Building a workstation

[Jon Zanone]

Buy a system from a reseller.

Barring that, check out Avid’s site for Mac requirements:

https://www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/qualified_mac_notebooks.pdf

and here:

https://www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/specs.asp#pc

Keep in mind when Avid specifies a specific OS version, stick to that version. It will save you many headaches, even if you have to step back.

Jon

“The Almighty tells me He can get me out of this mess. But He’s pretty sure you’re F%$#*D!”

[Richard Sanchez]

One of the trickier things to keep in mind is the PCI bus segmentation (which can be tricky information to get on each motherboard). If you’re custom building your system and you plan to use the mojo, you need it on it’s own PCI bus segment. A lot of motherboard manufacturers will have the firewire port, usb port, and other ports sharing the same bus. If that is the case, your mojo will drop frames like crazy.

I tried to custom build my own system, and in the end, I found it was more cost effecient to buy a refurbed Avid qualified system with very little components and then upgrade from there. I found an XW4300 refurbed for about $500 and then added my own video card and whatnot, and it’s worked great.