Building a new machine - please critique!

[chameleon23]

Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

ASUS P7P55D-E LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor

(x2) G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

EVGA 01G-P3-1158-TR GeForce GTS 250 1GB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-650HX 650W

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1501FASS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner

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Any suggested changes anyone may have to offer, I welcome your critiques. Thank you!

I will not be doing much video gaming, but will be doing graphic design which ultimately will require rendering. I didn't see the need to go for the 400 series nvidia cards.

 

[iufan4lifeul]

I would personally go with either a 5850 or 5870 for rendering. I bought a 5870 for $340 with free cod mw2 on newegg a week or so ago. I don't have a whole lot of experience with rendering but from what I know is fairly gpu intensive. Also, I don't see the point in the 2 wd black hd's. Samsung f3 1tb for 60 bucks is unbeatable. If you had your heart set on wd then I would do the 640gb black edition and the 1 tb green or blue to save power price etc. Data storage doesn't require blazing fast speeds and the difference between the editions isn't too big anyway

 

[jchu14]

Do you know specifically what graphics card the rendering software will utilize? Some may require professional cards like FireGL or Quadro

 

[mfenn]

I would personally go with either a 5850 or 5870 for rendering. I bought a 5870 for $340 with free cod mw2 on newegg a week or so ago. I don't have a whole lot of experience with rendering but from what I know is fairly gpu intensive. Also, I don't see the point in the 2 wd black hd's. Samsung f3 1tb for 60 bucks is unbeatable. If you had your heart set on wd then I would do the 640gb black edition and the 1 tb green or blue to save power price etc. Data storage doesn't require blazing fast speeds and the difference between the editions isn't too big anyway

Sorry, this is just wrong. Nearly all rendering packages are CPU-only.

OP, the GTS 250 will work fine for your purposes, which basically comes down to rendering the preview at a decent framerate.

 

[chameleon23]

Will be using 3d Studio Max for the rendering. On top of that it's just Adobe products such as Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects.

I like your idea with the hard drives, but to me data is the most important part of the machine. I don't want to worry about saving 30 dollars and being a bit nervous about whether the drive can last the test of time. I haven't researched much into Blue or Green, but what I have heard haven't been positive things.

 

[mfenn]

I like your idea with the hard drives, but to me data is the most important part of the machine. I don't want to worry about saving 30 dollars and being a bit nervous about whether the drive can last the test of time. I haven't researched much into Blue or Green, but what I have heard haven't been positive things.

Huh? Green/Blue/Black is all about performance. The failure rates are similar. Sure, WD gives a longer warranty on the Black (part of the reason it's more expensive, got to build the risk mitigation into the cost of the product). Once the drive has failed, the warranty won't get your data back.

FACT: Even the fanciest, most expensive hard drive will fail.

If the cheaper drive will meet your performance needs, then you are better off getting 2 drives and using one as a backup.