Will this handle AVCHD, or overkill?

[Mark Goodsell]

If you wouldn't mind commenting on these parts/pieces, let me know what you think. Will be editing HDV and AVCHD on Premier CS5. Not too many layers, some color correction, titles, clean up video as needed. It's somewhere between GG DIY8/DIY9. Please comment if you would change anything. Honestly, it's been years since I built my last PC.

CPU - Intel Core i7-980 Gulftown 3.33GHz ($580)
Mobo - ASUS P6X58-E PRO LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel ($224)
GPU - GIGABYTE GV-N570OC-13I Rev2.0 GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 ($345)
Mem - CORSAIR XMS3 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) ($90)
HDD - Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" ($149)
Power Sup - CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX850 V2 850W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power ($135)
O/S - Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit - OEM ($139)
Misc - Liteon Blu Ray burner ($100)
Case - Already have..
Monitor - SAMSUNG S24A350H ToC Rose Black 24" Full HD HDMI LED BackLight LCD ($199)
2nd Monitor I already have.

Total Price: $2,110 (includes cables, fans, mouse, card reader, etc)

During the holidays I'll probably try to pick up (4x) SATA drives if I see a hot deal, for a Raid 5. What RAID enclosure do you recommend? Also, I have a few HD's filled with DV that are IDE. How should I handle this on a SATA system (external Firewire housing)? Would I get much benefit from going with a 10k main drive instead of the 7200, other than fast start-up, which isn't that important to me? Like I said, this is adding and I wouldn't mind trying to shave off a couple hundred, if it won't hurt performance much. OTOH, this machine will likely need to last me a few years so maybe it's worth it to go bigger now. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance.

[Harm Millaard]

I replied in your other post, but will repeat it here:

You better get two tri-packs for your memory (6 x 4 GB) or only use 3 sticks. The X58 can only use its triple channel architecture if you use 3 or 6 memory sticks. With 4 sticks your memory will be downgraded to single channel or dual channel, depending on the slots used.

The PSU is better exchanged for an AX model 850+ W with gold label.

For the OS disk look at a Samsung Spinpoint 320 GB F4. Your IDE disks are best used for backup, because they are very slow. If you want to add 4 new SATA disks in the future for a raid5, what controller do you intend to use? On-board is way too slow with a parity raid.

I miss a third party CPU cooler in your list. CoolerMaster, Noctua and Prolimatech have good coolers.

[Randall Leong]

For the most part, I agree with Harm. However, the LGA 1366 memory controller might as well run in single-channel all the time even with three or six memory sticks: Running a benchmark test for memory throughput, I discovered that there is little difference in the memory throughput scores between single-channel and triple-channel with this particular platform. In fact, in triple-channel mode the memory throughput on LGA 1366 is far below what was expected from that platform - less than the benchmarked throughput results from the dual-channel memory controllers on lesser LGA 1155 Intel CPUs at any given memory speed. No wonder why the capabilities of the LGA 1366 CPUs are largely wasted due to this relatively inefficient memory controller: It should have blown away the Sandy Bridge CPUs even with a cheapo GPU and a cheapo disk system - but the restricted memory controller would not let it do so (although it should be noted that the reason for the restricted memory controller bandwidth was to keep the CPU within its designed TDP of 130W).

Similarly, relatively low memory throughput combined with relatively high overall memory latency are among the leading causes of the underperformance of the still older Core 2 Quad in the PPBM5 benchmarks.