Photoshop CS6 Computer Build

Question

Please review and critic; but most importantly please help solve the Controller issue.
CPU                      i7 3960
MOBO                  Intel DX79sr (perfered or Asus P9x79 Deluxe
Case                     NZXT Phantom w/front fan 140MM
Cooling                Corsiar H100 w/cougar replacement fans
Power                  Antec HCP Platimum HCP-1000 ATX12V Crossfire ready
Video                    XFX Double D FX797GTDFC Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
DVD+/-RW          LG 24X Sata DVD+/-RW
Storage                2) Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB
4) Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
2) Intel 520 Series Cherryville SSDSC2CW180A3K5 2.5" 180GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Controller            Adaptec 6805
Memory               (64 Gb) 8) Crucial 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model CT102464BA1339
I am building the ultimate Photoshop CS6 PC desktop for my photography. I want to have it last for 4 years and be ready for the Adobe CSx upgrades and Windows 8. No overclocking, no gaming, very little video editing.
The (4) 3Tb drive will be run in Raid 5 and the (2) 1Tb drives will be run in Raid 1. I want all drives to run with 6Gb through put.
I have a problem that I can’t overcome in that I am told that the Adaptec controller card won’t run on either motherboard, partly because of uFEI and the X79 chipset.

Answer 1

Sorry for posting to a relatively old thread, but I've been going through my own re-building process and this thread is among the more informative/interesting.
Noel, you've put together an amazing system through some rather extraordinary modifications to your Dell T5500.  A few questions:
How did you come to putting (4) 480 GB SSDs into a RAID 0 configuration?  Did you compare or research running the drives separately? In the past, you couldn't use TRIM on SSDs when they were in a RAID configuration. Intel recently made allowances for this (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6161/intel-brings-trim-to-raid0-ssd-arrays-on-7series-mother boards-we-test-it).  Are you taking advantage of this new capability?
What "enterprise class" drives did you use?... Western Digital Red drives?
The biggest beef I have with all of the workstations and workstation-like laptops out there is that they include a CAD-oriented "professional" (i.e., expensive) graphics card with them.  I take it you replaced whatever was in the T5500 with a "consumer" based graphics card?
What OS are you running?... Windows 7 Professional 64-bit?
Rmumba, you got some really good advice.  What did you end up building?  IMO, the Core i7 3960K CPU is also a bit of overkill (certainly the 3970K is), but that's me.  I think a 3930K would be better if you want/need to stick with the X79 architecture or go to a XEON like Noel if you don't.  The XEON E5-2687W is ultra expensive (and a dual CPU setup with TWO of them would put most of us into bankruptcy), but it absolutely rips through Photoshop. Check out http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2687w-benchmark-review,3149-6.html for a comparison.
Finally, if you're still researching how to build this computer by yourself, you could always get a system builder like Origin PC to do it for you.  It's obviously more expensive, but they can also help you with questions about power supplies, cooling, and other issues you didn't get into here.  As ex-Alienware guys, gaming systems are their claim to fame, but they can certainly build you a nice Photoshop rig.  They even have a Professional line if you want to go the XEON route.
-AM