I do not recommend solid state drives. Most programs are still designed to write data onto hard drives, but solid state drives have a different storing process. Current software will cause SSDs to lose blocks faster than anticipated. A good hard drive will do you just fine. I posted one below that I would recommend for you.
This is bullshit. Solid State Drives operate just fine, and contrary to what folks may think, aren't some magic solid mass of material that will one day give up the ghost differently than any other piece of electronic hardware. CCP has been using SSDs for many years to run EVE Online without any issues. I've been running an Intel 40GB SSD for over a year, and two Corsair SSDs for just about as long, zero issues. In that same time span, I've had to replace about 4 hard drives across all of my other home / Server PCs. SSD's don't have a different "storing process" - they write and read data much the same way as a standard hard drive would. They just don't do it on a spinning magnetic substrate with a lot of little parts. Current software has nothing to do with SSDs losing blocks "faster than anticipated". Where did you pull that out of? SSDs will allocate sectors based on use and "burn out" but the makers of SSDs "overprovision" the drives, so you may buy a 120GB SSD, but you may be getting 122GB so that over the life of the drive, 2GB can be re-mapped to circuit paths as they die out - it's pretty ingenious and it works fine. Other than Intel FUBAR'ing some SSD launches (the 320 series for example) SSDs are perfectly legitimate storage devices. Expensive still, compared to non-SSDs, absolutely.
nbrikha, you may have your opinions on things, but spouting them off as fact, I take a grave problem with. There are no published articles that state what you mentioned is the case, and I think you're completely off base.
You're also incorrect about the difference between AMD and Intel processors. Take a good look at my avatar, and it'll be pretty obvious who I side with.
That being said, Intel's CPUs are several factors of magnitude faster than AMD processors, and in more than just video editing tasks. I have the fastest AMD Phenom II X6 money can buy, but it can't hold a candle to an i7 2600k we have at work (that I built...) You're completely off base by stating the difference is in milliseconds. This is false. In many cases, Intel's processors can be several minutes faster, which is substantial. I wouldn't have a problem with you stating your opinion, but when it's obvious that you don't know what you're talking about and you start throwing random numbers out there at people on a public forum, I have to question your integrity. Links to back yourself up shouldn't be necessary, but at this point, you're still living in the 90s.
I never want to downplay the value of going with an AMD, especially since the processors they make do fine in high resolution gaming paired with a decent graphics card - they're evenly matched in this arena, at least when it comes down to the final visible framerate (both can deliver substantial FPS, which is enough for the current landscape)
About the only thing I can get behind in your response is the Power Supply. At least you didn't suggest something crappy like RAIDMax as being "top quality"
