By now, you've probably heard of Intel's new second-generation Core microarchitecture, best known by its code name, "Sandy Bridge." It's packed with technologies that can improve the speed and efficiency you edit photos, transcode videos, and perform other media-related tasks. Because it's also intended (at the moment, anyway) for the mainstream market, it's also relatively inexpensive. That means with a bit of shopping and a small time investment, you can construct a solid everyday PC that can move your photos and videos faster than that elaborate paperweight you may be using now.

What follows is one way you can do this, using easily available (and generally inexpensive) components. In fact, this is the exact procedure and hardware we used for constructing our new Sandy Bridge test-bed system, which has been serving us well for over a month now. As always, you can swap out individual parts if they don't meet your specific needs or budget, but what follows is a good, basic strategy for putting together a good, basic computer using Intel's latest technology.

(Note: If you've been following the tech news for the last month and a half or so, you've heard of the Cougar Point B2 stepping glitch that caused some serious headaches for Intel with its motherboards and frustration with early adopters of Sandy Bridge. Intel has rectified the problem in its motherboards now, so you shouldn't expect any degradation in hard drive speeds.)

For the motherboard and processor, we stuck with the Intel Desktop Board DH67BL ($107 list) and the Intel Core i7-2600K CPU ($317 list)—the microATX motherboard would be easy to install and give us all the general features we needed, while the Core i7-2600K would provide faster Intel HD Graphics 3000 integrated video for our non-media needs. The memory we chose was a 4GB kit of Kingston HyperX H20 ($94)—our PC won't be using liquid cooling, but this will give us more options should we decide to add it later. The power supply we settled on was an Ultra X4 500-Watt Modular PSU ($99.99), decently powerful and likely to help keep our computer interior tidy. We went with our standard Lite-On optical drive ($17.99) and 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor hard drive ($149.99) for storage.

We wanted to give ourselves more options, though, and since photos and videos were what we had in mind, that screamed out for as much convenient storage as possible. So we chose for our case the Thermaltake Dokker ($69.99), which has a built-in external hard drive dock on top. This would let us insert any 3.5- or 2.5-inch SATA drives at any time—even while the computer is on. We always have plenty of spare drives scattered around here, so this will let us use them to our hearts' content.

Components
Case: Thermaltake Dokker ($69.99)
Motherboard: Intel Desktop Board DH67BL ($107 list)
CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K ($317 list)
RAM: Kingston HyperX H20 4GB kit ($94 list)
Hard Drive: 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor ($149.99 list)
Power Supply: Ultra X4 500-Watt Modular PSU ($99.99 list)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 ($17.99 list)