building a post computer..

[Zakaree Sandberg]

looking to build a PC (figured i can get more for less)
mostly for finishing (coloring and whatnot)

please give me a list of what i should get...

video card,
processor,
ram,
monitor (color correct.. yet on a budget),
so on...

thank you!

[PatrickW]

What is your budget?

[Owen James]

Hi Zakaree,

I did well with a system like this:

$229 Intel i7 Chip
$350 Gigabyte X58 UD5 Motherboard
$329 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 OC 896MB GDDR3 PCIe 2.0 Graphic Card
$141 Corsair Memory XMS3 6GB DDR3-1600 (PC-12800) CL9 DIMM Memory Kit (Three 2GB Memory Modules), get two kits (12Gig) if you can
$170 PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad Black Power Supply or similar
$119 Antec Performance One P182 ATX Tower or Similar
$70 Thermaltake 6 Heatpipe CPU cooler for Intel Core i7 or similar
$200 SATA Hard Drives

$1500 will get you a kick-ass machine capable of easy overclocking.

Check out the thread http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23932&highlight=mother+board

[Zakaree Sandberg]

1500 - 2000k is my budget for this project.

[kidrobot]

Owen, we have eerily similar PC's, different power supply, core2duo 8500 3.16GHz here and I got 8GB of RAM.

[Owen James]

hi kidrobot, cool! i really like the gigabyte board, i've been using the beta windows 7, great improvement over vista, have you been overclocking your chip?

[kidrobot]

No, not yet. I haven't really been getting on with Vista until recently. I got it looking like XP, but I still hate the way the file explorer looks, feels and behaves.

[Tom Lowe]

Get a 64-bit i7 system with a shitload of fast DD3 RAM. A lot of the video programs can use multiple cores now but each core requires like 3GBs of RAM independently. So you need at least 12- or 14GBs of RAM to fully take advantage.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Just built a 64bit i7 920 windows 7 rig myself. I love it. Super fast.

[Tim Whitcomb]

Get a 64-bit i7 system with a shitload of fast DD3 RAM. A lot of the video programs can use multiple cores now but each core requires like 3GBs of RAM independently. So you need at least 12- or 14GBs of RAM to fully take advantage.

dont forget MS OS limitations on memory... a PC aint a MAC... 3 GB max on XP and I think 4GB max on Vista... the rest is a waste of $... as its not
being optimized by OS...

Again, this is not MAC OS... which optimizes cores and memory.

Unless you run 64 bit OS (server 2003), but then you lose legacy support on 32Gb apps.

I hear Longhorn may be ready in 2025 though :shiftyph34r:

[Tom Lowe]

I think 64-bit Vista can handle at least 16GB, maybe more.

[Rudi Herbert]

dont forget MS OS limitations on memory... a PC aint a MAC... 3 GB max on XP and I think 4GB max on Vista... the rest is a waste of $... as its not
being optimized by OS...

Beg to differ, it does make a difference and you can see it on applications that are multi-threaded. I just bough a Gateway FX workstation with am i-7 processor, 64 bit Vista and the rest of the niceties, and tagged 12 gigs iof Corsair dominator trichannel DDR3 ram on it, then overcloked the system to run at 3.2G and got it all for $1900. that system flies!!! Rendering HDCAM footage on it, say, a 50 minute timeline with 3-4 layers of effects, etc, gets done in 22 minutes! all 4 cores running at close to 100% and the RAM usage pegged at 70% of the total of 12 gigs. This beats the same rendering done of the same material on an octo core Mac with 16 Gigs of RAM by about 6 minutes. Anyway, not meaning to start the old Mac-PC debate here, but for about $2000, that system is amazingly fast, stable, quiet and runs super cool. A true bargain really. Truth is, building it yourself does not make it cheaper anymore when compared to some manufacturers, although it is potentially a bit of fun if you like to tinker with parts. But I highly recommend these Gateway FX workstations as a good, cheap and reliable foundation to build upon. We have now 3 of them and have no complaints whatsoever.

[Craig Ryan]

got it all for $1900. that system flies!!! Rendering HDCAM footage on it, say, a 50 minute timeline with 3-4 layers of effects, etc, gets done in 22 minutes!

Anyone else sold? That's kinda what I was looking at building when I save up enough green. The i7s are a good deal; however shouldn't we be spending the most on our processor, and less on the Mobo?

EDIT: just looked at the core i7 mobos and realized how expensive they are. Guess have to make do.

[Tom Lowe]

what graphics card, rudi?

[Adam Glick]

... Rendering HDCAM footage on it, say, a 50 minute timeline with 3-4 layers of effects, etc, gets done in 22 minutes! all 4 cores running at close to 100% and the RAM usage pegged at 70% of the total of 12 gigs....

The Windows Task Manager on your i7 should show 8 cores - not 4.

You might want to check your BIOS and check to see if "Hyperthreading" is enabled.

Cheers,

Adam

[Tim Whitcomb]

Beg to differ, it does make a difference and you can see it on applications that are multi-threaded. I just bough a Gateway FX workstation with am i-7 processor, 64 bit Vista and the rest of the niceties, and tagged 12 gigs iof Corsair dominator trichannel DDR3 ram on it, then overcloked the system to run at 3.2G and got it all for $1900. that system flies!!! Rendering HDCAM footage on it, say, a 50 minute timeline with 3-4 layers of effects, etc, gets done in 22 minutes! all 4 cores running at close to 100% and the RAM usage pegged at 70% of the total of 12 gigs. This beats the same rendering done of the same material on an octo core Mac with 16 Gigs of RAM by about 6 minutes. Anyway, not meaning to start the old Mac-PC debate here, but for about $2000, that system is amazingly fast, stable, quiet and runs super cool. A true bargain really. Truth is, building it yourself does not make it cheaper anymore when compared to some manufacturers, although it is potentially a bit of fun if you like to tinker with parts. But I highly recommend these Gateway FX workstations as a good, cheap and reliable foundation to build upon. We have now 3 of them and have no complaints whatsoever.

thats sounds great... again... was NOT talking 64bit OS... and the tradeoff is you lose 32bit legacy support (still lots of apps that dont run 64)... in fact, I think Scratch still runs on
XP...

and ironically it was a BOXX rep who told me I was wasting $ wanting
more RAM than the 4Gb quoted... when I asked why so little RAM
and it did have the new i7 chips.

confusing as hell... not to mention Vista has been so unstable for pro apps
ask... Assimilate...

I appreciate this thread though as Im trying to spec a PC box but its so hard
to get a straight answer... and mac you dont worry about that...

my problem has never been with PC (linux rocks) its been Windlblows

[Tim Whitcomb]

Beg to differ, it does make a difference and you can see it on applications that are multi-threaded. I just bough a Gateway FX workstation with am i-7 processor, 64 bit Vista and the rest of the niceties, and tagged 12 gigs iof Corsair dominator trichannel DDR3 ram on it, then overcloked the system to run at 3.2G .

BTW. what was speed of your new i7 - pre overclock?

[Adam Glick]

thats sounds great... again... was NOT talking 64bit OS... and the tradeoff is you lose 32bit legacy support (still lots of apps that dont run 64)... in fact, I think Scratch still runs on
XP...

and ironically it was a BOXX rep who told me I was wasting $ wanting
more RAM than the 4Gb quoted... when I asked why so little RAM
and it did have the new i7 chips.

confusing as hell... not to mention Vista has been so unstable for pro apps
ask... Assimilate...

I appreciate this thread though as Im trying to spec a PC box but its so hard
to get a straight answer... and mac you dont worry about that...

my problem has never been with PC (linux rocks) its been Windlblows

I'm sorry. Respectfully Tim, I can't figure out what in the world you're talking about...

What did a BOXX rep tell you? I'm not following your point...

Vista is unstable? I can tell you we have extensively tested damn near every Pro app available for Windows in the lab as well as speaking with studios on a near daily basis. Pretty much every pro app I can think of is known to run quite well (stably and quickly) in Vista and Vista64 at this point. Including Scratch. (There just aren't any Quadro SDI drivers for Vista or Vista 64 yet)

Can't get legacy 32bit support? I've not heard of any instances where Windows XP64 or Vista 64 did not support the proper functioning of a 32 bit pro Windows application.

I'm not tryng to be a smartypants, I'm just letting you know it doesn't need to be as difficult (or bad) as maybe it seems to you...

Adam
BOXXlabs

[Rudi Herbert]

Guys,

This is the system I got: http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668210.php
Again, it has limitations and perks, this is a consumer unit and it surely isn't a BOXX system, but at $1200 from Best Buy it was cheaper than all the options I could come up with for assembling something similar myself. Now, Dell has a similar system for $999 but the BIOS is fixed at the factory so you can't over clock it. Cons with the system I got:

- it has the "slowest" of the three i-7 processors, but if 2.66Ghz speed isn't enough, you can overclock it and take it over 3.2 GHz SAFELY. Even after that almost 40% increase in speed, it is amazing how cool the air coming out of the box feels when the computer is running at full throttle...
- it comes with only 3GB of RAM and slow RAM at that, so I bought 12 GB of Corsair dominator tri-channel memory from Tiger Direct ($800) which is a memory designed specifically for over clocking solutions. There's more expensive memory and certainly cheaper, but this is doing a great job for me. God bless all those gamers pushing computer technology for us video guys :-)
- Graphics card is nothing to write home about, but with about 1 GB of allocated video memory, it actually powers my 2 x 25.5 " Samsung monitors (I'm quite blind so I use two of those monsters) without a problem. If you want to do color critical work, then you need to add a dedicated card. I've ordered the Black Magic HD Link Extreme http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/decklinkhdextreme/ which will give me HDMI monitoring and a bunch of other goodies for more professional work.
- You still need to add an external video array for footage storage and add a couple of small internal drives to run your programs and the system files separately for optimum speed and reliability.

Again, this is NOT a professional system with all the bells and whistles, but for $2000 I got a monster of a computer that really performs tasks faster than systems that sold for 4 times as much just a couple of years ago. IT doesn't come with the tech service of a BOXX, but it sure rocks those Premiere and After Effects renders like a donkey chewing through wet grass...

[Eric S.]

Hi Zakaree,

I did well with a system like this:

$229 Intel i7 Chip
$350 Gigabyte X58 UD5 Motherboard
$329 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 OC 896MB GDDR3 PCIe 2.0 Graphic Card


Hey Owen,

Do you know if Nvidia has fixed the apparent driver-bottleneck issue with the i7 architecture yet?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-280,2156.html

Otherwise, I'd be careful with i7 and Nvidia cards for now. A safer bet would be something like the Radeon 4870, which will probably be softmodded in the coming months as well. Don't get me wrong either, I've used Nvidia cards in two of my own systems, so I hope the issue is fixed soon.

Edit: To clarify, I'm talking about the Geforce GTX 2xx series of Nvidia cards, not their workstation cards, which obviously use different drivers.

[Thomas Patrick C.]

Guys,


- it has the "slowest" of the three i-7 processors, but if 2.66Ghz speed isn't enough, you can overclock it and take it over 3.2 GHz SAFELY. Even after that almost 40% increase in speed, it is amazing how cool the air coming out of the box feels when the computer is running at full throttle...


Hey Rudi,

Wondering how you are overclocking the Gateway 6800?

I have the same computer but I see the bios is locked, no tweaker option so can't overclock it.

[JanneJansson]

Hi Zakaree,

I did well with a system like this:

$229 Intel i7 Chip
$350 Gigabyte X58 UD5 Motherboard
$329 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 OC 896MB GDDR3 PCIe 2.0 Graphic Card


Me too, I love all Gigabyte mobo. I used another graphic card, the ATI Radeon 4870 with 2GB. The current state of many nvidia cards is sad. More then 10% of sold cards are DOA, and even if it work it have some seriour hardware hickups. Stay clear of nvidia another year, until thay have fixed the producton again.

And I used 12 GB OCZ ram, great low-cost chip.
4 x 1 TB Western Digital RE drive in a raid-0 for pure speeeeeeed. :)

..and I have gone the hard road and used non "RE" (Raid Edition) drives from WD, and thay WILL crash your raid. They have by mistake/design a built in timer that in about 100 h will teporary freeze the drive. The only way to get out of this freeze state it to power cycle the drive. This is no biggi when using one drive, but if they are in a raid, the raid will assume it's broken and "deaddify" it. This freeze happen usually at same time for all drives of same series, so if you really have a hard day, the most part of a raid will apperar dead, and data will be fubar.

[Eric S.]

Hey Rudi,

Wondering how you are overclocking the Gateway 6800?

I have the same computer but I see the bios is locked, no tweaker option so can't overclock it.

I'm not sure if Rudi is actually overclocking his Gateway or was just giving hypothetical advice to the original poster (since the OP will be building a computer with a brand-name Core i7 motherboard, not a proprietary Gateway one).

However, if you really do want to overclock your Gateway system, it might be possible. I'm not sure if I'd advise it, but you should have a little headroom with that 500w PSU. Remember that warranties are usually voided with overclocking, but the i7's do seem to be overclocking pretty safely.

In the good ol' days of LGA 775 (core 2 duo, etc.) you could sometimes do a pin mod. Might be worth looking into, but I'd personally not seriously consider it:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/228129-28-e4300

A second option is that you might be able to overclock via software like CPUFSB. Here's a good, but old, introduction. I'm not sure if CPUFSB is still current or when / if your system is compatible, but software-driven overclock might be feasible:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=41097

Hope those give you a good starting point in your research.

Eric

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

About cooling: The Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme is the best air cooler thus far.

So get one with LGA 1366 bracket and you are good to go.