10/10's - Ten Lists of Ten Tips for Digital Filmakers & Professional Videographers
Ten Things to Look For in a Professional Video or Audio Editing Computer - Continued

2. Ram 1 GB per core, minimum 2 GBs per core is the sweet spot. Consider more than 2Gbs per core if you are working with 1080p or 4K video files.

3. Audio/Video Cards. A discreet audio card will reduce noise and often offer digital outs for using better analog converters. A discreet video card is required for serious video editing. You should load up with as much GPU as you can afford. This allows the software to offload some of the tasks to the card. Depending on the motherboard, you can often daisy chain 2-3 video cards and sum their GPU.

4. Hyper-threading. Available on some Intel chips, this will optimize your core use up to 3x. Your 7 cores just became 21 cores. Yes, you will like that.

5. Cooling & case electronics hate heat. Your computer will like you if you have a massive cooling fan on the CPU and 2-4 fans in an aluminum case.

6. Firewire & USB 3.0 data ports. You will need to backup massive amounts of data. Firewire is fast, but is not on every computer and shouldn't be hot-swapped. USB 3.0 is hot-swappable and backward compatible to USB 2.0.

7. Optical drives & drive speed. Your computer can only read/write as fast as the drive will allow, so look for a 7200 rpm or higher drive. Solid state drives are the fastest but best for running programs, not for the extensive read/write done by editing software.

8. Dust control. Electronics also hate dust. Store your workstation in a dust-proof location and look for cases with filters.

9. Volume (fan types). There is always a balance between cooling and noise. A 120mm case and CPU fans will generally be quieter.

10. Card readers & card reader speed. If you are shooting video on a DSLR or recording audio on a portable card-based recorder, a card reader is a nice luxury. Firewire and USB 3.0 is available on the better models. CPM

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