Nice specs overall, but what will you do with it?

SD or HD?

If SD, is it DV or uncompressed?

Big differences.

You should have a separate non-RAID system drive.

No need for RAID for media drives unless you are cranking high bit rates.

Vegas will not do anything better with two 7800GT cards than with, say, one 5200 card. For gaming, you may get a small improvement with two cards vs. one. Don't forget that two of these cards will generate a lot of noise and heat.

Magic Bullet can use fast nVidia cards to great advantage, but for that a 6600GT would be sufficient for most people.

4GB of RAM can be helpful with some high end applications, but for most people it's a waste and won't even be accessible to Windows without some tweaking.

I would also avoid WD hard drives as I have had a very high failure rate on both WD and Maxtor. I would go with either Seagate or Hitachi.

A- You could save some money on the case and power supply by dropping down to one of the cheaper Antec models. The 3700/3800 series should be good enough I would think.

B- SLI: Basically you're paying a lot of money for a small increase in performance. Vegas render speed is dependent on CPU, and not all all on the video card. Games are more dependent on the video card than CPU.

If this machine is for professional use (as in, you spend lots of time at the machine) then it might be worth it to go for a dual core dual Opteron system (about $6k?) because of the time you save (including hitting deadlines faster).

The 4600+ and 4200+ X2s may be better buys. Clock speed is close to linearly related to render speed, while the extra cache doesn't really help much.

C- RAM: Save your money and get normal RAM. That's overclocking RAM that isn't any faster unless you overclock (and may not even be worth the money even if you are overclocking).

D- Monitors: Not too big a deal what you get, but it may be better bang for your buck to wait for a hot deal on a Dell LCD (or similar hot deals). Their sales are nice, and come reasonably often.

As far as dual monitors go, you can have the preview window, video scopes, audio meters, and filter / FX windows on the second monitor. I find it very useful.

E- RAID 1 provides data redundancy, at the expense of half the hard drive space.
2X250GB provides 250GB of storage in RAID 1.

RAID 0 (striping) provides extra speed (probably much less than you think), at the expense of doubling the data loss if something happens. Plus a small chance of losing data because the RAID screws up (i.e. some on-board RAID controllers are badly designed).

I just built an AMD 4800+ system that flies...the one area that I didn't go top end on was the video card. After reading here and other places that programs like Vegas won't be any faster with a super high end card, I opted for an NVidia GeForce 6800 (from XFX) with 256 meg of memory. That alone saved about $150 or $200 from the 7800 card.

I ended up going with the NTEC NEOHE 430 RET power supply for $85. It's very quiet and has removable power cords. Very nice.

I agree with Glenn on the monitors as well...I bought some Dell 1905FPs that look beautiful and I paid $270 when they had a coupon going on. If the Samsung is near that price, then go for it. Now I'm waiting for their 24" to go on special...two wide screen 24's would rock. I think I need to knock a wall down next to my desk to fit it all, but it'll be worth it. :)

You didn't mention DVD drives. If you don't have a fairly new one, I'd suggest the Benq 1640 for $40 or one of the NEC's (3540?) near the same price. Get one of each at that price!

everything else sounds great!


Sean Caldwell
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broadcast voiceovers

Hello,

Sean, are you working with HDV footage?? Can you get realtime 30fps playback with this sytem?? Can you tell us more about your video drives, and how they are setup??

Thanks,
mike m.

I just built a PC using the same mobo but with the AMD X2 4600+ proc. My specs are here. I was going for powerful yet quiet and mine is whisper quiet.

I would go with the AMD X2 4600 which is a faster processor than the 4400 (which has a larger L2 cache). Processor speed is everything to Vegas and I think that would be a better choice.

I built this system specifically for HDV and I’ve been very happy with it. It runs the original VASST render test 3x faster than my P4 3.0Ghz. As far as HDV preview goes, my P4 3.0Ghz could playback CineForm at 720x540 (Preview Auto) at 8fps and this PC does 25fps. That’s a 3x performance improvement as well. So a dual core AMD 2.4Ghz is three times as fast as a single P4 3.0Ghz at HDV preview. (BTW, a Vegas rendered CineForm file plays back at 29.97 at 720x540 (Preview Auto) on my AMD X2)

~jr

Thank you ALL so much for all of the helpful comments! I'm so glad I asked. So here's what I'm thinking about NOW;

--Antec Performance I P180 Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ==NO CHANGE (a bit more expensive but has insulated walls and gommet mounts for quiet operation.)

--Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply== NO CHANGE(also supposed to be quiet with a 120mm fan.)

--ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard ==NO CHANGE

--AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Toledo 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4800CDBOX - ==CHANGED from the 4400 based on comments that proc speed rules. Stayed on budget by reducing in other areas (see below)

--Qty 1 Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit ==CHANGED from the DDR 500 PC 4000 kits that I found were noncompliant with my mobo choice - also noted comments that they were "overclocker" ram. Still not 100% that this choice is the best, but I've seen them used in other commercial rigs.

--Qty 2 Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives in Raid of some sort (Raid0 or 1?) ==NO CHANGE but I've done some reading and believe I want to play it safe and use RAID1. Not sure why I can't use RAID array for boot/OS disk as noted by one comment. Would a RAID1 not provide a faster boot?

--Qty 2 SAMSUNG 940b-Black 19" 8ms LCD Monitors = NO CHANGE (yet) Noted comment on Dells. 24" widescreen would be nice. Checked with Dell but no sales. Samsungs are $300 each after rebate... what Dell would be comperable?

--Qty 1 ASUS EN7800GTX/2DHTV/256 Geforce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - ==CHANGED from the Qty 2 7800GT in SLI mode. I started out trying to build a fast quiet system and the comments on noise snapped me back to reality. With the GTX I'll get a bit more performance for fun and could always buy another down the road when prices come down.

- Existing DVD burner is Plextor 708A. Works good for me. Also have a couple of 80gig WD HDs. May snag one for this system.

I have not pulled the trigger yet (but it's getting real itchy). Still thinking about the hardrive options. Also think there may be some sales after thanksgiving. I spec'd this new config at NewEgg at $2,800.

barb

Raid 0 is for speed and raid 1 is for parity, same info on two drives.

Well I've got almost everything in the case - very nice case.

full case

I'll tidy up the wires a bit later. All the hard drives are mounted on these rubber gromet things which is nice and should be quiet but I'm a bit concerned about heat.

gromet

The case is very well ventilated - looks like a G5 case with the seperate chambers so I've got my fingers crossed.

So far the only snag is the VGA vent,

vga vent

can only be used in passive mode. If I put a fan on - it sticks out to far and bumps into the video cards, oh well. I'm kind of documenting this with pics and I'll post a spec in a new thread - that way everybody can learn from my mistakes:)

Yoyo,
I've read on two different websites (they must be true :)) and they say there is a better read performance even on a RAID1 compared to a stand alone drive while write speeds are more comparible to a single drive. Then on other sites I read that the read speeds are "somewhat" slower than a single drive and write speeds are slower than a single drive. Mmmm, I'm torn.

I've read that folks have had problems with the VGA vent and fan. Are you using two video cards there? I'm sticking with just the one GTX card now and it's an ASUS brand.... think I'll have same problem?

Thanks for posting the pics. Makes me want to start building. How about a list of ingredients?

I would also avoid WD hard drives as I have had a very high failure rate...

That's interesting. I've used WD hard drives exclusively for over five years and never had one second's problem with any of them.

I wouldn't use anything but Western Digital hard drives!

I'm currently using 8 Maxtor HD's and have been using them for years as well. No problems.

You can't always believe rhetoric you hear floating around on these Sony forums. If it were true my new XP Media Center Edition based PC should be choking in Vegas. Works fine and cranks out :45 second RenderTest times.

Hi Mike


I am working with HDV, and to my disappointment I can't get 30fps playback in most cases. It IS better than my 3.6ghz Pentium 4 I moved from (faster, quieter, less heat), but not an order of magnitude.

Drive wise, I'm with Seagate & Maxtor 250 gig sata drives (two of them total, thankfully I don't need more...don't want the extra heat in the system from 3 or more). If anyone really wants to dig deep on hard drives, I'd suggest reading Storage Review.

they're formatted NTFS and each have two partitions.

Sean
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broadcast voiceovers

"--Qty 2 Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives in Raid of some sort (Raid0 or 1?) ==NO CHANGE but I've done some reading and believe I want to play it safe and use RAID1. Not sure why I can't use RAID array for boot/OS disk as noted by one comment. Would a RAID1 not provide a faster boot?"

The best advise I can pass along is - do not bother with RAID anything for a Vegas environment. RAID provides no additional benefit for audio/video. RAID 0 is a crapshoot since you will lose everything if a drive goes south.

And as far as the boot goes - It's what you do with the box when Windows is up and running that counts. Saving a few seconds on the boot really has no bearing on anything.

With this motherboard, use a recent IDE drive for your OS and apps and leave the heavy work to those WD SATA's . Windows/Vegas do not require a super fast drive once they are up and running. An efficient config could go something like this:

IDE 1 Channel 1 :WD 80 OS/APPS drive
IDE 1 Channel 2: Some 80/120/200 GB drive for storage
SATA 1: Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB - Projects/Recording
SATA 2: Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB - Capture/Samples/Loops

I have had a SATA (WD Raptor) as my OS drive for a while now - and I have been shown by a few studio pals that I really could be using those SATAs for something more important like recording and sample streaming etc....gonna be switching the OS/Apps back to a trusty IDE WD 80GB here very soon....

Cheers!

VP

VP, you beat me to my punchline. I pressed the button about an hour ago and my order is in. After talking with the family IT guy about RAID, I came to the same conclusion. RAID wasn't going to do what I wanted. So I switched to two Western Digital 250G|WD 7200 SATA2 16MB WD2500KS drives. These are a bit faster with the 16MB cache and I will use them in a stand alone config. I may one for the boot drive or I may use one of my 80 gig IDE drives. For back up I'll just have to let NERO do that for me.

Half the fun of a new system is spec'ing it out. The other half is building and troubleshooting. Then the rush of that first boot when you can ooo and ahh over every new program that snaps into view. After a month I'll be drueling over some new toy.

Thanks for all the comments. I'll try to post some follow up when the building begins..... now where's that big brown truck?

Only drives I've had problems with are Fujitsu drives. Two of them, same with friends who bought the same models, all that a few years ago.
Now, I've got Seagates, Maxtors and WDs and no problem with any of them so far. The older ones being the Maxtors, then the Seagates, then the WDs.