$2000 Workstation Build?

what will this work station be doing exactly?

Primarily Video editing, 3D rendering, etc. VERY light gaming. Nothing intense.

Wasn't sure if I should get i7 or a Xeon

I guess a better question is. How powerful do you need this work station to be? How intensive of editing/rendering are you doing? What programs do you use, do they take advantage of cuda cores? How much ram do you think you are going to need? Might make the difference between a z77, x79, or a server board

(Also I don't think you can just shove a xeon into any 1155 socket.)

i would suggest getting a i7 3770k or a 2011 processor/wait for the new IB 2011

Rendering 15+ minute videos in 1080p. 3D rendering in Cinema 4D. 1080p Rendering in Adobe Premiere (uses CUDA cores). Xbox Game Capturing, Screen Recording while playing low-intensity games (like Maplestory or Minecraft).

Would an i7 3770k perform better for these tasks? Which one is a better multitasker?

EDIT: I don't think I'll use over 16GB

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/lRs8

Thats something along the lines of what I was thinking. If you don't want to OC the i7 that could drop the price a bit and I included 2 ssds + hdd for a reason. When recording the speed of the medium is often quite the hindrance. If you can't write the recording to the disk fast enough it will reduce performance while recording.

Alternatively you could just install the OS + game on the HD and use the ssd as a recording drive but that just seems like a waste IMO. Though I will say though if you don't want to grab 2 ssds right off the bat thats fine. Try it out with one ssd and see how it works for yah. Recording off your OS + drive that has the game on it isn't all that great of an idea. though the vertex 4 might just be fast enough for it to not make all that much of a difference. I am inexperienced in this matter as I don't do a lot of recording. Maybe someone else can come along and help out /shrugs.

Case is completely personal preference, as is the need for an expensive heatsink and BR drive. Getting rid of BR drive + heatsink could save you about 150 bucks. Going with a 212 evo or something might be a better option.

Heh starting to feel like I spent way to much on that build >.> I'll look at it later when I'm not dead tired.

I like that a lot. It just dawned on me that a lot of people don't use blu-ray so why spend an extra 50 on that. That liquid cooler.... IS HEAVEN. Seen one before in a build similar to this and it ran like a champ. Very low maintenance too. Any reason for going with less RAM? I thought the more RAM would speed up rendering speeds. Case is great too. Used it in one of my other builds I'm messing with. I know nothing about video cards so can't comment on that. I wasn't entirely sure if a xeon was appropriate in this case I guess not. Have that exact DVD drive in my current AMD PC and it's fantastic for the price.

more ram doesn't always mean more speed unless you've run out of it while storing files in it,and if your not going to overclock id also advise a 212+ or evo over the noctua and put the money twords a 670 also maybe drop the blueray and get a dvd drive and put that money into a 670,a 3770k paired with 16gb of ram and a gtx670 will be a powerhouse for what you need to do

Isn't the RAM speed limit on the 3770k 1600Mhz? Also, would the 212+ be sufficient for moderate overclocking (nothing intense)?

The intel "officially" supported ram speeds are 1600 but overclocked ram can get up to 2133MHz. (assuming good ram, etc.)

The 212+ should be good for atleast 4.3 to 4.6ghz I would think.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/lVVg

ive got a 2500k 4.01 ghz overclock on a 212 evo and i run great, mastrom101's build looks very good . throw those velociraptors in raid 0

Of course I'd put them in RAID 0 lmao. I'm no noob. Changed the case to a NZXT Guardian 921 RB. Love that case. Other than that I like it. I'll think I'll end up going with it.

If I'm not mistaken the phantom is a better case, but if you want to save some money and prefer the aesthetics of the Guardian 921 RB, go for it.

If you really want I can try to fit a 3930K in, but your current build looks pretty good.