PC Equipment

What PC should I buy?

People often ask about what kind of PC to buy for video editing. I'm a firm believer in building your own. This is the only way to be sure of what you're getting. If you can't build you own, the buy from a builder like iBuyPower.com that use standard parts that you can upgrade yourself later. I recently built myself a new Quad Core system for video editing. I have a very simple formula: Buy an Intel processor with an Intel motherboard using the memory that Intel recommends for that motherboard and you can't go wrong. The result is a system that Intel has actually tested for you and so you know it's just gonna work. My system is extremely stable. In fact, it's the most stable system I have ever built by sticking with all Intel parts. A simple yet effective strategy.

Here are the parts for my current system:

Current Intel Core 2 Quad System:

Should I use XP Pro or Vista 64?

The next question people often ask about is what operating system to use. I wish this were a simple answer. My opinion is that Vista 32 is not worth the upgrade to from XP Pro. In fact, I consider it a downgrade because it has the same 4GB memory limitations of XP and it offers nothing but incompatibility with existing hardware and software so it leaves you with less functionality not more. Vista 64 is another story. I have several applications now that take advantage of a 64-bit OS so I decided to try Vista 64 Home Premium SP1. The reason I chose the Home Premium package was because the Ultimate package had nothing useful for a lot more money. There is hard drive encryption that only works if you have a special hardware chip (so it's useless without it), support for more memory (Premium maxes out at 16GB), and it comes with some "extras" that are ill-defined and unneeded. The Business Edition might have been a good choice too because it strips away much of the multi-media stuff that you don't need but for the price, Home Premium seemed to be the sweet spot for now (I don't plan on using more that 16GB of memory and my current motherboard maxes out at 8GB anyway).

Unfortunately, Vista 64 does not have great hardware support yet. For the longest time I couldn't use it because M-Audio didn't have 64-bit drivers for my FW-410 so I had no audio. My recommendation would be to configure your PC as I did, into a dual-boot system with XP Pro SP3 and Vista 64 Home Premium SP1. Don't dismiss Vista 64 even if you plan to use XP Pro mostly. Most importantly, I would buy hardware components that have hardware drivers for Vista 64. Trust me, if you build a system that only has XP drivers you will be sorry when the inevitable move to Vista happens and you need to buy new hardware to be compatible. I currently spend most of my time in Vista 64 because it is much more responsive and uses all 8GB of memory that I have. I dread having to reboot into XP just to use hardware that isn't compatible with Vista 64 yet (e.g., my Primera Bravo II Disc Duplicator, and Sony HDR-60 Hard Disk Recording Unit don't work with Vista 64).

Hopefully some day I can say good bye to XP Pro but Vista 64 just doesn't have enough hardware support yet. :(

So how fast is it?

This new Intel Quad Core system is scary fast. How fast? Here are some rendering times in Sony Vegas 7:

As you can see from the times, HDV renders are slightly over 1x but darn near real-time. They were 3x longer than real-time on the AMD Dual Core below. Also DV AVI to MPEG2 encoding is less than half real-time. That is impressive.

I replaced the the Antec Sontata II SmartPower 450w power supply with a SeaSonic M12-600 so that the Quad Core had plenty of power. I wanted this PC to be "whisper quiet" so that I could do voiceovers with it sitting right next to me and I succeeded. The Antec Sonata II case and SeaSonic power supply have very quiet fans and the case itself has some great features like rubber grommets for mounting the hard drives, that keep the case quiet. Likewise the Zalman CPU cooler has a large quiet fan that keeps the Intel Quad Core idling at 41° C. The toughest part was finding a graphics card that was powerful yet didn't sound like a jet plane. The ASUS 8600GT has no fan os it's dead silent. If you don't do any 3D work or gaming you are probably better of getting a less expensive Matrox card but I like to game so Geforce was the only option for me. (I will never buy an ATI card again. Their drivers are the worst I have ever encountered.) In total I am very happy with this build and you can barely tell this PC is on. Many of the parts were re-used from the AMD system I built below.

Fortunately I did not have to sacrifice performance for quiet. The Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme is a screamer. It is almost 3x faster than my AMD X2 4600+ system outlined below. (that's right a Quad Core 2.66Ghz Intel is 2.8x faster than a Dual Core AMD 2.4Ghz!) I ran the rendering test on both and my new Intel completes it in 0:14 sec and the AMD Dual Core took 0:39 for the same test.

As usual I buy all my parts at Newegg.com even if they are not the cheapest. Their return policy is quick and simple and trust me, if you buy enough parts, eventually you will get a dead one and require the RMA process. You don't eve have to call them. It's a web based form and they print the return label for you and you just ship it back and get a new one. Very painless.

Previous ASUS/AMD X2 Dual Core System:

Important note: The Antec Sontata II comes with a SmartPower 450w power supply but it is NOT SLI-Certified. Since I selected an SLI motherboard this PSU is really not appropriate. I used this for about 6 months before it started to fail on me and I purchased the SeaSonic S12-500 which is SLI-Certified. If you do not get the SLI motherboard you can just stick with the PSU that comes with the Sonata II. Otherwise make sure you get an SLI-Certified power supply (it's not just hype).

This AMD system was the fastest system around prior to Intel introducing the Core 2 Duo/Quad processors. It is still a solid system that can be had cheap given today's prices. The AMD X2 Dual Core is quite fast. It is almost 3x faster than my Pentium system outlined below. (that's right 1 dual core 2.4Ghz AMD is 3x faster than a single core Intel 3.0Ghz!) I ran the rendering test on both and my new AMD completes it in 0:39 sec and the Pentium 3.0 took 1:29 for the same test.

Previous Pentium 4 3.0GHz System:

This system was a killer in it's day, but that day as 2 years ago and it was starting to show its age.

The case needed to be big enough to hold lots of hard drives so I went with a full tower. This Antec PlusVIEW 1000AMG has room for 4 3.5" drives and 4 5.5" bays. It also can hold 5 fans so I bought 5 (two blowing in the front, two blowing out the back, and one blowing in the side over the video card). The power supply is not an area to skimp so I went with the Antec TrueBLUE 480 watts. This should be plenty of power for all my internal devices. (Unfortunately, it sounds like a jet aircraft so when I started doing audio recording again this was a big problem)

My brand selection of hard drives was driven by what was on sale. I originally was going to use Western Digital for both the IDE and SATA drives but Maxtor was running a $50 rebate and hey, $50 is $50 so I bought the Maxtor. The Logitec MX 310 optical mouse got rave reviews with the gamers and I figured if its accurate enough for fragging, it should do fine with precise video frame editing. It is one smooth mouse.

I selected Windows XP Home over Pro because I don't really have the need for the advanced networking capabilities of Pro and XP Home was $100 cheaper at the time.

So where do I buy the parts?

I bought all of my parts from NewEgg.com and I was very impressed with their service and professionalism. The day after I placed my order they lowered the price on two of the items I had purchased. I called them and they credited my account! I placed my order two days before Christmas and it arrive two days after Christmas (and they don't work Christmas day) so their regular ground shipping was very fast. The site also has a customer feedback on all the product so you can easily tell which are the best parts and which to stay away from. I actually purchased the memory from ZipZoomFly.com because NewEgg was out of stock on it and ZipZoomFly was very quick in making their delivery as well.

While I've never purchased from MWave.com, they look like a good dealer and they will also assemble the parts for you for a small fee. So if you really don't want to build your own, you can have them build it for you. Finally if you want a purchased a PC that is pre-built and tested, I suggest you try one of the smaller builders. I've head great things about ABS Computers and they actually use a lot of the parts I bought anyway. I also can recommend iBuyPower.com. I close friend of mine recently purchased a system from them that I helped him configure and it was an awesome PC. They use all stock parts so if you need to upgrade you can buy new parts from any PC parts supplier (e.g., NewEgg.com) and have your computer upgraded in no time at all.

If you are seriously considering building your own PC, check out PC Mechanic. They have lots of great tips on their web site and you can even buy tutorial CD's that take you through the process of building a PC step-by-step.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation to any of these merchants. I just found them to be good and would definitely buy from them again.

Tip: Before you buy from any merchant you've never dealt with before, check their rating on ResellerRatings.com. This is an awesome web site that will save you the horror of dealing with some of the losers out their by reading other peoples horror stories.

Why can't I just buy a Dell?

Let me warn you about what Dell does. First read this article on Dell proprietary (non-standard) ATX design. That's right, they have their motherboards and power supplies specially designed to be non-standard and thus not upgradeable so that you have to buy replacement parts from Dell. These power supplies cost 2x what a normal one would cost. It is a huge rip-off! Then they were quite happy to advertise that their computer comes with standard parts like the Creative Audigy 2 sound card but they don't advertise too loudly that some features have been disabled to make it cheaper. I the one I purchased they removed the MIDI support! That might not be a big deal for you but my primary reason for buying the card was because I'm a musician who plays MIDI keyboards so that was quite a showstopper for me. They also disabled the digital input or output (I forget which). Then they sold me an nVidia GeForce 2 GTS graphics card with only half the memory of the retail version. Another Dell cost cutting measure.

So Dell has name brand peripheral makers like nVidia and Creative make special cards with disabled features just for Dell and they sell them as if they are the equivalent of the retail version. Beware. This is very deceptive marketing and I would never buy from Dell again.

Finally, I followed the instructions on the Dell web site on how to upgrade my Dell 8100 from Windows Me to Windows XP. They provided programs and drivers and BIOS upgrades and everything. Then when I called Dell for support, the first question they asked was, "Did you buy Windows XP from us?". When I told them I had bought it locally, they informed me that they could not help me since they did not sell me the operating system. End of conversation.

So if you buy a PC from Dell. You must like this type of deception and abuse. Buy from custom builder or you can build your own cheaper and have better quality parts.