Built a new video editing computer

[Ken Jarstad]

Nice going, Rusty. I was at Costco today and the Sony Blu-Ray players were going for $379 something. Seems like just two weeks ago they were asking $450. Prices seem to heading in the right direction faster than I anticipated. Yea!

I tell myself that the hunt for components is part of the fun. OK - I'm sorry my geek is showing.

I'm not usually a "chatty" guy but this topic is fun for me, too. I tell people that I was a geek before it became "fashionable"

[rustysterling]

Yeah, I'm a geek too. I am lucky enough to be able to make a living being a geek. I loaded up my software last night (Pre and Photo Elements -- I'm still waiting for delivery of my Premier Pro). Finally got to a place where I'm cleaning out the boxes, LOL. So much to recycle, it's scary. But I love this machine.

[jeffterm]

I decided to do an upgrade to a Blu-Ray burner, since my software supports burning Blu-Ray. Got an LG and it will also read HD DVDs as well.

Now you're just toying with us. making us all jealous. Good show though.

[rustysterling]

It helped that I got a VERY NICE bonus from work recently. With the Blu-Ray my cost is now up to about $1700.

[VernonRobinson]

Rusty,
I built essentially the same machine earlier this summer. The ABit board has performed flawlessly. I will eventually try my hand at overclocking. I opted for the Cooler Master 850 case with (9) 120mm fans, a Zalman 110mm CPU Cooler, (2) 2 Gig Patriot 1066 DDR2 memory, 850 watt Rosewill powersupply, the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB SLI video card, Samsung 22 inch monitor and 2 Terabytes of storage in a Raid0 configuration. I did not do nearly as well on the pricing. Ignoring the cost of the case and cooling fans, I still spent $2300. As usual the cost of the components keep dropping. With one kid in college and the other knocking on the door, I need this machine to run for a few years. So far, so good....

Regards,
-Vernon

P.S. Thanks for the tips on the overclocking. I have never done anything like this and it will certainly come in handy.
-V

[rustysterling]

Vernon: Sounds like a very nice machine. I didn't go for the high-end video card like you choose but my card is decent especially for what I want to do. You are right about prices dropping. Since I bought the Q6600 the price has dropped $20 and looks to continue heading down.

As far as overclocking, do it in small steps. I found one of my biggest challenges was the CPU cooler fan shutting off when I did some changes. I fixed that by setting my low RPM setting to 1800 and then in another place the low to 95%. Then I changed the CPU:DDR@ ratio to 1:1.2, and then adjusted the CPU FSB in increments until it just wasn't stable any longer, than I backed off to where it now clocks at 3.1. I'm happy with that. Visit the Abit forum and you find there are a lot of good people there who can offer some good advice on just about anything.

I love the Abit IP35 Pro. It's a great board and I'm very happy with my choice.

[Dave C]

Thanks for posting this Rusty! And the information about PSU, Case etc. I hadn't given them enough thought.
.............Dave