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1. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Ulf Laursen Jun 13, 2009 10:22 AM (in response to Chuck A. McIntyre)Hi
Harm Millard has made an excellent and informative thread on this topic:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/433549?tstart=0
/Ulf
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2. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Harm Millaard Jun 13, 2009 12:52 PM (in response to Chuck A. McIntyre)Two hints, in addition to the Guide Ulf linked you to. At the end of the guide is a link to my setup. You'll see I use OCZ, very fast timings as discussed in the guide. Second, I like ATI video cards. Have a look at the ATI HD Radeon 46xx or 48xx series.
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3. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Chuck A. McIntyre Jun 14, 2009 6:44 AM (in response to Harm Millaard)Thanks Everyone:
I ordered everything from Newegg.com. There were some "bundle" discounts and you can't beat the shipping charge. I settled on the highly rated and inexpensive Radeon HD 4830 512MB 256-bit GDDR3
On the subject of the CPU I ordered, the crazy thing about the i7 920 is it will overclock and benchmark on the level of Intel's extreme version that will cost you around $1000, The latest issue of Maximum PC did a review of Thermalright's Ultra-120 eXtreme (air) CPU cooler and found that it outperformed the stock Intel cooler by a "shocking" 25 degrees at full burn.
We do a lot of corporate video production that is marketing focused, and in shopping for components I continually see huge missed opportunities and outright marketing mistakes made by otherwise successful companies.
Take Thermalright for instance. They show images of this great cooler with miserably poor installation instructions. They show spring-loaded, slot-head screws holding the cooler in place. This conjures up images of bearing down on the screw during installation, having the screwdriver slip out of the groove carving a slice out of the top of your new $200-$350 motherboard. All Thermalright would need to do is shoot a detailed "best practice" installation video that'll ease the mind of potential buyers. Maximum PC stated in the review that installation was challenging. They probably had to "wing it" like everyone else. The thought of ruining something during installation is what is giving me second thoughts about purchasing this highly rated cooler. I checked on youtube.com, and didn't find any home-made videos of someone installing one of these coolers.
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4. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Harm Millaard Jun 14, 2009 7:03 AM (in response to Chuck A. McIntyre)Charles,
Installing a CPU heatsink is not difficult, it just requires a steady hand and reading the installation instructions three times to be sure that you have everything right. Your choice of the Thermalright 120 is understandable (it is one of the top performers), but the different sites that do publish reviews show widely different and often opposing results because they use different measuring methods. That makes it a difficult choice. What lead me to the Noctua was the standard push-pull configuration. Don't consider this as an accusation you made the wrong choice. Not at all. In practice, you go for one of the best coolers available at a reasonable price, since the difference at reasonable overclocking is usually within 1 degree. There is not much difference between the top coolers, but a giant difference with the standard Intel cooler.
On the subject of the CPU I ordered, the crazy thing about the i7 920 is it will overclock and benchmark on the level of Intel's extreme version that will cost you around $1000, The latest issue of Maximum PC did a review of Thermalright's Ultra-120 eXtreme (air) CPU cooler and found that it outperformed the stock Intel cooler by a "shocking" 25 degrees at full burn.
Didn't I tell you in the PC Buying Guide?
The thought of ruining something during installation is what is giving me second thoughts about purchasing this highly rated cooler. I checked on youtube.com, and didn't find any home-made videos of someone installing one of these coolers.
The problem with that, is that it is so much dependent on the system components to be worthwhile.
I would be interested to see your Passmark results when you have built this system and compare notes. Can you post the components you ended up with?
Hope this was helpful and answered your question. That was the reason I posted this guide.
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5. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Ulf Laursen Jun 14, 2009 7:23 AM (in response to Harm Millaard)Hi Harm
Is it this model of Noctua you have: NH-U12P SE1366? I have started out with the stock cooler from Intel, but I want to OC too after reading this, and want to get new cooler.
/Ulf
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6. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Harm Millaard Jun 14, 2009 8:40 AM (in response to Ulf Laursen) -
7. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Ulf Laursen Jun 14, 2009 8:49 AM (in response to Harm Millaard)Aaah yes - thanks Harm - I'll go for one of these babies.
/Ulf
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8. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Chuck A. McIntyre Jun 15, 2009 7:38 PM (in response to Ulf Laursen)This is what I bought:
Video Card - MSI R4830-T2D512 RT 1 $89.99
Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R 1366 X58 R 1 $199.99
CPU - INTEL CORE I7 920 2.66G 45N R 1 $279.99
PSU - CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W RT 1 $119.99
RAM - Crucial Ballistix 240-pin DIMM 1608 6GB kit (2GBx3) $169.99
Case - Cooler Master HAF Full Tower Already OwnedKingwin hard drive enclosure - yet to buy for new system:
I've tested these internal hard drive enclosures for over a year in three different computers. They work great. You mount the enclosure in your computer and any new internal Sata hard drives will just slide in and snap in place. There's no mounting brackets to install on the drive. Changing internal drives around takes about 15 seconds.
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9. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Harm Millaard Jun 15, 2009 8:52 PM (in response to Chuck A. McIntyre)Congrats. Great system for an affordable price. Can you give a link to the Kingwin drive enclosure to have a look at?
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10. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Chuck A. McIntyre Jun 16, 2009 4:17 AM (in response to Harm Millaard)Harm:
http://kingwin.com/products/cate/mobile/racks/kf_4000_bk.asp
This model takes up 3 DVD sized drive bays and holds 4 internal SATA hard drives. I was initially skeptical about the drives just pushing in and plugging in the fixed connectors in the back of the enclosure. I 've removed and replaced many different SATA drives from these enclosures and never had any issues.
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11. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Harm Millaard Jun 16, 2009 4:40 AM (in response to Chuck A. McIntyre)Thanks Charles, it sure looks nice and from my point of view the 3000 model looks even nicer, because, at least in my case, I could fit in 5 of the 3000 cages, giving me 15 hot swappable disks. The only question mark is the effectiveness and soundlevel of these rather small fans. You have experience with them, so what is your opinion on those aspects?
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12. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Chuck A. McIntyre Jun 18, 2009 8:34 AM (in response to Harm Millaard)Harm Wrote:
"The only question mark is the effectiveness and soundlevel of these rather small fans. You have experience with them, so what is your opinion on those aspects?"
Newegg.com sells Kingwin products and these units are getting good reviews. The fans have been an area of concern for several of the posters. I personally haven't had any issues, but I can see how heat could build up when you have several drives mounted on top of each other. Some of the guys have been replacing the fans on these units just to be safe.
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13. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Harm Millaard Jun 18, 2009 8:45 AM (in response to Chuck A. McIntyre)Thanks for the feedback, Charles. I more or less expected that.
How is the build progressing and where are my points for helping you?
Seriously, if you need help during the building of your system, don't hesitate to call on me if you want to.
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14. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Chuck A. McIntyre Jun 28, 2009 12:44 PM (in response to Harm Millaard)Harm wrote:
"How is the build progressing and where are my points for helping you?"
Yes, thanks for your recommendation/information related to the CPU cooler and Video card in particular. I have all of the pieces still boxed in my closet.
Just got back from an 8 day event in New Orleans LA. We drove all of our equipment down from Atlanta, GA, about an 8 hour drive. We set up in a staging room at the Hilton Riverside and we're at the mercy of our current systems and CS4 for the duration of our stay. For these events, I make triple backups. The first room we were set up in, sprung a water leak from the ceiling in a far corner of the room. At first it was just a steady drip. The maintenance crew put a bucket under the leak and proceeded with the repair at a leisurely pace. While we were all out at one of the General Sessions, all hell broke loose, and someone other than our crew had to move our editing systems. None of our equipment got wet, but we lost 2 hard drives. Fortunately, they were just backup drives. One of drives was on our main editing system. It appeared to have $$MFT corruption. If any of you have experienced this, a drive in this condition often makes the system it's in, dog slow. In this condition you can probably imagine what it did to the CS4 suite.
With the help of "Plan B", "Plan C" and even "Plan D" We managed to complete all of the On-Site edits and videos. It was all down to the wire though.
New Orleans... I'm originally from the Los Angeles area. I've lived in the San Fernando valley, Westchester and Santa Monica, within walking distance of the Venice Beach freak show. I've never seen anything like Bourbon Street, New Orleans though. It's like a different country (The French Quarter) with one huge non-stop party.
Any of you editors from New Orleans?
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15. Re: Building New Editing System - Suggestions Welcome
Chuck A. McIntyre Jul 5, 2009 1:10 PM (in response to Chuck A. McIntyre)I finally built my new home editing computer this last 3 day fourth of July, Independence day weekend, using the parts I purchased from Newegg.com. I took my time and the build went without a major hitch. The system started up the first time which is a good thing. I have built many systems, and you get better at it with each one. I usually install only the system drive, but this time I installed all three drives before I installed the operating system. I installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate and Premiere CS3. Windows 7 ROCKS! In its release candidate version, it's better than Vista by a long shot. My previous home system is an Asus P4C800E-Deluxe motherboard with a Northwood 3.2GZ processor. I did the first speed comparison last night. the old system took 8.5 hours to render a 53 minute video to *.FLV. My new system only takes a little over an hour to render the same thing.
When I said the build went without a major hitch, the following are my close brushes with disaster:
1.) By installing all three drives before the operating system, Windows 7 installer defaulted to install on the wrong drive which had a big load of important data. Of course, I was halfway expecting that and caught it. I proceeded to select the correct drive and deleted the partition. After I deleted the partition, I immediately selected format, and didn't notice that the selection went back to the original drive (that had all of my important files) that was selected and wiped it in an instant.
Of course the data is all still there, I just had to update my copy of GetDataBack for NTFS, scan the drive and copy all of the recovered files to another drive. About 5 wasted hours. Microsoft! This is where most would appreciate one of your usually annoying dialogs:...."Are you sure you want to wipe the drive!" Or maybe have the drive I selected to install the operating system, stay selected.
2.) The Positively reviewed Cooler Master case uses snaps instead of screws to hold in the ad-on cards and cover the PCI-E slots in the back of the case. Just before I turned on the power supply rocker switch, I did a careful visual inspection of the inside of the computer and noticed that the Cooler Master snap that is supposed to hold the PCI-E cover in place came unsnapped and the metal cover was laying across the top of my video card. This would have caused a major short if I hadn't caught it. I'm not sure what all it could have ruined.
Our systems at work utilizing Q6600's and Vista 64 seem sluggish compared to my new system. Of course I haven't tried CS4 on my new system, but I think Adobe built their latest editing software for cutting edge and more powerful future hardware.





