Need To SPec Up an absolute beast!

[badass]

Hi, I need to spec up a machine for Video editing. Budget is more or less whatever is required - It must be the latest and greatest of everything so in the region of £10k
Ideally it would all come from 1 manufacturer with a decent response time for replacement so 8x8x5 or something support. I need to know the software aswell.
He mentioned a TUE card though I have no idea what one of those are.
Can anyone help?

[Moby-Dick]

you'd want a specific system then rather than component level ?

[Zak33]

/\ what he said...you need a purpose built beast. Not a component build

dont think so anyway

[badass]

As long as the components are someone elses responsibility. Its fine using components aslong as someone else who'se providing the warranty is the one that builds it.

[cm_uk]

If you have money too blow... X2, or many some dual Operon X2's

[nichomach]

If this is for editing (i.e. importing and chopping up video) as opposed to animation or something like that, your disk array (and I DO mean array) is where I'd start - big (uncompressed video eats disk space like anything) and fast (and I'd still choose SCSI) so something with say an Ultra320 RAID controller. Something like 2xOpteron 270 or 275 (dual core Optis)'d be nice, and plenty of memory. As I say, if it's just for editing/encoding video, then I wouldn't have thought a hugely powerful graphics card'd be necessary; it's not going to be doing the real work on the video, something like one of Canopus' or maybe Matrox' RTX cards'd be doing the editing work. HP do a nice dual Opteron, the xw9300 with various configurations, one of which might suit you, and HP's warranty cover is pretty good.

[badass]

If I can spec up the components it would probably have 2 arrays - set up like a server - 1 mirror (2 disks) using 15K RPM disks and 1 RAID5 array using large 10K disks.
Some of these apps have a temporary working area they need too don they? How about a 15K RPM 36/73 GB disk for that?
That adds up to a min of 6 Disks! and only for 300 Odd GB usable
For the vids I would expect they would want to do some effects etc aswell.
Processor wise I dont think 2x dual core ones would be a problem, price wise.

[StormPC]

If you just want bang for the buck with a single CPU the 4800+ X2 is a monster. If however you will be using this for a business where time is money you should consider the Opterons. Quad 875 dualcore Opterons in this:

Tyan S4882UG2NR-D 8131 Video/GB-LAN/USB/SATA/SCSI/DDR-400/E-ATX

Would be a true monster!

[rajagra]

If I can spec up the components it would probably have 2 arrays - set up like a server - 1 mirror (2 disks) using 15K RPM disks and 1 RAID5 array using large 10K disks.

RAID5 can be slow for writing. RAID 0+1 should be within your budget.
It will be much faster for video editing, and have better resilience.
Try RAID5 by all means, but if it chokes you'll know what to do.

Having said that, if you need a decent backup solution that's going to take a big bite of that £10K.

[Taz]

At that sort of price point, your software may cost you more than the hardware. I personally would approach the software companies that provide the software you need and then spec a machine around that using their recommended specifications. It's no use building a fast machine if your intended software does not run on it.

It's easy to build a fast machine that produces good results on benchmarks but will it do what you really want to do with it?

As you go up the ladder of capability (and cost) you will find that there are companies out there that will provide the hardware and the software for your application and support it.

[StormPC]

Good point Taz.

I think many hardware types loose sight of why people buy computers in the first place. Benchmarks are fun but in most cases they won't feed the baby.

[Moby-Dick]

I'd have thought digital video editing is one of the more demanding PC applications though cartainly RAM and storage intensive.
I dont think this rig will be used for rendering , so is raw CPU power as high on the list ?

[StormPC]

Not sure what you mean by raw, but yes CPU power is extremely important in any program that does a lot of math.

That brings up another good point though. Make sure your program makes use of multiple threads or you might be better off with a P4EE or FX-55.

[BUFF]

you need to speak to someone like Armari imo.

[badass]

If you just want bang for the buck with a single CPU the 4800+ X2 is a monster. If however you will be using this for a business where time is money you should consider the Opterons. Quad 875 dualcore Opterons in this:

Tyan S4882UG2NR-D 8131 Video/GB-LAN/USB/SATA/SCSI/DDR-400/E-ATX

Would be a true monster!

Bang for the buck is not what this is about. Its just bang
However if it would simply not need 2x dualies then I wont spec it. I suspesc however that it will benefit from them.
I will not be speccing more than 4 GB of RAM though as Windows simply cant address more.

[weebroonieuk]

windows 64 bit can and your talkin og goin opteron ..... that or linux
or windows server 64 or something like that ?