You are certainly looking at a powerhouse system - but I don't see you asking if you want to hit the current VegasPro11 target?!

In fact, if anything you don't seem to be even suggesting VegasPro in your criteria...hence I think you are in the wrong forum to ask this question.

Serious 3D imaging /animation is a whole different ballgame! What software in that line do you intend to target? Do you have any on the ground experience with that type of software package. Ask LIGHTWAVE people for some guidance.

Boot if you will from the SSD - I would not. Skip using USB 2. implementations. Power supply upgrade. Where are your rendering drives?

I forgot to add the 16 Gigs of RAM to the list -- it's on there now ;-)

Yes, VideoITguy, I'm using Vegas Pro 8.0c (32bit and 64 bit) on this system. But, I've been using Vegas since version 3. So it will be a dual use system: between Vegas Pro and Lightwave. I've been using Lightwave since version 1 (about 20 years now). In case you're interested, here's a gallery of a few of the thousands of 3D modeling and imaging I've done over the years. I will also be using PhotoShop and Illustrator (CS4 on both) on it as well.

Oh, and by the way, I've been member here in the Vegas forums since 2002. The reason I mentioned the 3D work, is that some people might feel that the GTX570 video card could be overkill for just Vegas. If I had an unlimited budget I would go for something along the lines of a high end Quadro card, but since a quadro card can cost $2000 or more, I figured I would just settle for the 570.

Jim

3 quick comments:

1. Not sure paying for the 3.8GHz boost is worth the money

2. I'd get a Blu-Ray burner instead of just DVD

3. I found that CyberpowerPC.com was able to assemble & test my system (similar to yours) for very close to the same price NewEgg wanted just for the parts. So I let them build & test it for me.

Thanks for the lead Bick. I'm setting up the system now at CyberpowerPC to see what I can come with.

About SSD drives. What size drive do you think would make sense for the OS and installed applications? Would a 120GB drive do or bump it up to 240GB?

I'm adding a 2TB data drive for other uses, as well as moving an exsiting 2TB drive that already has over 1TB of video clips on it into the case as well.

You can't have a big enough power supply. Mine is 850 watts and with all that stuff going in I question 620 watts as being sufficient.
JJK

Thanks JJK. It looks like I'm going to go with Cyberpowerpc building it for me. And you're right they suggest an 800 watt supply. They can build the same system for $1650, so it's really a better deal over buying the components from Newegg at $1600 and building it myself.

Jim

The question about what size SSD to get is fairly controversial. Most people ascribe to the HDD-centered theory that "bigger is better." Frankly I do not, and here's why:

I put an SSD into my system fairly shortly after SSD's came out. At the time SSD's were really expensive. Mine cost $400 and is 64GB in size.

"What? 64GB? Are you nuts? How can that possibly work?" I've heard it many times. Here are the short answers: Yes, 64GB; Yes, 64 GB; No; It works very well.

When I initially installed the SSD I started with a clean install of Win7-64 and all my applications. (I had originally specced my system to be Win7-32 with a 500GB HDD because at that time SSD's were not available.) After installing everything my SSD was 22 GB full. My software included Office 2010 Professional, QuickBooks Professional, Vegas Movie Studio, DVD Architect, Streets & Trips with a full CD of data, Photoshop Elements; Autopano Giga, Expression Web, Family TreeMaker, and TurboTax Business. I also have a fairly complete set of utility type programs and a few other things (like Google Chrome.)

Because it is a good idea to minimize writes to an SSD I relocated page, temp, hibernate, My Documents, My Pictures, my email folders, and a few other things off the SSD boot drive and onto the 500 GB HDD. All that stuff remains on the HDD to this day. (Note that My Pictures also contains all my AVCHD video files; currently it is 106 GB in size.)

Because the OS and all my applications are on the SSD my system is very responsive. Would it be more responsive if my data files were also on the SSD? Sure it would, but I'm not sure the difference would be all that great. Even though SSD's are a lot cheaper now I am not planning on getting a larger one and don't think I ever will.

Currently my SSD is 31.5 GB full. This increase in size is due almost exclusively to growth in size of the Windows\WINSXS folder. My opinion is that WINSXS is the major design flaw of Windows - it gets larger every time you install any software, and it never gets smaller. There is no way to clean it up and remove stuff that is no longer needed. This is a whole other issue of course - but it does bug me.

As long as my SSD has more than about 10GB of free space I'm confident my system's performance will be virtually unchanged. SSD's have microcode that rearranges their data in ways Windows never sees (which is one reason to never defrag an SSD) so 10GB should be more than enough space for it to do that.

Since this is the Vegas forum I should say something about rendering. So I will. Rendering likes to have input data on one disk, and output/rendered data on another. What I did was buy an external FireWire 1TB disk for system backups and rendered output. This disk operates at speeds virtually the same as an internal SATA drive, and has the advantage of being able to go in my Safety Deposit box when I am away from home.

Again, it might be true that rendering would go a bit faster if Vegas's input or output were on the SSD, but my guess is it wouldn't go all that much faster. It seems to me that what matters most is having separate devices for rendering input and output.

About GTX 570 card - when reviewing what testing has been done by users of Adobe Premiere for their systems - this card shows up in the majority of the overall best rated total system builds. Of course that is Adobe.

What is interesting is that it will do nothing for a VegasPro8.0b install , but the forum users who are here should give it a review of performance for VegasPro11 current builds. Then we might have a better handle on what VegasPro11 can do.

Sony's posted tests show the 570 doing the fastest job with their CUDA software versions. That is why I went for it. There have been reports that some of the newer NVIDIA cards were not as powerful, and there does not seem to be clarity about the Quadros doiing better, but I am no expert.

At that, the most powerful 570 is only a tad over $300. at various sources, so........

I won't see my 570 in action until I get my second computer up and running, though, due to issues I listed above.