suggestions for build

[pharmakon]

I am planning on building a new pc within the next month. i have about $2500 to kill to build it from scratch (don't have monitor, printer, etc...). My primary focus is photo and video editing, and some multitrack audio (pro tools digi001). i was looking for a couple hardware suggestions reguarding:

1. an 800mhz vs a 533mhz P4 processor
2. "dual channel" vs regular DDR
3. anything else that could help performance wise

my primary concern is bus speeds.. is it better to get the highest on the market (and is it worth the cost), or components that "match up" per say?
this will be my 2nd pc build so i am still somewhat of a novice (the first was an AMD XP 1700+ on a $500 budget) so any overall suggestions are appreciated.

[Axion]

1. the 800fsb far out perform the 533fsb... overclock VERY nicecly and the bandwidth will greatly benefit your video editing and audio recording

2. dual channel provides much greater bandwidth - again VERy beneficial, especially for vid editing etc.

3. big overclock

p.s. pro tools digi001 isnt up to much.... its aucoustic sound quality is pretty bad...

[malfunction]

Also - if you're the P4 route and want dual DDR / 800FSB / Hyper threading (and I reckon you will) get a 865/875 (Springdale / canterwood) motherboard with the on-board SATA RAID (RAID 0 for speed or RAID 1 for reliabilty - RAID 1 should still be faster than a single drive is) and get a couple of fast SATA drives (at least 7,200RPM and 8MB cache - the 10,000 RPM drives are good but relatively small and pricey). Oh and lots of RAM - but you probably already knew that.

[Axion]

it is mathematically impossible for raid 1 to be faster than no raid...

[Sinizter]

800 fsb processor (2.4C or 2.8C - They OC well)
Definitely dual channel RAM
An Abit motherboard
A very good intel HSF/Watercooling
Massive OC

The 2.8s recently are hitting 3.6+ GHz with watercooling or very good aircooling.

[praetorian]

Intel Pentium 4 'Northwood' 2.4CGHz (800FSB) with HT Technology - Retail
Abit IC7-G Max-2 Advance "Canterwood" (Socket 478) Motherboard
OCZ 1GB (2x512MB) PC4000 Dual Channel Series EL-DDR
Pioneer DVR-106 4x DVD±RW
Pioneer DVD-120 Slot Load
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB TV-Out/DVI
Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA V 120GB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB 7200RPM ATA100 8MB Cache (2x)
Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 930SB 19"
Coolermaster ATC 201B-SXT (No PSU)
Terratec DMX 6Fire 24/96 Sound System
Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop
Antec TruePower 550W PSU
Arctic Silver Ceramique
Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m) - Metal Braided (2x)
Akasa Serial ATA 45cm Silver Data Cable
Akasa Serial ATA PSU Converter

Speakers and printer don't ask me about. Not too sure about the sound card though plus you will have to add the video capture as well as I am again not sure if the Radeon can do it. But believe me for the setup that I've listed above is WAY above £1500 ($2500) more like £2,300 ($3200) but that is for what is probably going to be a top of the line system.

Explainations for choices:
The P4 2.4C is hitting very high speeds on standard air cooling even with the standard stock heat sink that Intel provides people are still getting these things to 3.2ghz using those things!

The Abit IC7-G and OCZ 1gb RAM go very well together and can achieve some amazing speeds and give great performance which is what you are going to want with what you are going to do.

The two Pioneer drives, no doubts about these really

GFX card has to be the Radeon 9800 Pro as these cards are simply amazing at everything that they do. Coupled with a good monitor, Mitsu 19" diamond Pro, you are going to get outstanding clarity on the screen. Yes I would have opted for a TFT but however at 19" you are pushing it a bit on terms of budget and you can easily swallow up your original budget for simply a screen

Serial ATA drive for your primary system drive where applications, temp data and windows will reside and then two 120gb 8mb PATA drives in a RAID array. You will have to add another 120gb drive to achieve RAID 0+1 for speed and parity

Coolermaster case was a difficult choice cause I'm cut between Lian Li and them at the moment. You could always go for something like an Antec File-server case or a Chieftec Dragon (both practically the same anyway) if you wanted to lower the cost slightly.

Soundcard, again I'm not really sure on this one but I remember that Terratec are well respected in terms of professional usage.

Wireless desktop, you could change this for a normal keyboard and mouse (with cables) if you wanted again to cut the cost.

Antec power supply, nuff said really I selected the 550W cause its not much more than the TruePower 480W but will allow for a little more breathing space when it comes to upgrading but they will still provide you with very stable 12v lines which is the key

Arctic Silver is the daddy of all thermal transfer pastes and definately something nobody should skimp on IMHO.

The rest are just the cables and I chose them to match the Alu case that I selected.

Hope this helps you in your direction

*EDIT*: I deliberatly left out a floppy drive cause not a lot of uses for them now especially with the price of USB pendrives (64mb) down to almost pennies and they are bootable if the BIOS accepts that setting, which most modern boards do

[malfunction]

Originally posted by Axion
it is mathematically impossible for raid 1 to be faster than no raid...

Whilst I'll admit to having no personal experience on this here's some further reading on the subject:

acnc.com

storagereview.com

[Axion]

just thinking logically

1 disk - read/write @ disks spec

raid 1
- disk 1: reads/writes @ disk spec
- disk 2: acts as a backup disk... literally mirroring disk 1... its simultaneously writes data along with disk 1... the SAME data

therefore how can you write data quicker in raid 1 than without?

only raid 0+1 is quicker....

[SilentDeath]

wait for amd64, still looks like it will be cheaper than p4's and a 2ghz cpu willl outperform a p4 at 4.1ghz, need i say more?

[malfunction]

Originally posted by Axion
just thinking logically

1 disk - read/write @ disks spec

raid 1
- disk 1: reads/writes @ disk spec
- disk 2: acts as a backup disk... literally mirroring disk 1... its simultaneously writes data along with disk 1... the SAME data

therefore how can you write data quicker in raid 1 than without?

only raid 0+1 is quicker....

I never said it would be quicker for writes - though I should have said it's been said to be quicker for reads (as that was what I was aware of). And the storage review link seems to say that only random reads will be quicker. But you know - free advice is worth what it costs and all that!

Thread hi-jack over?

[Axion]

no i havent finished arguing yet!