Due to random circumstances, I started working as a video editor in Edius, turned out I'm not too bad at it.
I would be bringing some work home, so I wondered what's the most important hardware for rendering.
My config right now is Phenom II X4 965, stock, 4gb DDR3 1600 (Windows sees it as 1333 for some reason), Radeon 6870, Cooler Master TX3, and an old Sata (one i think) HDD.

So i was thinking of getting one 1TB Sata 3 HDD, maybe a better cooler to make the rendering at night as quiet as possible.
Are those WD green HDD's ok for that, i think they spin at 5400 iirc, and slow down even more if neccessary. Is that ok for render?
Also, I would like to avoid installing fresh Windows and everything, i would just add that new HDD and store raw files and renders on it, so can i keep the old HDD for Windows and have a few gb's on it? Is it important for the Windows partition to be as free as possible? Curently i have like 4gb free out of 40 on C.

It's mostly weddings and birthdays and such, hour and a half to 3 hours of material, we render blurays as well.. At work, with Phenom X6, it takes about 6 hours to render a bluray..

Any other advices are welcome..

I've done some intensive video encoding, mostly ripping DVDs and converting them to a more compact format. What you need is a strong CPU, the rest of the system didn't seem to have that much of an impact. I used my laptop for the encoding and despite it having an energy efficient (=slower) HDDs and RAM it still managed to kick ass of most comparable desktops. If you use a software/codec that supports hardware accelerated encoding a compatible GPU might come in handy too.
I've read some horrible stories about WD Green's unreliability, those drives are not meant to be run 24/7. It might have been exaggerated or maybe the problem is fixed by now, but I'd certainly be careful here.

Ram, the pc will recognise what the motherboard supports.

Green HD's run slower, thats how their made.

You ( IMHO ) need a NAS for storage, failing that, 2 Tb drives in the box are the sweet spot ATM.

My advice, run a SSD for your OS, Run a ( number of ) fast 2 TB for your swap file, storage ( steam, etc )

Run a NAS for bulk storage for your completed projects.

But feel free to do what you like, thats just my professional advise.

I use a 320gb caviar blue for my movies @ 1080p while using 3.2ghz athlon II x4, 4gb ddr3, and a 6670.

Quote from Sueycide_FD :

I use a 320gb caviar blue for my movies @ 1080p while using 3.2ghz athlon II x4, 4gb ddr3, and a 6670.

How do you get all your movies on a 320 gig ?



Mind you, at least the US offers better streaming than NZ does.

Cheers guys, btw what's NAS?

Also, never owned one of those more expensive cpu coolers, are they quiet when cpu is pretty loaded? Will i gain anything by just changing the fan on my CM TX3 cooler for a more quiet one?

I do post production for an animation studio, working with 16bit TIFF files (sequence files).
My configuration is:
i5 2500K
8gb 1600mhz DDR3
1tb Seagate Barracuda SATA3 7200rpm 64mb cache
MSI 560GTX
Monitors: Dell U2412M (preview) + LG W2242T (flow)

SSD would be needed but not essential. SSD does make rendering faster, but it doesn't add any more buffer space for your frames.
More RAM = more render cache/buffer. Or in other words, the more RAM you have the more frames you can preview at a time. 4gb isn't enough to work with because windows is a resource hog. And also quad processors need at least 6gb of ram to use all it's 4 cores for rendering.

Anyway, what kind of monitor(s) do you have? I would recommend using 2 monitors, preferably 16:10 (1920x1200+) monitors, because then you can have tools on the screen while viewing 100% of the image (HD).

I can recommend Noctua NH-D14 and NH-U12P coolers, they are both extremely quiet yet very good at overclocking.

If you're going to get a new rig at some point, 3930K CPU is born to do video encoding.

Some nice tips, thanks. Ideally it would be to have an SSD for Windows partition, and 1tb, 2tb, 7200 quality hdd for renders and raw files, and to add an extra 4Gb of ram (how are they behaving these days if two sticks aren't from the same manufacter?)
Also is this Noctua any good?

NH-D14 is quite expensive.. around 70 euros here.

If you will be processing some highly important data, you might consider getting two HDDs and put them into a software mirrored RAID. You'll lose half the capacity, but you won't lose any data if one of the drives fails.

RAMs should not be a problem as long as you have sticks with same frequency and DRAM timing, chipsets are usually smart enough to pick a working settings.