2nd build ever... Intel Based Budget of $1800.00 No OS

That's what you currently have? IMO just grab an SSD. There are no really good price/performance upgrades from what you have. Would 480 sli be faster? Sure. Would it be worth it? No.

What on earth is wrong with your existing rig -- besides the hard drives?? I'm with sp12 on this one... Go grab an SSD -- doesn't really matter which one, as long as its from a reputable company (Kingston, OCZ, etc). Install the OS on the SSD, use your WD's for data (pics, movies, etc).

I custom-built an i7-860 system -- used to have a RAID-10 array, which was pretty blistering, but after getting a boot SSD (Kingston SSDNow V-Series 128GB, $250), I have to say that it's the best single upgrade you can buy for a modern PC. The reason? Access time: the access time for a decent SSD -- doesn't even have to be a high-end SSD -- is between 50x to 100x faster than any conventional desktop HD out there. (Even the V-raptors...) I blogged about it in "SSDs: Are You Experienced?" -- there are some decent links at the end if you're interested in further reading.

You didn't mention either if you were OC'ing your CPU... definitely you should be doing this instead of spending ridiculous $$$ on an i7-880 or some other extreme processor. Unless you're doing video rendering or intense Photoshopping... or you happen to have you a lot of spare cash.

Keith

Sorry I forgot to mention my main uses etc... I mainly browse the internet and as of late I've been doing a lot of video editing using Adobe CS5 I use After Effects and Premiere Pro a lot for my job. So basically I end up having render stuff a TON. So honestly anything I can do to speed up my render times to me is worth doing. Trust me though I do realize my current PC isn't a bad PC by any means. I've always kind of had the problem of wanting to buy the latest and greatest stuff though. But honestly if you all think I could just upgrade my current rig then that's what I'll do.

I've been reading some articles and from what I've gathered thus far is that OCZ has the best SSD's on the market. They're SSD's use the Sandforce memory controllers. (On the Vertex 2 and Agility 2 etc...) So anyways do you guys think if I bought a OCZ agility 2 120Gb SSD that it would make a big difference in my render and project export times?

I'm also wondering if investing in a NVIDIA Quadro graphics card would really be worth all the money they cost. Because obviously I don't want to have to throw down 1,000 dollars on a GPU unless its going to make a HUGE difference in what I do.

By the way though I haven't OC'd my current Rig lately the most I ever OC'd it was to about 3.0Ghz because to be quite honest with you it makes me somewhat nervous I'm gonna screw up my rig. Even though logically I know the odds of that aren't high at all only doing a OC of 3.0Ghz .... But anyways thanks for the feedback. I look forward to your responses.

For photoshop the only CPU to really offer an increase in performance would be a 980x or a Xeon ~1000$

You may need more ram, however.

Do you think if I got a SSD and 6 more gigs of RAM that would make a difference I could actually notice?

Best answer selected by ComputerNovice.

In all honesty there has only been a few times when I've noticed my little RAM gauge was running out of Free mem, but I may just go ahead and wait till after I get the SSD to decide. I think I'm gonna try to order either the OCZ agility 2 or the OCZ vertex 2.