and the slot it’s in is called “5V 32-bit PCI slot” – lower left in both categories. So I need a mother board that has this support.
8. Operating System: Do you want Windows XP or Vista, or Linux compatibility?
• Well, I’m running XP Pro now. Eventually I would like to get to Vista-64 but I’m afraid of too many applications won’t work. So I think XP Pro and I’ll wait for Windows 7 (maybe 7.1 ). I’m willing to hear arguments to this thinking however. Don’t know anything about Windows XP Pro 64 bit.
• The system I’m replacing was a custom built system (by a video editing dealer in 2004). Could I use that XP license? I don’t plan on keeping this system – although if I try to sell it… don’t know.
9. Case: Do you want help selecting a case and if so, how big do you want it?
• I would like a suggestion here. Size does not matter, needs to be big enough for the removable drives and the two DVD drives. It would be nice if it had front mount Firewire, USB, headphones and card reader – but that’s just a ‘nice to have’.
10. Accessories: Do you want a keyboard, mouse, or other items included?
• Yes, I’m on this system a lot so a nice keyboard and a mouse with very good accuracy. I don’t like the slit/curved keyboards.
11. Recycled Components: Will you be reusing any components you already have?
• Yes, to save money so I can get a faster/better computer I’ll keep my two Samsung SyncMaster 910T monitors. http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors...-30901770.html (unless there is some good reason I should not do this).
• I’ll keep all my SATA disk drives.
12. Monitor: If you want a monitor, what size do you want and should it be widescreen?
• See recycled above.
13. Stores: Do you have any online stores that you prefer to purchase from?
• I like Newegg but I would consider other major sites if I could get a better price – but I find Newegg is hard to beat.
14. Location: What country do you live in?
• USA (New Hampshire)

wrench97

Have a look over this For the keyboard I think you need to feel them yourself for the one you like,
This set up has 6 hot swap external bays and 7 500Gig drives to cut down on initial cost you could go with less and add more later.
Link............................................................................. Disc Qty Price rebate Cost
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119158 Case 1 $129.99 $129.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817994062 Icy Dock 6 $36.99 $221.94
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115130 Q9650 1 $549.99 $549.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131295 P5Q 1 $119.99 $119.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148301 SG 500Gig 7 $70.99 $496.93
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130380 9800GT 1 $114.99 $15.00 $99.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817703009 PcP&C 750w 1 $129.99 $30.00 $99.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832116515 XP Pro 1 $139.99 $139.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148212 1 $82.99 $30.00 $52.99

$1,911.80

nhvideoguy

Thanks wrench97 for your recommendations - sorry it's taken me so long to reply. I have been looking this over and have a few questions.

1) To you happen to know if the ASUS P5Q motherboard you recommended has PCI 2.2 PCI slots? As I understand it, you can necessarily tell by looking at the slot. Version 2.2 has 3.3V AND 5V while a PCI 2.3 speced slot only has 3.3V (I need the 2.2 slot). I’m going to try to call Asus about this too – I could not find anything about this on their site. UPDATE: I called Asus and they said they were 2.2 (I hope she was correct, she didn’t seem positive)!

2) While on the Asus site, I used their power supply calculator and it came out to 850W – you recommended a 750W – so I was wondering what you thought of that. My current system is on it’s way out due to (I think) power supply issues – so I’m very sensitive to this!

3) I didn’t see anything about how to connect my 4 eSATA ports external drive box. My current card is a PCI-X so that won’t work in the mother board – right? Will a PCI Express x1 slot board be able to drive the 4 SATA drives adequately?

4) You specified DDR2 800 memory, the mother board can support 1066 – was this to save money? Would it make a big difference in performance?

Thanks again - plan on buying things Friday!
\Dave

nhvideoguy

One other question - would this be a better case?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Tpk=11-133-056
Don't know anything about it, just it's on special at Newegg and it's $30 less on sale and about $40 more regular price and it's rating is as good or slightly better. I guess too I'm wondering about the bottom mount power supply - most are top mount
\Dave

wrench97

It a good case but it has 7 full size drive bays instead of 11 as long as you stay with 1 DVD/CD and 6 external drives it will work.
The power supply size I gave is on the minimum side and 850w would be better I did realize you were looking for 4 Esata and 6 external docks the board supports 8 sata drives and 2 IDE devices I was thinking some of the external drives could replace the Esata?
This one that I have used before will give you 2 external Esata http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816150027
For power one of these the PCP&C has 15 drive connections and the thermaltake has 8 Sata and 8 4pin molex I prefer the PCP&C but it does have a heavier price tag and is a single 12v rail as opposed the 4 on the Thermaltake. With a single rail you don't have to worry about balancing the load across the rails.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...703013&bop=And
As for the memory there is slight performance advantage to 1066 not a lot and I don't the extra cost is worth it on a stock clock system for a 1333 FSB to out run DDR2 800 the cpu would have to be running near 4 gig.

I'll keep looking for a 4 port Esata but so far all I found was in the $300 range so I guess the question is with the 6 external bays do you need all 4 Esata or can you give up 2 external bays for a Esata bracket?

nhvideoguy

Actually, I never thought of that, I could use the external drives in the case for at least two of my eSATA drives - and maybe all 4 of them. So I don't need a 4 port eSATA card.

OK on the memory, I'll stay with 800

I think I will go with the PC Power & Cooling PPCT860 860W

As for the case, I don't really have to have my system drive external - so I could go with the other case - you think it's better? Thing is, that sale ends today. Which makes me wonder what will be on sale Friday. Maybe what I'll do is order it late today, they won't ship tomorrow being Thanksgiving, then I'll see what is on sale on Friday morning and if there is something better I will cancel this one - does that sound like a plan?

Almost forgot to ask, what do you think of the 10K RPM drive for my system drive - worth it?

Thanks very much.
\Dave

wrench97

I don't think the raptor is worth it today the seagate perpendicular drive are not that much slower is real usage and for the price you end up with a drive that opens a program 500 milliseconds faster?

I like the plan see what happens Friday.

nhvideoguy

Thanks for the input.

One of my video editing friends had this input to my configuration, I would be interested in what you have to say...

1) "Do your homework on the Asus. There are many people that have 100% success, and I have colleagues that have had issues, but they still are using the replacement products."

Not sure what he means by the last part of this. Asus is OK tho right? I know it has good reviews.



2) "As far as the MB goes, what functions do you want it to do i/o wise? Do you need FW front and back? How many USB 2 ports to your need? Is this the MB with the HDMI i/o? Do you plan on using that feature?"

It does look like I would not get front FW -the case has a port, but I think the mother board only has one out the back -- not a big deal for me. I'll just run a wire around like I do now. I'm all set with USB 2 ports and I'm not sure about HDMI i/o at this point.



3) "Just from the cursory look, the CPU is the lion's share of your budget. If you could settle for something a bit more modest you could consider adding a SATA DVD drive, which is a great addition for data transfer."

Do you have a recommendation about this - and DVD drives in general? I don't want to downgrade the CPU but a faster DVD drive might be better.


\Dave



4)

wrench97

DVD burner is a piece of cake> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827151171

The board has a FW port you can hook it up in the back with the bracket (Esata/ IEE94 bracket that comes with the board)or hook up the port in the front of the case.

HDMI is not on the board but is on the video card - sound ATI cards support Audio and video through HDMI but Nvidia cards only support video.

Asus and Gigabyte make the loins share of boards so of course you will hear more about the problems people who don't experience issues you don't hear from I think they are both about equal and I trend to favor Gigabyte myself but the amount of Sata controllers is what tip my favor to this board over the GA EP45 UD3R
By the last part of his statement I think he means that they had a problem and had to RMA the board for a repair or replacement and are using the repaired or replaced board?

nhvideoguy

Well - newegg just sent me an email with their Friday deals -- I'm sure you got it too - but just in case...

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEPro/F...y504@gmail.com

I looked it over, but really don't know this stuff like you do... Do you see any deals I should take advantage of?

nhvideoguy

Oh and one last twist I would like your imput on. One of my video colleagues said the below. I think this configuration is out however becuase when I called Asus they sort of implied that they went to PCI 2.3 with the i7 motherboards (and because of my VT needs 3.3V and 5V I need PCI 2.2.

Comments?

Note that the Intel Core i7 CPUs are available, and for the same total cost of your speced motherboard, CPU and memory, you could build a Core i7 920 based system with a MSI motherboard and 1300MHz DDR3 RAM. And though the 920 is natively a lower clockspeed, it's equal to a faster non-i7 CPU, not to mention quite easily overclockable.

Realize, with hyperthreading back, you go from four cores to virtually eight cores. Video encoding shows improvements from 12-20%, according to reviews.

\Dave

wrench97

The i7 920 is cheaper and a slower clock speed but the motherboards are at least twice the price as is the ram
For a socket 1366 board I would be looking at the GA-EX58-UD5 but these are new the x58 and i7 came out last week and unless your an experienced builder I would not recommend doing so until some of the bugs get worked out.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ame=LGA%201366

Ram DDR3 Triple Channel > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...20(3%20x%202GB)

i7 cpu> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ame=LGA%201366

nhvideoguy

Good point on the i7 - I think I' wait till the next one on that...

Any comments on the Black Friday deals?
---
Well - newegg just sent me an email with their Friday deals -- I'm sure you got it too - but just in case...

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEPro/F...y504@gmail.com

I looked it over, but really don't know this stuff like you do... Do you see any deals I should take advantage of?

wrench97

I haven't received it since I changed Email address awhile back, Guess I should update the address:) However this did pop up in the daily deals RSS feed> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-358-_-Product It does have 8 sata ports and this and the UD3R are fast becoming my favorite boards.

The link to the newsletter doesn't work.

nhvideoguy

I do like this motherboard (GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P) a bit better.

I was about to order the case - it was 12:04am and I looked at the price - it went up $30 -- oh well.

I was looking at some of the Friday sales, I found this memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...page=3&bop=And
They are both made by OCZ - how is that for memory. They both have a higher regular price, and after rebates a few bucks less than the crucial memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148212
They have 200+ 5 egg ratings AND they are 1066 not 800. Wouldn't one of these be better?
Maybe this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227289
just becuase the regular price is more

That do you think?

wrench97

I prefer Crucial to OCZ if only for the support both are good ram the Crucial you linked is DDR2 800 same as I gave you:). I don't think you'll need the reaper that's more for overclocking you looking for stability more then overclock abilities.

If you want the OCZ go with the Platinum> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227298

nhvideoguy

Yes, the link to the Crucial 800 was just to reference what you had suggested. I jumped over to the ram and power supply support forum, they said you should go to the memory manufacturers web site and look up your mother board and see that they suggest. I did that at Crucial and they suggested this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2KIT25664AA800
But no heat spreader and higher Cas Latency - you figure it' s just an old list? OCZ did not list my MB so even tho it sounds like it would work, I guess I'll stay with the Crucial 800 based on your recommendation.

I was thinking about what else I might need... Do I need and if so, recommendations?
1) Thermal Compound for the CPU?
2) SATA cables for the disk drives don't see that I'm getting those with anything
3) CPU Cooler or is the ”Heatsink and Fan included” OK?

Anything else you can think of?

Oh and one other question - anything wrong with having 2 of the Samsung burners - I usually see one read only and 1 R/W. But they are so inexpensive I figure just 2 burners would be OK. Any advantage to getting two different brands that you can think of?

Thanks a million!
\Dave

PS: I lucked out on the case and will get the $70 rebate since I ordered before midnight west coast time - so it was still the 26th!

wrench97

Go here scroll down the list and check 2 piece kit uncheck single stick and value ram see what you get.> http://www.crucial.com/store/listpar...%20(rev.%201.0)

You get 2 cables with the Mb > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812123190

The Cpu comes with a cooler and a heat pad but you want to clean the pad off and use AS 5> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835100007

Not I use 2 burners in a lot of builds watch how many drive bays your using.

nhvideoguy

Thanks for the answers!
OK - I think I'm finally all set. Thanks for the help and I hope the next message is that it's built and working great. We'll see... !!!

wrench97

Let us how it goes