New System Build For Premiere 5.5 Looking For Advice

Question

Hi there, this is my first time on here and it looks like this is the best place for advice.
So I've been tasked to build a new computer for a client for Premiere 5.5. He's running a very basic studio setup and his main complaint is how it takes
such a long time to render video. He told me it takes him about 6 hours to render a 40 minute sequence to MPEG2 standard(this is what he mostly renders as). I did some playing around and it turns out that his current system is relatively good but it uses a HD 6990 as its GPU(which can't even take advantage of Premier's hardware rendering capability!)
Now initially I was going to go the all SSD route with a a budget of about $2500 or so. However, after doing some reading on here, I've decided that this
isn't necessarily the best way. So I will only run the OS of an SSD. Here is what I have so far:
PROCESSOR:
Intel Core i7-2600K Quad-Core Socket LGA1155, 3.40Ghz, 8MB L3 Cache
(I will overclock this as much as possilbe with the Noctua cooler)
MOTHERBOARD:
Asus P8Z68-V Pro Socket 1155 Intel Z68 Chipset
RAM:
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series DDR3 1600MHz (PC3-12800) 16GB (4x4GB) Dual Channel Kit
VIDEO CARD:
EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD Superclocked 1280MB GDDR5 (012-P3-1573-AR) nVidia GeForce GTX 570Chipset(797MHz) 1280MB GDDR5 Memory(3900MHz)
POWER SUPPLY:
OCZ ZX Series 1000W Fully Modular 80 Plus Gold Certified Power Supply (OCZ-ZX1000W)
HARD DRIVES:
OCZ Vertex 2 SATA II 2.5" 120GB Solid State Drive (OPERATING SYSTEM DISK)
Western Digital VelociRaptor (WD3000HLFS) 300GB SATA II 10000RPM 16MB x2 (Project Disk Run in RAID 0)
Western Digital VelociRaptor (WD3000HLFS) 300GB SATA II 10000RPM 16MB x2 (Output Disk Run in RAID 0)
CPU COOLER:
Noctua NH-D14 Six Heatpipe Dual Radiator CPU Cooler
OPTICAL DRIVE:
ASUS DRW-24B1ST Black SATA
Now if there are any suggestions, PLEASE let me know how I can improve this build. I really don't want to disappoint the guy, especially if he isn't going to get a great performance boost in terms of rendering time. Considering he can't use GPU acceleartion right now on his $600+ card, I would imagine this should be a better build.
Also, will there be a problem if I run four hard drives in RAID 0 mode using the motherboards onboard RAID capability?

Answer 1

Photomaster,
I think you are on the right track to speed up this guys system (2600k w/ OC, dual RAID 0) and I second Harm's comment about large 7200 drives being better than the prev. generation VR 300GB drives (HLFS series).
Be aware however that "rendering" does mean different things, and if you are thinking that MPE will increase AME rendering to MPEG2-DVD by 10x you will be very disappointed! Here is the rest of the story...
Timeline rendering, as benchmarked in PPBM5, will indeed speed up on the order of 10x with the addition of MPE using the appropriate nVidia hardware. PPBM5 is a test carefully constructed test that represents how long it takes for Adobe Premiere Pro to prepare (render) a timeline for playback. In actual use, your results will vary. Some timelines may only be sped up by 2x (i.e. very complex and/or using non-MPE effects, filters, etc.) to more than 1,000,000x faster for the case where a non-MPE system requires rendering, whereas the MPE system can play back the timeline without ANY rendering (i.e. simple SD timelines with MPE compliant effects).
Next, full timeline rendering and "exporting" from a Premiere Pro timeline to MPEG2-DVD format are both sped up, but more on the order of 2x. On my fast quad-core system, I'm getting about a 1.8x improvement from MPE assistance using the PPBM5 project for testing.
Finally, using Adobe Media Encoder (AME), and I can only speak for CS5, the MPE hardware does not even come into play and does not speed things up at all. On a positive note, Harm has reported that AME ver. 5.5 ran just over 2x as fast as ver 5.0.3; possibly the newer version is in fact tapping the MPE hardware for this gain?
Regards,
Jim