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Seven years ago I built a machine for video and photo editing, tracking a SweetSpot build.    I never play games.  I run Linux Mint, but I need Win7 for PremierPro, Photoshop, one or two other video editing programs, and Quicken.  Still runs fine with:   Intel i5 2500, stock cooler, Asus P67 B3 motherboard, 16Gb memory, MSI GeForce 450 graphics; an Antec Sonata III 500 with built in PS.  128 GB Crucial SSD, drives are two WD 1TB, and one 2TB  (years of images, and lots of music)   The indulgence is an Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card (wonderful).   System works fine.   
But I want to build another.  Why?  to keep at my son's house for when I'm visiting and so that my 11 year old twin  grandchildren can help build it.  For the fun of it.   Like every other machine I have this too will be dual boot.

My goals this time around are: a fast system, a flexible system, and a quiet system (I'd rather not notice how quiet the house becomes when I turn off the PC).   I'm comfortable with most of the the SweetSpot.   My open questions are:
CPU --  i5-6500, i5 6600K, or i7 6700K  ?  -- I do like speed, and video editing really benefits from it.

Cooling  - pure rock slim?  or something more?   Noctua?   CPU does heat up rendering video.

MB --  I'm at a loss here -- I want to stay with Asus, because I'm used to the software.    I wouldn't hesitate about the Asus X99-AII  --  but there are many less expensive Asus boards.  USB C and lots of USB3 are good things.

Graphics  -- even more at a loss --  did I say dual monitors?   The 11 year olds don't play games on the iPads -- their parents will discourage gaming -- but I suppose they could get tempted.  So perhaps that possibility needs to be kept open.

Storage:   the Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB would be more than ample -- but if the Toshiba OCZ really did perform I'd indulge myself some more.

Your thoughts will be appreciated.

Hi friend, I'm by no means an expert on this, but if video editing is the primary use, Puget has some nice articles on CPU usage/cores in Premiere. See Link and other links therein. With 6-core AMD processors coming in a couple months, why not wait a bit and see how that shakes out? 

The extra speed of NVMe SSDs aren't noticeable on a lot of tasks, but scrubbing is one example where it can make a difference, depending on what you're doing. 

I've got only good things to say about Noctua coolers- they're quiet and work well, and will last forever. But you can get 90% of the benefit for half the price with the venerable Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. IMO a lot of the price difference is explained by the quality of the fans you're getting with Noctua.  

OldYogi wrote:

..a flexible system,    

..The 11 year olds don't play games on the iPads -- their parents will discourage gaming -- but I suppose they could get tempted.  So perhaps that possibility needs to be kept open.

I'll make a "left-field" suggestion here:

-an Unraid server (..something I'm doing right now for my Dad).

Basically have it on all the time with the machines you need: Mint, Windows 7 or 10, Windows 10 *Pro* (kids gaming)..

This guy has a nice tutorial on creating a Windows machine in Unraid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTMBf_s74oE

Use the second Windows 10 OS for the Kids gaming and allow them to "remote desktop" into it for playing games, or even give each a computer to remote into:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microso ... 64092?mt=8

You can also remote into either of your machines (Mint or Windows) at any time - perhaps for some added processing in conjunction with your current system.



-just a though, but it might offer some added flexibility you won't achieve with dual boot.

What level of importance is your work with the aforementioned programs?  Is this casual use where you can wait an extra few seconds/minutes for a task to complete, or mission critical professional stuff where everything needs to be done in the absolute shortest amount of time possible?

Inevitably, most threads regarding photoshop-like builds end up in an argument about how much RAM is necessary.  Since you're already using these programs, just monitor RAM usage on some complex projects/tasks to give you an idea of YOUR needs.  Whatever you come up with, try to get it in 2 sticks of RAM on a board that has 4 RAM slots.  That leaves you the opportunity to upgrade RAM capacity later.

There are GPU accelerated functions in the programs you mentioned, but whether or not you use those functions is important.  Someone else more knowledgeable than myself should be able to help you determine whether GPU-acceleration on the IGP would work, or if it would be better to get a dGPU and/or what brand/caliber of dGPU you'd need.

Other than that, focus on silence is easy to do these days.  Most modern graphics cards have passive fan operation at low load/temps.  There are a handful of power supplies out there that turn off their fan below certain power draw (my EVGA G2 does this).  A tower-style CPU heatsink is recommended.  Larger fans will be quieter.  Less fans will be quieter.  SSDs are silent.  etc etc.

CScottG wrote:

OldYogi wrote:

..a flexible system,    

..The 11 year olds don't play games on the iPads -- their parents will discourage gaming -- but I suppose they could get tempted.  So perhaps that possibility needs to be kept open.

I'll make a "left-field" suggestion here:

-an Unraid server (..something I'm doing right now for my Dad).

Basically have it on all the time with the machines you need: Mint, Windows 7 or 10, Windows 10 *Pro* (kids gaming)..

This guy has a nice tutorial on creating a Windows machine in Unraid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTMBf_s74oE

Use the second Windows 10 OS for the Kids gaming and allow them to "remote desktop" into it for playing games, or even give each a computer to remote into:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microso ... 64092?mt=8

You can also remote into either of your machines (Mint or Windows) at any time - perhaps for some added processing in conjunction with your current system.



-just a though, but it might offer some added flexibility you won't achieve with dual boot.

Fascinating -- I'll check this out.   thanks

DPete27 wrote:

What level of importance is your work with the aforementioned programs?  Is this casual use where you can wait an extra few seconds/minutes for a task to complete, or mission critical professional stuff where everything needs to be done in the absolute shortest amount of time possible?

Inevitably, most threads regarding photoshop-like builds end up in an argument about how much RAM is necessary.  Since you're already using these programs, just monitor RAM usage on some complex projects/tasks to give you an idea of YOUR needs.  Whatever you come up with, try to get it in 2 sticks of RAM on a board that has 4 RAM slots.  That leaves you the opportunity to upgrade RAM capacity later.

There are GPU accelerated functions in the programs you mentioned, but whether or not you use those functions is important.  Someone else more knowledgeable than myself should be able to help you determine whether GPU-acceleration on the IGP would work, or if it would be better to get a dGPU and/or what brand/caliber of dGPU you'd need.

Other than that, focus on silence is easy to do these days.  Most modern graphics cards have passive fan operation at low load/temps.  There are a handful of power supplies out there that turn off their fan below certain power draw (my EVGA G2 does this).  A tower-style CPU heatsink is recommended.  Larger fans will be quieter.  Less fans will be quieter.  SSDs are silent.  etc etc.

None of it is mission critical -- but speed is sometimes a pleasant indulgence, and long boot times and the like can become frustrations.
You may be right about the Graphics -- I could always add a dGPU later.   Same goes for audio.   Which takes me back to the question of what motherboard.

Well, you've pretty much taken all the recommendations out of it.  You said you want an Asus board (mATX?/ATX?), so go to Asus' boards on newegg, start at $130 boards and see if they have the features you're looking for (handy to use the comparison feature).  If not, step up a price bracket.

This one looks pretty feature-packed for $85 albeit a little barren in the rear IO department.  I think that's a side effect of the USB3.1

How about some of these components?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Skylake Core i7-6700K ($335 @ B&H)
This is the fastest LGA1151 processor available today (until Kaby Lake i7-7700K reaches store shelves).  With a stock clock speed of 4.0 GHz, it's substantially faster than non-K models, even if you don't overclock.

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO ($30 @ B&H)
This bargain-priced cooler quietly performs as well as units costing twice as much.  It is rather tall, but the case that we have selected is wide enough to handle it.  A closed-loop water cooler like the $60 Corsair H55 or H60 would keep the inside of your case at a lower temperature because the radiator would exhaust the CPU's heat directly out of the case's rear 120mm fan port, but CPU cooling performance wouldn't be a whole lot better than what the Hyper 212 Evo can do.  Closed loop coolers are also good for cramped cases that don't have room for a tall tower cooler or for people who buy memory with huge decorative heatsinks that interfere with cooler installation.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170MX-Gaming 5 ($137½ @ Amazon)
This looks like a great Z170 LGA1151 motherboard.  It includes USB 3.1 type C, M.2 PCIe+NVMe, 4 DIMM slots and 4 PCIe slots and it does not waste space and I/O channels on an obsolete PCI slot.  Substitute the $128 Z170M-Plus,  $210 Maximus VIII Gene or $80 -10MIR B150M-A/M.2 if you must stick with Asus for your motherboard.  Note that the B150 chipset doesn't support faster memory, so you might as well use DDR4-2400 to save another $22 if you choose the cheap motherboard.

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GiB (2 x 16 GiB) DDR4-3000  ($186 @ Amazon)
2x16 GiB is where you want to start for your memory-hungry editing applications.  If your needs grow beyond this, there are two more memory slots available.

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 0.50 TB M.2-2280 AHCI ($136 @ Amazon)
You're right.  This SSD provides good performance for the price.  The M.2 version was quicker than the 2½" version in Anandtech's tests.

Storage: Toshiba P300 3.0 TB 3½" 7200RPM ($89 @ Amazon)
A hard-drive is still an economical place to store the stuff that won't fit on the solid state drive that holds your operating system and most-used applications.  If you put all of your noise-generating hard-drives in NAS in another room, you may get by with just a silent SSD in your PC.

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ACX 2.0 ($145 @ B&H)
This may be more graphics card than you need for general use, but if you do want to play games at 1080p, it will provide an acceptable experience.

Case: Silverstone TJ08B-E MicroATX Mini Tower ($100 @ Amazon)
This is my favorite micro-ATX case.  It's as small on the outside as some manufacturers' mini-ITX cases, but it still has room for 5¼" and 3½" drives, large graphics cards and a 180mm inlet fan with a filter.

Power Supply: SeaSonic 360W 80+ Gold ($66 @ Newegg)
With the modest GeForce GTX1050Ti graphics card, you don't need a 650-watt power supply.

Optical Drive: LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer  ($50 @ Amazon)
This drive will handle any shiny discs that you have.

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit  ($91 @ B&H)
You may use Linux for many tasks, but some things just work better in Windows.

Keyboard: Corsair STRAFE ($70 @ Newegg)
Cherry MX Brown switches make this keyboard accurate and durable.

Mouse: Logitech G402 ($38 @ Amazon)
This is an excellent gaming mouse for a reasonable price.  For web browsing and productivity applications, the 4th and 5th buttons are very useful for moving forward and backward.

Speakers: Cyber Acoustics CA-3602 30W 2.1ch ($43 @ Amazon)
These inexpensive speakers provide decent sound for the price.  If music really matters to you, invest in a good set of stereo headphones.

Total: $1514
Prices include shipping and discounts when available.

Thanks -- that's really useful.   
I thought hard about the MB you suggest.  I finally settled on the Asus Z170 ProGaming/Aura,  mostly to stay with the familiar software. It is part of the October Sweeter Spot build.   Close to the same price point.

The graphics card you suggest may be just what I need -- useful but not overkill.  
I hadn't thought about keyboards or mouse at all, figuring there were plenty of old ones about the house.  Maybe it is time to rethink that.

Thanks again.