cheap Shuttle for video conversion

[lost eden]

Righto, my father has recently starting editing & converting old hi-8 tapes into DVD, & is finding the Athlon 2600+ at the heart of his newest Shuttle rather slow.

So he wants me to help gather parts for a new Shuttle (he's fine with building it, but doesn't really keep up with the hardware progression) (well, neither do I as much as I used to, which is why I'm here!).

He is used to building Shuttles for under £250 & although I told him that he really won't get much for that price these days, he still wants to keep this as cheap as possible.

So, this machine must be a Shuttle chassis (to fit the space the old one comes out of) & must be capable of running Photoshop CS/Elements nice & quickly (I want him to have 1GiB of RAM for definite) but it also needs to have as much processing grunt behind it as possible to make the video conversion as fast as possible (atm it runs about 1.5x real time, 1x would be great).

So I'm looking for advice on a barebone & processor really. He might use the hard drive from the old machine, because he recently upgraded that to a 120GB which is enough for him. Graphics can be onboard because he doesn't game (though the possibility to add-in a PCI-X card might be nice because he can no longer nick my PC to play IL-2 since I live away from home 9 months of the year!).

[Funkstar]

well with video encoding it's the processor that counts more than anything else. Core2Duo would be your best bet. Scrimp on everything else and spend as much as you can on the processor i would think.

I'm sure someone else can give specifics. i don't keep as up to date as i did at one point, although I'm more up to speed now than i was a year ago....as long as you don't ask me about games or 3D

[lost eden]

Yes my first thoughts were towards Core 2 Duo, but I think that will cost too much for his ideas - the Core 2 Duo barebone that I was looking at for my next rig is a £250+ deal, & the cheapest Core 2 Duo chip is over £130 if I remember right. He doesn't really want to be spending that much money, & I was thinking that maybe even a 939 system would suit him better, even though it is now obsolete. There does seem to be a lack of dual core 939 chips around though (Athlon X2 that is).

[ikonia]

run XP64 - thats the only time I saw 64bit come into its own was video editing

[lost eden]

Yes I thought I heard something to that effect somewhere. What's more, I think that I might be able to get a copy off of the MSDN (courtesy of UWA of course!).

[Funkstar]

What about upgading the current system, can the processor go any higher?

What about just changing the board and keeping the case? I know you used to be able to buy the boards seperate.

[lost eden]

What about upgading the current system, can the processor go any higher?

'Fraid not, I remember this because I had a mission finding the fastest chip that a 133FSB board could take (the Thouroughbred 2600+ I think) when it was last upgraded.

I don't think that upgrading will really be an option, because it would require a new motherboard, processor & therefore RAM, & there's no guarantee that a new motherboard would work with the ICE heatsink of the original G series chassis. If we're to buy a new mobo, CPU & RAM, then we might as well go the whole hog & buy a new SFF, & keep this one for another task.

[DanceswithUnix]

I think your only low cost option is the SK22G2. Linked to Aria simply as they claim to have stock, other people list them. That gets you a start for ~140 quid.

Shuttle 140
X2 3800 80
RAM 70
HD 35
Windows 55

I can see the budget getting rather blown here!

[lost eden]

Yeah, I was thinking that X2 would be a better direction over C2D, simply because it's cheaper for a low-end machine. Looks like MY next machine is going to end up as an X2, because student-expenses (such as y'know, food & accomodation) seem to be a bit more important than a faster PC!

Thanks for the link to that Shuttle - that's about the price that he'd probably be happy with paying - he recently bought a 7200dpi IR-pass capable negative scanner as well, which definately needs more grunt (I've seen reports of the IR-pass taking over 2 hours on a 2.4GHz P4...).

I'll keep that barebone bookmarked for future reference if he gets out of hospital okay & still wants the new machine.

[CrazyMonkey]

he gets out of hospital okay & still wants the new machine.

I cant really help you with SFF but i do hope your dad gets better
But that Barebones from Aria looks like an excellent start unless you wanna go ebaying...

All i can say is X2 perhaps something cheaper that clocks well.
1 gig of Value ram (he wont be needing high performance ulta 1337 ram) 80gig HDD is like £25.

[lost eden]

Now bear in mind that I haven't built a machine with more recent technology than Socket A, so don't laugh at me if I this sounds like a stupid question;

AM2 is 940 pin, right? So are single-way Opterons, right? I mean would it be cheaper (bang-for-buck wise) to go for a dual-core Opteron rather than an X2?

[DanceswithUnix]

AM2 is not the same as S940, even though they have the same number of pins those pins are in different places.

Honestly, get AM2 if you are on a tight budget. If you can afford the dual core X2 then that is nice, though at some point this year a quad core version should be out and each core should be faster than the current ones by quite a margin (well, for things like video encoding anyway) so you have a future upgrade path for some years to come.

Even the performance of a single core A64 will spank the old athlon XP.

[Splash]

Not really in the same league as the stuff you're talking about, but I have an ST62K with a celery 2.8 that has run fine at 3.2Ghz for the past year or so kicking around doing nothing - it's be an upgrade (albeit a small one!) on an Athlon 2600. Let me know if you're interested.

[schmunk]

If you're looking for an even cheaper solution, for all their faults the Pentium 4 processors were always very good at video/audio encoding compared to Athlons - could be worth a look.

[DanceswithUnix]

P4 would only be cheaper if you went for a Shuttle with no core2 compatability, in which case I think throwing away any future upgrade path for the small money it would save is a false economy.

IMNSHO, there are 2 clear paths right now: Fast = core2, cheap = AM2

Either will result in a lovely machine that will feel way more responsive than the current Athlon XP.

Hope your dad gets better soon, a hospital is a pretty poor start to a new year

[lost eden]

Yeah I think it is going to have to be AM2 for him, & probably for me too.

a hospital is a pretty poor start to a new year

Pretty poor way to spend Christmas Day & Boxing Day too!