Computer specs for Avid/Creative Cloud

[Pat Horridge]

I’d look at an HP 420 or 820
One 3TB drive isn’t practical you want os and media separate. I’d consider a 250GB SSD for the OS and 2x 2TB raid 0 for media (making sure all media is backed up or can be re ingested as raid 0 is unprotected. But then so is a single media drive!)

Pat Horridge
Technical Director, Trainer, Avid Certified Instructor
VET
Production Editing Digital Media Design DVD
T +44 (0)20 7505 4701 | F +44 (0)20 7505 4800 | E pat@vet.co.uk |
http://www.vet.co.uk | Lux Building 2-4 Hoxton Square London N1 6US

[Brad Coulter]

Thanks Pat. I wondered about the hard drive. I suppose running media on an external drive is a no-no?

[Pat Horridge]

No external is fine. But internally you can use the Sata and create a RAID.

Pat Horridge
Technical Director, Trainer, Avid Certified Instructor
VET
Production Editing Digital Media Design DVD
T +44 (0)20 7505 4701 | F +44 (0)20 7505 4800 | E pat@vet.co.uk |
http://www.vet.co.uk | Lux Building 2-4 Hoxton Square London N1 6US

[Brad Coulter]

Awesome. Thanks!

[Keith Rocheck]

I’m going to recommend you look into an HP z230. Its a fantastic box and at a price you may not expect for an HP workstation, but depending on the options you click you can go over your budget.

https://resources.avid.com/SupportFiles/attach/AVIDHPZ230WorkstationTowerSFFConfigguideRevA.pdf

Pay careful attention to the processor and RAM specs. We bought a bunch of the small form factors and a few towers and they are fantastic. Our configuration is

– Xeon® E3-1245 v3 4C HT
– 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 ECC memory
– Embedded Intel HD Graphics P4600 (read the guide about configuring for 512 MB vRAM)
– 120 GB SSD SATA 1st Drive
– 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA 2nd Drive

You have the K600 graphics option. The SFF motherboard has 3 DisplayPorts and the Tower has 2 DP + 1 DVI-I. I had a little fight with one of the SFF’s trying to get 3 monitors working the other day, but that may have been me being stupid. There’s something else I want to try, so I can report back if you’re interested.

~Keith

[Brad Coulter]

Thanks Keith. Yeah, I’d be interested in hearing your experience. I’m a couple of weeks out from buying a machine, so I’m still looking at all my options.

[Mark Baird]

I am currently running AVID mc 6.x on a machine that isn’t nearly that good and it works fine for me. (only 16 gig ram, lesser graphics card, and an i5 quad core processor.) I echo the idea of a 250gb SSD for the system and software drive. That is a HUGE plus. I run a 150ssd, a 3x2tb array AND another 1tb data drive internal. All media goes on the array, the other drive is stuff that I want to keep close at hand. (music, effects, finished masters) etc.

Also external drives are fine. I can edit easily from USB 2 or 3 drives. (don’t try multicam from them though. i usualy have 2 or 3 externals hooked up for various reasons and have a USB 3 SSD reader for the SSDs coming in from my Black Magic Cinema Camera.

If you are buying a turnkey machine definitely look at the HP line. I have had extremely good success with them. If you are rolling you own, my current system has an ASUS motherboard and it’s been great. I am currently considering rebuilding with the ASUS P8Z77 with thunderbolt support. Obviously don’t know if it will work but it’s worth a look. None of these are ‘supported’ by AVID but that doesn’t mean they won’t work. just means AVID hasn’t tried them in the lab.