New PC for Vegas

[Edward Troxel]

Leslie, I agree with you. So it may be worth looking at current AMD/ATI cards instead of old nVidia cards. I would steer clear of the Intel HD cards at this time, though.

[Andy Tejral]

Wow! My head is spinning! I read those two old threads and find I really don't know what conclusions to draw.

I looked at a bunch of those sites and they're just too pricey. More than I need I think.

But I was looking at this one: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1045283-REG/hp_f1l58ut_aba_z230_x_e3_1230v3_8gb_500gb_windows7p64_windows8_1p.html
I wanted to stay under $1000 but maybe the added cost is worth it? With 3T internal drive, wifi and card reader--$1300. But well under the $2500 for a custom build.

What do you think?

[Leslie Wand]

andy, what's your main format you're editing - that could be quite a factor in deciding the pc you need. eg. dv you can edit on almost any pc, 4k would be a whole new ballgame....

[Andy Tejral]

Eh... somewhere in between. I do have a lot of DV footage that I still hope to use one day... But various HD formats: HDV, AVCHD and whatever my Canon t4i shoots.

At the moment, I'm just producing for youtube. I've been doing 720p24 to save on upload time. Plenty of quality for my purposes.

I don't do 4K output but I do have high res input! My time lapse videos are shot with 3k or 4k input. I see this has a great impact on preview ability.

Right now, my computer choices are an old Core2Quad Q8400 2.66Ghz winXP--vegas 9 (some kind of AMD graphics card) and my newer i3 2.4gHz.laptop Win 7-vegas 12. For rendering, the old computer is somewhat faster. But for previewing video, its pretty much a draw. With proxies, I can just about edit on the i3. But without, the old computer can't keep up.

So, I want something better than those. Money IS pretty tight. I was really hoping that old computer would work but it just won't. I suspect a hard drive might be having a problem.

So, emphasis is on CHEAP but with a GOOD (not great) editing experience. Full speed preview is more important that final rendering speed.

Does that make any sense at all?

[Jeff Harper]

Originally Posted by Andy Tejral

But I was looking at this one: HP Z230 Series F1L58UT Tower Workstation F1L58UT#ABA B&H Photo

Looks good for the money, Andy. You would want to consider adding 8GB of Ram for a total of 16GB. B&H can probably do that for you and add to price.

The processor looks decent for what you do, but truthfully am not familiar with it.

Personally I would just keep your case and replace the MOBO, processor, ram, etc. New 8 core processors are coming very soon which is what I would want.

[Andy Tejral]

From some research, that Xeon is similar to the i7 4770 (?) but without graphics. So, its cheaper and I'm not paying for something I'm not going to use--seems like a good deal.

I'm just ordered that computer. I added a 3TB drive but I didn't get more ram, I can add that if it seems mandatory. Wish me luck!