Hi Guys,

First time poster here looking for some info on a new build intended for video and photo editing. I will be mostly using Adobe products such as Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects.

I am going to take a few items from a previous system I built about 4 years ago. Here is what I am taking:

PSU: Thermaltake Model Pure Power 480 AD

Will this power supply be enough? I don't intend to overclock at the moment.

Case: Lian Li PC-71 Full Tower

Hard Drives: plenty of them and will probably configure raid 0

What I will need to buy:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Yorkfield
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115042

Motherboard/Ram/Graphics Card ???????

Built on that processor what would be a good MB/Ram/GPu?

I am leaning towards the Quadro FX1500 256 bit version. 1. Because it's supported by Adobe for Premiere Pro and 2. I may run 64 bit windows xp down the road and because of that I believe I need the 256 bit version of the card.

I don't like this card because it does not support SLI which is something I may be interested in. Of course, I am not even sure if I would benefit much from SLI or Crossfire using Adobe products?

Can anybody suggest any alternate cards that play nice with Adobe products?

Motherboard, well, really don't have much of a clue here. Looking at the mobo's on newegg I found the EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188024). Wondering if this would be a good motherboard? I also looked at a bunch of Asus and Gigabyte motherboards. Any other suggestions?

For Ram I am even more totally clueless.

My goal is to spend no more than $1500 on everything. I am looking for a system which I can edit HD video. I am also looking for a system that I could possibly add another video card in down the road. Last but not least I want a system that all the components play nice with each other and I don't have to worry about crashes or glitches every other day.

Whewwww. Okay, I've said enough. Thanks for reading this far :-)

Kevin

AFAIK SLI or Crossfire are only useful in games. I may be wrong. Send an e-mail to Adobe support and ask. They're not allowed to laugh at customers, so you're safe.

The Q9450 is an excellent choice. It will be better for HD video editing than, say, E8400 or Q6600. For Adobe, the CPU is a lot more important than the video card, and you made the right choice.

Are you interested in games at all? If yes, which games?

- no games at all (or just Solitaire): anything from HD 3450 to 9600GT, and GA-EP45-DS43R; your PSU is fine

- some games, but not a major interest, on a 22" monitor or smaller: HD 4850 or HD 4870, GA-EP45-DS43R; 650TX PSU

- serious interest in games: Corsair 750TX or Antec TPQ-850 PSU, P5E Deluxe X48 (or GA-X48-DS4), two HD 4850 or HD 4870

For RAM: get 2x2GB or even two sets of 2x2GB, DDR2-800. Corsair, OCZ, G.Skill, Mushkin are good brands. Choose a motherboard first and then we'll see what works best on it.

The eVGA 780i is major overkill and a waste of cash if you don't play games. It's not a bad MB at all, it's very nice, but you'd pay for a lot of things you don't need. Also, if you are very interested in games and want a two-GPU solution, ATI's HD 4850 happens to be the best choice these days and two of those need an X48, not a 780i.

^ right

Okay,

I am getting closer to purchase.

So I am for sure going with the q9450.

Motherboard I am looking at the Asus P5K-E/WIFI-AP

Graphics card I may be looking at a QuadroFX 1500 as I stated in my original post. I plan to run dual monitors. One being 24" and the other 19".

Memory. Looking at New Egg and using there "memory configurator" I stumbled upon this Corsair memory. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145043

It's $44.25 after mail in rebate for 2 X 1Gb DDR2 1066. for that price is there any reason not to get the 1066 as opposed to 800? It's got a latency of 5 and I heard that it's easier to overclock memory that has a latency of 4. And I am 99% I will dabbling in overclocking this thing. Nothing crazy, but I will try and get to 3.2 ghz or so.

How are we looking so far. And to answer the question about games. I will not be playing games at all. No gaming. In my 30 years I have never been a gamer so I don't think I am going to start. This is going to be strictly a video/ gaming machine.

Thanks for the help so far!