Computer recommendation for video editing

I am thinking of buying a computer for video editing (Desktop or laptop with Adobe Premiere) what do some of you experienced video nerds recommend? Trying to keep it under $1500 bucks, $2000 would be my absolute limit. Mac or PC, whatever....as long as it does the job efficiently.

I thought my old HP Pavilion Elite 9040n would be able to handle the 7D video files but I was sadly mistaken.

The hardware is dependent on the software you plan to use... ie if you plan to use final cut, you need to go with a mac. If you want to use adobe, you can use either. If you want to use sony vegas, you need to stick with windows. Etc.

Chippy569 wrote in post #11915319
The hardware is dependent on the software you plan to use... ie if you plan to use final cut, you need to go with a mac. If you want to use adobe, you can use either. If you want to use sony vegas, you need to stick with windows. Etc.

Sorry about that....Software will be Adobe Premiere.

I built my own about 6 months ago, and love it ....

3.0GHz Core2Quad, 4GB RAM , 1GB nVidia Video Card, and 2TB of HDD space (Ill add a more HDDs later)

Of coarse, as technology always goes, there are better options available now... but I still only paid about $850 for everything to build mine (including the Windows 7 license).

I got an I7 with 9gb and a u2711 for about $1650. The imac27 with just a dual core and 4gb was $1700 at the time.

I've had it playing 6 tracks of 1080p without skipping a frame. It's ridiculously fast.

10megapixel wrote in post #11915341
Sorry about that....Software will be Adobe Premiere.

you could build a pretty impressive Windows 7 rig for $1500 if you're not afraid of assembling it yourself.

Chippy569 wrote in post #11915473
you could build a pretty impressive Windows 7 rig for $1500 if you're not afraid of assembling it yourself.

Yea, I know nothing about assembling them. There are a couple computer stores around my area but they are very expensive with their Custom computer builds.

You can get a nice prebuilt system for under $1500. Just a 2 minute search got me this which at its default configuration is a pretty good system. http://configure.us.de​ll.com …&model_id=studi​o-xps-9100

If you can hold out a few more months for the new Sandy Bridge parts to get sorted out I would wait as sandy bridge has some pretty impressive performance gains.

core 2 dual 2.5ghz min and 4gb min and bunch of terabytes hdd
if you got the money go with Mac and learn final cut

10megapixel wrote in post #11915530
Yea, I know nothing about assembling them. There are a couple computer stores around my area but they are very expensive with their Custom computer builds.

if you want to build, just go online to newegg or the like.

Apollo.11 wrote in post #11916494
if you want to build, just go online to newegg or the like.

+1. It's not like assembling a rocket ship, or brain surgery, it's just a computer

As long as you get parts that are compatible (e.g. Intel supported motherboard for an Intel processor). RAM is probably the most confusing purchase... as you will need to confirm what type of RAM the motherboard supports (e.g. DDR3) and what speed. Then confirm the voltage the RAM requires fits what the motherboard outputs.... or just find the Compatible RAM chart on the manufacturers website for the motherboard. Connect power and data lines to each device (DVD/BD/HDD drives, video card), and you save yourself hundreds!

Do yourself a favor and check out the Dell Outlet page. They sell refurbished dell PCs and huge discounts. I got a Studio XPS machine with a quad core i7 920, 6GB DDR3, 512MB ATI 4850HD for $850 and that was a year and a half ago.

For serious video editing the hard drive is going to be your biggest bottleneck. Make sure you budget for a faster drive or a RAID 5 setup.

Try and get a Nvidia video card that will work with Adobe's Mercury playback engine, that is, one with CUDA technology. There is a list of suitable cards here.

http://www.adobe.com …S5&device=graph​ic&format=

Thanks everyone for your input.

I'm a novice on most of this computer stuff - how much of a difference will the "new" sandy bridge processors make over the current Dell studio xps 9100 offering for 999 (that includes Intel® Core™i7-930 processor(8MB L2 Cache, 2.80GHz)) that is going on this weekend?

How much of a price difference will the new SB equipment run?