Here is a compilation of some FAQs (frequently asked questions) I've recieved from mails & replies I get from my tutorials & computer related issues which might prove useful.

Tutorial related qestions

Yes, in fact I am typing this reply from the computer built in the tutorial. It had allowed me to work and play almost all the games I've brought to date at maximum visual settings and achieving a steady high framerate. Since I built the computer (around late 2002) I never had the need to drop down to any service centers of so for problems. I face mostly software problems which I solve mostly through the net or using Windows XP "system restore feature". But that too, depends on how you protect, upkeep and maintain your computer overtime. The only possible problem I have is the exception of my harddrive being quite fragmented due to a current 80% fill. It is so for all harddrives when they are full.. slow, otherwise everything's fine and still going strong!

1) Defragment your harddrive once every 6months to allow your harddrive to run smoother.

2) If you use thermal paste instead of the thermal heat pad for your processor, reapply the paste once every 6months, or your processor will not perform at maximum efficient due to Insufficiently heat dissiplation.

3) Cooling is very important to sustain the heat emited over time & to prolong equipment life. Added additonal fans to your casing and one for my monitor all controlled by a fan speed controller.

4) Moreover, DIYing your own PC gives you freedom - Having a warranty for each component allows you modify one component without voiding the warranty of the whole computer (only that specific component), unlike branded ones.

5) Building your computer gives you one thing many people fail to realise- Knowledge. Instead of just throwing it off for repairs when problem arises, DIY. This allows you to learn more about your computer, the hardware community and developments, allowing you to be your own PC technical assistant. It may be tough at first and crashing your computer is very much the norm (I've crashed my very first computer countless number of times just to get to know how it works) but the end result now is great.

Firstly, the main thing you need in video editing is tons of harddisk space, also, if you are doing digital video editing, one hour of pure unedited raw footage takes up 20GBs of space. Setting up a raid array is only useful when you want to backup your data on your computer (you need 2 harddrives of same capacity in order to do that, then one will mirror another in terms of data stored, and when drive goes down, you still have another excalt copy in your other backup drive)
What I am advising you to do is not to use the raid feature, raid is only useful if you have very important data to backup or just running a game of net server, where you cannot afford downtimes or losing data. Also even if you have two drives, say, two similar 40GBs drives, raiding them together will only you to gave the capacity of one of the drives in your computer as one mirrors the other. Why not doing away with raid and setting up one drive as a primary and other secondary slave drive so as you can have total of 80GB of disk space for instance- total of 4hours of raw undited video stored max. Space is the main concern here.

You can use any graphics card with the video-in, video-out feature (aka VIVO) in most reasonably high end first line of nvidia geforce Ti4 series. You can check up canopus line of digital video firewire capture cards www.canopus.com these are definately more superior (in terms or overall quality and speed) than using any input-output on your video card. I can't really tell you that the nVidia MX440 64MB you are refering have a video-out & video-in or not, it differs from manufacturers who always end up putting may different features in their cards. When shopping for your graphics card, look for the word VIVO in store, they will always indicate it there, also by the slightly stiffer prices in the same card range. The TV output only outputs video, say if you want to use your computer through your television or just output your video to a digital camera storage tape. Therefore, if your graphics card only have the TV out option, you cannot use that for video editing. For video editing, what you need is the video-in feature- what it does is just input video and sound from an external source such as you video camera, VCRs... DVD, LD player, etc... and get it stored into your computer for any editing or storage purposes. Otherwise, if your video camera have an included USB or firewire cable connection, that even merrier as you don't even need a VIVO graphics card to do that, you can just purchase a firewire add-on card if your computer don't have one for the most $20 & link it to your camera (e.g. i-link cable found on most video cams, esp those by sony).