[Mike Thomas ii]

You will need to replace the PSU if you are getting a higher end video card. I believe Dell 530 models use a standard power supply with regular mobo power connections, so any unit that you buy will work fine. Look for a 750w PSU.

If you don’t want to replace the PSU, you can get a 9500 GT card. I have one (EVGA Nvidia 1GB) in my Dell 531 16x PCIe slot with one port to my monitor and the other to my Sony LCD TV and it works pretty good.

https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Graphics-Video-01G-P3-1526-KR/dp/B00549HZ7S

https://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4111742&CatId=3669

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130395

[Mike Thomas ii]

There are many ways to skin a cat and even more ways to render in Vegas.

You could render out using Save As…MainConcept AVC/ACC (.mp4) and then change the template settings for frame size and bit rate (which will determine the overall file size).

I render most of my files in DivX, so I can play them on my Xbox360 and burn them to a DVD to play in a compatible DivX-DVD player.

The DivX Converter (free download https://www.divx.com/en/software/divx-plus/converter) has a bit rate calculator, so you can set the exact file size if you wish. The converter can be used as standalone program or through Vegas in the ‘Video for Windows (*.avi) render options, then you change the template, Custom > Video format to DivX Codec > Configure…select your profile.

If I am doing a straight conversion with no editing or effects, I use the DivX standalone program, it seems to convert faster than in Vegas.

[Mike Thomas ii]

I happen to be benchmarking a few of my hard drives this lazy Sunday. These are the results from three Western Digital drives in different configurations.

WD1002FAEX Black (1 TB – 64MB Cache)
Motherboard connected: 104.7 MB/s, 12.7 ms

WD5000AAKS Black (500 MB – 16MB Cache)
Motherboard connected: 73.9 MB/s, 12.9 ms

WD10EADS Green (1 TB – 32MB Cache)
eSata II connected: 79.8 MB/s, 19.3 ms
USB 2.0 connected: 32.7 MB/s, 19.4 ms

The WD Green drive is in a NextStar eSata/USB 2.0 External case. As you can see, there is a huge difference in performance depending on the connection type.

note: you will generally get better USB connection speed when using a rear port directly on the mobo.

[Mike Thomas ii]

Congrats and good luck with your system.

One more suggestion is to pick up a copy of Scott Mueller’s Upgrading and Repairing PCs (19th Edition). There is a DVD and chapter with pics showing you how to assemble a computer and how to troubleshoot any problems. You can pick up copy from Amazon (or elsewhere) for $30.

[Mike Thomas ii]

Joshua head explosion in 3-2-1…

You will do fine on a two drive SATA III system. My preferences are: drive one, Windows OS and apps on a formatted 8kb cluster; drive two, for video files and storage only with a 32 or 64kb sized cluster. For price performance get the WD Black drives.

Mobos are a flavour of the month at times, see what of other people have, and working. If you really want a system that will keep up with tech get a board where you have two x16 PCIe slots, your video card will take up the first. 32GB max memory is a good option also. You cannot beat the Intel Core i7-2600K on price performance!

[Mike Thomas ii]

Hey Joshua,

If you can build your own (better) system it would cost you less or no more than what is being offered. Just a suggestion.

As Jeff noted, MSI mobos are sometimes questionable. I prefer to build desktops with only Intel mobos with Intel CPUs on work jobs.

I’m an old system builder that believes any video or audio or RAID should come from a fast bus on a seperate card.

[Mike Thomas ii]

You will get better performance over SATA II 3G drives but not the have added risk of a RAID 0 config.

I have been really impressed with the 1TB Western Digital Black 6G drives (WD1002FAEX), I have two in my computer and I have two of the older WD 3G Black drives in external NextStar3 eSata units. I needed to add a new PCIe card for the SATA III upgrade. I cloned my drives over to the newer ones, now I use the older ones for backups.

Your CPU & GPU look pretty solid. For a brand new 64-bit system, I’d go with the newer drives.

[Mike Thomas ii]

Yes, drop the RAID 0 config. I am not familiar with that motherboard, but if I was building a new video workstation I’d be looking for a SATA III 6G controller and drives.

It might be handy to have a good eSata port for an external drive. Great for backups and moving files to other computers.

[Mike Thomas ii]

I just got my Vegas, but last week I had a tricky AVI file(s) that I wanted to fix the contrast/colour and join two seperate parts, to then be played on my Xbox360 in .mp4. I had sync proglems when final rendering.

So what I did was add the two files to the timeline and rendered out an single uncompressed AVI file. Then I took that file, did my corrections/edits, and rendered out AVC .mp4 with no problems.

[Mike Thomas ii]

Thanks for the help. It set the field to Upper and changed the Pixel aspect ratio to 0.8889.

I guess I messed up before with setting Lower field and 0.9091 pixel.

The video first looked blurry with interlace lines. All looks good now!

What happens if I add different interlace footage to the timeline where one clip has Upper field and another clip with Lower field?