Hackintoshes are nice if you don't plan on constantly updating the O.S. every time they're released as that usually introduces new issues; especially if you don't have the perfect configurations for them- they're plenty of guides out there for that. You usually have to plan ahead before you make a commitment and buy parts. I know for the new x79 platforms I don't think anyone has gotten Lion to run perfectly smooth on then, i.e. no sound, power management issues etc. Best alternative is to have both a mac and a PC as that seems to be working out well for me.

@Macalincag Fab!! Can't wait to get mine going!!

@Macalincag That's similar to the system I'm buying - although I've gone for a GTX580. Looking forward to getting it - and I've bought a few bits and pieces in advance of it including that SSD boot drive which makes an amazing difference even in my old Q6600 quad core. You also gain because they don't need cooling of course. I also render (Vegas) to the SSD and that seems to work well. Haven't tried RAID but great suggestion. Holding off doing any serious editing till I get my new machine. Can't wait - and hope it's more exciting than watching things render at 1 frame every 3 seconds - although that teaches you zen-like patience.

Am I right in thinking the 3930K runs pretty well without having expensive cooling? Mind you I'm in a cold house so it might be useful to keep my feet warm.

Base principle - NLE first choice! Then - choice hardware. I recommend to choose NLE firstly.

Yes, I get that, but what's on a dual core i5 @ 3.2Ghz? Does it count anything? Or is it worth to use Premiere at all? If I understand well, only Adobe Premiere could benefit from CUDA, do You recommend to use that software for basic editings or something else?

Cool advice. I am about to ditch my ageing pc which allowed me to try out some bits to see what made a difference. Nvidia cards do make a difference - and the other thing which hugely increased my pc's speed was installing an SSD drive. Anyway good luck - it's an adventure!

A quick question related to this topic: I'm having a quite moderate PC, Dual-Core I5-650 with 4GB DDR3 RAM. I'm planning to change my VGA card to something with a passive cooling (budget-one). My question is is there any difference between a radeon card e.g a 6770 and a nVidia card with CUDA? I'm planing to edit footage from my newly purchased GH2 (maybe it'll be hacked). Just some home made work, nothing really serious. Thank You,

Tom

>kind of makes Thunderboltredundant.

Nope.
In fact they use Thunderbolt as intermediary transfer for PCI-E :-)

@alcomposer

The faster 6 core will be better for most of your routine tasks and with the hyper threading, the 12 virtual cores serve plenty adequate for a majority of things, since lots of RAM, good card, scratch disks etc. also help to balance things out properly. As for the 12 core... it's a lot more money and having 24 virtual cores is kind of overkill for most people, especially considering the fact that not every applications utilize that many, so I've read. As for FCPX, background rendering it's obviously going to take advantage of those 24 cores, but I highly doubt you'd be pulling your hair out with the smaller, faster 6-core...

Originally I was planning on getting the aluminum slab but...apple's just not updating it! Anyways, I saw no harm in getting a bang for the buck PC workstation, and with my Macbook I don't have to ditch my fav. O.S. entirely.

I have I think 11 computers in the house, so obviously I needed a new one. And when I recently put a new build together I went for the i7 that has a turbo mode of 3400. Hyperthreading for 8 cores. I use very large heatsinks and silent fans, so I can work on audio as well. I put a $50 ebay Nvidia GT 240 in there, making sure that I had the DDR5 ram, not the DDR3. I used an SSD for the C Drive. I bought 16 gigs of ram, since it was dirt cheap. Seasonic HE Power supply, of course. And a $60 blu-ray burner, thank you Tiger Direct. Scythe and Nexus fans. The whole thing I guess was in the $800 range.
It runs fast! Everything plays in real time with load of effects. And the computer is completely silent.
So the first thing I do is to get out GPU-Z and see what really was slowing the other systems down. Ran a bunch of tests on CS5 after rewriting the ini file to enable cuda on my $50 card. And the max out of the card GPU load was 45 percent. Not even halfway up the scale on a $50 eBay card! So I took out the same card, and tried it out in a bunch of other computers: quad intel, quad AMD, core duo intel and so on. Nada. Gotta have that i7 hyperthreading turbo goodness. i7 rocks. It ain't the card.
My advice, FWIW, get an i7 with turbo AND hyperthreading for 8 virtual cores. Buy 16 gb ram cause it is cheap and you will feel satisfied, finally, with your ram. SSD, check, whizzo!!!
So that leaves the graphics card. And here, I just don't see spending a lot. Get 1gb DDR5, OK, but even my old DDR3 GT 240 has plenty of cuda in this system.
Monitor: IPS. Colors have to look the same in different places.
Power supply: I'm running 350, I never have had an issue, I'm sure 500 would be plenty, especially with Seasonic.

I thought I saw this link some where, but couldn't find it again. Found it helpful:

http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm

we are actually building somewhat similarly specs machines, heres mine that im building monday and it came out well under $3000, i think if i remember correctly it was all just under $1100

GIGABYTE GA-Z68P-DS3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 Motherboard

I7 2600k with Cooler Master Hyper 212

G.SKILL Sniper 16GB DDR3 1333

ASUS ENGTX460 GPU

3 x 1TB samsung spinpoint f3 (plan to add SSD when i have the funds)

650 Watt Antec PSU

run of the mill dvd drive

Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

LG IPS236 23" monitor

@LucasAdamson Can I ask why you think I need such a large PS? I'm trying to calculate the actual use. Am I overlooking something? SSD: maybe 5w, hard drive another 10w max, CPU rated at 95w and I won't overclock, video card rated at 65w, DVD drive maybe 15w?, CPU fan another 5w, and the chipset at max 50w. Do these components draw more than their rated wattage?