$1,000 system to run Adobe CS6

beedle

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Nov 22, 2012
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Approximate Purchase Date: e.g.: this week (the closer the better)

Budget Range: ~$1,000 after rebates and shipping and tax

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Running Adobe CS 6 (Premiere, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator (likely some AfterEffects as well)), internet/web. I do not play games at all. Not even a little.

Are you buying a monitor: No. Have dual 24" Dell Ultrasharp IPS panels

Parts to Upgrade: brand new build

Do you need to buy OS: Yes (Perhaps a dumb question, but I see Microsoft is allowing previous owners of Windows to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $39... would this work if I installed 7 first and then upgraded? I only own a version of 7 that I paid 10 bucks for when I bought a new Vista system shortly before it's release. Would those licenses not be valid on the new motherboard?)
Please note that if you're using an OEM license of Windows, you will need a new one when buying a new motherboard.

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: I like newegg (and amazon), but I'm open any place you guys recommend

Location: City, State/Region, Country - Dallas, TX

Parts Preferences: Open to whatever is recommended. I want an SSD for the boot drive but am not sure how big it needs to be (would CS 6 run on it or just Windows?). Also saw something on an ASUS board having two 6GB/s SATAs (or eSATAs) that could be use for a boot drive and the other one for caching only or something to speed things up. Also would like to have a RAID 0 with two drives in there. The RAID controller can be integrated into the motherboard, right? (I have a feeling I'm pushing over the $1k with asks like these.)

Overclocking: Yes. I would like to overclock if I can do it safely. Seems like from what I've been reading some of the motherboards have some overclocking presets that are "safe". Definitely want to squeeze maximum performance out, but I've also never overclocked.

SLI or Crossfire: I think this has to do with multiple graphics cards and I think no.

Your Monitor Resolution: 2 x 1920x1200

Additional Comments: I value a quiet PC. Is there a way to keep an overclocked machine cool without lots of loud fans?

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Current system is 3 years old and running Adobe Premiere CS6 is no bueno.


I have always purchased prebuilt computers... Dell and HP. First time building a system.

I work with Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator for my work daily. I also have loads of HD video that I've shot on my SLR over the past couple of years that I would like to edit in Premiere. This is the primary reason for the upgrade. My current system just basically can't edit it with any fluidity or efficiency... and things like Warp Stabilizer are especially slow.

I found this thread: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/369936-31-modest-video-editing-computer-build-2012 which prompted me to pick up the i7 3770K from Microcenter for $250 (after tax) and the Gigabyte nVidia GTX 670 for $330 on Newegg a couple hours ago. Was thinking about the ASRock z77 Extreme4 or Extreme6, but some of the reviews mentioned quirks, instability, and a bad manual. I definitely want reliability and didn't know if ASUS would be worth the premium here?

In researching the motherboard, I came across a lot of info that recommended the X79 chipset for video editing. The Videoguys.com DIY builds all use them and I saw this recommended in other places too. I saw the 3930K processor pop up a fair amount. I also understand that the quad channel RAM would be good for video I editing. And last, the results of this Premiere benchmark seem to demonstrate pretty clearly that the top performers all run X79: http://ppbm5.com/DB-PPBM5-2.php. But obviously that comes at a price.

So I guess I am asking two things:

1. What system would you recommend based on the info above? (And how would it differ from the recommendation in the other thread?)
2. Could you also shed some light on the cost to benefit ratio of going the X79 route. Clearly things seem more expensive by going that route. I would almost certainly be willing to spend $1500 to get 3x the performance (or 1/3 the render times) but almost certainly would not for a 20% bump. I just don't have a sense of where in that range I would be (cost or performance wise).

Thanks very much guys. I resisted posting for hours thinking the answers are probably already here somewhere. But I felt like I just didn't know enough to make a good judgement call here so I finally broke down and decided to lay out my questions. Many thanks for the help.
 

boulbox

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Apr 5, 2012
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an i7 3770k is pretty good video render but if you are not going to do any games then i would opt for a i7 3930k(but at your budget maybe not since you need to have 2x1920s)

Also on another note, AMD FX series is pretty awesome for budget workshop computers
 

kitsunestarwind

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Dec 24, 2011
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If your serious about your work in CS6
Either a Intel Core i7-3930k
Or a AMD FX 83xx series CPU

GPU wise you can go Nvidia or AMD , As CS6 fully supports OpenCL and will handle many different gpu's
(i have CS6 on my rig and get some damn good acceleration out of my my 2x 7970's in OpenCL)
though do a bit of research first not everyone can get OpenCL to work smoothly on their rigs
 

beedle

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Nov 22, 2012
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Thanks for the insight, everyone.


boulbox -
I didn't understand the comment re the 2x1920 monitors. Is there something additional or more expensive that I would need to buy with the i7 3930K but not the i7 3770K? (Aside from the higher cost of the processor and motherboard, that is.) I hadn't really considered AMD, I will look into it.

Draven35 -
That's exactly what I was thinking with the 670.

kitsunestarwind -
Hmm... so clearly I need to look into the AMD FX 83XX series. I am assuming this would save me some money over the Intel route? I may look into AMD GPUs, but your comment about things not running smoothly definitely is a con for that route. I do not want to be tweaking and messing with things once it's built. I highly value not needing to tinker much after that.

K3v1n -
Have you done editing in Premiere specifically with that setup? Where do you think you would fall on that Premiere benchmark I linked to?

Also, I looked at those links. The picture of the motherboard on tigerdirect shows an LGA 1155 socket but it's listed in the specs at LGA 2011. Assuming the pic is wrong.

So that's a pretty similar price to the i7 3770K... you think I would get better performance out of the 3820? What about the fact that it's partially locked?

Also, that motherboard only has 4 DIMM slots. I thought part of the X79 advantage was quad channel memory.

Last, given your avatar, you seem like a guy that knows AMD. Would you recommend that over Intel for my purposes? Are there things in CS6 designed to specifically take advantage of Intel processors that I would be losing by going with the less common AMD?
 

beedle

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Nov 22, 2012
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On a more general note, if anyone has the time to put together an X79 system for around $1K to compare to the Z77 (does everyone agree that's a decent setup if I go that route?) that's in that other thread, that would be awesome. And then maybe make some guesses about how much one would outperform the other.

Also, will I need to just pony up full retail for a copy of Windows or will that Windows 7 disk I mention above work?

Thanks!
 

beedle

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Nov 22, 2012
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Draven35

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Premiere CS6 does not support OpenCL on the PC.