Thanks for your post.
To answer your questions...
I am dealing with Canon Raw. Each file is typically around 30MB, and a shoot can range from 400 - 800 shots. My Photoshopping generally is limimited to between 5-10 layers. I do mostly event, and portrait photography. I also shoot video on my 5DMarkII which produces H.264 MOV files which I generally run through compressor to make very large PRORES 422 files. The speed at which compressor compresses these files is important to me as is rendering speed within FCP7. Also I render some motion stuff, as well as after effects. I use handbrake to pull my DVD's.
AS far as my storage goes I know that I will benefit greatly from SSD's, which these will be eventual upgrades. To start I will probably run 3 X 1TB 7200 RPM 300 mb/sec drives in raid. And have a 4th drive for my Win7 OS.
I understand that the GPU doesn't handle much in the software that I use, but I know that it is important to gaming so I will most likely order whatever the system comes with and get an additional high end card for the gaming. I run a pair of 30" 2560 X 1600 screens.
I also know that the RAM i get is highly important to what I do... I won't get any combination that has 1 gig sticks. I will probably get the minimum of 8 gigs (4x2GB) and then buy some RAM elsewhere. Probably another 8 Gigs to get to 16.
I am aiming my budget at 4K. If I need to go over it is ok as it is a business expense, and will be covered.
I hope that this answers your questions!
Thanks!
I hope this answers your questions.