Another (very useful) "Rate my Machine" Thread

[Peter Laurelli]

Hi all - I could not justify the price of a mobile workstation, no matter what the needs and have decided to go desktop. I've been looking at builds by Puget and CyberPowerPC (CPPC) and noticed what look like good options from the latter on i7's recently.

Here is a configuration I've put together from CPPC, please let me know how well you estimate it will handle my needs...which are:

Camera: SR 11 AVCHD
Editing: Vegas 8
Editing will be intensive for an amateur, include color correction and whatever else I can do to make interesting movies about fishing for personal friend and family use...ie...I want high quality output, but it's not my career on the line.

Here's the system:
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-920 2.66 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
- MOTHERBOARD: (3-Way SLI Support) Asus P6T Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/eSATA, GbLAN, USB2.0, IEEE1394a, &7.1Audio
- MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) PC1333 DDR3 PC3 10666 Triple Channel Memory
- VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT 1GB 16X PCI Express (EVGA Powered by NVIDIA)
- Hard Drive1: Single Hard Drive (320GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
- DataDrive: 500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive
- FAN: Intel LGA1366 Certified CPU Fan & Heatsink
- MONITOR: NONE
- CD: (Special Price) LG 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
- CD2: LG GGW-H20L 6X INTERNAL SUPER MULTI BLUE BLU-RAY DISC REWRITER & HD DVD-ROM DRIVE [+237] (Black Color)
- FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer [+10] (BLACK COLOR)
- OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate w/ Service Pack 1 [+209] (64-bit Edition)
- POWERSUPPLY: STANDARD CASE POWER SUPPLY

PRICE: $1386.00

So what would you do differently? Where are the weaknesses? Too much? Too little?

Also, I've only bought from big producers in the past, does buying a configured system like this require much additional knowledge of building on my end, or will it likely arrive ready to go? Finally, I've got an HP LCD monitor right now, are there any issues with hooking this up to a new non-HP machine?

sincerely, thanks again for the help...