Best PC for Editing video

So we need to by a new computer. Needs to be PC not Mac as all our programs and old stuff is for the PC.

Given a budget of say $1500 or less (just for tower) what should I tell the teens at the computer store I need? Anything on the 6mth horizon worth waiting for?

Please be specific with part names etc as I am clueless.

Do currently have about a terrabite (sp?) in stand alone storage.

Thanks!

Ok so bumped the budget up a little.

Anyone know if there would be a noticable differance between these two processors?

Intel® Core i7-940 processor (2.93GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache with QPI Technology)

VS.

Intel® Core i7-975 processor Extreme Edition (3.33GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache with QPI)

This is far from specific, but you tend to pay an unnecessary premium for the very latest processor. Other factors in the PC may be your limiting factors, not the CPU speed. I usually go for the 2nd-fastest Intel processor i.e. the one that's already been out for a while.

Get a really good case such as ThermalTake or LianLi and a good CPU cooler such as Zalman.

Personally I will probably go for an Intel motherboard in my next desktop, having been less than thrilled with my Asus boards. Everyone I know who paired the quadcores (Q6600 etc.) with Intel motherboards had a better experience than I did.

Here's some good advice on the Sony Vegas forum. It's a few months old now but still relevant and the author is a well-respected pro with a lot of experience.

For compression, it's not the processor speed that's important but the bus speed for the data.

Only if you have a lot of effects(esp compositing) will any extra processor speed (esp just a 0.4ghz difference) be significant enough, that's on bigger projects. That said, if it's in the budget.. why not?

Thanks for the link good info. Now dumb question, what "number" stat am I looking for when we talk about Bus speed? When I look at HP's site I don't see anything that refers to bus speed.

Thanks

The other thing you have to do when you get a new PC is decrapifie it and tweek the OS.

When editing you should have no other programs running except maybe a firewall.

If you get an overclock friendly motherboard, you will find you can overclock the CPU very easy to give you a boost in performance.

Maybe buy an aftermarket CPU fan if you are going to do it though.

Get a dedicated 512meg PCI express twin port graphics card, don't let them sell you a setup with a graphics port built into the motherboard.

Put 4 GIGs of ram in it, get extra drives for backup of main drive, scratch disk and video storage.

How about this...

Power Supply: 550 Watt Velocity Micro® Power Supply with Dual Blue Lighted Fans

Motherboard : EVGA X58 based chipset with DDR3, PCI Express, 3-way SLI!

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 processor i7-940, quad 2.93GHz cores, 8MB Cache, 4.8 GT/sec

CPU Cooling: Intel® Certified Heatsink/Fan, Thermal Controlled Variable Speed Fan

DDR3 Memory: 6GB DDR3-1333 Triple Channel Memory with Heat Spreader (3x2048)

PCX Video: 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTS 250, PCI-Express 2.0, Dual DVI

Hard Drive 1 500GB Hitachi 7200rpm 16MB Cache SATA 300 w/NCQ

Hard Drive 2 None

Optical Drive 1: 6x Lite-On Blu-ray Burner (HDCP and Play Movie 1.5 REQUIRED for playback in Vista Media Center)

Optical Drive 2: 16x DVD/48x CD-RW Lite On® Combo Drive, Black Bezel

I would get a server-grade 10,000rpm hard drive for your OS and programs. It doesn't need to be big. Even as small as 72Gb would be enough. I had Western Digital Raptor but I'm no longer a fan of WD (had a couple of failures), but I seem to recall the other HDD suppliers do 10,000rpm models as well now. Then as many 1Tb drives as you need for your data. Get Hitachi drives if you can. You can never have enough storage space, especially for video.

Why do you need a 2nd writer? The Lite On is a burner for all formats already, albeit not as fast. I'd save the power for hard drives. Assuming you are just using AVCHD or HDV, then you don't need super fast drives and RAID 0 arrays unless you want to edit in uncompressed. Cineform and other codecs don't require that much drive speed.

Get 8GB of RAM and a couple of 1- 1.5 TB drives. This is especially true if you want backup. BD backup is sloth slow!

Unlike Nick, I like my WD RE2/4 GP drives. A good 4W less draw per hour and quiet too. All enterprise drives.

Thanks for the help. Just editing video from our Sony HC7. Plus I have several stand alone drives. Currently have about 1T of aux storage so should be ok there. Looks like a custom made is the way to go.

Software-wise, you might want to check out Windows 7 RC. That's what I would use now if I was building a new PC and needed a Windows OS licence. I put it on a friend's computer a couple of weeks ago and I really liked it. Much better than Windows Vista. All her software worked fine and all her hardware except her webcam. You can use it for free until next year. The finished Windows 7 is due for release later this year I believe.