Suggests for cheap build for video editing?

Jimpowers79 · 22 Feb 2010 at 19:48

Hi, i'm an art student who does a fair amount of video editing. After having waded through some horrific render times (40 hours for a minute of heavily edited footage!) i was thinking of possibily building a new system.

Two questions really...

Firstly what is the cheapest system i could make that would improve render times, and allow the possibility of rendering HD footage in the future? (i already have a monitor, keyboard, speakers, mouse, optical drive) Price to include OS.

Secondly, as i have no experience of every having built my own system (other than fitting a new HDD, optical drive and memory) would i feasibily be able to build one without too much trouble? I have seen the tips of system build example, and think they would be very useful to me, but would my total lack of experience and knowledge be detrimental to my chances of creating a system that works at the end?!

Cheers.

John

Cookeh · 22 Feb 2010 at 19:51

Athlon II X4, 770/785G Chipset, 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz Ram, and perhaps a decent nVidia card for the PhysX and Cuda which are helpful in rendering.
Would spec you a system, but little busy now

Maniacfest · 22 Feb 2010 at 19:53

Firstly, dependant on budget, I would recommend an i5 build, but we need to know the spec of your current build to be able to give you an idea of performance increases.

Secondly, building a PC is not hard, as long as you read up and take your time.

shanezog · 22 Feb 2010 at 19:57

Not got an estimated price rage you are willing to spend? I mean cheapest is good but there might be little things which can help (like an extra £20 here and there) so??

Jimpowers79 · 22 Feb 2010 at 20:55

Right i see what you mean, sorry i was a little vague in terms of costing and current system spec.

I'm currently using a four year old Dell Dimension 5150...
Pentium (R) 4 CPU 3.20 GHz, 3.19GhZ, 1.00 GB RAM

Its pretty out of date, but has done pretty well considering the hell i've put it through over the years!

I'm on a tight budget so between £300 and £400, is that workable? Cheers all.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 22 Feb 2010 at 21:33

Maniacfest · 22 Feb 2010 at 21:50

Something like this will be a definite improvement over what you currently have.

Edit: Or above

Jimpowers79 · 23 Feb 2010 at 20:50

Thanks for all the work you put into that post CAT, that is very good for under £400. Indeed i'm intending to reuse my DVD drive so i could save there and get the higher spec motherboard.

May i ask, what is the difference between the Athlon and Intel quad 4's?

Also, when you choose these various components together, is there anything to be aware of in terms of intercompatibility?

This could be an interesting easter project, building (or wrecking!) my first computer.

Cheers to you too Maniacfest

Jimpowers79 · 23 Feb 2010 at 20:53

Oh, and would i need to get an extra fan? The case comes with one, is it advisable to have two fans? And what determines how quiet the system is? Is it down to the fan's used or how well the case is insulated from interal noise?

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 23 Feb 2010 at 22:21

Jimpowers79 said:
Thanks for all the work you put into that post CAT, that is very good for under £400. Indeed i'm intending to reuse my DVD drive so i could save there and get the higher spec motherboard.

May i ask, what is the difference between the Athlon and Intel quad 4's?

Also, when you choose these various components together, is there anything to be aware of in terms of intercompatibility?

This could be an interesting easter project, building (or wrecking!) my first computer.

Cheers to you too Maniacfest

Here is a comparison of the Athlon II X4 620 and 635 with the Intel Q8200:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=106&p2=52&c=1

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=122&p2=52&c=1

Look at the DivX 6.8.5 Encode (Xmpeg 5.0.3),x264 HD Encode Test - 1st pass - x264 0.59.819,x264 HD Encode Test - 2nd pass - x264 0.59.819,Windows Media Encoder 9 x64,Sony Vegas Pro 8 - Blu-ray Disc Image Creation (25Mbps MPEG-2) and Sorenson Squeeze Pro 5 - Flash Video Creation video encoding and editing benchmarks. Both the X4 620 and X4 635 are ahead of the Q8200 which is still above £100 at many retailers.
Either the Athlon II X4 completes the video encoding and editing tasks in less time or both produce higher framerates.

If you compare the £100 X4 635 with the Q8400 the former is still ahead for most of the video benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=122&p2=89&c=1

On OcUK the Q8400 is available for around £133 and the slightly slower Q8300 is available for £130:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=cp-281-in&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=567

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=cp-269-in&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=567

the other processor which you could compare the £100 x4 635 to is the £98 core i3 530 dual core which has ht:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=122&p2=118&c=1

in all the video encoding benchmarks the x4 635 either completes the task in a much lower time or produces higher framerates.

even the £82 x4 620 is better for video encoding than the core i3 530:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=106&p2=118&c=1

the cheapest h55 motherboard for a core i3 processor is around £75 on ocuk:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?&groupid=701&catid=5&subid=1124&sortby=priceasc

there was one briefly available for around £65 though.

also the athlon ii and phenom ii show very little performance difference between 1066mhz ddr2 and 1333mhz ddr3 as the memory controller is more latency dependent:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-x4-955,2278-3.html

Jimpowers79 said:
Oh, and would i need to get an extra fan? The case comes with one, is it advisable to have two fans? And what determines how quiet the system is? Is it down to the fan's used or how well the case is insulated from interal noise?

I would see how cool the system runs with one fan. Since you are using integrated graphics one 120MM should be fine IMHO.

A combination of the case design,fan noise,drive noise and distance of the system from your ears will determine the amount of system noise you can actually hear.

Jimpowers79 · 24 Feb 2010 at 11:05

Once again thank you CAT, a very comprehensive and thorough comparison. The Athlon II option seems the way to go. When choosing the motherboard, how do you know whether it will be compatible with the processor?

So the system you suggested to me has integrated graphics, that's graphics that are contained on the motherboard, is that right? What is the advantage of having dedicated graphics? Is that more to do with the high demands of gaming?

Jimpowers79 · 24 Feb 2010 at 11:15

Oh, and i know this isn't the place to ask the next question, but just wondered if you might be able to suggest something...

I'm also looking into the possibility of getting a small laptop/netbook to do light word processing/photoshop/even some basic video editing. I want it as small as possible (having to take it to studio everyday). I've been looking at the new Asus eee pc 1201n, which is coming to the uk soon. It has a dual core with 1.6GHz 330 Atom processor, Nvidia ION graphics, 2 GB RAM, 12inch display.

I know the processor is sure to be a bottle neck for anything requiring too much processing power (it can play HD video content however). Do you think this system would be capable of adequate photoshop usage/basic video editing (non HD)? I know reducing the size of the laptop compromises power, but i really don't want something much over 12inches in width.

Apologies for posting here, just thought you might have an idea CAT?