Video Editing Workstation Spec Help

[VideoTechMan]

I am doing some research in building a new video editing workstation, but need some help/tips on what would be some decent specs for a fairly high-end system.

For budget, I am considering around $2,000 - $2,500 depending on the components. I have mostly all SD material to work with, but I want to get into HD editing also down the line, since SD camcorders are getting difficult to find to a point.

Main thing of concern is the motherboard and CPU....I don't think the X58 boards are available anymore and I have been reading on the X79 chipset board by ASUS that supports the Sandy Bridge E based system. i7 will be powering this workstation.

Video card, I use Adobe and I have CS5 that I upgraded from a much older version so I would like to take advantage of the MPE that Premiere Pro offers. I read that the nVidia Quadro 4000 was recommended and runs about $800, but I will need to read Adobe's website to get updated specs on recommended video cards.

RAM and other stuff I pretty much got down. Plan to go with an SSD for the boot drive and undecided how to work with the video storage yet since hard drive prices are still pretty high. I read that RAID is recommended for working with HD, would I need to consider that?

I will dig up the other thread I posted regarding the monitors...something that's color accurate when doing color correcting and such.

I appreciate any help or ideas anyone may have. I bought the HAF 922 case in early 2010 and still in its packing box. I'm ready to get what it takes to get my video editing workstation up and running.

[_Al_]

What HD ? I have HD video, m2t format from HV30 and don't need $2000 PC. $600 is enough plus you put extra HDD in it. 2x 2T at least.

If you consider working with AVCHD or different MOV etc. that nowadays photocameras produce, get Cineform maybe Neoscene would be enough. I'd still go with this solution not with beefed up PC that tackles raw footage.

I think this is most common mistake that people make, just forking away money for latest hardware that is going to be junk years later.

[turk690]

I had an SSD boot drive for a year. It was fast and all that but eventually I got fed up with its limited size (120GB), and it would cause an arm and a leg to RAID1 SSD drives (from my POV), which I had before. So I went back to a RAID1 (2 1TB drives so 1TB normal) boot set-up, and really, I don't miss the marginal speed increases that I had with OCZ Vertex before. I'm past the SSD-is-the-in-thing stage for now. There are new beasts called hybrid drives (conventional HDDs with humongous caches of 64GB and upwards or PCIe cards that have a 2.5" HDD on it, supplemented by the 64GB SSD on the same board); maybe you can check them out.
Vast majority of current main boards have at least two SATA controllers: one is part of the chipset, and the other an onboard controller thrown in for good measure. Both support at least RAID1 or 0. What I'd do is put a RAID1 boot drive (~1TB normal) on one controller, another RAID1 (~2TB normal) on the other for capture and edit files, and another RAID1 (either by an internal SATA PCIe card or an external eSATA box) for backup. RAID1 across the board is mandatory, especially if you intend to make a living out of this box and have super-critical files.
You do not have to go as far as the Quadro 4000; you can get by with a GTX580, and tweak Premiere CS5 to enable the Mercury engine on it. You pair this with an IPS LCD monitor, reputed to be where it's at when NLE is involved.
Lastly, any self-respecting NLE workstation should have a good audio set-up. This means an amplifier-and-speaker combination you can actually use as reference and have an accurate impression of how your soundtrack really sounds like. The choice-and cost- is as varied as flotsam on the beach, but I have generally gone by with good results from M-audio on one hand, to the Logitech THX-certified Z623 on the other.