New Computer - reasonably powerful

[rpcrowe]

My wife needs a new computer. I'd like her to get one with enough power to edit some short HD video. I am not looking for a professional video editing setup, just one that will be reasonable fast and powerful. Here are some of the important specs on the computer she may get. What do you think?

Lenovo M82 with Intl Core i7-3770 Processor (3.40GHz, 8mb Cache)
Total Memory: 16GB PC3-12800 DDR3 UDIMM (4GBx4)
Video Adapter: AMD Radeon HD7450 1GB (DVI+DP)
Display Support: Display Port to DVI-D dongle
Hard drive: 1TB 7200rpm SATA

Should we opt for a smaller solid state hard drive and use external hard drives + cloud for storage

[Manfred M]

At a high level, the specs look okay - there is enough RAM and processing power to handle the video work.

Just a few thoughts for you. There is no issue at all with a SSD on the machine; but it needs to be large enough to handle video file that you will be building. You could also look at a secondary internal hard drive for the data. The issue with external drives is that the data rate can be inadequate for the data throughput during rendering process (this is for both the original files that have to be accessed as well as the output file. The clooud is a terrible place for these files as the data rate is far to low. I don't store any video files on the web just because they are so large.

Depending on the software you are using, you might to better with a different graphics card. Premiere Pro (the last few versions) can employ certain nVidia graphics card to do the video rendering (the Adobe site lists these), and even if it does not, there are some hacks available th allow you to use a Cuda enabled card. If your software supports this, it really has a really siginficant impact on your workflow, especially for HD work.

[davidedric]

Hi Richard,

I can't comment on what's needed for video processing, Manfred is your man for that.

However, I have just spent quite a while deciding on my new desk top, with some very helpful input from CiC members. It arrived a few days ago, and so far so good. A few thoughts:

I can't see much advantage in using external drives for storage. High capacity internal drives are not expensive, and you can mirror/RAID them if you wish. Then use an external drive for back up and extra security.

I decided on a 250Gb ssd for programs and my primary Lightroom database, and it certainly flies - so to me it makes sense to buy the biggest in budget.

I also decided to go for a "custom build" supplier. They are uk based so no use to you, but it means I know exactly which components are in the box (which motherboard, for example) and that I have capacity to upgrade should I need to (I always assume that each new generation of software will take more processing power for granted). It does mean that the physical box is quite a bit bigger than the Lenovo you suggest, but I do have the space for it.

Sorry if this rambles, rather

Dave