I've been lurking here for quite a while just to get the swing of things.
I have great interest in video editing and have basic skills and quite a bit of knowledge of software and computers in general, but not so much hardware.
I dont want to give you my life story but pretty much want some advice\recomendations on some upgrades. I want to keep my DVD Drive, Hard drive (And get a faster one too) and My Firewire card and such. I mainly want a New Mobo\Processor, Ive been looking at a couple combos and havent really decided\been able to know what Im even lookign at haha.
I want to run Adobe Premiere Pro with After Effects and not lag out and have my PC catch on fire. I mostly edit BMX related stuff and nothing fancy, like nothing fancy AT ALL, no 3D rendering or anything. So anyways, this is what Ive been looking at\considering.
http://www.factorydirect.ca/catalog/...p?pcode=BI3064
And a fast stick of 1GB ram to go with it, and eventually another to match it.

Advice?

Firstly - Go with a known branded Board. These smaller brand oards tend to fail at the worst times. The big brands sell well cause they are reliable. ASUS & Gigabyte and so on are who you should be looking at. Spend a lil more than you think you should as it is the key part to your system.

Second. Get a good Power Supply Unit. One that has good fail safe meassures. - i lost a macjhine that blew up due to a poor psu - took out all the components!

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www.irishmark.net / MyYouTube / www.tandem.tv

Exactly the type of advice I was looking for, thanks!

Any more?

I strongly, strongly agree with both of these points. The motherboard is the most important part of your PC. Do NOT skimp on it.

I'd also advise against Maxtor branded hard drives too - they're ok, but from experience they have had consistently the highest failure rates over several different models. I'm not saying that most of them fail, but I am saying that compared to other brands we use in our workshop such as Hitachi and Western Digital, they don't seem to hold up very well.

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Redefining the concept of low budget filmmaking
Manchester Comedy Forum
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Oh, and if you can afford it, get 2 hard drives - have one for your operating system and applications, and another solely for storing all your video files.

What's your budget?

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Redefining the concept of low budget filmmaking
Manchester Comedy Forum
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Budget? High School student with Partime job at the local Lazer Tag place.
I put together a shopping cart at TigerDirect and it was about 600 bucks for a ASUS or Gigabtye (either) Motherboard Combo, two sticks of 1GB ram and a case with a 400W PSU.

Ive come up with some more questions too. Would that 400w psu be enough to drive the system?
I also do plan on having two hard drive, one for assorted crap like system files and movies (not ones Im editing) And another solely for editing and such.

Other question was about motherboard sizes. Ive seen 'Micro ATX" cases, the tiny cube ones, and mother boards marked as "MicroATX Form Factor" but upon further inspection, the dimensions of the motherboard are much bigger than the case. I dont want one of those ugly little cubes but it seemed to be a good example. All the motherboard Ive looked at are 'ATX'.

I need you guys to tell me if this is all good 'enough' stuff haha.

Mother Board Combo


RAM

Case

Will that Mobo fit in that case?

Ive also heard certain RAM will hold back a system, is this true in my case?


And should I look into a cheaper (50 dollar) sound card?
Will that on board video be good? I dont play games.



Sorry to ask so many questions but this could probably end up being a really good thread for someone else in my situation, I looked around for someone askign the same questions but didnt have much luck.


anyways sorry for the huge post, you guys have been great so far.

On-board audio will be good, on-board video DEFINITELY not.
Also, a 400W PSU will most likely not be enough either.

Okay so I have my RAM, Kingston 1GB, and Im looking to finally choose a motherboard/case.
I was looking at a "Gigabyte K8NE NVIDIA Socket 754 ATX Motherboard and an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2.0GHz Processor with Fan"

And I noticed, right now I have an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ at 2.0GHZ, running with my gig of ram and a 256 stick, a 7200RPM drive with like 90% free space.

Would this be good enough for premiere?

I dont want to go through installing it and blah blah and caputring video and testing it. Would it be unbearably slow?

Socket 754 is not really the best platform for A64. Try 939 instead. 754 is for Semprons. And yes, there's a hell of a difference between A64 3000+ and AXP 2400+ although they both run at 2 GHz. Try it. And by the way in that new system of yours go for dual-channel RAM (that is, 1GB + 256 MB is a no-no), definitely get a dedicated hard drive and perhaps setup a RAID array.

I am definetly getting another stick to match, and a dedicated hard drive in the near future.
Thanks for the advice, all the stuff about the socket numbers etc is what I was wondering. I hate comparing stuff when Im not sure whats better or not haha.

This reminds me of my friends when they go to pick out bike parts, because theres almost as many if not more options to choose and to make sure this fits with that but only when you have gotten this first etc.
Thanks for your patience.


Edit- Also, Im not really the most hardcore of video editors, Im really just going to be fooling around in Premiere Elements a bit and with After Effects, So I dont want to drop a bunch of money then find out Im not as interested as I thought I was and just go back to using it for MSN and Firefox haha. So Im considering getting a 754 board and upgrading later if I find it to hold me back too much, or something.