Find out what the watts are on the power supply. How many rails and how many amps per rail.

This will determine if it is up to par enough for what is included for heavy duty work and if it will allow for more hardware such as drives and a more powerful video card, etc.

Also find out if the power supply is a standard type or some kind of proprietary thing.

Find out if the Radeon can be replaced with an Nvidia card instead. When it comes to GPU acceleration Vegas 11 will work with some Radeon cards but there are plugins such as neat video that does not. A mix would not work well.

Good system on general specs but how good is it really when one looks at the total specs? Could make or break stability!

Your system as as you described it is more than adequate. The only addition I'd make is at least one other 1 - 2 TB hard drive. Put your project files on the extra drive, and use the C: drive as your temp drive.

At this point I would also seriously consider a backup strategy. Last year I had two major PC crashes that resulted in the irreplaceable loss of valuable video files. I'm now using an external dual 2TB eSATA drive bay to hold two backup drives. One drive for my main C: drive. The other for my projects. I use the internal Windows 7 Pro backup program to create both a System Image, and file backup of my main drive. And a file backup for my project files.

It might cost $90 more, but I would go with the Asus PA238Q monitor.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HIRG52/

And as others have said it is helpful to have at least 1-2 data drives aside from the boot drive.

Find out what the watts are on the power supply. How many rails and how many amps per rail.

Name-Brand PC's' almost always have "just adequate" power supply's installed. Add a second hard drive, a Blu-Ray burner, more RAM and a second display adapter, and your stock PSU is on the edge of failure. Upgrade to at least half again the original capacity. I.E., if they install a 600-Watt unit, install a 900-Watt unit in it's place.

Personally, I would buy an OEM version of Windows 7 Home Premium and throw away the "install" disc (sometimes called the "recovery" disc) that comes with the PC. They also come with sub-par drivers and a whole load of crapware. Here's a good source - while it lasts:
Buy.com

One more thing. If you are into building a computer, you can build one for nearly the same price and end up with non-proprietary components. I built one just 2 weeks ago from this list.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=17183571

You could swap out some of the parts, add a keyboard/mouse, get a larger single data drive, etc. Also Amazon.com had some of these parts cheaper a few weeks ago.

Thirdly, if you have patience, Newegg.com will often have these things on sale with coupon codes the way the Caviar Black drives are right now. But once you start buying the parts I would test them before the 30 day return policy is up.

Thanks for the replies, all. (And nice PC build, Pixel.) I bit the bullet today and bought the Gateway FX6860-UR10P from Micro Center, with full awareness that the Radeon 7770 won't render as fast as a GTX550, although the Ivy Bridge i7 should help matters (?). There are 2 empty hot-swap SATA bays, so picked up a Hitichi 2TB 7200 drive for back-up. (I'm excited to finally start using Vegas Pro after all these years as a 'mere' VMS guy. I the hope the version 11 crash issues I keep reading about don't occur too frequently with my upcoming project.)

Nice Box... Decent Price.
You should love it.
Especially if you are coming from an underpowered or aging machine.

Congrats. Hope you have a lot of fun with the new machine.

If you ever have any future worry about power supply adequacy, just invest $20 in a power meter. It goes into the wall and your PC plugs into it, then it shows actual power use. I think you'll be shocked by how little power your PC actually consumes.

I would strongly recommend against this particular system.

First and foremost, the video card will likely be problematic. I tried an ATI card and had to return it - immediately after installing the card Vegas 11 became completely unusable, with sluggish operation and crashes every 60 - 90 seconds. This all went away after I went back to nVidia.

Secondly, as others have pointed out, power supplies in pre-built systems are often barely adequate, with little reserve power for extra hard drives.

IF you can find a similar model with a decent nVidia card and if you can verify that the PS is 550+ watts, then I'd feel comfortable with it; in my experience Gateway has always been reliable.

Another option is to build it yourself. As others have pointed out, you can choose quality, non-proprietary, components that are known to work well together for video editing. Each year Videoguys.com builds an editing system and publishes the specs. This year they have 4 variations of the system, OK/Good/Better/Best, and you can find it here: http://www.videoguys.com/Guide/E/Videoguys+DIY9+Its+Time+for+Sandy+Bridge+E/0xe9b142f408a2b03ab88144a434e88de7.aspx

It sounds like you have a fun project to work on, good luck!

riredale said, "I think you'll be shocked by how little power your PC actually consumes."

LOL!!! Like approx 264 watts while surfing the net and approx 360 watts when rendering. A full tower monster that I call a space heater!

The power meter is the Kill A Watt P3.

My old low wattage PC could not play one track of avchd video at full rate even with the 'preview-auto' setting! I can now play 4 tracks at full rate using multicam with the 'best-full' setting.

Guy S. says, "... and if you can verify that the PS is 550+ watts, then I'd feel comfortable with it; "

I would want to verify the amps on the rails and how many rails it has. I have a 400 watt power supply that has one 12 volt rail with more amps for a video card than another 550 watt supply with multiple rails with severely inadequate amps for a video card.

On another system I replaced the 550 watt supply with the 400 watt supply for that very reason.

So watts are not the only specification to look at.

"If you ever have any future worry about power supply adequacy, just invest $20 in a power meter. It goes into the wall and your PC plugs into it, then it shows actual power use. I think you'll be shocked by how little power your PC actually consumes."

Total consumption doesn't tell you how the power is distributed among the rails. You can still easily have an overloaded condition on one rail but consume less than the power supply rating.

As I said before, the stock PSU on brand-name PC's is usually just barely adequate for the configuration when they ship it.

<<I would want to verify the amps on the rails and how many rails it has. I have a 400 watt power supply that has one 12 volt rail with more amps for a video card than another 550 watt supply with multiple rails with severely inadequate amps for a video card.

On another system I replaced the 550 watt supply with the 400 watt supply for that very reason.>>

Very helpful, I'll use this info when choosing my next PS. Thanks!