Advice on building an editing station.

[suiken_2mieu]

I'm building an editing station for my brother. Not sure what he needs because I only ever build Gaming and General use PC's. He doesn't have too much money, but I'm helping him with parts. The only thing I really know is that he'll probably want an nVidia card for acceleration in CS6 as it doesn't support OpenCL.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Editing in Adobe CS6, Sony Vegas, Cakewalk SONAR, MS Paint
Browsing, Watching Movies, School Work
Light Gaming
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$800, both yes.
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
USA, Newport News, VA
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
CPU
Motherboard
RAM
nVidia Video Card
Hard Drive
Possibly an SSD
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
750 Watt Ultra Power Supply
Cheap Rosewill Mid Tower
2 x Dell 2209WA
Keyboard
Wireless Mouse
Speakers
Power Strip
Wacom Bamboo
6) Will you be overclocking?
If possible.
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
1680x1050, 22" 1280x800 12" Laptop touch screen via Synergy
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Next 4 Months (Taxes and money from school coming in)
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
USB 3.0, Sata 6, nVidia Video Card, possibly hyper threading, multi-monitor support, don't exactly know anything else.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Windows 7 x64.

 

[Dangman]

If your brother can't narrow down that time frame to the next 30 days, just have him save all his money and spend it all in one go. Our parts recommendations can and does change over time due to pricing and availability. Not to mention that there's a good chance that we will see an entirely new platform from Intel in the next four months. So at the very least, the CPU, mobo, and RAM are out unless you can buy all three parts within the next 30 days. Since the CPU, mobo, and RAM would be out, really no point in getting the video card, SSD, or hard drive if they're just gonna be sitting there.

Also, you'll need to get a new PSU since that Ultra PSU is pretty shitty and isn't suitable for any modern system.

 

[suiken_2mieu]

Thanks, I'll talk to him to see a more definite time frame.