Maximum PC

I am growing out of my current Phenom 32-bit system, mostly due to the 3.25GB memory limit, and am looking at a Sandy Bridge system. My biggest computer needs are for editing HD video with Adobe Premiere. There is plenty on the web regarding what is required for gaming systems, but from what I've read, it seems the biggest things needed for video editing applications is cores and RAM. My budget is between $1000 and $1500. Here what I've picked out so far, and I am interested to know if there's better hardware for similar prices. By the way, I am from Canada, so the prices I'm quoting are all from NCIX.com where I plan to purchase all my components.

By the way, I'm planning on gutting my Antec 300 case and building the new system inside it. So I don't need monitors, mouse, keyboard, webcam, or any audio hardware. I may re-use the OCZ 650W power supply, depending on whether or not I get one video card or two in the new system.

Here are my thoughts and reasoning behind what I've chosen:

Processor ($320): Intel Core i7 2600K Quad Core Unlocked Hyperthreading Processor LGA1155 3.4GHZ Sandy Bridge 8MB
I pretty much want the best processor I can get without jumping to a Sandy Bridge E or something else that would cost way more. I'm not willing to put my money on Bulldozer yet until I can see some numbers on the new patch.

Mainboard ($200): ASUS P8Z68-V Pro GEN3 Z68 LGA1155 ATX 3PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 2 PCI B3 Motherboard
I just wanted a relatively inexpensive mainboard with SLI and Crossfire support and a LGA1155 socket. I've heard (on the MaximumPC podcast) that the Ivy Bridge chips could also slot in an 1155 socket and give me faster PCI-E slots.

Video card: ($150) ASUS GeForce GTX 560 DC 810MHZ 1GB 4.0GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI Mini HDMI PCI-E
Pretty much any video is an upgrade for me, but I need something that would work well with editing video. At this price point, getting two would be an option aswell. Although I'm not sure if dual cards using SLI will improve editing, or if that's just a gaming advantage.

RAM ($52): Corsair XMS3 CMX12GX3M3A1333C9 12GB 3X4GB DDR3-1333 CL-9-9-9-24 Triple Channel Core i7 Memory Kit
12GB is the minimum I'd go for, and this was the cheapest way I found to get that. Is 12GB of faster RAM better than 16GB of slower RAM? I'm guessing so.

Hardrive ($149) Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA3 64MB Cache 3.5IN

Blu-ray burner ($70) ASUS BC-12B1ST Internal 12X Blu-Ray Reader & 16X DVD Writer Combo Drive

Power Supply (optional, $145) OCZ Z-SERIES 850W 80+ Gold Certified 24PIN ATX 71A Modular Power Supply With 135mm Fan

I think that's about it. Let me know your thoughts, or if there's any pertinent information that I've missed.

Thanks!
Andrew

Welcome to the forum!

First off, the Phenom is a 64bit processor, you just may have paired it with a 32bit OS. But yeah, its dog slow compared to the new stuff out now for HD video editing.

Second, How soon are you looking to build? I only ask this because you are literally 3 weeks away from Intel's next i5/i7 series chip; the Ivy Bridge. It looks quite promising, about 5-15% boost in most apps compared to the current i5/i7's for the same price point. Although, Intel did say that availability on launch could be limited quantities as they try to allow OEM makers first to sell off their SB chip inventory, but this is mostly towards the low voltage, mobile markets.

Not only that, but Nvidia is releasing their next gen Kepler series gpu's next month; nothing you should actually worry about, except that it could lead to price cuts for their current 500 series line up; specially when AMD's mid range 7800 series hits the market today or the fact that AMD gpu department has been doing pretty well across the board. But, I'd say stay with the nvidia CUDA platform since that is what Adobe Premiere currently uses for CS 5.x; CS 6 could change that when/if they added support for OpenCL for the AMD guys, but even then, nvidia cards actually run OpenCL apps better. Although AMD has said they redesigned the way that the 7k gpu's handle OpenCL apps better. Only time will tell, but safe to keep it with nvidia.



If you can't wait, then you still get a blazing fast machine that will eat through HD material alive. Your list is pretty much on par except for one thing: You can't use triple memory kits in a dual channel configuration. You have to install in pairs or even numbers to get the dual channel memory bandwidth boost with sandy bridge's.


i7 2600k Sandy Bridge build:

Part list permalink / Part price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($309.99 @ Newegg Canada)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($31.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional (B3) ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($99.88 @ Canada Computers)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($249.89 @ NCIX)
Hard Drive: Crucial M4 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($155.92 @ Amazon Canada)
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($179.79 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 560 1GB Video Card ($149.99 @ NCIX)
Optical Drive: Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($79.98 @ NCIX)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 (64-bit) ($145.90 @ TigerDirect Canada)

Total: $1403.33
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated 2012-03-19 04:14 EDT-0400)

With this, I'm assuming you will be recycling the case and power supply. This will net you a pretty decent setup for HD video editing if you can't wait for Ivy Bridge.

CPU/Mobo

Like I said 2 or 3 times already, Ivy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Ivy Bridge! Less than 4 weeks away! But the i7 2600k will hold it's own. I paired the cpu with the Cooler Master 212 EVO cpu cooler that will net you quiet a bit of overclocking potential; probably hit 4.5-4.8Ghz with ease and still be quiet cool.

Also side with those choices is the AsRock Fatal1ty p67 motherboard. Why did I pick this? because its on sale for half off and a fantastic board over what I'd usually suggest around $30-40 more. It's the very few boards still that has the old IDE/PATA connectors in case you are still rocking some old drives. The board has tons of other options like 10 SATA ports (6x SATA3; 4x SATA2), 4x USB 3.0 slots along with the 20pin internal connector and three 16x pcie 2.0 slots. You don't need all of the pcie slots, but its nice to know that you can add a x16 slot raid card and/or a pcie SSD... if/when you get bank.

And since I added a proper sized SSD to the budget, don't need to get Z68 for the SRT SSD caching feature. This board is a great buy.

Memory

Here is where I maxed out, because you can really use up some ram with what you are doing. 32GB of RAM may seem crazy and expensive, but let me tell you, you will love it when you do high res photoshop work or HD video editing. Specially with Premiere being a hog with system memory. And since you only have 4 slots, we had to use the expensive 8GB modules to max our the board. You still come out on top, being under your $1500 price point.

If you want to be sensible, you could get away with 16GB (4x4gb) kits; Just try to keep it at cas9 or less, 1.5v or less, 1600 speed ram. No need in wasting your money on high speed ram like 2133 since most of the time, those modules are running at slower timings and negate any speed boost in bandwidth from it. Plus most of the time, they are no more than overclocked 1600 modules anyhow for double/triple the price tag. Even the good 2133 speed modules will only net you a 1-7% increase in performance; hard to justify the performance for such high costs.

SSD/Hard drive

You'll notice that I picked out an SSD for your system because of two reasons: 1. It'll boost your load times with the OS and apps and 2. SSD's make great scratch drives for your projects.

I picked the Crucial M4 128GB because its a great performer with compressed files like HD videos, mp3's and jpegs as well as being rock solid and reliable. It's also not a bad price at $156 since it tends to be around the $170-180 mark. There are other SSD's on the market, but you should stick with the more expensive ones that use sync NAND's (like the M4) that perform way better with compressed/encoded files like most media/videos are.

Paired with the SSD (obviously since its kinda small) is the 3TB seagate drives for a decent price; its not much more than the 2TB disk you selected above. Should provide you with ample storage for your HD videos, but I'd maybe look at picking up a 2nd drive and atleast do raid mirroring for data security. You can probably drop it to 2TB so you could afford two.

And to make myself clear, you still need to backup your data/important docs with offline media, whether it be an external hard drive, tape, dvd, cd, or blu-ray; nothing beats a proper, regularly timed backup solution. Even have it offsite somewhere in a safe or a friends house; shit does happen.

Video card

You don't need to do crazy multi-card solutions for gpu acceleration support with CS 5.x; actually you don't even need to spend $150 on a card for this. You can literally get away with a cheap $30 GT 430 card for your basic gpu acceleration with the mercury playback engine. You'll lose a bit of horsepower when you want to do live previews with lots of filters, but if you are doing normal cuts and such, you can cheap out here. Even then, you can always have your i7 do pre-renders in no time flat.

now CUDA does offer some post processing abilities with their encoding through premier, but its kinda flaky at best since it only supports a certain number of filters and effects. Plus its even worse when you want to do a final export of your project and want gpu acceleration since AME doesn't support this so you can't do batch adds. Plus its also skiddish if you run multiple monitors and move premier export tab around. Donno whats up with that.

Optical

Same Asus Blu-ray burner drive as you listed, but its not listed as $70 on NCIX...

Operating system

Win7 pro 64 bit... nuff said. Lets you take advantage of more than 16GB of ram that's limited on the home edition.

That pretty much wraps it up. Everything should fit in your current Antec 300 case just fine and your current 650w psu should be more than enough to hand this system. Even with you overclocking, you might be pushing 400-450w max on load.

JBaz,

Thanks so much for all the suggestions and help! I have time on my side with this build because I've just started saving up for it, and currently only have $450 put aside at the moment. So I can definitely wait for the Ivy Bridge chip, as long as it would fit inside my $1500 budget. However, if the price of the Sandy Bridge drops at that time, that is another option that is quite attractive to me aswell, so I'm still on the fence... but in the end I don't think it will change the rest of the build as long as I stick to a 1155 board. I assume the ASRock board you sepc'd would be fine with an Ivy Bridge chip too?

I like the SSD option as an OS/Working drive, and of course, the more TB's the better on the storage drive! I failed to mention in my last post about my current drive setup (all standard HDs, no SSD's). My OS drive is a 250GB internal with a 500GB internal storage for my music and photos, etc. I have 2 500GB external drives. One is a storage and working drive for my videos, and the other is a backup drive for my music and photos and imporant docs. Yes I don't have a backup for my videos... yet! I think I'm leaning towards a 2x2TB mirrored RAID setup, just for security and backup. My eventual goal is to have a 4-bay NAS box in my network room (what my wife calls the "laundry room". whatever.) populated with 2 or 3TB (or 4TB as I just heard today!) drives. But that's for another day. I still need to buy a 24-port gigabit un-managed switch to complete that room. (Any suggestions there? I don't want to spend more than $300)

I totally ok with spending the money on 32GB of RAM. Why be "sensible" and get only 16GB??! And I'll keep in mind about keeping the dimms in pairs.

The biggest surprise in your response was with the video card. I currently have a 9600 GSO that I got for $80 to replace a 9600GT that died (which I paid $250 for brand new). Do you think that would work well in my new editing rig? In any case though, I think I will get a new (better) GPU since I like the freedom of being able to do live previews with effects. Also, good to know that dual GPUs would not be required for video editing.

Thanks again for your reply, and I'll post any other questions I may have when I start buying the components and putting it together. For now, I will wait to see what happens when Ivy Bridge releases and make my decision at that point which i7 chip will end up in my rig. I suppose there's little chance that the Ivy Bridge will be 6 cores...?

Andrew

Ivy bridge chips that are comparable to current sandy bridge lines are going to just replace them at the same price point; it maybe more expensive on launch as its a "hot new item", but we can probably fit it in your budget assuming you get access for it in Canada on launch.

And yes, p67 and z68 1155 boards should be compatible with 22nm IB chips; not to sure about the lower end 1155 boards, but I wouldn't see why not, but then again, I never took the time to find this out since with i5/i7's, you really want to match them with the higher end chipsets. The mobo selection will probably change once the z75/z77 chipsets are released next month since those are suppose to replace the p67/z68's; not much is known about the pricing, but there's going to be floods of new mobo's on the market.