[Alexis Vx]

Thank you all for your answers and valuable tips.

Ok, so I won’t partition. I will keep everything on one drive and get an external for cache.

My question however is this, do I really need an SSD for cache? I know that SSD is much faster but will it make a difference just for the cache? Also what is the optimal size of drive. As it will be used for cache only, I assume I only need a small one. Lastly, I know that Thunderbolt is much faster than USB 3, but will this make a difference for the cache drive.

So my questions are:
1) Do I really need SSD for cache?
2) What size drive should I get for cache?
3) Will Thunderbolt make a big difference from USB3?

Drive options:
SSD:
LaCie Rugged SSD – 120GB – Thunderbolt – $200
LaCie Rugged SSD – 256GB – Thunderbolt – $350

Non SSD:
Seagate Backup Plus – 2 TB – Thunderbolt – $260
Lacie Rugged 5400 rpm – 1TB – Thunderbolt – $220

Seagate Backup Plus – 500 GB (USB 3.0) – $60
Seagate Backup Plus – 2 TB (USB 3.0)- $110

[Alexis Vx]

I had a quick look at the PC builds and they are almost half price to Macs…
Can I then go back to my original question, if I decide to go for Mac it looks like an iMac with an external SSD would do the job more than enough, what do you think?

Alexis

[Alexis Vx]

Thank you all for your replies.

Ridley, I would wait for the conference, but after the announcement how long does it usually take for products to come out? I sort of need to buy the computer now, my wife is working off a Macbook Air right now…

Paul, Is the price difference that big? Could you please give me rough price estimate and rough build in terms of CPU/GPU/RAM? I can definitely build a PC, I have done it before. Do you know of a good resource where I could find recommended specs for PC and AE?

The other thing to consider is that my wife is really not very tech savvy, she can use AE and Photoshop with no problems, but beyond that not much else. I found her using Apple creates less issues for her. But if the price difference was big enough it might be worth it.

Thank you for your advise
Alexis