Build question

bobkn said:

Front of the case, yes, assuming that the I/O ports are in the back of the case. (There are a few cases where the board is oriented differently.)

I think of that as the back of the board. Maybe I'm unique in that.

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No, not unique.. just wrong. lol The front of a motherboard is where the front panel connectors are at, and, when you are facing the front of the motherboard, then the info that is printed onto the motherboard to identify the various connectors should not be upside down (with no or almost no exceptions). I know that there are PC cases that break this general rule of thumb, and I also know that this doesn't necessarily make them bad. Even so, they're still unconventional. Just because a PC case can be backwards, doesn't also mean that those who insist on calling it the opposite of backwards are correct. They aren't. But then, a chicken does have its knees on the back of its legs, I digress...

There's loads of answers here - but one thing that's usually overlooked is unless you have the fastest disk i/o subsystem available with a decent cache size then other things tend to be largely irrelevant. High grade video / photo / even audio editing often require large files - even if temporary scratch space and it's the I/O subsystem that's likely to make more of an impact -- memory is also important but any sensible machine these days will have enough and decent fast memory too.

I assume the nr of cores and threads on the i5 and i7 processors are similar too -- if not go for the one with the most cores and threads otherwise all things being reasonably equal I doubt if there's any significant difference you as a user would notice between the two CPU's - excepy in your wallet / bank account.

Sort the disk I/O subsystem out first and then select the CPU. Even a Cray super computer would get hampered with slow rubbishy disks or a poor I/O subsystem bus even if the disks were OK.

Cheers
jimbo

I'm seeing 4 SATA ports in the picture.

pparks1 said:

I'm seeing 4 SATA ports in the picture.

View attachment 113838

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The second image in post 58 is clearer, although not highlighted.

Close-up inspection: