I'm currently in the stage of picking components for a new computer, and I'd appreciate it if some of you could have a look at the things I've picked, and tell me if I'm going in the right direction.

Basically, I want a computer that will run Avid Liquid (normal, not Pro) but not yet. I can't actually afford to do the whole thing at once, but I need a new computer pretty quickly. Therefore, I need the basic computer now, with the capacity to upgrade it to a video editing machine later on (two monitors, dedicated capture and storage drives, a quality sound card etc). Therefore, I've picked my components with this in mind, so here it is with rough prices.

AMD Athlon 64 (ADA3800BVBOX) X2 3800+ - £190

*Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe SKT939 RD580 Crossfire ATX - £125

2 x Crucial 1GB DDR PC3200 400MHz - £56 each

2 x Samsung SpinPoint P120S 250GB (RAID 0 setup - just to have a go at it) - £55 each

Club3D Radeon X1300Pro 256MB DDR2 PCI-Express, DUAL DVI-I, HDTV Out - £55

*LiteOn 16H5S Lightscribe Kit retail - £30

Microsoft OEM Windows XP Professional x64 - £90

Plus a decent case (recommendations welcome)

The things with a * next to them are things that seem to do everything I want, but that I don't know a great deal about and haven't put a lot of effort into finding alternatives.

Thanks in advance for any help.

ETA: I've just looked at the system requirements for Avid, and they mention that it requires an AGP Graphics Card, whereas the one I've picked is PCI-E. Is this an issue?

I just rebuilt one similar to yours. But I used the ASrock Dual Sata2 board which has the option of both AGP and PCI-E cards. It is very cheap and many gamers are using it because of it's overclockability and value. Setup is kind of hard for the novice because of the position of the IDE's but with patience it is running very good with my AMD64 X2 3800. The only other board I would consider is the DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D or DFI Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-DR. for SLI setup. Also make sure you get a very good HSF setup with Arctic Silver 5 as your cpu paste. I use a thermalright SI-120 with a 120mm panaflo fan and thermalright backplate..very cool temps. If you want crossfire then the Asus A8R-MVP is the way to go.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157081

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813136152

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813136151

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131584

It may be better not to raid the 2 drives but instead use one as a system drive and one for video... not sure... others may be more wise about this.

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JVC DV5001e (big cam), Sony PC6E (tiny cam), Vinten pro5, PAG light, SM58, Sony ECM50, Sony C-76, 0.5x convertors for sony, Rode video mic, Vegas 7.

Oh I bought it all now. Well it might be a bit different. I got this if you're interested:

Athlon 64 X2 4200+ AM2
Asus M2N-E Geforce 570
Asus ES7300GS Graphics
2GB Crucial PC5300 DDR2 RAM
2 x Samsung Spinpoint 120 250GB Drives
Samsung DVD ROM
Samsung DVD-RW
Antec P180 Case
Antec Truepower II 480W PSU

Bit different then. I decided to go for the single widescreen monitor rather than two for now. And I always have the option to add a second, I'll just have to use th VGA port instead of a second DVI (why the hell do they not do cheap cards with Dual DVI-out?).

I haven't got it working fully yet, because I'm having Window's install issues (there's a surprise), but it's all together and I've gone for the Raid 0 array.