Be Right Back, Uninstalling

Son, one of my friends wants to build a workstation that will primarily be using Premiere Pro. Budget is $3,000 at most, and the Quadro is required for GPU accelerated Premiere Pro. So, this is a nice start for sure (comparable workstations builds from www.boxxtech.com[url=http://] cost $2000 more and don't have a fancy SSD either), but there are a couple small things I'm not entirely sure of. So, I don't know how much experience anybody here has on the workstation side of things, but why not ask?

Suggestions requested on:
Which SSD should we use to boot Windows and a couple CS5 programs?
Good choice of RAM?
Any other motherboard suggestions (must have USB3 and eSATA)
Processor, should we go MORE EXPENSIVE?!

Oh, and if you can make a convincing AMD argument and then provide a comparable motherboard to go with it that would work too.



Yeah, that's pretty much it. Tell me what you'd change, BRBU.

Edit: Currently that build is just under $2,600.

Why do people always skimp and buy one hard drive?

Get one small one for windows, and set up a 3 disk RAID 5 or something for the video editing

(08-26-2010, 09:08 PM)Caffeine link Wrote: [ -> ]Why do people always skimp and buy one hard drive?

Get one small one for windows, and set up a 3 disk RAID 5 or something for the video editing

I didn't skimp. Second harddrive is combo'd with PSU. I'm saving money. (:

(08-26-2010, 09:08 PM)Caffeine link Wrote: [ -> ]Why do people always skimp and buy one hard drive?

Get one small one for windows, and set up a 3 disk RAID 5 or something for the video editing

I wouldn't suggest a RAID 5, really ever.

I'd say go OS on one drive and minimum 2-drive mirror for media. Modern hard drives are fast enough to keep up with most video streams.
If you'd like to do it properly, build a RAID 10 for your media.

Is this just a hobby for him, or is he looking to go into business?

(08-26-2010, 11:34 PM)Mission Difficult link Wrote: [ -> ]Is this just a hobby for him, or is he looking to go into business?

It's business.

(08-26-2010, 11:35 PM)Spore link Wrote: [ -> ][quote author=Mission Difficult link=topic=4938.msg171206#msg171206 date=1282883651]
Is this just a hobby for him, or is he looking to go into business?

It's business.
[/quote]

RAID 10 it is then

I wouldn't worry about getting a raid 10. Mirror your projects and put your media and scratch files on a raid 0. If it fails you can always batch redigitize (assuming he uses time code and tape numbers.) The number of hard drives he uses for media will depend on what resolutions he's working on and how many streams he's doing. Does he have any kind of video interface or is he just doing everything DV over firewire? What is the deliverable? He should really get workflow hammered out before he decides to commit to any hardware. I would recommend a better NLE, but I don't think he's going to do much better than Premiere for the money he has.