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Archive 2009 · Best Computer for Photoshop?
  
 
sjms
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p.6 #1 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


Dpic_arctic wrote:
I feel sorta silly asking this, but is it cheaper to build your own computer buy one "assembled"?

sometimes yes sometimes no.
what you end up with in the end is a machine that:
1- you understand better (makes hardware issues easier to deal with)
2- is as close to the use specification that you want as can be made especially if you are more on the tech savvy side and have knowledge of the underlining technologies
3- generally components have better warranties individually. (up to and including lifetime)
4- really get what you paid for.

drivers from component makers tend to be updated more then those from whole system builders like Dell and HP. in fact most big box builders lose interest in updaing their "product" after about 2 years. HP is notoriously short attention spanned.
Jan 15, 2010 at 07:47 AM
Nickle S.
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p.6 #2 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


sjms wrote:
drivers from component makers tend to be updated more then those from whole system builders like Dell and HP. in fact most big box builders lose interest in updaing their "product" after about 2 years. HP is notoriously short attention spanned.

sjms,

Great points, every one of them. I could add that a reputable boutique builder such as Puget or AVADirect will take great care with cable management leaving you plenty of room in the case for air-flow. I never knew how important this was until I started researching a custom high-end build with air-cooling.

Also, you will have access to all of the functions in the BIOS with a custom build whereas an off-the-shelf PC will have most of the timings and frequencies locked.

But I think the biggest value in going this way is the tech and customer support. Quick story. We have a Gateway computer that was shutting down from time to time, even when it was idling. Everyone I talked to about this said the chip was probably failing, so we sent it down to ACER/Gateway in Texas for warranty repair. They ran all their tests, said nothing could be detected and sent it back. Couple days later, same thing, sent it back for trip #2, they ran tests and sent it back. Couple days later, same thing, made trip #3, they repeated tests and sent it back. Couple days later, yep, same thing, made trip #4 from VA to TX (computer was getting frequent-flyer miles by then).

This time they replaced the mobo, the CPU and the HDDs, they basically rebuilt the darn thing. Got it back and WOW, what a surprise, it shut itself down. OK, I took a different approach, went to TigerDirect and bought a new 400W power supply for about $45. That was about 1.5 years ago and the computer has been running great ever since. Each service trip had us without the computer for 9 or 10 days, so after this experience, I wouldn't buy the time of day from ACER/Gateway. I read somewhere that Michael Dell was forced to come out of retirement because their customer and tech-support had deteriorated and was rated the worst of the major PC companies. Maybe he righted the ship somewhat.

Nicholas
http://www.copperhillimages.com/index.php?pr=galleries



Jan 15, 2010 at 08:26 AM
sjms
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p.6 #3 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


i'll tell you right off the bat as you described it as a power issue. it sounded like a PS. testing a MB won't find that at all. in troubleshooting you can miss the forest for the trees. the more integrated and sophisicated the harder the job. you should see the T/S system i go into battle with daily on my B777's.


Jan 15, 2010 at 08:45 AM
Nickle S.
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p.6 #4 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


sjms wrote:
i'll tell you right off the bat as you described it as a power issue. it sounded like a PS. testing a MB won't find that at all. in troubleshooting you can miss the forest for the trees. the more integrated and sophisicated the harder the job. you should see the T/S system i go into battle with daily on my B777's.

Wish I had brought the issue here for your opinion instead of relying on ACER.


Jan 15, 2010 at 08:55 AM
sjms
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p.6 #5 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


thats why i build it myself. and oh believe me i've blown it more then once chasing a ghost around. another point is to always try to know someone who knows just a bit more then you do about certain specialities. i got a whole cardfile full of them.


Jan 15, 2010 at 09:02 AM
Dpic_arctic
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p.6 #6 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


Bifurcator wrote:
BYO is much cheaper these days again for mid to high-spec machines.



At about what price point do you start to save?


Jan 15, 2010 at 02:29 PM
Dpic_arctic
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p.6 #7 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


Dpic_arctic wrote:
I feel sorta silly asking this, but is it cheaper to build your own computer buy one "assembled"?

sjms wrote:
sometimes yes sometimes no.
what you end up with in the end is a machine that:
1- you understand better (makes hardware issues easier to deal with)
2- is as close to the use specification that you want as can be made especially if you are more on the tech savvy side and have knowledge of the underlining technologies
3- generally components have better warranties individually. (up to and including lifetime)
4- really get what you paid for.

drivers from component makers tend to be updated more then those from whole system builders like Dell and HP. in fact most big box builders lose interest in...Show more →

Yes, sometimes (with cameras too) you pay for stuff you don't want, and don't get enough of stuff you DO want.




Jan 15, 2010 at 02:34 PM
Bifurcator
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p.6 #8 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


Bifurcator wrote:
BYO is much cheaper these days again for mid to high-spec machines.


Dpic_arctic wrote:
At about what price point do you start to save?

Well generally speaking:

A typical $6,000 preassembled machine can be built for a little less than $4,000 ***

A $4,000 machine can be built for $3,000.

A $2,000 machine can be put together for $1,500

A $900 machine can be put together for $800 to $850.

*** And in so doing the specification is additionally raised considerably. Like the MB you select will accept 12, 18, or 24 DIMM modules at 16 GB each for a total of a hell of a lot of RAM. Or it sports 8 SATA and 8 SAS connections, Or it has 1 or 2 extra PCIx slots, etc. where the prebuilt ones will be limited to 8 RAM slots, and maybe either/or on the Drive connections. You'll additionally be able to select a much better power supply maybe and etc. etc.

And this is all assuming that you're purchasing similar grade parts. It is possible to additionally lower the cost of components you select by choosing one's that are equal in speed but rated for consumer/gamer use instead of server grade. etc.

One interesting note is that when considering machines with same or similar components the Mac Pro from 2006 through to 2008 were pretty close to the same cost as a roll-your-own box. In 2009 however they for no apparent reason added almost $2000 to the price tag of every Mac Pro. So where once Mac Pro was a pretty good deal for the components you got Apple has joined the ranks of over-chargers. Sad but true. So if you want an Apple per-chance look for a new 2008 model which can still be had - here and there or on Apple's over-stock/referb pages. The higher spec'd ones are essentially $6,000 boxes selling for $4,000.

Since this thread is about machines specifically for photoshop it's also important to note that clock speed is much more important then number of cores and that the amount of RAM is critical to over-all speed. SSD units as cache and scratch drives are also critical components for improving PS's performance! Rotational media can not compete - this is also true for every photo editing and photo browsing application I have tested (and I think I have tested all of them [stopwatch at the ready] - yeah, too much time on my hands. )



Edited on Jan 15, 2010 at 08:18 PM · View previous versions
Jan 15, 2010 at 07:39 PM
sjms
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p.6 #9 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


i've been lucky in that respect with camera bodies. they've pretty much given me what i've wanted at least up until now. this recent idiotic love affair with video in a DSLR and now everyone wants to don a beret and become the great director.


Jan 15, 2010 at 07:40 PM
Dpic_arctic
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p.6 #10 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


Bifurcator wrote:
BYO is much cheaper these days again for mid to high-spec machines.

Dpic_arctic wrote:
At about what price point do you start to save?

Bifurcator wrote:
Well generally speaking:

A typical $6,000 preassembled machine can be built for a little less than $4,000 ***

A $4,000 machine can be built for $3,000.

A $2,000 machine can be put together for $1,500

A $900 machine can be put together for $800 to $850.

*** And in so doing the specification is additionally raised considerably. Like the MB you select will accept 12, 18, or 24 DIMM modules at 16 GB each for a total of a hell of a lot of RAM. Or it sports 8 SATA and 8 SAS connections, Or it has 1 or 2 extra PCIx slots, etc....Show more →

Thanks so much Bifurcator. I assume you're Mac, right? Would the prices be different for a Windows system, or are the components the same in both Win. and Mac?
Jan 16, 2010 at 03:11 AM
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p.6 #11 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


I am all things.

Currently I have
1 Mac Pro triple booting OS X, Vista 64, and Ubuntu,
1 roll-your-own WinAMD,
1 roll-your-own WinTel,
2 roll-your-own Ubuntu boxes,
4 Dell Precision workstations dual booting Ubuntu and Vista 64,
1 Gateway laptop dual booting XP 64 and Ubuntu.

You can of course build a hackintosh for the same basic price differences but it's against Apple policy (EULA) to permit installation on non-Apple hardware. I was talking about hardware though and not the OS's. These days the only real difference between a Mac and a Windoze box is the OS itself.
Jan 16, 2010 at 06:03 AM
Dpic_arctic
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p.6 #12 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


Tom K. wrote:
Possible final configuration. Without SSD.

$2209.38

* ANTEC, Performance One P183 Black Mid-Tower Computer Case, ATX, No PSU
* PC POWER & COOLING, Silencer® 750W Quad (Black) Power Supply, 24-pin ATX12V EPS12V, Single +12V Rail, Quad SLI Ready
* ASUS, P6T Deluxe V2, LGA1366, Intel® X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-2000 (O.C.) 24GB /6, PCIe x16 SLI CF /3, SATA 3 Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2, ATX, Retail
* INTEL, Core™ i7-920 Quad-Core 2.66GHz, LGA1366, 4.8 GT/s QPI, 8MB L3 Cache, 45nm, 130W, EM64T EIST VT XD, Retail
* NOCTUA, NH-U12P Copper CPU Cooler, Socket 1366
*...Show more →

There are a couple terms I don't understand here. Could someone explain the highlighted words to me?

Also, which one of these has the sound and USB or firewire ports? And why are there 3 hard drives? Wouldn't two be enough? And one more thing- does this have openGL?
Jan 16, 2010 at 03:38 PM
Bifurcator
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p.6 #13 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


ECC is a kind of RAM which is very useful if you're running a Data-cener... you know... those rooms filled with main-frame machines? ECC (Error Correction Code) is a mechanism by which computers can correct "soft-errors" in memory. Soft-errors can occur:

  1. if you live in an area with high background radiation like Iraq these days or Boulder Colorado where the site (building) is surrounded by massive sized boulders (think Half-Dome. ) or is sitting atop such,
  2. if a cosmic ray from an exploding star strikes a RAM chip in your machine,
  3. if the machine is in close proximity to extremely hot substances (molten steel for example),
  4. if the machine is in an environment with thousands of other "packaged" computer components - some of which may have poor material purity levels and occasionally spit out an alpha particle as it ages (AKA, a Data-center).

The chances of a soft-error happening in the typical home or small office building is about a billion to one over a 1 year period. If a soft error does happen on non-ECC RAM the software has a very good change of crashing. If it happens on ECC RAM it has a very good chance of not crashing - although the alternative exists in both cases.

ECC RAM is slower and typically costs a bit more.


RAID is a way of using more than one data storage device (usually hard disk drives and/or solid state drives) in combination to increase either speed or capacity or both. As a result of the redundancy the failure probability rate changes for the RAID as a whole either for the better or for the worse depending on the RAID level and settings. Just use a real-time or hourly backup program and don't worry that though - if you decide to set up a RAID. You can read about all the different RAID levels and scope out some general information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID


SATA (serial advanced technology attachment) like IDE or SAS, is a bus interface for (usually) storage devices like HDDs and SSDs, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
Jan 17, 2010 at 12:16 AM
johnip
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p.6 #14 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


Bifurcator wrote:
  • if a cosmic ray from an exploding star strikes a RAM chip in your machine,


    This has probably happened to me with my luck


    • Jan 17, 2010 at 12:51 AM
    Dpic_arctic
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    p.6 #15 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


    Bifurcator wrote:
    ECC is a kind of RAM which is very useful if you're running a Data-cener... you know... those rooms filled with main-frame machines? ECC (Error Correction Code) is a mechanism by which computers can correct "soft-errors" in memory. Soft-errors can occur:

    1. if you live in an area with high background radiation like Iraq these days or Boulder Colorado where the site (building) is surrounded by massive sized boulders (think Half-Dome. ) or is sitting atop such,
    2. if a cosmic ray from an exploding star strikes a RAM chip in your machine,
    3. if the machine is in close proximity to extremely hot
    4. if the machine is in an environment with thousands of other "packaged" computer components - some of which may have poor material purity levels and occasionally spit out an alpha particle as it ages (AKA, a Data-center).

    The chances of a soft-error happening in the typical home or small office building is about a billion to one over a 1 year period. If a soft error does happen on non-ECC RAM the software has a very good change of crashing. If it happens on ECC RAM it has a very good chance of not crashing - although the alternative exists in both cases.

    ECC RAM is slower and typically costs a bit more.

    RAID is a way of using more than one data storage device (usually hard disk drives and/or solid state drives) in combination to increase either speed or capacity or both. As a result of the redundancy the failure probability rate changes for the RAID as a whole either for the better or for the worse depending on the RAID level and settings. Just use a real-time or hourly backup program and don't worry that though - if you decide to set up a RAID. You can read about all the different RAID levels and scope out some general information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

    SATA (serial advanced technology attachment) like IDE or SAS, is a bus interface for (usually) storage devices like HDDs and SSDs, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

    ...Show more →

    Thanks so much Bifurcator. They must only use ECC for computers handling super-important information like government computers.

    What was the difference between the SSD Tom had listed before and the WD VelociRaptor™ he has now?




    Jan 17, 2010 at 01:21 AM
    Bifurcator
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    p.6 #16 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


    johnip,
    They aren't all that uncommon on the surface of the Earth actually. I think the scientists call them "ground events" and there's like, a lot of them happening. But still the chances that one hits the chip and also flips the bit (causes a "soft error") is like pretty rare. there's even a few agencies on the planet that are responsible for counting them. Heh, Bob, the cosmic ray counter. http://www.ips.gov.au/World_Data_Centre/1/7



    Dpic_arctic,
    Actually a lot of high end workstation and server grade computers use ECC chips. My Dells and my Mac Pro are all using ECC memory.
    Jan 17, 2010 at 01:24 AM
    Nickle S.
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    p.6 #17 · Best Computer for Photoshop?






    What was the difference between the SSD Tom had listed before and the WD VelociRaptor™ he has now?



    Here's a thread with an extensive discussion of your question:

    http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=34102813

    Nicholas
    www.copperhillimages.com


    Jan 17, 2010 at 09:06 AM
    Dpic_arctic
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    p.6 #18 · Best Computer for Photoshop?




    What was the difference between the SSD Tom had listed before and the WD VelociRaptor™ he has now?



    Here's a thread with an extensive discussion of your question:

    http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=34102813

    Nicholas
    www.copperhillimages.com

    I guess the question now is how are VRs different than a HDD? They appear to having moving components unlike SSDs.


    Jan 17, 2010 at 06:28 PM
    PierreB
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    p.6 #19 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


    Tom K. wrote:
    I wouldn't change a thing. You can pop a few more HD's in there is you want. AVADirect builds an incredible PC. Quality craftsmanship is very evident in their builds. This thing is quiet too, which was important to me.

    # ANTEC, Performance One P183 Black Mid-Tower Computer Case, ATX, No PSU
    # ANTEC, Signature 650 Power Supply, 650W, 24-pin ATX12V EPS12V, One 6-pin + One 8-pin PCIe, SLI Certified
    # ASUS, P6T Deluxe V2, LGA1366, Intel® X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-2000 (O.C.) 24GB /6, PCIe x16 SLI CF /3, SATA 3 Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2,    ...Show more →

    This has been a very useful thread for me as I too need to decide on the spec of a new Windows machine. Can you tell me whether that Asus board supports USB 3.0? I am continually backing up to external HDD's (WD MyBooks) and copying a terabyte or more on USB 2 is just so slow.
    Jan 17, 2010 at 06:50 PM
    Dpic_arctic
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    p.6 #20 · Best Computer for Photoshop?


    Tom K. wrote:
    I wouldn't change a thing. You can pop a few more HD's in there is you want. AVADirect builds an incredible PC. Quality craftsmanship is very evident in their builds. This thing is quiet too, which was important to me.

    # ANTEC, Performance One P183 Black Mid-Tower Computer Case, ATX, No PSU
    # ANTEC, Signature 650 Power Supply, 650W, 24-pin ATX12V EPS12V, One 6-pin + One 8-pin PCIe, SLI Certified
    # ASUS, P6T Deluxe V2, LGA1366, Intel® X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-2000 (O.C.) 24GB /6, PCIe x16 SLI CF /3, SATA 3 Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2,    ...Show more →
    PierreB wrote:
    This has been a very useful thread for me as I too need to decide on the spec of a new Windows machine. Can you tell me whether that Asus board supports USB 3.0? I am continually backing up to external HDD's (WD MyBooks) and copying a terabyte or more on USB 2 is just so slow.


    USB 3.0? I must be out of the loop. Never heard of it. Did this come with Windows 7?
    Jan 17, 2010 at 07:22 PM
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