I have found the Adobe Forums to be a tremendous help to me over the years. Finally, I am about to purchase a new computer and monitor. I am overwhelmed with all the technical discussions and honestly, I think I am almost paralyzed to make a decision. I have about $2000 to spend and I do not want to build a custom system as I am not that handy and I worry about support. I have been looking at Best Buy and other big box stores and I am not sure what to buy. Intel Processors…Q6600, Q6700, Q9300, Q9450??? XP or Vista 32 or Vista 64? Yes, I have read several posts that call Vista a downgrade from XP, but I haven’t found a big selection of PC’s with XP loaded these days. How much memory is best? Is 4GB enough , or 6GB, is 8GB too much? Hard drives…2 internal drives? Raid 0 Raid 1, Raid 5? ARGHHHH!!! I have searched the Premiere Pro Wiki and the Adobe resources and with the velocity of hardware change, they all seem a little dated concerning equipment configuration information. I have the CS3 Production Premium suite and primarily use Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop. I am currently running an old Sony P4 on XP SP1 with 1GB of RAM and with two internal drives (120GB and 250 GB) (no Raid) and a graphics and sound on the motherboard (I pause here for your laughter to subside). I imagine that anything I buy today will be a distinct improvement but I am concerned about making a dumb decision. Whenever I read another forum posting about some hardware horror story I wince. I am just trying to make a good decision. I don’t do anything in HD yet, but plan to in the near future. I want a system that will be useful as I move into HD and when (hopefully) Adobe issues 64bit versions of their software. Can anyone help with some recommendations? Any guidance is greatly appreciated!

I apologize if this information is available eleswhere in this forum, but I have been unable to find it.

Jay

My first choice would be to wait just a bit longer and get one of the new Core i7 CPUs from Intel. Early tests have them up to 20% faster than a similar speed Core 2 processor.

My second choice, if you can't wait, would be based on the Intel Q9450. Very nice performance/price ratio.

My third choice would be the Intel Q6600. Also very nice performance/price ratio, though the technology is a bit older than the first two options.

Get at least three hard drives - System (can be 75GB or 80GB), Projects (200GB - 500GB), and Media (500GB to 1 TB). More is good, but those are pretty safe minimums for an editing rig.

I'd get at least 2 GB of RAM. 4GB is better, but not all that necessary for SD work. You can always add more RAM later to keep initial costs down.

Onboard audio should be sufficient.

Graphics card should be good enough to support your monitor configuration, but you can go overboard. High end cards probably won't make all that much difference for most tasks.

I'd stick with Windows XP for now. Buy it separately and install it yourself if you need to. You can still find it online.

Hi Jim,
Thanks for the great advice, I do appreciate it. I have another question about the hard drives; when you say "Projects" are you referring to the PPRO project files and/or AE project files including the scratch disks and the media cache files, etc and then on the "Media Drive" my source DV files?

Thanks again for the insight...you have really helped!!!

Jay

Correct on the drive config.

Thanks Jim!

Hi Jim, I am running into problems finding a PC at the usual Big Box retailers (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc) that have PC's that will support three drives internally. Either the power supply is too small, the cabinet wont hold 3 drives, or the cooling system wont be able to control the heat from 3 drives. I thought I had read somewhere that it was important for bus speed that they be internal. Is it really essential that all three drives be internal? What do you or others use for an editing rig? Anyone with any experience with Gateway computers? Best Buy is recommending a Gateway FX4710 and adding two drives and extra fans and a new power supply. Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

HP will build out a pretty good workstation for you.

Nothing from Gateway will be any good, in my opinion. Dell is marginal.

External drives - if they run on FireWire or USB 2.0 - will be okay to a degree, but they will not run as fast as internal drives. Depending on what kind of editing you do, you may see a somewhat noticeable or very noticeable performance decline.

eSATA is a good option, if it's available.

I am running into problems finding a PC at the usual Big Box retailers...




That's why I recommend you build you own. That way you get whatever parts you want. Cheaper, too.

Start ordering <http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Home.jsp>.

Everyone has given me great advice and I REALLY do appreciate it. I have looked at Alienware, Boxx and Velocity Micro. Heard bad customer service stories about Velocity, but super customer service comments about Boxx. I have looked at Newegg and ZipZoomfly but lack the courage to tackle a DIY project.

When I look at the big rigs from Boxx, they don't offer systems with 3 independent drives. They do offer options to add two additional drives in a RAID 0 config...even some at 10,000RPM.

How would one drive for the OS and two drives in a RAID 0 array compare to the three drives suggested above? Can a system drive at 7200rpm coexist with a RAID Array at 10000rpm?

I am not doing super heavy duty editing and graphics work. Typical editing activityand some AE graphics with Zaxwerks. DVD Authoring, etc. Fairly simple stuff...not ILM or Pixar LOL. I am only doing SD today, but plan on HD very soon. Also CS4 is coming later this month and I want to plan for it. I cant adfford a $8K to $20K machine. My budget is more in the $2k-$3K range maaaaaaybe $3500 without monitor. I don't buy a new pc very often so this is a big deal for me so I really appreciate everyone's patience with me!

How would one drive for the OS and two drives in a RAID 0 array compare
to the three drives suggested above?




Less good. Three drives really is a good minimum recommendation - System, Projects/Scratch and Media.

You can get away with less and it'll work. We're just talking ideal scene here. Do what you can to start with three, and have room for more.