Windows 7 - Could someone help me spec a build please?

Hi

Posting on behalf of a friend who asked me for advice on speccing a build he wants for video editing etc

About the computer upgrade.. This is where you might be able to help me. My bro hasn't ordered anything yet as he said that Motherboard etc was just a suggestion of what he thought i might need. He says it's been a while since he upgraded his PC so hasn't been keeping upto-date with current trends in the computer world. He suggests making a post on the overclockers forum to 'Spec me a PC for image and Video editing', but i thought i'd ask you first incase you might have an idea of what i need. Would be using it for the following tasks -

- Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Lightroom

- Working with full HD video and rendering 3D graphics

As you can see it will need to be a machine that can handle intensive graphic and video editing so no doubt a nice number of 'cores' would be essential. My bro has a gfx card there for me (if it meets my requirements), it's a 8800GTX. If that package that he specced for me already (the Phenom 6 core one) is good enough then i'll just go with that or if you can spec me something more suitable then i'll go with that.

Would the i5 2500k be better than a Phenom X6 for what he wants to do....any help on this or suggestions would be most appreciative....

The Phenom X6 is a good CPU. But for overclocking you may be better off with the i5 2500K. A good board for overclocking is this one. I would also recommend an SSD for the OS. Makes it a lot faster.

an 8800GTX was an awesome card... but that was 5 years ago

Working with Full HD video you need something with some guts. While you can get Graphic design cards, they are a specialty and modern GPU's can do the job just as well.

It all depends on the budget, a ATI 6850 or Nvidia 550 will set you back around £130-£150 and is a decent card, but not the fastest but will cope with it as well as modern gaming, you then have the next level ATI 6950 or Nvidia 560 or 570 for between £160 and £250. the next level up is the top end with the nvidia 580 and ATI 6970 £300+ or the extremes 590 and 6990 which are dual core beasties.. sooo youve got some choice.

If the bidget can stretch £80 more you can get a core i7 2600k, which is basically a hyperthread i5 2500k, so youve double the logical cores.

you then want A LOT of Ram and at a fairly decent speed id say a minimum of 8gb (16 if budget can stretch) and probably at a speed of 1666mhz or higher.

what im basically getting at is that you need a fairly high spec machine.. or time will be spent waiting for the computer to catch up.