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I've got a Quadro 1500 in my workstation, the older version of that card and it works great with PPro and AE. I've been told it's overkill for what I do (video editing and AE animations but no heavy 3D animation), but it's been able to handle SD and HD just fine.

Before you rule out the Z400, take a look at this...

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/videoedsys/revfeat/review_hp_z400_05 12/index.html

Nice of you to give him less than 24 hours to make the "decision" and build a computer.

Maybe he is busier than you?

And if he aint a computer geek and is actually a creative type ,pro editor...what does he do then?

I have never had a problem telling my 'puter builder to custom build me a machine to do the task I want them  to do.  They have built me about 7 reliable systems

I suggest to the OP if you do not wish to build it your self ..take Harms list to a custom 'puter builder and get the job done.  Avoid the factory Dells and the HPs etc...

If it doesnt work...BLAME HARM M.

JSS1138 wrote:

 

You get a better computer for less money, without all the crap that a pre-built will invariably come with.

I can only speak from my experience, but when I got my HP workstation, the only extra "crap" it came with was just some CD/DVD burning software - just that and XP. When HP sent me my (free, by the way) Vista64 upgrade, it was just Vista64 - nothing else. Now, my laptop was another story, but that was more of a high-end consumer model - not a workstation-type laptop...but I had all the "crap" cleared off in about 15 minutes.

As for a better computer for less money, that may be or may not be. I think many people have issues with PPro because they work on home made systems that have components that may not work together well. I think a large part of why I've had such a smooth PPro experience (with CS3 and CS4) has been because my system was built to work together well...not being a hardware/IT guy, that's reason enough to me to spend the extra money.

But I know others who build their own systems and are very good at it - they can put together a great system that runs great for less money...but they also can function as their own IT support...me - I like picking up the phone and calling HP...their workstations have a great warranty.

Keith, good luck in what ever you decide!

Keith,

I understand your reluctance and I can not judge the value of your time. Just a couple of general remarks.

When buying or building a new PC the most time consuming part is selecting which components you want to have in that PC. Once you have that list it is time to shop around and nearly always will you find that either not all your selected components can be found in a prebuilt system, or you can't get everything from one supplier or delivery times vary due to out-of-stock situations, so you may have to compromise, selecting other components that need further investigation. This process can easily take a week or more. BTW, that was why these guides were written, to help in the selection process and save time.

In contrast, physically building your own PC takes less than a day and is not nearly as challenging as some believe. If you have the skills to plug an electrical cord in a wall outlet and can handle a screwdriver, you can easily build your own system.

BTW, just out of curiosity, I wanted to see the HP Z800 workstation and I started to configure the system. The price was already over $ 13K when I was trying to configure the raid controller and saw that the only options were so limited in capabilities, that I gave up. If they can't deliver any good raid configurations on a workstation, it is not worth the name, let alone the extravagant price.

For comparison, my system costs less than 3000 euros in the Netherlands, excluding sales tax at the moment and is much better equipped than the HP Z800. A single 1 TB disk costs me around 60 euros, HP charges $ 450 for a similar disk. Count your benefits if you want 16 disks... disregarding the fact that their case does not allow that.

I envy you the daily rates you can charge if you can make up that price difference in one day physically building a system.

I second the reputation GuyGraphics has. Only positives, but not cheap.

I was already astounded by the prices of HP, that I did not bother to look at GuyGraphics prices, but Ashley has always been pretty steep. All the more reason to build yourself, unless you can charge your clients around $ 10 K per day...

Good basic system, it will not quite compete with Harm's disk-centric overclocked monster (you can see I am jealous). but a fairly reasonable, what I would call a true entry level video editing system.

But I am confused to why he specifed 4 GB (unless he was following your directions).  I would guess that for that motherboard it would either be 3 GB or 6 GB or some multiple thereof.  Unless you use all three memory channels I would suspect performance would be somewhat crippled.

I personally would not go with RAID 1.  With out adding appreciable to the cost I would specify those two disks be used seperately but the second disk in a mobile rack and get an additional tray or two and archive to the mobile rack drive(s).  Also personally I would use a VelociRaptor drive for the OS.  You will not have quite the storage and it will cost a few dollars more but you will get better performance from the OS and applications.

John beat me to it, but for information only the new i7 family of Intel chips have three memory channels there are system that only use pairs.

Eventually you will go with a 64 bit OS (Win 7 is available in a 64-bit version) and then you want more than 4 GB.  Even now I am daily using Vista 64 Business Edition for editing.  At this point in time I would actually recommend going with Vista 64 if you are capable of tuning and performance enhancing it.  It is unfortunate that some of the options that they offer are so limited, for instance they only offer Vista 64 Ultimate which is an overkill for video editing.

The mobile rack allows you to change disks readily and as your projects grow you can very simply archive to as many additional disks as you want and then easily pull an old disc of the shelf and access it with a simple reboot and no accessing the inside of the computer.  The only advantage of RAID 1 is redundancy, there is no gain in capacity and no performance increase.

I suspect that they just have not brought their configurator up to date.  Apparently it is not a very intelligent configurator as when you select the ASUS motherboard it should require three memory stick modules

Keith,

-Fireware A for my external sound card

-Firewire A for Epson R2400 printer

-Firewire A for camcorder/digital camera

-Firewire A or B for LaCie 1

-Firewire A or B or eSATA for LaCie 2

-Firewire A or B or eSATA for SimpleTech ProDrive

You could easily daisy chain the first two, or maybe three. While playing sound, you don't need to capture, when capturing you don't need your printer, so bandwidth with these two or three devices would be unlikely to cause problems.

In my case I have a firewire harddisk daisy chained with a DV deck, taking up one firewire connection.

On the P6T-WS Pro you have two firewire A ports, so, again in my case, I use the second firewire for direct camera connection.

If you can get a PCI-X firewire B card in, you will have two additional B ports for your HD's. My remark was based on the fact that I once installed such a PCI-X card with 2 B connections and 1 A connection (which was rather difficult to find at that time) and it caused some difficulty with using A and B at the same time.

Hope this helps.

Hey I just also found Windows 7 64-bit RC media from Newegg for only $10!

Very true Jim, but some people may not have the capability (or patience) to download 3.04 GB files.

Congratulations, but you confuse me with your 4 GB of RAM and a 64 bit OS when we all explained that the chip and motherboard have three memory channels.  You are limiting yourself to 2/3 the available memory bandwidth to save yourself ~$50.  Can you tell us why?

Also since there are two 1394 ports on the motherboard why the 1394 card?  I could not find anything on the ADS web site about a API-311, maybe they have repaced it with a newer model?