OK, first off this would not be a 'workstation' as workstations are high end machines that employ redundancy and/or error correction, and favor accuracy over speed. A workstation GPU for example starts at $600, where a comprable 'gaming' card is only $250-300. While we are at it a HTPC (home theater PC) is a gutless silent machine for watching (not editing) videos.
Now that that is cleared up
you are looking for a good quality mid-range build that is geared towards production rather than video games. If you look at my signature I recently upgraded my old core2duo rig in order to better do video editing in Adobe Premere, and I have to say that it has way more editing power than I will be able to use for a good long time. I was able to cut some corners because I already owned my HDDs, case, keyboard, monitor, DVD drive, fans, aftermarket CPU cooler, etc. I recently purchased the pwoer supply, motherboard, processor, ram, and graphics card (what I call a 'core refresh'), and it totaled ~$650 (most of which was the GPU, but I found killer sales on everything but the motherboard).
System requirement questions:
What software will you be using for video editing and picture editing? Different programs take advantage of different hardware. Some will use hyper-threading, while others dont. Some use the graphics card for rendering, while others dont. It is very important to know this before you purchase anything.
What quality pictures/video will you be shooting? (pictures: 8MP, 12MP? Compressed or RAW? Video: Standard, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, and what compression? The more compression the more important your CPU is, the less compression the more HDD space you need)
How large of projects are we talking? 5 minute videos for facebook? or 30+ minute productions. General rule of thumb says there is 2-3x raw footage than final product, so keep that in mind when selecting your HDD space.
How involved of projects are we talking? Simple cuts and fades? Or heavy color correction, and some effects?
How important is rendering time and being able to preview the final result in real time? I cannot stand editing video without seeing what I am doing, others are much more patient than me and dont mind rendering previews all the time.
General rules of thumb for a "production oriented PC"
1) Do not over clock, stability is most important
2) More cores are better, and hyper-threading is great if supported
3) 64bit is a requirement for the OS
4) Ram size is paramount. You will want a minimum 8GB of ram for small projects, and preferably 16GB. The speed of that ram does not matter as I can guarantee that the bottleneck will be at the CPU or GPU, so feel free to save a few bucks on 1333 ram as you will see no difference between it and something faster.
5) nVidia is the only GPU option. many programs use CUDA to help rendering things for pictures and video, which is an nvidia product. When selecting a GPU pick one with as many CUDA cores as possible. Adobe Premiere requires a minimum of a GTX 570 for CUDA processing, so be aware that some programs will take a "go big or go home" approach. If the software you use does not take advantage of a graphics processor then you can save a bunch of money sticking with the onboard graphics.
6) silence is golden. Dont buy a case that takes anything smaller than 120mm fans, and set all fans at their lowest possible speed. You do not want to mask over any noises in your footage with excess computer noise.
7) Disc management. You want a minimum of a system drive (OS and programs), and then a 2nd media drive (for documents and project files). Preferably you would want a minimum 3 drive setup of a system drive, a document/rendering drive, and then a media drive for your raw footage. And if you go nuts then you want a RAID or two... but that is way out of your scope.
8) Power is... well power. Not all power is equal, and not all power is clean. I highly suggest (even on a small system) to have some sort of line conditioning to plug the computer into (either a UPS or a high end power strip), and then buy a good quality (heavy) power supply. Even if you require little power, that power still has to be clean so that you do not damage your hardware.
9) Capacity over speed. What matters is that the computer can do a job, and do it accurately, and do it without errors or problems, not raw processing power and speed. One example of this is the Ram, where the speed dosnt matter so much as the size. Same with the HDDs, where more physical drives generally (though not always) trumps disc speed or capacity (it does not take much video to bog down a processor, especially with compressed HD footage). Another example is the processor, a slow quad core will trump a fast duel core all day long for video editing. Everything in video is highly parallel, so redundancy of components almost always wins over raw performance of any part.
10) Build with balance in mind. Dont go buy a fast processor at the cost of ram or disc space. Everything must be matched well to get the most bang for your buck, and this is much more important in a editing build than a gaming build.
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