Time for a system build upgrade - HD video and photo editing rig

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garykf16

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Hello all, new to the community here. Looks like an excellent place in every respect from what I've seen so far.

As you can see from my title, I'm at the point where I'm ready to completely rebuild a new desktop system pretty much from the ground up. I'm in the process of selecting components, and I'd like some views and opinions about my chosen setup.

My current desktop system consists of the following:

Windows XP Pro 32 bit SP3
Asus P5E3 Deluxe motherboard
Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 at 2.4 GHz
Stock fan and heatsink
2 x 1 GB OCZ RAM
2 x Seagate Barracuda 320 GB SATA HD
Seasonic 430W PSU
Radeon HD 3400 graphics card 256 MB
Dell 2001FP 19" LCD

This is fine for everyday stuff that doesn't really need any horsepower. Where it runs out of breath is doing HD video editing and rendering and graphics, using Sony Vegas and Photoshop. I do a lot of both. After purchasing my Canon HF11 HD camcorder last year, moving up from Sony Handycam SD-resolution, things really slowed to an absolute crawl. When editing HD video on this platform, live video preview is almost unusable. I have to "pre-render" the full HD video files DOWN to a lower-res AVI, then edit that file, otherwise my system and graphics card simply can't display a high enough framerate to work with during editing. This defeats the entire reason to shoot HD, you end up with a lower-res finished product. And the renders take forever, with the system at full blast with fans screaming. So, it's time to step up significantly here.

Here are my component selections for the new build. All are selected from Newegg, but course I'll shop around first.

OS - Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Motherboard - Asus P8P67 Deluxe B3 revision
Processor - Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz
Fan and Heatsink - Noctua NH-C12P SE14 140mm
Memory - G.Skill Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
Hard drives (these are from my current system):
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s
1 x Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB 7200 rpm 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Power supply - SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold
Graphics card - ASUS ENGTX560 TI DCII TOP/2DI/1GD5 GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Blu-Ray/DVD Optical Burner Drive - Sony SATA Blu-ray Burner BWU-500S

Whew! I think that covers all the bases. Now for a few quick questions that might qualify (or disqualify) my choices.

Should I go with 32 or 64-bit on Windows 7? Being that all the hardware will be new, should be compatible. Browsing MS's compatibility website, all my peripherals are good to go. Sony Vegas 9 and Photoshop might need upgrades.

According to what I've read, and checked with PSU calculators, will the Seasonic 650W PSU be OK for this build?

How about my graphics card choice? I don't want to break the bank on this, but get decent performance for my applications. The last thing I want is a very expensive, finicky hair-dryer heating my room up and running my power bill up!:annoyed:

Maybe the 16 GB of memory is overkill, but it's a great price on that much, and might as well go ahead just in case for future applications.

I found out about the Noctua NH-C12P SE14 cooler while reading reviews, WOW, how beautiful AND functional, the Mercedes Benz of the breed! I was hooked after checking them out, they are some of the very finest hardware available. I have a Lian-Li mid-tower case which has good width, so it should go in fine. I may tinker with OC'ing, but not a big priority. It's like driving a Veyron, it's totally capable of all demands when you decide you're ready to put your foot in it.

Complete tab for the build comes to $1484 + shipping from Newegg. What would you add or toss if you were building it?
 
That's a great looking rig, except for the RAM. That is way to much, and it's slow. (1333) Go for at least 1600, and at most 12gb. I have 8gb and can use Premiere Pro, and Photoshop at the same time with only 18% RAM usage. And the Caviar Black 640gb has 64mb Cache, I have that drive, and it's FAST (for an HDD) :)

And go for x64 Windows 7, because x86 (32 bit) doesn't support that much RAM.
 
That's a great looking rig, except for the RAM. That is way to much, and it's slow. (1333) Go for at least 1600, and at most 12gb. I have 8gb and can use Premiere Pro, and Photoshop at the same time with only 18% RAM usage. And the Caviar Black 640gb has 64mb Cache, I have that drive, and it's FAST (for an HDD) :)

I agree, 12gb will be plenty. You may also wanna browse around for a motherboard that supports triple channel memory; from some benchmarks i've seen, it gives a decent performance increase. One other thing: If you plan on doing a lot of video editing, I would consider getting some faster HDD's to throw in RAID. (Maybe get a couple Raptors for working with files, and have a 1-2TB to the side for storing) Those Seagates you have will definitely bottleneck your system!
 
Triple channel is last gen's stuff now (LGA1366). The 1155's are dual channel. 8GB will be a good jumping off place if you want to go heavy on the RAM.

Go with 1600 as that is the highest native RAM speed supported by the board.

Forget Raptors. They were good in their day, but SSDs are getting cheap enough to go with them now. If you want stupid fast get an OCZ RevoDrive X2. ;)
 
Thanks guys for all the great information. I believe you're right Trotter, 1600 is the fastest w/o OC that the board takes, and I'm "probably" not going to mess with OC for some time. I simply need a system that mows thru jobs like PS and Vegas quickly and cleanly. I figured I'd go ahead and load up all 4 slots with a matched set of memory, for future-proofing and just-in-case. You know, the last-minute, gotta get all this done, brain-melting multi-tasking situations where you end up with more stuff open than you planned on. As far as the hard drives, I'll probably stick with what I've got, and upgrade them a bit later. SSD might be nice for boot.
 
Looked at the RevoDrives. That's serious $$$ bleeding edge, crazy fast I'm sure. I'll wait a bit, a little rich for me, don't mind staying with traditional HDD's for the present.

Last stupid question. You mentioned triple channel was last-gen (meaning CPUs). In looking at the 1600 memory, they're referring to the kits as "dual, triple or quad-channel". I assume this is only the number of matched sticks in a set you are buying. If I only get a 2-stick 8GB matched set, and wait to get another set later on, any chance there will be a degrading mismatch, not to mention they'll probably be unavailable by then? I'll save some $ now if I go with 8GB, I wanted to go ahead and load up now instead of risking getting a mismatch, or having to add in another brand later.
 
Yes, it goes by how many sticks are in a kit. Be sure to check the prices as it is sometimes cheaper to buy two sets of two than one set of four.
 
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