Is this overkill?

I am in the market for a beast of a machine, for intensive video production & graphics editing + gaming.

I was looking into the dell XPS 9100 series
Processor Intel® Core™i7-960 processor(8MB L2 Cache, 3.20GHz)
Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate 64-Bit
Memory3 24GB3 Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
Hard Drive 2000GB4 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
Monitor No Monitor
Optical Drive Blu-ray Combo Drive (8X BD-R, DVD+/-RW) with DVD+R double layer write capability

$1799

What do you guys think?

Not overkill at all.

The 5D2 produces some pretty big files, mine gives my i7 2600K a really good work out.

Graphics card? GPU is going to be very important for video work if you use Adobe CS5 and up.

Hello, that does sound like a good machine but depending on your price range you can do better. Have you thought about MAC I currently use a 27" IMAC for all of my editing and gaming, if money is not a concern then I would recommend them after some tweaks during ordering it cost me $2600 but it is worth every penny.

I have considered an iMac but for the cost I can build
Something that outperforms
It

Do you know much about computers? You can build your own for much less and more power. I remember I was going to build one for $2k but it had two 1gb video cards and each were like $500.

Do a little research and build your own machine, it's easier than you think, and you won't have to deal with all of the annoying "software packages" that keep throwing prompts at you while you're working (HP is really bad about this, don't know about Dell).

They are all bad with pre-installed software. ASUS and Toshiba are pretty bad now.

Why are you using the older i7 960 processor? Get a Sandy Bridge processor.

You need more disks, i'd go with 3, and maybe an SSD. I have two SSDs and three spinning disks.

I wouldn't get that computer. The i7-960 is a nice chip, but I wouldn't drop $1800 on last-gen technology, especially when you're not getting a monitor with it.

jasonlitka wrote in post #12751672
I wouldn't get that computer. The i7-960 is a nice chip, but I wouldn't drop $1800 on last-gen technology, especially when you're not getting a monitor with it.

The i7 via the socket 1366 isnt quite last gen technology. It is meant to exsist above socket 1155/1156.

....one reco...all this money spent but no SSD?

I agree, go with a Sandy Bridge i7, cheaper and way more performance per dollar.... Look for a 4 digit (2600, 2700, etc) model number instead of 3 (960, 980, etc).

For example:
Intel i7 2600k +GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3-B3$385
CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 V2 $45 - $25 MIR
Kingston HyperX 8GB (2 x 4GB) $65 x 2 $130 - $50 MIR
Cooler Master HAF 912 $60
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB $260 - $20 MIR
Samsung F3 1TB $50 x2 = $100
ASUS Black 12X BD-R $85
ASUS GTX 460 $150
Total: $1215 - $125 MIR

Windows Home = $100 (unless you need ultimate for some reason)

This is the fastest of the older family 990x vs 2600k.

You lose out a bit on RAM, but gain an SSD and save $600-$700 with an overall faster system.

YP5 Toronto wrote in post #12752119
The i7 via the socket 1366 isnt quite last gen technology. It is meant to exsist above socket 1155/1156.

....one reco...all this money spent but no SSD?

The 1366 i7 is last-gen tech. That's why Intel calls the new ones "2nd Generation".

Now, I'm not saying the 1st Gen chips are bad, I've got two systems with the Xeon W3680 (6-core, 3.33GHz, basically identical to the i7-980X), and they're extremely powerful, but I also know that unless I'm running something that is heavily threaded my i7-2600k system is faster and it runs a lot cooler.

You can save yourself a heap of cash if you build this yourself. I put this together at Newegg in just a few minutes. The only thing you'd need to add is the case you want and they have tons of cases to choose from. I even picked out a Blue Ray DVD Recorder and it's STILL way under the price you found. This one only has 16GB of RAM (as opposed to the one you picked that has 24GB of RAM). You can choose a different motherboard if you absolutely have to have 24 GB but I think 16GB would be fine. Oh, I forgot a video card with that as well. I'm almost certain the Dell you're looking at has on board video. Unless you plan to buy a video card, you'll have to add that to my list as well.

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