Help putting together a video editing rig

Detosx

Detosx

Detosx

Associate
Joined
25 Feb 2010
Posts
24
Hello UKOC forum! :)

Benchmarks say go Intel i7 920/930 but what I want to see are benchmarks based on user scenarios - I have high and low band U-matic video tapes that I need to capture, edit and put onto DVD or blu-ray. Each program is 30 minutes. Editing aside, what sort of time scale am I looking at, re the Intel versus AMD debate?

I am constrained by a budget but also yen to play games.

CPU: Would a Phenom 555 or 550, opened up to four core, be massively slower than an i5 750 or i7 930? preferably a real-world time figure rather than a percentage. Heat is a consideration; if temperature monitoring doesn't work on unlocked 550/555, could the processor fry?

PSU: Quiet matters! Is an Antec True Power 750Watt PSU a good choice?

Graphics card: ATI Sapphire 5850 Toxic, possibly x2 in a year+. Future proofing wise, should the motherboard's PCIexpress slots both be 16, rather than 16 and 8?

Motherboard: Again, future proofed would be good with new CPUs coming out in Q2. Based on reliability studies Gigabyte motherboards appeal more than my usually preferred Asus models, but the CPU placement in the Gigabyte AMD boards appears too close to the memory slots; which aftermarket coolers are size compatible and quiet?

Raid Hard drive: Western Digital black models seem to get favourable reviews; users of WD green models report problems. Quiet and reliable are as important to me as fast.

Any recommendations for a decent capture card are welcome, too!

Thank you for your consideration, it feels good to be here. :)
 
Hi and welcome
finding specific benchmarks for a particular program will be difficult I'm afraid, you could try googling to see if there are any but your best bet is probably to head over to anandtech and techreport and look at there benchmarks and try and extrapolate based on which program best matches the one youre going to use
Re the use a 550/555 be aware that unlocking cores is not guaranteed, for your uses Id want to be getting a true quad core tbh
The Antec is a decent PSU, theres a good review here, alternatively theres the ever popular Cosair
Re PCI-E lanes x8/x8 wont make much of a difference but it will make a small difference, something to weigh up depending on your overall budget, which is what?
Re coolers, one of most popular atm is the Corsair H50, its an all in one water kit which performs similarly to high end air coolers but has the advantage of not creating the clearance probelms you mention
Re HDDs suprised about the WD G problems, they are quieter than the blacks, but not as fast, Samsung also have good offerings F2 on par with Greens and F3 on par with Blacks, though if you get a decent case with soft HDD mountings this shouldnt be an issue anyway
If you post up your total budget it will give a better idea of where to point you
 
Thanks for the welcome, 95thrifles! Re the cooler I have learned something new right away!

Budget, a good question that I find it hard to quantify, at the moment, as I know nothing about video capture cards, presumably pro-sumer ones, need to do some homework, hope people might have some recommendations. So, here's what I can tell you:-

CPU - £80 - £220 - I hoped to save money, here, and sneak around the time-is-money equation, or at least find out how much time the i7 920/930 might save over an AMD chip.

Aftermarket cooler - £25 - £45? Or more; does water cooling make a pumping sound?

Motherboard £80 - £150 - this one is a headache, especially with new processors on the horizon. Two PCIE 16 slots or 16 and 8. Also, AMD boards seem to give better bang for your pound, though AMD chart marginally less well than intel, re reliability. USB 3 for backing up Video files to an external drive would be welcome, though not necessarily a must-have at this point. Does SATA 6 apply just to solid state drives? I can't see myself going solid state until prices fall a lot.

4GB Memory £110 +/-, though I imagine the more the better with video work; more means less of an overclock, right?

Graphics card: £260; I wanted a 5870 but the 5830 seems to have bumped up the 58** series prices, instead of the stated ATI aim of a filler priced card between the 5770 and the 5850. Aren't we still in a recession?!

Hard drives £150.

Capture card and editing software I will need to factor into the budget at some point.

Case, monitor, keyboard, mouse and Windows 7 I already have.
 
Last edited:
panta said:
You can still get a 5850 for about £210-20 if you look carefully, which makes the 5830 irrelevant.
Click to expand...
A lot of cards that are physically in stock seem to have gone up in price, irrespective of the vendor, and I imagine pre-order prices will follow suit. Put another way, from my perspective, I had been hoping to see 5850/5870 prices falling by now!

This begs another question from me, are some graphics cards (those presently on sale) utilised in the video editing process or are we still at a point where the process is CPU dependent?
 
Don't think the 5850/70 prices will drop by any big margin for a while yet. They make more money on higher volume sales of the lower models anyway! :)
 
Your second queation...

Higher end GPU's take a share of the video editing load so can make it a quicker process but not a factor to really rely on. It's still a CPU intensive task so hyperthreading tech is the real bonus here.
 
Thank you Essexraptor, again something I need to read up on; I know a bit about Apple's work on OpenCL, re using the GPU in the future to work with video, but little about the PC platform. I notice from your sig that you are overclocking your i7 920 to 3.6Ghz where I imagine you could comfortably manage a bit more; is that because 3.6Ghz is rock solid and doesn't tax the processor?
 
In an ideal world, with a budget I'm not sure I can stretch to, how does this sound:-


Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 £160

CPU: intel core i7 930 2.8ghz £226 +/-

CPU cooler: Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler £24

Memory: OCZ Obsidian 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 ? £120

Graphics card: ATI Sapphire 5850 Toxic £260

Antec True Power 750W - £105

The memory, Raid and capture card I am much less sure of.
 
Last edited:
I am constrained by a budget but also yen to play games.
Click to expand...
why is it always held by budget.

Think you have to consider what you really want to do with the system is it a game machine or a work machine. If you constrains your budget decide what you want.

Game machine fast processor ( single/dual ), great gfx card
Work machine video fast processor ( dual/quad ) fast hd/good ssd lots of storage, cheaper gfx card, massive amounts of ram.

cheap and cheerful for editing
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4730 512MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£57.99 inc VAT
£49.35 ex VAT


:D
 
What youve selected above looks good, bar the cooler, not sure on that one tbh, the motherboard should handle your RAID fine, pick up a couple of decent HDDs blacks if you like, just make sure youve got soft mountings for them, dont know too much about capture cards either im afraid
 
Good points I think, Smee and 95thrifles, thank you. :) Budget is a limitation but I am trying to be realistic - about needing to spend possibly much more than I ever intended -by factoring in the time-is-money equation; the i7 920 is known to excel in video work. I would love for someone to pop up and say massively overclock a cheap AMD and I would get the same result for much less money!?

It would definitely be great to have a computer dedicated to just the task of video crunching but I have long wanted a games machine and I can't see me having the opportunity to shell out this kind of money again in a long while, for a second build.

My 8-core Mac Pro using friends generally have around 12GB of memory in their computers and talk a lot about OpenCL which (will) use(s) the power of both the CPUSs and graphics card. I wondered if there is or soon will be an equivalent to that for the PC, another gray area that I need to research and seek advice. I notice with a lot of bundled overclocked deals on OCUK there is an advisory saying if you add memory you might not get the same level of overclock. I think I am wording that correctly? Again, something I need advice on.

This probably is the wrong forum to ask about video capture cards! :) Just putting it out there, in case anyone knows.

I am a little out of date on solid state drives but I think they are still very expensive for decent ones and not very durable for intensive work.

The cooler I am very keen on, just a couple of degrees less good than the Titan but much quieter than and comparatively cheap; what I don't know about is build quality consistency. Also, on an AMD build I noticed that it covers one of the memory slots! Not something I want if I am installing 6GB of memory.
 
Plan B would be:-

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4 £108

CPU: AMD Phenom 555BE (or Phenom 955; think it overclocks better; 3.8GHz for 24/7?) £130

CPU cooler - want to avoid blocking off any of the memory slots, perhaps the Corsair H50-1 watercooler; does it run quiet? Are there better air deals that fit tight spaces? £64

Memory: Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel £122

Graphics card: ATI Sapphire 5850 Toxic £260

PSU: I am wondering if I can get away with 650W Antec True Power, rather than 750W (might double up on that graphics card at a later date)? If 750W - £105

That's £789 as against £895 for the Intel setup, though the AMD has the more expensive cooler. Potentially the saving could be around £130, but then the Intel rig has 2GB more memory. Things get much more interesting, savings wise, if I unlock and OC a Phenom 555. I appreciate the setup would be less fast, probably significantly so, just not sure what significantly means in real terms. Again, something I need to do my homework on but would welcome any advice from people who work on video and are familiar with both setups. :)
 
Detosx said:
Thank you Essexraptor, again something I need to read up on; I know a bit about Apple's work on OpenCL, re using the GPU in the future to work with video, but little about the PC platform. I notice from your sig that you are overclocking your i7 920 to 3.6Ghz where I imagine you could comfortably manage a bit more; is that because 3.6Ghz is rock solid and doesn't tax the processor?
Click to expand...

It's solid as a rock at 3.6Ghz. I have had it up to 4Ghz but have not had the time to play with the voltages to bring it down to a steady workable temp. Probably best if I follow the guides on here and work up a little at a time!.

Also have my other new rig now to clock up a little as well!
 
PCs also use Open CL as well as Cuda if you go for an NVidia gfx card, its largely dependent on the program you use. I think for the sake of £100 youd regret not going i7 route given your uses
 
SSD's are only ok for OS boot drives at the mo. Would not be good for video or graphics editing with the large amounts of constant read/writes you would soon see a large downturn in performance of the drive.

USB 3...... get a expansion card!!!... 25 quid for a ASUS model at the mo and the ports also double up as eSATA!! No point in getting the "latest" USB 3 MB IMHO until it becomes more mainstream.

The Intel solution would be better IMO over the AMD for your use.
 
Essexraptor said:
SSD's are only ok for OS boot drives at the mo. Would not be good for video or graphics editing with the large amounts of constant read/writes you would soon see a large downturn in performance of the drive.
Click to expand...

I agree, SSD would only boot your PC faster or load your program faster (if you installed it on there).

USB 3...... get a expansion card!!!... 25 quid for a ASUS model at the mo and the ports also double up as eSATA!! No point in getting the "latest" USB 3 MB IMHO until it becomes more mainstream.
Click to expand...
I also agree with this, USB3.0 hasn't even started to be used by anything yet, it is a pointless expense at the moment.
 
95thrifles said:
PCs also use Open CL as well as Cuda if you go for an NVidia gfx card, its largely dependent on the program you use. I think for the sake of £100 youd regret not going i7 route given your uses
Click to expand...
I have wince-ingly suspected for a while that unless I go for the bigger saving of an unlocked and overclocked AMD Phenom 555, possibly with a £78 motherboard, and someone can show me that the amount of time saved via the i7 920/930 route isn't massive, you are correct. After the football I will hit the search engines and see if I can find those elusive real world benchmarks! :)

Essexraptor, enjoy your overclocking! It is all very new to me. I have an ancient Asrock 945G DVI, which must be one of the worst motherborads for overclocking out there! No, wait, that title would go to my Asus P5VD2-MX!!
 
Thanks IKMS and Essexraptor. I saw something on SSD devices on the Tekzilla show and what you are saying tallies with their thoughts. There are a few USB 3 external drives out there and from the reviews I can certainly see its use for backing up large video files. If I somehow end up going an ultra budget AMD route, though, its exclusion would save a bit but it would still be good to have it - and keep a slot free on the motherboard for some other card. I still have to consider the video capture card, also.
 
You'll need a PCI-E slot with x2 or better for the USB3 expansion card if your going that route.
Video capture card ?... sorry can't help with that one. Not something that I know about I'm afraid. Still trying to figure out a good TV card and all the different choices to be had with that one!!!!....lol :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom