Some of you know that I recently acquired a new desktop computer that I’ve set aside to be my dedicated video capture and editing machine. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on rigging it out properly in order to get the most out of it. For those interested, here’s the basic technical specs:
Gateway LX6810-01
Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor10 Q8200 (2.33GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2 cache)8
Genuine Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit) with SP11
8192MB 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Memory (4×2048MB Modules)9
Hard Drive 640GB 7200RPM SATA II hard drive with 16MB Cache4
8-Channel (7.1) High Definition Audio with Dolby Home Theater® Sound
Maximum 8GB
Systemboard with NVIDIA® nForce® 720i Chipset (MCP7A-D)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT120 Graphics with 1GB DDR2 Total Video Memory9
In addition, I added a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro video capture card and installed the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium bundle. All together, it’s one powerful machine.
My first capture tests started out well – the first four game videos I captured spooled off perfectly – but then the capture sequence started to lag, hang, and ultimately abort prematurely. A little research revealed that my hard drive wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the HD video being captured to it. Fortunately, this computer has built-in expansion slots for a RAID array, so my next task was to select and acquire two hard drives for that purpose. A little more research, and I chose two 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor disks, which clock in at 10,000 RPMs, 16MB cache, and 3Gb/s data transfer. A quick hot-swap, a RAID 0 config (128K stripe), and I suddenly have a VERY fast hard drive.
As I write, I’ve got Adobe Premiere capturing video footage, and so far there’s been no hesitation or problems. If all goes well, my computer will continue to function at a high rate, and I can really start to think about what I need to do to start work on a Reclaimer machinima.
Sounds good. Can't wait for reclaimer in moving picture format
Are you thinking of remaking a few comics or a side series?
A supplemental series.
You lost me at "A".
Huh. Didn't take much…
A Reclaimer machinima? =O
Run it on Linux, it'll be easier. And it won't stop working after a year.
Yes, I'm a Linux geek. Fear me.
I would have said OSX but its a bit late for Apple now you already have a PC. If you can't downgrade to XP try stripping Vista of all of its crazy graphics features and everything that will otherwise take up 99% of your processing power.
Bloody hell! He has a freaking quad core computer! I don't think Vista is gonna slow it down that much! And Jim for the record, 8GB RAM is bloody overkill! How much did it cost you to upgrade to that?? And I am so jealous. My capture card was an epic failure from the get go
The 8GB was included with the machine, so it didn't cost me anything extra.
Yes, but he's using Intel. That just about make the whole quad core thing redundant.
So the question is, how much did this beast run you? I'm in the market for one right now.
I acquired most of the parts at no cost, due to several lucky circumstances. But the retails cost of the computer, monitor, capture card, and RAID hard disks would have normally run between $1800 and $2000.
Wow that's cheap. My capture card was a massive failure, and we can't get it to work as advertised
Maybe it's not meant to work for xbox… or just not meant to be 
Then Jim, how is it all the dell computers I have looked at are so much less powerful for that price? Would those specs on a laptop really justify the enormous increase in price?
I don't know much about Dell. I've steered clear of that company for quite a while now. Gateway makes a pretty decent machine, and this one is built to be a gamer's box. I'm just using it for video capture. Also, a laptop does not generally make a good capture computer, hence the reason why I have this particular desktop.
Yeah laptops are always expensive in themselves because of their portability. You can get my laptop for $1800 with a 2.5GH Processor centrino dual core, with 2×200GB hardrives and 3GB RAM, or you could get Jim's kick ass desktop with whatever he said for the same. Your choice
Did you build it, Jim, or order it? I liked all the parts, and I'm drooling over the 600Gb Velociraptor Raid configuration. Any chance my Facebook note influenced this?
A little of both, actually. I acquired the base machine, and then performed several hardware upgrades to it.
I agree, though my friend reckons you should have ditched the RAM upgrade and spent the money on solid state hard drives. Apparently they are almost 5 times faster than those velociraptors you got. Anyway, I better leave this site now before drool damages my laptop…. I'm so damn jealous!!!
I just wish mine would work…
The RAM was all included. I also know that solid state disks tend to be pretty good, but I don't know whether they come in SATA models or how they compare against the Velociraptor.
SSDs leave even the mighty velociraptors in the dust, but they're also quite expensive. You still didn't tell me if my note influenced your computer construction.
Alrighty, I found one of about the same price with the config you have of sorts. I'll be looking into it more:
PROCESSORS Intel® Core™ i7-920 processor(8MB L3 Cache, 2.66GHz)
OPERATING SYSTEMGenuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit
MEMORY8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz – 4 DIMMs
HARD DRIVE500GB Data Security RAID 1(2×500GB SATA 7200 RPM HDDs)
OPTICAL DRIVEDual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW
MONITORDell 24 inch S2409W Widescreen Flat Panel
VIDEO CARDATI Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5 1024MB
SOUND CARDSoundblaster® X-Fi™ Xtreme Audio
Alrighty, I found one of about the same price with the config you have of sorts. I'll be looking into it more:
PROCESSORS Intel® Core™ i7-920 processor(8MB L3 Cache, 2.66GHz)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit
MEMORY 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz – 4 DIMMs
HARD DRIVE 500GB Data Security RAID 1(2×500GB SATA 7200 RPM HDDs)
OPTICAL DRIVE Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW
MONITOR Dell 24 inch S2409W Widescreen Flat Panel
VIDEO CARD ATI Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5 1024MB
SOUND CARD Soundblaster® X-Fi™ Xtreme Audio
Intel sucks, as a result, so does your PC.
Not true. Intel is really quite good. There's a reason why they're one of the leading processors in the world, and the Core 2 series is a huge improvement over their previous line of chips.
Your HDs are the all-but-standard 7200 RPM, while Jim's Velociraptors are a good 10,000 RPM, so while you do have the advantage of RAID to improve speed and efficiency, the raptors still leave you in the dust. Everything else looks pretty good though, and I absolutely love the processor choice, even if it is a bit pricy.
Looks kind of like the computer I'm aiming to get myself, except with a mega processor on top. I was looking at the HD 4870 not ten minutes ago.
He already told us that the problem was his HD's speed., not his processing. Hey, Jim. Do you already own a steam account with Half Life2. If not, you should.
I have a Steam account, just not with Half-Life 2 (I own the Orange Box).
All the more reason to buy games for the PC.
Not this machine. Games have a bad habit of ruining your computer, requiring it to do things it shouldn't do, and wrecking certain system configurations in an effort to break rules. You should never, ever install games on a computer that you intend to use for video editing for that very reason. No, this computer is going to be exclusively a video editing station, nothing more.
Building a PC is so much cheaper. Way to go guys! We're all nerds on this website.
PC Power FTW!
The exact same thing I did.
They're expensive, and you don't get nearly the same amount of storage
for your buck. Believe me, two Velociraptors set to RAID 0 striping
are plenty fast enough for what I need.
And what note?
"How To: Build Your Own Computer"
I posted it a month or two ago on Facebook.
Hm, musta missed that one.
I should also point out that my RAID is a secondary hard disk system. My Master HDD is a standard 7200RPM Western Digital drive. I'm using the RAID array for my scratch disk.
The setup you have keeps the raptor array optimized as its own drive, though. All I was saying up above was that having a couple 7200 RPM drives raided together isn't as fast as a couple 10,000 RPM drives raided together.
Granted. I was mostly just adding another detail to the mix.
Holy damn, that machine sounds sweet. How much did it cost you?
Hehe, I got lucky. Special circumstances allowed me to nab the machine for free. The only things I paid for to add to it were the WiFi card, the Intensity Pro card, and the two Velociraptor SATA drives.
O.O envies