The simple rule, get the fastest most powerful computer you can afford.

Intel i7 multi core 3+ GHz CPU Or AMD High end CPU (3+ GHz). Currently Intel is on top of the speed demons.
Pick one near the top of this chart.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Fastest GPU you can afford. Minimum of 1 GB of on board RAM.
Pick one near the top of this chart.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Windows 7 64 Bit OS.

At least 6 GB of Ram 6-16 GB recommended. Fastest speed. Triple channel or Double channel (depends on your CPU architecture).

Plenty of Hard drive space 1 TB and up. Hard drives are the limiting factor for computer performance. 10,000 RPM is the fastest.
For Powerdirector, there is a big question about using Solid State Drives, Not enough free space on many of them.
Powerdirector needs about 100 GB of breathing room on the OS drive.

BluRay Burner. (if you have a BluRay burner, you do not need a DVD burner). BluRay Burners can burn and read all current disk formats.

External Hard drives for backup and external storage.

Ports: USB 3.0, Firewire, e-sata, ???

Yes, to all of the above. e-sata not necessary
Some USB 2.0 ports, there is still a lot of USB 2.0 stuff around. Such as Keyboards, Mice, Printers and Scanners.

Monitor: Your choice, Prefer Wide Screen 1920x1080.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Thanks VERY much - this is the kind of stuff I was looking for -- really helped.

I looked at the video and cpu sites and picked the following (in my budget):
CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K @ 3.20GHz
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 - The Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 graphics card has 1,280 MB of GDDR 5 RAM.

I then looked to see if I could have these added by a major computer mfr (e.g. Dell) but it doesn't look like it. I thought about building my own computer (I checked out the tutorials and guides on tom's hardware site) but don't want to get into that.

Does anyone know how I could get the computer built w/ an appropriate motherboard, the above items, DDR3 or DDR5 RAM, etc. without my having to build it by myself?

Thanks,
Bill

Hi,
Well I got my system built by a 'Mom and Pop' operation, they had a package deal with some extras i didn't need ( I had DVD burner, and Blu-ray burner, and a 1.5 terabyte hard drive on my old one so I just had them remove theree stuff and put mine in, and I picked my graphic card for the system and it worked. I have an Asus motherboard with i7 2600 @3.4GZ processor and a Geforce 560ti Graphic card and 12 GB memroy on windows 7 Premium 64Bit and don't have any problems (so far..touch wood hairy wood the best).
Jim Intel i7-2600@3.4Gz Geforce 560ti-1GB Graphic accelerator, windows 7 Premium 12GB memory

Visit GranPapa64's channel for your YouTube experience of the day!

Depending on where you live, there is nearly always somebody that will custom build a computer for a price.

It you are in a large city, I would check the shopping guides for somebody.

Be sure to ask friends and computer savvy people who they would recommend.

I am surprised Dell could not built something at least close to what you want. Dell made his reputation by building custom computers.

What about TigerDirect? They have some that would be great editing computer.



Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Thanks everyone -- I'll look. After I posted, I found a few custom builders online -- not 100% custom but close. The ones I looked at were: Falcon-nw, PugetSystems, and CyberPowerPC. I'll check out local places to see what they say. Thanks, again.

I just want to clarify something you said as I'm considering the purchase of PD 10 Ultra.

"Powerdirector needs about 100 GB of breathing room on the OS drive." Does this mean you can't specify another drive (or partition) for temporary files? I used to edit using Ulead Media Studio Pro, and it allowed me to specify a non-OS partition for temp preview files.

On another thread you said, "Editing from an external drive is a bad Idea" Does this mean the clip source shouldn't be on an external drive? I have many hundreds of GB of SD AVI files, and there is no way they would fit on my internal drive. Maybe this wasn't an issue for on Media Studio Pro as the USB external never went to sleep. Is that the issue?

Thanks so much for any clarification.

Bob

Sorry, the above message was for Carl321. Forgot to include that !

Quote: I just want to clarify something you said as I'm considering the purchase of PD 10 Ultra.

"Powerdirector needs about 100 GB of breathing room on the OS drive." Does this mean you can't specify another drive (or partition) for temporary files? I used to edit using Ulead Media Studio Pro, and it allowed me to specify a non-OS partition for temp preview files.

On another thread you said, "Editing from an external drive is a bad Idea" Does this mean the clip source shouldn't be on an external drive? I have many hundreds of GB of SD AVI files, and there is no way they would fit on my internal drive. Maybe this wasn't an issue for on Media Studio Pro as the USB external never went to sleep. Is that the issue?

Thanks so much for any clarification.

Bob

You can move the paging file to another drive, most people do not.

Powerdirector uses the Windows defined Temporary file system. Plus Powerdirector uses its own temporary space in the user Data area.

Editing from an external drive is not good because USB drive will sometime go to sleep in the middle of you doing something. Also the access to USB is a little bit slower, USB 3.0 is not too bad, but USB 2.0 is terrible.
There are keep alive utilities to keep a USB drive awake.

Powerdirector does a lot of writing and reading the hard drive while rendering and burning disks (including burning disk folder).

Edit: on the External drive for your large video files, you would have to try it to see, but if Powerdirector can not find the video files, you get a black file place holder on the timeline where the original video was supposed to be.

Powerdirector does not modify the original video file, so it must have access to the original file at all times.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Thanks for the clarification, Carl. I very quickly found a neat little keep-alive utility online. I can't imagine what other uses do when they have a large library of video unless they use firewire.

Quote: Thanks for the clarification, Carl. I very quickly found a neat little keep-alive utility online. I can't imagine what other uses do when they have a large library of video unless they use firewire.

I have a large library of Video from my HD camera, and do have those video on external storage, some USB Hard Drives and some are burned to BluRay disks.

But, when it comes time to edit, I copy the needed videos to a folder on my hard drive and edit from there.
Once the edit is done and final video is created, I then Pack that project and export to external storage.

I keep enough space on an internal hard drive for editing, when done move the project to external storage.

Edit: I should clarify that the editing internal Hard drive is not the OS drive, it is a 500 GB partition separate from the OS partition.
I still mantain 100 GB of free space on the OS drive, because Powerdirector must have the space for temporary files.

Attached my 64 bit Dxdiag.txt
The editing drive is D. Drive J is used for backup.

Most of the time editing HD video and burning Bluray Disks is very easy. Powerdirector only complains (Slows, jerky video) if I have a lot of tracks being edited. The more tracks, effects and transitions on the timeline the more computer it takes to run smooth.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.