New Editing PC

[albertdw]

I want to build myself a monster editing PC

Budget 14K

Throw out what you would suggest please.

[Roberto]

http://www.adobe.com/products/photos...?promoid=DRHXH

[albertdw]

thanks Roberto, but that is the minimum requirements , not really what I have in mind

[Dave_]

14K is not going to buy you a "monster" editing PC. Just a good one.

My 1st suggestion would be to budget for an IPS LCD screen, one that you can calibrate. There are a lot of guys here that will suggest going the Apple route, all with valid reasons. I went the PC route.

Also, it depends on what you are going to be doing, more info would help. For example, what are you editing? What apps will you be using? Will you be doing other tasks (like gaming)?

[cagenuts]

In order of importance (IMHO of course)

IPS monitor
Calibration device like a Spyder3
Minimum of 8Gb RAM, more the better
Tablet
SSD for faster access
Backup device
Processor and motherboard (i5 will do the trick but i7 will be better)
Graphics card

[albertdw]

Thanks Dave, I have 2 IPS screens already, I need it for photo editing, I run CS5 master suite and Lightroom. No games, don't have time for it.

[albertdw]

How does these specs look? what would you change?

PC Case: Antec P193 Silent Professional Case
Power Supply: Corsair TX750 V2 750W 80+ PSU
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600 (3.4GHz, 8M Cache, 8x Cores) CPU - Included
Heatsink & CPU Fan: Corsair Hydro H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V Pro/GEN3 LGA 1155 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 MB
Memory: Corsair XMS3 16GB DDR3 2000Mhz High Performance RAM
PCI-E Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB DDR5 Overclocked Card
Sound Card: Integrated 8 Channel HD Audio - Included
Primary Hard Drive: Seagate 1TB SATA3 7200rpm Hard Drive
Main Optical Drive: 24x Dual Layer DVD +/- Writer - Included
Network Adapter: Gigabit Network Card - Included
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit

[HiltonP]

Asus P8P67 LGA1155 motherboard
Intel ® i7-2600 QC Sandybridge 3.4 GHz processor
8Gb RAM
Asus ENGTX550 graphics card
2 x WD CAVIAR Black 1TB HDD
750w power supply
Coolermaster HAF922 case

[Trevor Ives]

If you're doing photo's and regular 2D PS stuff, an 'uber-GPU' isn't essential. It's only when you start doing 3D and gaming (solitaire doesn't count) does the GPU really benefit.

IO is going to be a bottle-neck, so SSD's would be an advantage, but even as 1TB often isn't enough, good luck with the 14K budget when going that route... Caviar blacks will serve well and can be raided if required. You can stripe disks to increase IO. Read the PS tuning page to see where to put pagefiles, scratch disks etc. How your current workflow is set up will dictate how you choose I think.

Windows 7 64-bit is a must, but work out why you need Professional over a cheaper Home Premium version. For me the cost diff was silly (yes, I bought Windows)

Future proofing your MB by ensuring max amount of SATA ports is a good idea (not looked at above MB specs). And for more future proofing, why not get a Blu-ray?

Someone mentioned backups... maybe that should be the first line item for us all?

[Dave_]

The i7 is not really worth it, the improvement over an i5 is minimal (comparing for example the i5 2500K vs i7 2600). You will not notice the difference when editing.

The SSD will only really help you when opening/saving a file. I read a long article a while back about the benefits. You may end up saving only really a few seconds per image. I don't have one, so I can't really comment, however it's a lot of money for marginal benefit.

RAM is going to give you the most benefit here, 8GB of high quality fast RAM is a definite.

As Trevor said, a fast graphics card like the 550 in your specs is a complete waste if you are not gaming, or doing 3D rendering. A lesser graphics card would certainly be more than sufficient.

A liquid cooler? Highly unnecessary unless you are going to be overclocking. And why would you do that unless you were gaming? A good aircooler will be perfect (I use an old Zalman on an overclocked i5 2500K and it works brilliantly - the stock cooler sucks).

Overall, this looks like a gamers rig. If you plan just to edit photo's, you can cut a lot of fat off the above. Perhaps spend the bucks on a Spyder and a tablet, as suggested by cagenuts. These 2 devices make a HUGE difference in your workflow.

p.s. the Antec is an awesome case, I have the older brother. Nicely built and quiet.

[albertdw]

I read this on the net about the importance of the screen card: "Adobe makes full use of Cuda Cores & NVIDIA® PhysX® technology to accelerate image rendering"
So maybe a bigger screen card will help...and yes those 2 seconds saving per image will make a difference ( average wedding is 2000 images..so that will be saving an hour per wedding).

SSD: From what I read so far, it makes a huge difference. Thinking of getting a 80Gig one just for the OS and applications.

Spyder/ tablet/ screens/ backup is already sorted.

Space on machine will only be used for current projects,...as soon as its finished it gets saved to external HD's.

[Phillip.Grobler]

Look at the following articles

Optimize performance | Photoshop CS4, CS5

Optimize performance | Lightroom

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book: The Ideal Computer Setup for Lightroom

Build a powerful PC for Photoshop and other imaging applications


From the image science article they suggest spending your money in the following sequence

1. (Monitor + Calibrator) - this still definitely comes first
2. Disks
3. Fast Ram
4. Video Card
5. Processor
6. Motherboard
7. Case

and if you mostly use lightroom the Video card can actually move further down.

So I would change the following:
- Skip the water cooler - you are not overclocking ,my stock CPU cooler CPU cooler keeps my 2600 at 40 and a basic cooler master model I replaced it with keeps it at 35.
- Skip the Video card and up the Hard Drive in terms of size and speed instead

If you have money left add the video card back in again

[Phillip.Grobler]

Image Science Performance Image Editing System - Around $2000

[Dave_]

Personally, I would go the RAID route rather than SSD. The performance for your bucks is definably better. Think about it, once the image is opened, say in lightroom or PS, an SSD makes no difference. the image is loaded in RAM.

Perhaps CS5 does use the screen cards cores for rendering, but CS4 only uses it for other things like rotating the canvas. However, I would argue that Adobe uses this for 3D rendering not 2D. As far as I understand it, you CANT use PhysX or CUDA cores for 2D. Perhaps I am wrong, but I did a huge amount of research before I did my latest upgrade. I am pretty sure Lightroom falls in the category that doesn't.

In the end, it's your money. And you have to decide what is/isn't worth it.

[albertdw]

Thanks PF that help LOTS!!!!

SO back to the drawing board ...lol

[albertdw]

Thanks Guys appreciate all the advice.

Im just at a stage where I feel that every second that I can save on editing time helps productivity and that in the end is money and more time with family.

[Dave_]

more time with family.

100% agree! Any changes to speed up editing is worthwhile. Sometimes this job is like an iceberg. The "visible" part, a.k.a the actual shooting and then the 90% of drudgery that is left...

[Trevor Ives]

Thanks Guys appreciate all the advice.

Im just at a stage where I feel that every second that I can save on editing time helps productivity and that in the end is money and more time with family.

Time is NOT money.... you can get more money (even if you steal it), but you can't get more time (I tried and failed).

But enjoy your new beast....

[Henk Coetzee]

Based on my recent experiences, don't underestimate the importance of ergonomics and silence. If you're planning on spending a lot of time processing, a really quiet PC is a huge bonus. The easiest ways to get there are a decent cooler, decent case fans and a quiet power supply.

[Phillip.Grobler]

Just as a side comment my msi h67 c mb can drive 2 screens. one on hdmi and 1 DVI USING THE ONBOARRD GPU. WIN 7 HANDLES THE SEPERATE COLOUR PROFILES FOR THE MONITORS.