Build me a computer

[Pseudonym]

The computer here at Gymnation HQ must be close to 10 years old, and still running XP. It's had a couple of upgrades in that time, and it's never let me down, but I think it's starting to feel its age. So it's time to farewell Old Faithful and get a new machine.

It doesn't need to run games, but it will be used for photo and video editing. I'm not looking for a supremely high-end system, but I don't want it to struggle when it comes to crunching video either. The budget is stuff-all... because I'm a bit povo after the Gymnation web development work that's going on. Could I get anything decent for $1000-1500?

Here are the requirements for video editing software Premiere Pro: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html

 

So here's what I'm thinking...

- 256GB Solid state drive for OS and programs
- 2TB HD for data, documents, and raw media files
- Re-purpose my existing hard drives (230GB & 300GB) for Premiere to write its previews and media cache to
- Don't need to get a new monitor

- Graphics card should be Nvidia, since apparently that plays nicely with Adobe. But a lot of the models listed on the Premiere page aren't available on the PC Partpicker site (which is about as far as I've got in the research process).

So I've taken this build...
http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/blog/45/970-gaming-build

...and tweaked it to come up with this:
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Pseudonym/saved/6kwypg

And as you can see, I'm somewhat over budget. So tell me, nerds of Gymnation, what do you suggest? It's been nearly a decade since I last built a computer and I'm a bit out of practise.

[Polo]

All honesty I think any computer over 1G would be better than this 10 year old windows XP you've stated. I'm no tech guru with computers but you say max to spend is 1.5G that would buy one he'll of a computer 

[Pseudonym]

All honesty I think any computer over 1G would be better than this 10 year old windows XP you've stated.

Hey, be nice! Old Faithful continues to serve me well!

 

you say max to spend is 1.5G that would buy one he'll of a computer 

Well, I'd really prefer it was at the other end of the range. But I wasn't sure that was realistic if I wanted something that was half-decent at video editing.

[Rebel101]

Hi Pseudo my son builds computers from componentry, far better value for money than buying one all set up, let me know if we can be of help.

[AZIDE]

Hi Pseudo my mate sells stolen computers. He has 20-30 atm, all are within 1-2 years old and some are literally brand new never used. Usually sellsfor $200-$500, far better value for money than buying one brand new from a shop or getting someone to make one up from parts, let me know if we can be of help.

[Pseudonym]

Hi Pseudo my son builds computers from componentry, far better value for money than buying one all set up, let me know if we can be of help.

Cheers Rebel. I was actually planning on building it myself. I quite enjoy a bit of nerdiness every so often. I just thought I'd throw it open to get people's opinions on componentry - eg, are SSDs worth the expense? How much RAM do I need? Windows 7 or 8 or 8.1?

 

Hi Pseudo my mate sells stolen computers. Usually sellsfor $200-$500.

Great. What sort of warranty does he offer?

[crazyfacials]

Thank you for not trying to run everything off your SSD (not to mention a big SSD would cost an arm and a leg)

 

Depending on how much video/graphics editing you do it will be vary in what it needs, I found out that some graphics cards are superior for this than the video game ones (the quadro ones if anyone remembers from back in the days )

 

I too prefer to spend about a grand or so and have a machine that can go on for years (heck I am still running a first gen quad core and it is still going hard...I think)

 

however have you thought of switching to a linux OS instead?  my next machine will be one, running a few VMs of Ubuntu and Centos and have found them to be great (can always run things through wine if it is windows only)

[AZIDE]

i used ubuntu for about 4 months in 2011 on my ex-windows vista laptop. all its good for is browsing the net and using openoffice which you can do on windows as well obviously. wine was shit at running most windows programs and most of the linux games are shit too. has linux/ubuntu changed a lot in the last 3 years CF?

I ended up just sorting a pirate copy of XP which i used til computer finally died when i threw it out of second story window onto the road coz was a peice of sht

[crazyfacials]

Server edition and Desktop/Laptop edition is pretty awesome now (unless you want to make your server into a dhcp server, then it's a pain in the ass)

Whatever you get on windows you're bound to find it on linux/max os too now , so that's no issue, office 2007 runs fine on wine as does 2010, 2013 however has issues, the linux operating systems make the best use of your hardware so your device can still run pretty well, also when you kill a task , it actually gets killed, if you get used to using the CLI then your life becomes much easier

[pyro]

Talk to the guys over at Computer Lounge, let them know what your budget it is, what its being used for and they will help you out. You could then build it yourself or pay a little extra for having them build it and get their warranty. Easy as piss putting together PCs these days, you can pretty much just youtube how to do everything.

[Pseudonym]

Cheers guys. Because I'll be using Adobe Premiere, and testing web pages, I need to stick with the crowd, so that really means Windows. I just haven't settled on a flavour - 7 has the familiar interface, but 8.1 is supposedly less resource hungry.

I had a quiet day at work yesterday, so I spent a fair chunk of it reseaching computer builds... ideal.

I discovered by swapping to an AMD processor rather than Intel, I could go from 4 cores to 8, and still bring down the overall price! So here's the current AMD build.

http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/user/Pseudonym/saved/Gn8bt6

The video card I'll have to bring in from overseas, but it's just under US$200.

[Cameron_R]

How does that site work? Do you receive everything separate and you have to plug it all together? Kinda like Ikea for computers? (better get some of those anti static gloves!!)

 

Also, how does it work for things like external ports? USB ports, SD memory card slots, VGA port for your monitor etc?

Do you think you'll need a DVD player?

Can you get software from the site also? Anti virus/firewall/etc software

What does the networking? Wifi/LAN. Do you have that covered (motherboard I assume)?

 

I would go with Windows 8.1 but can't really say why. I use Windows 7 and it's ok. My policy is to get the latest, because you will have support from the software company for the longest duration.

 

Do you get a warranty on the whole thing? or part by part? or nothing?

 

Last question: Why not a laptop? Do you reall want to be tied to your desk forever?

[pyro]

Nice build.

http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview-combo.asp?partid=17830

Same Mobo / CPU, slightly better ram. Same price

GFX card Asus GTX660 - $259, may cost an extra $15-20. Generally warranties on imported gfx cards are tough to get fixed / RMAd here in NZ, without paying, and require them to be shipped back. For a saving of that much its not worth the hassle imo.

http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=21056

 

 

[crazyfacials]

Windows 8.1 is actually good, once you get a program that returns the old start menu (you have a choice of 7/XP/98)  

 

you're also missing a case?

[majorflavazz]

Yeah im just gettin use to windows 8 its algud but ended up downloading a program to make it run like windows 7 coz its easier and im more familiar with it.

SSD drives are way better in every way except pricing, i have corsair 256g , everything is more instant and faster in everyway, boot time goes from 40secs to under 10secs, opening files and transfering things are super fast you will not be dissappointed its like your new computer turned to a super computer lol.

8gig ram is more than enough i have 12gigs - iv opened up heaps of programs and music editing programs and go on internet and watch movies at same time and my lappy didnt even get close to using 3gigs.

Id say go windows 8, 4-8gig memory, 256g ssd, real gud cpu and midrange graphics card is all you should need unless you want awesome graphics for 3d gaming and those games that need a better card. You can get all that for under $1500

My laptop cos me $650 just got it few weeks ago and its an 17" i7 quad core,3630qm , 12g ram,ssd 256g, 2g nvidia card and its super fast and got for cheap price.

[Pseudonym]

Sorry it's taken me a while to respond. I read and appreciated your replies, but haven't had a chance to do address them. (Gymnation 2.0 is getting close and is taking up most of my time, so expect more delayed responses for a while.)

 

How does that site work?

It's simply a price aggregator that lets you sort through all the product available on other retail sites, and tells you if it detects any incompatibilities - eg, you've got an AMD processor, but an Intel motherboard, you dick.

 

Also, how does it work for things like external ports? USB ports, SD memory card slots, VGA port for your monitor etc?

Do you think you'll need a DVD player?

Can you get software from the site also? Anti virus/firewall/etc software

What does the networking? Wifi/LAN. Do you have that covered (motherboard I assume)?

Ports are generally part of the motherboard, graphics card, or case. The only thing I'm missing is a memory card reader, but it's easy enough to grab one and shove it into an external drive bay.

DVD player I'll steal from my old machine. Same with software. Networking is part of the motherboard.

Do you get a warranty on the whole thing? or part by part? or nothing?

Well, you're putting it together yourself, so warranty is on the individual parts.

Last question: Why not a laptop? Do you reall want to be tied to your desk forever?

Because laptops suck unless you really need to be portable. I have a laptop - but for comfortable use, you can't beat a desktop machine.

 

 

Windows 8.1 is actually good, once you get a program that returns the old start menu (you have a choice of 7/XP/98)

And going back to an old Start menu doesn't limit you in other ways?

How is it for navigating the file system? That's probably going to the biggest issue for me if Windows Explorer (or its equivalent) is crap.

you're also missing a case?

There's a case there - the BitFenix Ghost (Black) ATX Mid Tower. It's quite sexy.

major-flavaz wrote:

My laptop cos me $650 just got it few weeks ago and its an 17" i7 quad core,3630qm , 12g ram,ssd 256g, 2g nvidia card and its super fast and got for cheap price.

Man, that IS a good deal. I'm realising that on the one hand the price of a "reasonable" computer has come down since I last bought one. But on the other hand when I add up the specs I want, somehow they still don't end up so cheap!

[Pseudonym]

I asked a particularly nerdy mate about my proposed build. Here's his response:

AMD cpus are pretty inferior to intel's.. basically amd's top of the line cpu struggles to beat most Core i3 cpus.

Also they have "cores"... there are 8 "cores".. in that it has 8 integer units but every 2 units share 1 FPU core unit. So for anything FP Math intenstive its effective 4 cores. and if you haven't patched windows right up, it won't know how to proper put processes/threads on the right core to get more performance. 
 

so thats "two cores" of amd's cpu from bulldozer and up.

anyway go hunt some benchmarks, they generally do encoding and video editing benchmarks. Going to find with anything math related out side of integer math amd's stuff is gonna get raped hard.. not all cores are created equal (and mhz/ghz doesn't matter these days too.)

 

So I went and hunted down some benchmarks...

This guy seems to think AMD's perfectly good to run Premiere on, and the numbers in his benchmarks seemed to back it up:
http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/AMD-FX6300.htm

Here, AMD's FX8350 processor seems generally better than Intel's similarly-priced i5, but not as good as the expensive i7. (The exception being Mathematica, where AMD is shit)
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8350_7.html#sect0

These benchmarks put the FX8350 slightly ahead of the i5 in Premiere, but probably slightly behind in everything else:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2013/compare,3171.html?prod[6660]=on&prod[5944]=on&prod[5758]=on&prod[5754]=on

And this guy doesn't give AMD any time at all...
http://ppbm7.com/index.php/tweakers-page/87-what-pc-to-use/98-what-pc-to-use

It seems like there's probably a marginal lead to AMD in Premiere, but in everything else, Intel wins. So based on all that, I might have another play with an Intel build, and see if I can get the numbers to fit my budget.

[Horsebolone]

Pseudo your build looks fine mate. I'd definitely say go with intel from my own experience. My impression is that guys that go for AMD generally wanna mess around with there computers and overclock them, which most people don't need or want to do. Intel tends to agree with other parts and programs a bit better too. Graphics card looks fine can do more than just run editing programs so you should be sweet, similar model to my own I have the 670. Run your most used programs through the SSD (windows. editing software etc) but save all your files to the hard drive. As for what windows to use, I heard Windows 8 was a bit more ram intensive because of the extra interface it has but could be totally wrong on that. Don't think its gonna be life changing no matter what you choose. Windows 9 is around the corner if you're not in a rush lol. The only thing I would change is I would get a new monitor if the computers mainly gonna be used for editing as you wanna view images in the quality that you're trying to make them but other than that looks good! I'm sure you knew most of this already but thought I would put in my 2c ha :-D

[crazyfacials]

nah it doesn't limit you if you add the old start menu, if anything gives you a lot of power to change it and customize it...here is what it looks like for me, you have the option of 3 menus from memory...the program is called "classic start menu"