I'm going to buy a new PC to be my main photo editing/processing machine. I would love to get some input from others out there.
Whilst I dont know that much about computers my thoughts were something like the following, which was the quote I recieved from my local shop. What do you think?
ABIT IP35 M/board - P35 (onboard Gbit LAN, sound)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 CPU, 2.66 GHz
Corsair 2GB, PC-6400 (800MHz) DDR2 RAM
2x Samsung 750GB 'HD753LJ' HDD SATA
DVD Burner, FDD
Microsoft Corded Keyboard/Mouse pk
Inno3D GF 8600GT PCI-E 512MB DDR2 128-bit Videocard
Antec 'Sonata III' Case - Black, EarthWatts 500W PSU
Creative SBSA200 BLACK Speakers, 2.1Channel, speakers
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
3 years on-site Warranty
Price isnt my concern here, I'm looking for advice regarding the best possible system to run primarily cs3 and mangage my images.
I didnt notice the fdd, I certainly wont be needing one of those
Cheers, Dean
Scratch disks are merely places for CS3 to put stuff temporarily. Hard disks are waaaaay slower than RAM, so use a quick hard disk. And if it's convenient to do so, use a hard drive that's not being used (at the same time) for other things. That's about the whole science of it.
Comments on your machine: I like AMD processors myself. Both AMD and Intel are great, both work beautifully, you'd never know what is in your machine. I just like supporting the underdog, and I feel that I get more performance per dollar usually.
2GB RAM is OK if you don't do very heavy work. Increase to 3GB if it's easy to do. 32-bit XP does not handle 4GB real well, meaning you won't be able to use all of it. No crashes or problems will occur, however. So you might want to get 4GB (I did) and then eventually move to a 64-bit operating system.
I'd avoid the 750GB disks for this box. They use a new "perpendicular recording" technology that allows data to be packed in more densely, which is why they're able to get 750GB or even 1TB on those disks. But perpendicular is slower than the older technology. Use two 500GB drives instead.
Better yet, if you're able to do so on your motherboard (or can easily use a motherboard that supports it), get the two 500GB drives or even three of them and set them up as a RAID-0 array. It'll be faster, like having a single 1.5TB drive that can read with three needles at once. Of course, it offers no redundancy whatsoever, just speed, and if any one drive fails all your data is toast. (Not that drives fail often, but why risk it?) Never forget to back up.
Get yourself one or two of the Sandisk FireWire 800 card readers, and make sure your computer has FireWire 800 ports. Vastly faster and more efficient than FireWire 400 or USB 2.0.
Other than those suggestions, really any machine sold today will likely do a good job. Horsepower is plentiful. :-)
1. I use a two-disk RAID-0 array for my "C" drive, and that system drive is also my scratch disk. I used pretty fast 320GB drives that were on sale for $85 at that time, so I have a single (and fast!) 640GB drive to work on.
2. Primary storage is a RAID-5 array (better speed, and great fault-tolerance since two drives would have to fail for me to lose data) using four 500GB drives. 1.5TB raw, 1.36TB formatted in NTFS. That's where all my data files go. If the "C" drive fails, I reinstall the OS... but if one of the RAID-5 drives fail, I shut down the machine, replace it, ask the array to rebuild itself, and go on about my merry way with no data loss and only about five minutes downtime.
3. SyncBack SE is used to back up my main RAID-5 data array to an external WD MyBook Pro with 1TB capacity. Since the MyBook is a RAID-0 of two 500GB disks, it's fast; and FireWire 800 makes it look like an internal disk. I get about 35 MB per second transfer speeds to that drive. And SyncBack SE synchronizes the arrays every four hours to have quick backups.
That means at least three hard drives would have to fail simultaneously for me to lose data: one of the drives in the MyBook, and two of the drives in the RAID-5 array.
Obviously I bought a big case to do what I wanted. And I was willing to put up with some noise and some heat and some power consumption.
If price isn't a concern you can do a lot better. What you have there appears to be a fairly mid-range cost effective machine. Certainly nothing wrong with it but not a "money is no object" computer.
Looks like a decent system. But with RAM being so cheap I would throw in another 2 gigs. XP/Vista will only see ~3.5 but from my experience its worth the extra few dollars.
Not too familiar with the Samsung drives.. but the Western Digital WD7500AAKS (750 gb) are worth a look. 3 year warranty, great performance, quiet and very cool running. Seagates also offer great performance but their drives come with a 5 year warranty.
Also, a few on here recommend a RAID 0 array... while this offers some performance increase (and even that increase depends on the application you use), you also double your chance of down time. If your smart you will keep your data backed up... but still losing a system drive and having to rebuild the OS to get back up and running can be frustrating and time consuming.
If your not overly concerned with price, you may want to consider SCSI drives. You can get a 15K rpm 73 gig drive for around $150 + $50 for a decent controller. They are expensive... but the performance is phenomenal.
deanwh wrote:
Price isnt my concern here, I'm looking for advice regarding the best possible system to run primarily cs3 and mangage my images.
I didnt notice the fdd, I certainly wont be needing one of those
Cheers, Dean
I have to agree with the previous poster, get a MacPro.
Two Xeon (dual or quad core) processors
Up to 32 gigs of ram
Four internal hard drive bays (sata 2) up to 4 terabytes
ATI or NVIDIA video cards that can drive two 30 inch displays
No viruses!
The advantage to this system is memory management. With OSX, Photoshop CS3 can utilize 3.7 gigs of memory directly. System ram above this limit is used as scratch disk before Photoshop goes to a physical hard drive for virtual memory.
Thanks to everyone who has responded.
I will probably go for 4gb ram and also make sure there is firewire 800 ports.
I'm also thinking of upgrading to the E6850 3ghz chip.
Speed of the hard drives isnt as important as backup redundancy and size.
Thanks again to all, Dean
Reconsider the case. I have that case. It claims to be whisper quiet. It is, and HOT. I had to add another fan and aftermarket CPU cooler and now it is like a jet engine. This is not the cases fault but if you want to run your CPU cool, don't count on it with that case and no additional HUGE fans.
The system I just built is very similar to this except I went with the Quad. The new system has the best case I have ever found in over 10 years of building my own PC's.
There are hundreds of cases. I have the same M/B. The case I linked to is much much better. I have both sitting next to each other right now as a matter of fact. If I turn on the PC with the Antec case and required additional cooling, the whole room becomes filled with fan noise.
Right, we'll just pretend no one has used the M word.
Re the Antec case, I agree. You can do much better. I use a Thermaltake Aguila. Reasonably priced, very quiet and lots of room for expansion and updates. But there are many on the market equally good. Do a little research and you can do better for the same money.
Everyone has opinions and some prefer to hide their heads in the ground and quote what they heard from some source like a kiddies forum. My #1 start off choice would be a high quality POWER SUPPLY, not one that comes in a $39 case. Over $100 gets you in the door with a fair one. A good one will eliminate many potential problems in the future. More people will put this item in last place than first as a result of ignorance, how many recommendations so far? http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1000883
A case I’ve had good use from is Lianu, VG quality. OS choice? I’d love to put OSX in my box any day. That may not be that far in the future as some indicate.
visch1 wrote:
Everyone has opinions and some prefer to hide their heads in the ground and quote what they heard from some source like a kiddies forum. My #1 start off choice would be a high quality POWER SUPPLY, not one that comes in a $39 case. Over $100 gets you in the door with a fair one. A good one will eliminate many potential problems in the future. More people will put this item in last place than first as a result of ignorance, how many recommendations so far? http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1000883
A case I’ve had good use from is Lianu, VG quality. OS choice? I’d love to put OSX in my box any day. That may not be that far in the future as some indicate. ...Show more →
Agree on PSU. Plus, you can use the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator to get a pretty much good estimate of power required.
