Hey all, I'm new to the boards. Built about half a dozen PCs for various uses but never built one specifically for video editing and have VERY LITTLE knowledge of Avid. Told a friend I would build him a system for video editing/film production and encoding. He uses Avid as his main program at uni. Bearing in mind his budget is only £600  (I realise this sounds limited), he's doing a film course at Uni so its more of a hobby with maybe the odd little bit of work but obviously you get what you pay for.

First things first. Does Avid MC REALLY not work with any AMD CPUs? I don't really understand how a piece of software can be bound to the CPU brand, seems pretty odd. If it wasnt for this I'd put a Phenom X4 II 920 in his rig as they seem to perform well in rendering and encoding benchmarks, better than the Intel equivelent in terms of price. Same goes for the GPU, I'm pretty sure the Quadro FX570 is a much less powerful card than price point equivelants such as the 9800GTX+ etc. seems a shame AVID have such a limited range of compatible hardware. Anyway here's my proposed build I was hoping for some feedback...

CPU: either Q6700 £139 OR a Q8200 £137: the Q6700 is faster and has twice the cache size but the Q8200 is newer technology and smaller die. I think the 6700 is the way to go. Can anyone recommend a BUDGET heatsink as its OEM? Won't be overclocking.
MOBO: MSI P45 Neo-F £79...open to suggestions here but bear in mind the budget is tight so nothing much more expensive.
GFX: Nvidia Quadro FX570 £107 I'm at pains to pay so much for this card when a 9800GTX+ or HD4850 would probably blow it out of the water at the same price point...how bad IS the supported for non-Quadro cards, anyone know?
RAM: 4GB Corsair TwinX 800mhz CL5 (x2) i.e. 8GB of RAM, told you need a lot for rendering and video stuff £64
DVDRW: Samsung 22x DVDRW £15.50
HDD: 640GB Hitachi (is it worth getting two smaller physical drives? I've heard Avid doesn't like partitions) £48
PSU & Case: Coolermaster Elite 330 with CM eXtreme Power 460W PSU Bundle £53 open to suggestions here if you think money could be saved. The GPU runs off the MOBO and doesnt need the 6pin PCI-E from the PSU so I don't think it will need that much power. Was thinking I might get a budget case (as he doesnt care at all about aesthetics) and put a silverstone 400w (@ £35) to save a few quid. What do people think?
OS: Vista Ultimate 64 bit (already got)

Total: £504.50

Leaving £95 for a monitor (not decided what size to go for yet, any suggestions for this budget?), Heatsink and any tiny extras

Thanks in advance for any help.

I'm not sure on the "why's" and "how's" regarding Avid's incompatibility with other cheaper components other than the fact that for a very long time now Avid designs and tests it's software and hardware in a limited amount of configurations to ensure a quality build is released.  There isn't really enough man-power in QA to test all the iterations of what is available no matter how comparable it may be.  Also Avid has a long reputation of "just working" for very demanding clients (such as feature films and major broadcasters) where often times the editor at the controls knows about as much about computer tech stuff as someone's grandmother.  Avid software/hardware is designed and tested on these limited systems to allow people to do the job they do without worry. 

When a hobbyist jumps in the deep end of the pool there are two choices - start paddling or sink.  So, in short it may be possible to build a budget system to run Avid, but understand that often times it is not going to work as well as a completely certified system.  With an unqualified system, just about any issue that is encountered may be addressed as "well, your graphics card is not supported" or "AMD are not qualified" - as long as your friend/customer is aware of those risks and willing to accept any inconsistent behaviors in the performance as such.

With all that said:

Nobull:

he's doing a film course at Uni so its more of a hobby with maybe the odd little bit of work but obviously you get what you pay for.

If he's using an Academic version of the software (which I'm sure he is), he won't be able to be paid for any of it.  It's in the EULA. 

I don't know much about all the numbers and who-zi-whats-its, but regarding RAM, Avid is only going to see 3GB max (if the 3GB switch is enabled) - more RAM will help not bog the system down if he is multi-tasking though.

HDD:  It would be better recommended to go with a smaller size System/OS drive and then install a second (or even third) drive for Media.  For example, I have a MacPro system with 3x 1TB internal media drives and a 250GB OS drive.  It is highly unadvised to put media on the OS drive.  

Monitor:  For that money, you're not going to get a very large monitor and any respectable Avid system usually has a dual-monitor setup.  Largest I've ever worked on were 2x 24" monitors.  (that was too big)  I prefer 2x 22".  But not less than 2x 20"

Many people who frequent have built home-made systems and may be able to chime in, but I just wanted to forewarn of some of the issues you may face down the road.

Kenton, you should store that post for the next time this comes up.  It's about the best explanation I've seen.  There are a few things to clarify for Nobull though.

Nobull:

First things first. Does Avid MC REALLY not work with any AMD CPUs?

No, that's not true.  Older AMD CPUs without Intel's SSE2 and SSE3 extensions will not run Avid, because Avid uses intsructions from those extensions in their code.  You'd be hard put to find an AMD CPU in the shops nowadays that wouldn't support Avid, but as Kenton said, Avid hasn't tested those CPUs.

Nobull:

CPU: either Q6700 £139 OR a Q8200 £137: the Q6700 is faster and has twice the cache size but the Q8200 is newer technology and smaller die. I think the 6700 is the way to go. Can anyone recommend a BUDGET heatsink as its OEM? Won't be overclocking.

I should think not either!  Overclocking has the potential to cause slow insidious thermal damage to the die, and for that reason should be avoided for a work PC.  For the same reason, while I can't speak for brands on the UK market, get the best heatsink that you can afford.  Cheaper is not better.

Like you, I'd probably go for the Q6700 too.

Nobull:

MOBO: MSI P45 Neo-F £79...open to suggestions here but bear in mind the budget is tight so nothing much more expensive.

Probably OK.  I used to use the Neo series in the past, but I'm currently using Gigabyte.  No real reason except availability when I wanted to upgrade if I'm totally honest with myself.

Nobull:

GFX: Nvidia Quadro FX570 £107 I'm at pains to pay so much for this card when a 9800GTX+ or HD4850 would probably blow it out of the water at the same price point...how bad IS the supported for non-Quadro cards, anyone know?

You vary from nVidia at your own peril, and from Quadro knowing that you'll almost certainly have to make compromises to get it functioning reliably.  Avid uses the openGL library as implemented by nVidia to speed handling of effects and realtime playback.  There have been users here post about success or partial success with ATI cards, but the more you diverge from "Avid approved" the harder it will be for you to get support.

Nobull:

RAM: 4GB Corsair TwinX 800mhz CL5 (x2) i.e. 8GB of RAM, told you need a lot for rendering and video stuff £64

Here's where I diverge from Kenton.  My specs notwithstanding if you're using Vista you will need 8 GB.  Avid will only use a maximum of 4 GB of that, but the OS will cheerfully eat up the rest.  If you're using XP there's no point in more than 4 GB, of which programs can only use just under 3 GB.

The rest is pretty uncontroversial, except that as Kenton says you will need a small boot and program drive in addition to your current HDD.  It need not be fancy or fast but should be reliable, and you will probably find sub 250 GB more than enough.

I also think that you're sailing close to the wind with your P/S.  If I was building a system like yours I would go for 600W or better.  I certainly wouldn't go less than 460W.

"... you should store that post for the next time this comes up. ..."

Sheesh ... there were 3 separate posts just today asking nearly the exact same DIY questions.  Two of them were right next to each other for a while too.

Welcome to the club/forum Nobull, and check this while not forgetting to use the top right search box!

Randall L Rike:

"... you should store that post for the next time this comes up. ..."

Sheesh ... there were 3 separate posts just today asking nearly the exact same DIY questions.  Two of them were right next to each other for a while too.

I couldn't agree more!

Thanks for your help and replys guys. I've spend a good few hours trawling through old threads and posts to learn what has and hasn't worked for other people. Seems like a helpful and active community :)

Hi, I have to confess that I haven't read the entire thread so apologies for any duplication in my answer, but I could identify with your thread title as its pretty much what I just did.

So, in case it helps I'll list the machine I just built that I can confirm works with Avid Xpress Pro 5.5 and now (thanks to the free 14day trial) MC3.5 - I'm editing HD with it (several layers of video DVCPRO HD) and it renders effects as quickly as my old system did with SD.

CPU
Intel Q6600 Quadcore CPU G0 Serial Number 2812235082
£154.86
(scan)

DVD Drive
LG GH22NS40 22X SATA BLK OEM Serial Number 0512273650
£13.79
(scan)

Motherboard
ASUS S775 INTEL P45 ATX DDR2 A L 1
£91.88
(dabs)

Graphics Card
Nvidia Quadro FX560
£20
(ebay)

System Hard Drive
WD Caviar SE16 320GB S300 16MB 1
£37.58
(dabs)

Case/PSU
Antec Sonata & 500W PSU
£60

Memory
Kingston ValueRam - DDR2 2GB 5400
Had already but avail quite reasonably

I was on a budget and there may be ways of stretching your spend to make it work slightly better, but the thing I was looking for when I researched were actual systems that actually work! This is one you can confirm works. I currently use Lacie Firewire external HDDs for media but plan to fill the case up with 1T drives once they come down even more in cost...

Obviously no SW listed and no peripherals such as monitor etc but hope this helps. (XP Pro SP2 btw)

People have used GeForce cards with mixed success. Sometimes they work great, other times not. There are different tricks to get them to work, which often but not always help.

IMHO, I think the Quadro FX REQUIREMENT is a legacy of selling high-priced turnkey PC systems. The Mac version of Avid MC runs on GeForce chipsets, so clearly it is possible.

Thanks Seanski, great help to me. What sort of performance do you get out of it, is it acceptably fast for moderate work? Kind regards

95 quid should easily get you a pair of 21'' Mitsubishi or similar crt monitors on ebay - they still work great if you have the room, and he'll thank you for the xtra screen real estate. You should be able to pick up a quadro FX 1500 cheap on ebay too, which I believe is still a qualified card.

Performance is great. On Xpress Pro I don't think the software was utilising my quad cores, but MC appears to (non-scientific approach of watching the performance graphs in task manager!) - certainly bobs along and I've been doing quite intensive effects processing. Though I have to say I haven't used some of these toys before so can't compare.

At work we have some older Xpress Pro (3.5) machines running twin xeon workstations and mine outperforms them. We also have brand new HP workstations running Quantel editing and image manipulation kit and mine definitely outperforms their software only offering. - though that's not comparing apples with apples.

As for the quadro, yes you don't need it but Avid is somewhat locked down and refuses to allow fullscreen playback on the wrong Geforce card. Initially I built this system with an XFX Geforce 9600 card (at £90) because of the amount of processing cores it had. But it wasn't being used properly by avid (sold it for £50 on ebay and bought the quadro). Beware of paying extra for these gaming cards when you can pick up slightly older workstation class kit on ebay - my quadro card was £200 when it came out and I saw several of them up for "Buy It Now" £20 each ! - So, yes, geforce gaming cards work but I feel you don't need to pay the extra for them - people will talk about softquadro and rivatuner but again, you need fairly specific cards for that to work properly and you may as well buy an old quadro in the first place!

Hope that helps.

If you need a specific benchmark testing let me know!

Also, forgot to say - I also needed to buy an old soundblaster card as Avid (as usual) didn't like the motherboard onboard audio.I picked an old Creative Soundblaster LS card up for less than a tenner on ebay. - am sure a newer card would be OK too, as long as it is a creative.

just to give an idea of my setup - Budget-R-Us :) - I have my old Sony 14" portable TV hooked up as a second screen with the quadro feeding it via the S-Video out (via a DVD recorder which turns the S-video into a 15year old 14" TV compatible scart signal) this gives a great Full screen preview and allows me to see any field jitter from any stilled images/captions etc. - well I say it does, it probably doesn't because the quadro feed is a single field preview, but I also have to option to view via firewire via my camcorder's DV-AV feature - again, feeding the TV via the DVD recorder. - I'm using the DVD recorder as a router but with the option to record an 'offline'' version. The DV feed is a slightly delayed feed but good for final checking (and dumping to tape if required)

One thing MC does better is displays the correct aspect ratio on the 14" - the Xpress used to fill the screen - bearing in mind I work in PAL/16:9 DV or 16:9 HD that's not that useful.

I've also managed to complete the workflow and get some HD out the other end (always helps) via quicktime export - and have succesfully posted HD on youtube... phew!

Sorry, bit of a brain dump that but they were some things that came back to me as I edited this morning.... now, gotta go do the day job!

Thanks for all the input Seanski. I think I'm going to go with an FX560 on your recommendation, only £25 on ebay, he can always upgrade the GPU at a later date if he feels his needs are increasing. The best thing about the 560 is it has s-video out so can be linked to a tv. The newer Quadros don't have that and my mate said he'd like to check his colour etc. through a tv.

Your joking soundcards are an issue as well? They aren't even mentioned in the official system requirements list. Was just going to go with onboard audio as its more than capable of doing the job compared to a cheapo ancient soundblaster. If that doesn't work I'll do as you did and grab a creative SB off ebay, you can get em from like a fiver. Any idea specifically which Creative sound cards work, or are most of them ok?

Benchmarks for the FX560 would be grand.

Thanks again.

Hi,

Nobull:

Your joking soundcards are an issue as well? They aren't even mentioned in the official system requirements list. Was just going to go with onboard audio as its more than capable of doing the job compared to a cheapo ancient soundblaster. If that doesn't work I'll do as you did and grab a creative SB off ebay, you can get em from like a fiver. Any idea specifically which Creative sound cards work, or are most of them ok?

Do a forum search for "realtek" and you'll get an idea of what to avoid.  That said, the problem isn't universal.  I've got Realtek audio on my laptop and it plays with Media Composer without any trouble.

The Creative cards mentioned most often as fixing the problem are the Audigy 2 and Audigy SE. 

good luck,
Carl

As I recall, the SE and Audigy value cards do not support ASIO 2, whereas the Audigy 2 and $$$ (up) does.

MC does not take advantage / need  ASIO 2 ?