Use a good intermediate codec or proxies for editing and almost any machine will do

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Hi guys,

Have been away for a while hence the silence. I was going to have a look at the dell suggestions but most the comments here seem to suggest those pcs are not good enough. I am now thinking of contacting a local pc shop to compare.
Will you guys be able to come up with a list of components for the system if I should go down that route.

Thanks

Lots of RAM, decent CPU, large HDD. Pretty much what's been discussed already. Are Dell's good enough? If going for a pre-build, yes in my opinion. You get what you pay for, and you pay more for any pre-build system.

If self-build, then it's less expensive in some ways (operating system and other software (MS Office) can be expensive), and you should end up with a made to measure PC, however you also have no 'PC' warranty. Your warranty is parts-specific, so many points of contact, and can you trust your mate to bail you out if things go wrong? Does he have the spare kit to test and diagnose your kit? If so, then fine.

Just my opinion, but I wouldn't waste much time with SSD, as you want GB rather than speed. Many of the big HDDs have decent cache sizes, so they will be fast enough for your needs. There might be a reasonable argument for C: being SSD and data on another large drive, but I most of the people I speak to n SSDs aren't impressed enough (yet), due to the slow down factors. It's a speed/capacity/price balance that isn't favourable enough compared to standard HDDs, although the rising price of the latter does make SSDs more favourable at present. You could get a 1TB drive with 64MB cache for the price of a 120GB SSD.

Quad core CPU or better is pretty much all I recommend. Plenty of cache on the CPU is a good thing.

RAM should be 8GB or more, and in as few sticks as possible. It's preferable not to max out the motherboard mem slots from my experience, so two sticks in a four slot mobo is the way to go, but you might find that 4 x 4GB is better than 2 x 4GB if you need more than 8GB. Some motherboards don't care for all slots in use and problems have occurred in the past. If it's triple channel, then 3 x 4GB seems the best way to go (12GB).

The PSU wattage is probably overkill but the nice thing about Corsair PSUs is that they are quiet. I hate noisy PCs After market coolers are also likely to be quieter than stock coolers.
Building from scratch I'd probably go for a Corsair with a lower wattage for such a system but pcspecialist only have a limited range of PSU options and that seemed the best of the bunch. But at least there are PSU and cooler options, something you don't really get with the big box shifters like Dell, HP etc.

You can buy a system without the OS from pcspecialist.co.uk so if you get a student edition of Win7 that will save you a few pennies.

Personally I don't have a problem with PSU's and cooling - a CPU running at 100% usage for long periods when processing videos seems to be more an issue, so I always clean out the CPU's fan and heat sink regularly. A dirty fan and heat sink can cause real problems when editing and processing/rendering HD videos.

Having had a Dell PC that sounded like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier I now like my PCs to be quiet so my last one was a self build with a whisper quiet Antec PSU and after market cooler. The after market cooler means that my i5 CPU never goes above 60C even rendering video with all 4 cores going at 100%. Prior to that the weedy little stock cooler would let the CPU hit 80C and was quite noisy. The loudest thing now on my PC is the hard drive

Here you go op http://i.imgur.com/yTPmK.png You'll be able to get a better graphics card from amazon though, better still if you get the student version of 7.

My Dell Vostro is as quiet as a mouse, except when the DVD drive spins up with a multi-session data DVD disk loaded LOL!

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the input. Based on all the suggestions and other information gathered on the net here is what I have come up with so far. Please let me know if the various components are compatible or if better alternatives can be suggested.

Thanks


Asus P8H67 R3 H67 Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard - £68.23 (Quickfind - 260484)

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor - £138.06 (Quickfind - 251596)

Coolermaster Silencio 550 with GX 550W PSU - £79.15 (Quickfind - 267881)

PowerColor HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI Dual Mini DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card - £105.82 (Quickfind - 248745)

G-Skill 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz RipjawsX Memory Kit CL9 (9-9-9-24) 1.5V - £31.80 (Quickfind - 264750)

Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM - £87.44 (Quickfind - 173804)

Pioneer DVRS19LBK 24x DVD±RW DL & RAM with Labelflash SATA Optical Drive - Retail Box Black with Software - £14.88 (Quickfind - 250228)

Benq G2420HD Full HD TFT LCD 24" HDMI Monitor - £108.11 (Quickfind - 169099)

Case?