component recommendations for new system

[jimstamos]

am building a new system. want to prepare for hd down the line. what motherboard brands/model numbers do those in the know recommend.also, what video card, what kind of ram and what brand.
harddrives im probably going with west dig. sata .
any input appreciated

[STORMDAVE]

How much are you willing to spend??

[jimstamos]

components

not a real factor.
i have a supplier where i can get great prices and they charge literally nothing to build it.

[STORMDAVE]

Are you looking at an SMP (Dual Xeon's for example) solution or a single CPU solution?
If you ever do HD, are you going to do HDV MPEG2 files or Canopus HQ? Or uncompressed HD?

There are alot of factors to consider before building a new computer :)

[Jerry]

am building a new system. want to prepare for hd down the line. what motherboard brands/model numbers do those in the know recommend.also, what video card, what kind of ram and what brand.
harddrives im probably going with west dig. sata .
any input appreciated

What editing program are you using? Edius? Premiere?
Do you use AE, Photoshop etc. See where we are going with this.

If you can wait until the end of July, chip prices will be dropping drastically.
A new batch of chips are coming with Core 2 chips having 1333 fsb like the
Xeons. The catch is, the new Xeons have been mentioned to be going to 1600fsb.
Check this article out.
http://www.pcstats.com/NewsView.cfm?NewsID=58654

And the new P35 chipset looks very promising.
Hold off a couple of weeks and look n see.
I prefer Asus and Supermicro boards. Ram is changing to DDR 3 on some boards and others will run DDR2 as well as DDR3.
As far as video cards that is a tough one. Since you are preparing for the future, the issue of Xplode is a dead one so I wouldn't buy a card based on getting RT out of an obsolete program. Get the biggest and fastest you can afford. Direct X 10 is the key word now. Each MFG has it's issues with Edius. My ATI 1950x has issues with running a PCI-x card and the NX pci-e
at the same time with my mobo. However, my Nvidia Quadro FX 1500 has no issue and seems to free up throughput for my 3ware 9550sx -mi12 and also my Adaptec 39320 Scsi card (not at the same time).

Make sure you ask the integrator if they have built editing machines. Although it is easier these days, there still are little quirks that must be 'finessed' before the things work properly. If they have not and they are friends of yours, you may want to have an integrator familiar with editing machines build your system....just to keep them friends.

Do your research and take your time, it will all pay off in the end with the sytem you want, and a system that works.

[jimstamos]

componentnt recomm.

are you saying i wont get realtime with xplode effects with a new setup?one of the reasons i love canopus products so much, edius currently , is because everything is realtime, ive had up to 9 layers with no hiccups.
the last thing i want now is to have to wait

[STORMDAVE]

Edius will be as fast as your system is. It will fly like a rocket.

If you don't really care about being upto date on graphic cards, such as DirectX 10 support etc, then you can get one of the X1xxx ATI cards, or the X800XL which seems to be a favorite here. It's a decent card and Xplode Pro will be RT...and there are PCIe versions of it.

[jthomas]

I built my new system with a Gigabyte P35-DQ6 board with an E6600 cpu running at 3GHz. It supports my DvStorm 5 volt card which was a plus for me. I used an ATI x800XL PCI-e video card and have perfect overlay and Xplode Pro is RT. The X800XL is an older card but can still be found, some of the newer cards may work as well. If you are going to stay DV for a while this works great, it runs everything I throw at it RT. The P35-DQ6 will also support the upcoming 45nm processors and video cards can always be upgraded.

[STORMDAVE]

The Quad Core QX6700 was on sale the other day for $299...End of July looks bright for the original poster :)