The third build will not work at all because the CPU and motherboard are totally incompatible with one another. An LGA 1366 CPU will not even physically fit inside an LGA 1155 socket! Moreover, even if you found a CPU that's compatible with the motherboard, you'd still be hamstrung by a GPU that is still not supported at all in Premiere Pro CS 5.5.2's GPU acceleration mode (with any AMD GPU, you're permanently stuck in the MPE software-only mode, which is often 10 to 20 times slower for timeline renders than the GPU acceleration mode).

The second build is less than ideal because of its underpowered PSU. The LGA 2011 platform is a power pig (especially with a hex-core CPU), and 650W isn't enough for an LGA 2011-based video editing system with multiple disks and even an upper-mid-range Nvidia GPU, especially if overclocked at all (650W is barely adequate for that setup if neither the CPU nor the GPU is overclocked).

The first system is the best balanced of the three, but I'd question the OCZ Vertex 3 SSD because it is based on a Sandforce controller that (at least in its initial shipping firmware version) suffers from the random BSOD issue just even running Windows at all. Plus, the actual real-world write speed is much slower than advertised.

If you would like to pick out the performance level that you would like to achieve from 697 different configurations (today's total)  look at our Premiere Pro Bench Mark (PPBM5) web site and supplement that with the above suggestions. Because there is a difference in the scores between running CS5 or CS5.5 I suggest you first select the Versions tab and filter the results by picking  one or the other version to look at.

Or, a simpler solution is to have a well designed and tuned system custom built for you by ADK who are world renown specialists in building Premiere Pro editing systems.

According to http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Core-i7-3930K-2011-Processor/dp/B00603QXPM / that CPU is an LGA 2011 not an LGA 1366... check your CPU cooler

Lots of messages about problems with SSD drives... search the forum for SSD

I use 3 hard drives, My 3 hard drives are configured as...
1 - 320Gig Boot for Win7 64bit Pro and all program installs

2 - 320Gig data for Win7 swap file and video project files
When I create a project on #2 drive, the various work files follow,
so my boot drive is not used for the media cache folder and files

3 - 1Terabyte data for all video files... input & output files (*)
(*) for 4 drives, drive 3 all source files & drive 4 all output files
.
Search Microsoft to find out how to redirect your Windows swap file
http://search.microsoft.com/search.aspx?mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US

IF you think you will ever want more ram, go with 2x8gig so you can add 2x8gig later... BUT that will require Win7 64bit Pro, not Home to use more ram

shnips6,

My vote would be to stick with your latest build list, exactly as is.

With today's pricing, definitely go with the SSD + 2x2TB/64MB Blacks. It will run Premier very smoothly for what you are wanting to do. Regarding what you are giving up without 1 or 2 more HDs will be final project render speed, and that should not be any big deal for your 3 - 5 minute projects. If and when you want/need more drives later, you can hopefully wait until the prices for HDs has returned to pre-flood prices, or even less than that.

There is a lot of good information on this forum, but one has to realize that today's big 2/3TB drives w/ 64MB buffers seem have the punch of say 2x500GB drives in RAID 0 from a few years back. The drive design and construction in order to pull off 2/3TB already includes lots of data density, lots of platters/heads, and fast electronics. Having all files on a 2x2TB RAID will work pretty darn well. You may experiment with putting "media cache DB" (not media cache) on the SSD too.

Good luck, and report back with your PPBM5 scores as forum feedback when you are done.

Regards,

Jim

SSD and Video Editing http://forums.adobe.com/thread/902915?tstart=0

Keep in mind that if you will be upgrading to CS5.5 or the forthcoming CS6 in the near future, I strongly recommend upgrading your RAM to 32GB (in this case, getting another 4 x 4GB kit). That's because CS5.5 runs at its optimal performance level with around 2 to 3 GB of RAM per logical core. Unfortunately, your current setup has only 1.3GB of RAM per logical core because that i7-3930K has six physical cores with hyperthreading, making it a 12-logical-core CPU. And having only 16GB of RAM on that platform will degrade CS5.5 performance in a manner that's similar to what an i7-2600K does with only 8 to 12 GB of RAM installed (or an i5 system does with only 4 to 6 GB of RAM installed).