Quick bit of advice - upgrade

[hk3948]

hey there guys. Im about to upgrade after about 5 years with my e6600.

Its been good to me but with my recent purchase of a blu ray drive and full HD camcorder, its just not up to the jib anymore.
I am trying to decide between these 2 bundles from OcUK:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-056-OE&groupid=43&catid=339&subcat=1801

or

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-029-OB

Now, its been a very long time since i last looked at pc components
Im not 100% i understand why id be paying £50 more for one over the other. As far as i can tell, the motherboards seem to be the same. Am i paying the extra just for the sata 3?

My main use for the pc would be hd video editing and rendering of HD files.
What would you guys recommend
I am also going to purchase a SSD and cannot decide whether it would be worth getting a sata 3 capable SSD over a sata 2?

Will i notice a difference. What are peoples recommendations ad advice

Cheers guys

 

[accod]

The cheaper bundle comes with a different motherboard, the GA-X58-USB3 (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3571#sp) which doesn't support sata 3.

I've always preferred Asus boards but for no other reason than I've had less trouble with them over the years. I'd be tempted to get the more expensive bundle and change the motherboard to the Asus P6X58D-E. I know this is an excellent board but it's your £50.

As to if sata 3 is worth it, I'm not sure. As a normal OS drive you won't notice a difference. Working with the HD videos you may well do. Transferring the videos to the drive from the camera will be the same speed (slow) because you're limited by the sd card or usb. Once you've got the video onto the drive it may well be quicker with editing (assuming you get a drive large enough to store your footage on whilst editing).

Btw I moved from and to a very similar spec for the same reason of HD video editing (and a bit of gaming). E6700 at 3.4GHz to an i7 930 at 4GHz. It made a massive difference to the transcoding times of footage taken with my Canon hf100. You'll be very pleased

I haven't bothered with an ssd yet. I've got an old 300GB velociraptor which is serving me well. I'm waiting until the new Intel ssd's are released next year. They don't look like they'll be much faster but they should bring the prices of other ssd's down.

 

[accod]

Btw if your video editing program supports offloading the work to a gpu then this might give you the speed boost you're after without having to spend nearly as much money. I found the offloading to be too limited in what I could set for things like frame size, bitrate, etc. Besides, I wanted to upgrade Thought I'd mention it though.