Read Next - My Old Pentium 3 Computer
Begun March 2004
This is the journal of my NEW video editing computer, since as soon as my tiny budget allows (a budget kept smaller by a wife with many projects... plus a few house building projects of my own) I am going to buy the components to build an up to date computer (ie- a HyperThreading Pentium 4 at >3Ghz)
Since the next generation of computers will SOMEDAY be based on the 64 Bit chips now being developed (and which will require not only new hardware but ALL new software) and since this computer is (or will be for about 17 seconds in the life of a computer) as close to "state of the art" as I can build, I think this will be the LAST computer I buy or build
Before building a new computer I asked a LOT of questions on 3 Forums
Adobe Premiere
DV500 Capture Card
Adobe Encore DVD Creation
July 2004
The hardware I have chosen, all the new items purchased from New Egg based on using several price comparison search engines, NewEgg's quick shipping AND the fact that since I had to be patient anyway due to a small budget, I was able to wait and take advantage of their weekly specials and save even more
Intel D875PBZ motherboard
Intel 3.2 Ghz processor
2 Gig of DDR 400 Ram (1)
AGP ATI Radeon 9600xt
PCI 1 empty (2)
PCI 2 soundblaster 5.1
PCI 3 dv500 capture card
PCI 4 empty (3)
PCI 5 usrobotics modem
The motherboard, memory and video card will all be new... I will use the other cards out of my old computer... since the video editing boot drive will be without Internet access, I will not even install the modem driver on that install of Windows XP Professional SP1a (and that drive at least, probably both of the boot drives, will not have SP2 installed since it breaks a lot of the software I now have, and I don't have the $$ to upgrade ALL my software)
(1) Not knowing any better, I bought 2 separate "sticks" of 512 Ram... which the motherboard BIOS promptly told me at first bootup were NOT able to run in full Dual Channel mode... so if you want the full speed out of your Pentium 4 motherboard and DDR memory, be sure to buy a MATCHED PAIR of memory sticks and put those two sticks in paired slots (my motherboard has 4 memory slots, in pairs, so I would have had to put a matched pair in the first two slots for full DDR operation)
Dual Channel FollowUP 09/25/04
When all else fails, read the manual!
The brief motherboard install manual did not discuss memory, only the location of connectors to put the motherboard in the case... but the PDF on the CD included the technical details of how and where to install memory
I had placed my 2 memory sticks in Ram slots 1 and 2 when I should have placed them in slots 1 and 3 for Dual Channel operation... as soon as I moved a memory stick from slot 2 to slot 3, even though these were not sold as a matched pair (matched pairs are more $$ - but these were the same brand and model) I checked the Bios at the next power on and I now have Dual Channel memory running at a "timing" of 2.5-3-3-8 (the first timing number of 2.5 is, of course, better than a memory stick with a CAS of 3.0 but not as good as a CAS of 2.0 which I have only seen on the "extreme" memory sticks sold for lots more $$)
Memory update
When I replaced my wife's computer with a different/newer model, I wound up with 2 extra "sticks" of the same memory as in my computer, so I moved them over and now have a full motherboard with a total of 2 gigabytes of dual channel memory
(2) the ATI Radeo 9600xt video hard has a large heat sink and fan to cool the video chip, so since I don't need to use PCI slot 1 I will leave it empty for air flow and cooling
(3) the dv500 has a piggy-back card so the slot next door is basically not able to be used without crowding which, I have read in the support forum, is not good due to possible over-heating
I previously bought a drive swap system from Provantage, a StarTech SNT127ABK base unit and an extra 127ACADDYBK drive enclosure for a 2nd C: drive so I have one drive with Windows and the editing software ONLY (no Internet access, so no need for all the extra software to keep the computer safe) and another drive WITH Internet access and Firewall, AntiVirus, PopUp blocker, and all the other utility programs to keep a computer running in today's infected computing world... for this computer I am also going to have the separate video capture drive in a swap housing, so IF I ever get to the point that I want to work on different projects, I may also swap data drives as well as boot drives
August 2004
After reading LOTS of reviews, I decided to use a PC Power & Cooling power supply, and will go ahead and buy their MidTower case at the same time so I may build the new computer while using the old one... their MT case comes with one rear exhaust fan, I will add a 2nd fan in the front to blow more air into and through the case, and a 3rd fan mounted on the side vent to blow yet more air directly onto the P4 chip and the Dv500 card (heat is the Enemy of video capture!)
September 2004
Lots of nickel-and-dime-pinching later, buying on sale and when I have a few dollars extra, all the hardware is here and I am starting to build
Step One - Friday Sept 17 2004
Case and power supply arrived... since I have not one square inch of space at home (we are building and finishing our own house) I am using a spare desk in my office at work as a staging area
Power supply installed in the case, and begin on the drive enclosures to later be able to pop a hard drive in/out as needed for editing or "everything else" - Oops! Work day is over and it's time to go home... guess I finish the case on Monday
Step Two - Monday Sept 20 2004
Motherboard, CPU and memory installed... waiting for one last component to arrive on Tuesday to be able to turn on power for the first time and begin installing software
Step Three - Tuesday Sept 21 2004
While this is only the third "from scratch" computer I have ever built, you would think that holding a Boot Disk in my hand and thinking about running FDISK on a hard drive would trigger "need to order a Boot DRIVE" while making out my list - Oh Well - the $9 drive is here so the $900 project will very soon have POWER!
CPU Install Note: When mounting the combination heat sink and fan (cooling tower assembly) into the frame around the Pentium 4 chip, you need to WIGGLE the heat sink to be sure it is ENTIRELY INSIDE the frame and making full surface contact with the P4 chip - or your computer will run for just about 12 seconds and the heat sensor inside the P4 will send a SHUT DOWN NOW signal to the power supply
On to Windows XP Professional SP1a install and activation via toll free number (no modem in the computer, and the BASE install to later be ready for Video editing software would not have the modem driver initialized anyway)
Many Steps - Wednesday Sept 22 2004
Install all the software and updates which will be common to all boot drives, then use Image for Dos to make a DVD-R image of the BASE install to later write that image to my other boot drive(s) as a starting point
Next will be to take the computer home and move my Dv500 analog-to-digital capture card to the new computer, plus the modem, and install the video editing or "everyday" software to the appropriate boot drives
Drive Confusion - Thursday Sept 23 2004
As mentioned above, I used a drive imaging program to make a DVD-R of my BASE install of WinXp and the software that will be common to all drives, then wrote that image to a different boot drive as a starting place to be ready to configure my video editing drive - or so I thought!
When I put the base image DVD in the drive and started the computer I was busy (remember, doing this on a spare desk in my office, as time allowed) so was not at the keyboard at the exact moment when the bootable DVD actually booted
The imaging software allows for operator selection of what will be done... IF the operator is at the keyboard to make said selection... I was not, and the software went into "default" recovery mode... and promply wrote my 20Gig boot drive image to my 250Gig data drive... which is not at all what I wanted
After a wasted hour while I figured out what had happened, I booted from a floppy and ran FDISK to "dismount" both drives, and then booted from the image DVD again... and this time made sure I was at the keyboard to tell the software to write the image to the C: boot drive and not the F: data drive
Drive FollowUP 09/25/04
What ACTUALLY happened with the Drive Confusion
The problem was NOT with the restore process of the Imaging software... my 3+ year old Intel D815EEA2 motherboard's relatively primitive Bios did not care which boot drive was put in the computer, it just looked at the hardware location and booted up with no complaints
The Bios in my new Intel D875PBZ motherboard actually noticed that one of my boot drives was Western Digital and the other Seagate, and "balked" at using different drives... so I took another Western Digital drive from another place, cloned my setup to that drive, and now may swap drives and the Bios is happy and lets the bootup process take place without changing the drive assignments... bottom line of that discovery is that a "modern" motherboard Bios wants everything to be EXACTLY the same about a boot drive or it will complain (and now I wonder what will happen the first time I take out my 250Gig data drive and put in my 100Gig data drive... but that will be for another day)
Drive Swap FollowUP 10/01/04
This new Bios is EXTREMELY sensitive to hardware changes!
I have 3 Western Digital 20Gig drives, two of which will swap with each other without problems, the 3rd causes the computer to stop because the Bios has noticed a "change" in the hardware
The 2 drives which easily change are WD200BB-00DEA0, the other drive has a digital "signature" of WD200BB-00JSA0, so it seems that slight differences between the same size and model hard drive, not just different brands, will cause the Bios to notice the change and cause a stop
Once I had the base install on the correct drive I was ready to proceed installing Premiere and the Dv500 driver... Premiere installed without any messages (including the 6.02 update for XP compatibility) but the Dv500 version 4.5 driver caused XP to display a message (3 times) that the software had not been certified and signed as XP compatible and did I want to proceed... I of course did, and then installed the 4.5a update
Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager screen did not show any problems with any of the hardware, so as far as I can tell everything is installed properly and should work
That will be the end of this hardware page, since future notes will be back at my main Video page where I will describe actually using the new computer
One small added hardware note
For faster DVD writing, I put my Pioneer drive on the shelf, and bought a Samsung SH-W08A drive, which works just as well as the older brand I had been using (no faster, yet, since I am still using up my supply of 2x blank media)