Suggestions for a cool running video editing system

Newbie Forum
#1

I’d like to build a new system to be used for video editing (DVD Shrink, DVD Decryter, Scanalyzer, TMPGenc), cable TV capture (in the US), and DVD playback. The system will be placed in a slightly confined space. I will play no games nor will I overclock. Stability is prefered over peerformance.
I’m planning on getting a E6700, but don’t know what motherboard, DVD writter (I like my present plextor), power supply etc. to get.
Having a cool and quiet system is important to me, as is speed in CPU intensive tasks.
Questions that occur to me include:

  1. Do higher rated power supplies consume more power for a given power draw?
  2. Will more memory automatically draw more power?
  3. Will multiple hard drivers draw more power and produce more noise? If so what benifit do they provid (or haw large is the benifit of seperating the IO?
  4. What problems will I run into getting a SATA DVD drive with a modern motherboard?
    This is more first post, so I’m sorry if I’m asking too much.
    -Thanks
#2

Should I have placed this in the hardware forum?
Is this thread inappropriate?

#3

Don’t know why no one has helped on this so far, but I’ll contribute a little.

So to answer your questions:

  1. Don’t know. It’s probably not a big concern though. If you are looking for a quiet, efficient psu, I’d look at some of the newer Seasonic or Fortron Source power supplies.
    Here is an example

  2. Memory isn’t a big power draw.

  3. More drives will make more noise certainly, but if you are doing encoding, you will absolutely want seperate drives, one for source, one for output. The Seagate drives I’ve used have been a little more quiet than most, and have a 5yr warranty now.

  4. Most modern motherboards will recognize SATA drives with no problems. If you are putting XP as the operating system, and using a SATA drive, you may have to have a floppy to install the drivers. There is a point in the installation process where XP will ask for you to hit F6 and install these—but it is possible to slipstream the drivers into a copy of XP beforehand. You might google a bit to find out how to do this.

Cool and quiet are on the opposite ends of the spectrum as far as computers go you know. You need to pick a good case with lots of airflow—and one which uses 120mm fans. Lots of people seem to like the Antec P180B.

#4

Thanks,
The time when quiet is most important is durring DVD playback. I guess much of the system wil be inactive then and I’ll have the case fans PSU and
DVD as the big noise makers.