1. #1

    Video editing w/ gaming on the side

    I'm looking into building a PC for a friend who mostly does video editing with gaming on the side. I don't really know what would be beneficial for something like that, so I figured I'd get some opinions. She has a budget of ~$800, and with a quick foray into the PC part picker website, I managed to throw something together for $850.
    PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

    CPU: Intel Core i7-2700K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($289.99 @ Best Buy)
    Motherboard: EVGA 120-SB-E682-KR Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($84.98 @ Newegg)
    Memory: Kingston 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($74.99 @ Newegg)
    Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1.5TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($103.02 @ NCIX US)
    Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7770 1GB Video Card ($109.99 @ Newegg)
    Case: Cooler Master Elite 370 ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.98 @ NCIX US)
    Power Supply: Thermaltake 500W ATX12V Power Supply ($49.99 @ Mwave)
    Optical Drive: Samsung SH-222BB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($16.98 @ Outlet PC)
    Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) ($90.36 @ Amazon)
    Total: $850.28
    (Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
    (Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-08-30 01:32 EDT-0400)

    I was just curious how this would be. I'm aware i7's are pretty good versus i5's for video encoding and such, which is why I went with the i7. Beyond that, I am uncertain. She's also looking for quite a bit of storage. No overclocking and gaming is secondary. I'm operating under the assumption she can reuse her monitor, keyboard, speakers and mouse.

  2. #2
    Deleted
    I wouldn't recommend buying a Z68 mobo at this point. Z77's arent that expensive.

  3. #3
    With that taken into consideration, and taking a few other liberties, I scraped this together.
    PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

    CPU: Intel Core i7-2700K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($289.99 @ Best Buy)
    Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Pro3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($102.55 @ Newegg)
    Memory: Kingston 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($74.99 @ Newegg)
    Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($86.99 @ Amazon)
    Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7770 1GB Video Card ($109.99 @ Newegg)
    Case: Cooler Master Elite 370 ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.98 @ NCIX US)
    Power Supply: Antec 380W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($38.99 @ SuperBiiz)
    Total: $733.48
    (Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
    (Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-08-30 10:23 EDT-0400)

    I realize it isn't meant for overclocking and I've got an unlocked CPU, it was a $10 upgrade from the locked CPU below it, plus overclocking should help extend the life of the PC (the one this is replacing is pushing 7 years). I will just take a disk drive from the old PC, and I can get Windows 7 Pro for $80 at the uni here.

    That taken into consideration, the budget is ~$720. Currently my only concern is the PSU, and potentially the hard drive. 380W seems low, but supposedly is sufficient to power the components. The hard drive, ultimately I just don't really know the difference between Caviar Black and Caviar Blue, but I can find that on my own.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterNewbie View Post
    The hard drive, ultimately I just don't really know the difference between Caviar Black and Caviar Blue, but I can find that on my own.
    With WD Caviars you can read it like this:
    green = eco, green, whatever... low power and low speed
    blue = plain/normal/average...
    black = fastest and the best

    Depending on what kind of video editing your friend is doing, either fast HDD or fast CPU is the most important piece of the puzzle. You definitely should swap back to Caviar Black because it'll be around 20% faster in moving large files (raw video) around. If your friend is working on very big HD projects, let's say for example hour long documentary recoded with 1080p camera, going for RAID0 with two discs could be justified to increase disc access speed. On the other hand if the video editing is mainly very short clips that are effect-heavy and she's working mostly on AfterEffects or similar program doing frame-by-frame tweaking one HDD should be enough and 120-250GB SSD for the work files would be more beneficial.

    Also you should probably switch the CPU to i7-3770K instead of i7-2700K. It's faster, newer, and uses less electricity.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

  5. #5
    PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

    CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($289.99 @ Newegg)
    Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Pro3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($102.55 @ Newegg)
    Memory: Kingston 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($74.99 @ Newegg)
    Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($98.99 @ SuperBiiz)
    Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7770 1GB Video Card ($109.99 @ Newegg)
    Case: Cooler Master Elite 370 ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.98 @ NCIX US)
    Power Supply: Antec 380W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($38.99 @ SuperBiiz)
    Total: $745.48
    (Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
    (Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-08-30 16:23 EDT-0400)

    A RAID is currently out of the question, even if it would be justified. Same for an SSD; the set up is already over budget.

    Any other thoughts? Could this get improved any more without going over $750?

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