Custom Build PC - Advice

[The_Bulb]

There seems to be a lot of forum members who know their computer stuff on here so was hoping if I could pick your brains.

It is many years since I last built a PC having gone down the Gateway and Later Dell routes in recent times, but I fancy a crack at a new machine and the cheapest way to do this is to build my own!!!!

I bascially want the machine to handle my photographic needs in Lightroom 2 and Photoshop predominantly and I would like to get into handling Tiff exports from Lightroom into photoshop (with my 5D ii these files can be 120Mb's!!!!) and so was wondering if people had any advice.

I have listed what I am looking at purchasing below and wondered if anyone had any experience or advice with these components or generally when building your own machine.

Coolmaster Stacker 831 case
Coolmaster 850w Realpower Modular PSU
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P iX58 Socket 1366 7.1 audio channel motherboard
Intel i7 920 2.66GHz Socket 1366 Processor
Artic Silver Thermal Paste
CoolIT Domino Water Cool Kit (so I can look at overclocking the processor)
Corsair 12Gb (6x2Gb) DDR3 1600 MHz RAM
MSI HD 4890 Cyclone 0C 1Gb GDDR5 HDMI/DVI Graphics Card
LG Blu-ray Disc re-writer
Internal Card Reader
Dell 24" 1920x1200 Ultrasharp Monitor
Western Digital 500GB SATA 7200rpm 32Mb Cache
Windows Vista x64 bit with Windows 7 upgrade

I will use existing keyboard and mouse and will probably use a dell soundbar on the monitor and I have a sub I can use - Am I missing anything? Should I check any potential compatibility issues?

Thanks for any advice

 

[jamesoliverstone]

If anything I would say that is way over spec for what you need it for... you probably dont need to spend anywhere near that amount of money bud

 

[sym_richard]

Why only 500gb harddrive? Get 2 tb for your 5d ii is sensible

 

[The_Bulb]

If anything I would say that is way over spec for what you need it for... you probably dont need to spend anywhere near that amount of money bud

Thanks for the really quick reply - is the whole thing totaly OTT????

Why only 500gb harddrive? Get 2 tb for your 5d ii is sensible

I use NAS normally, hence only the 1 drive!

 

[PsiFox]

500GB not enough. Consider a mirrored raid array and external backup
1 terrabyte drives only cost£40 plus vat and delivery

 

[hashcake]

Total overkill....

An Intel E8400 775 CPU will do you rather than throw money at an i7 CPU and a relevant Gigabyte motherboard.
1TB Hard drives are now cheap enough so get 2 and run a mirror RAID array.
You certainly don't need an 800W PSU.

You can easily overclock an E8400 to 3.6ghz if you must insist on overclocking.
It seems that you've not had experience with serious overclocking for a while and although I am not trying yo put you off, going for watercooling is best left to those who have a better understanding of overclocking.

 

[The_Bulb]

500GB not enough. Consider a mirrored raid array and external backup
1 terrabyte drives only cost£40 plus vat and delivery

Thanks - I didn't realise they were that cheap TBH I have a 500Gb NAS, 500Gb external HD drive too so will use these for all my photos and have the USB drive backup the NAS!

 

[dalex_257]

I bascially want the machine to handle my photographic needs in Lightroom 2 and Photoshop predominantly and I would like to get into handling Tiff exports from Lightroom into photoshop (with my 5D ii these files can be 120Mb's!!!!) and so was wondering if people had any advice.

...
Coolmaster Stacker 831 case
Coolmaster 850w Realpower Modular PSU
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P iX58 Socket 1366 7.1 audio channel motherboard
Intel i7 920 2.66GHz Socket 1366 Processor
Artic Silver Thermal Paste
CoolIT Domino Water Cool Kit (so I can look at overclocking the processor)
Corsair 12Gb (6x2Gb) DDR3 1600 MHz RAM
MSI HD 4890 Cyclone 0C 1Gb GDDR5 HDMI/DVI Graphics Card
LG Blu-ray Disc re-writer
Internal Card Reader
Dell 24" 1920x1200 Ultrasharp Monitor
Western Digital 500GB SATA 7200rpm 32Mb Cache
Windows Vista x64 bit with Windows 7 upgrade

This seems like a massive overkill unless you are planning to use it for heavy gaming.

Firstly, why would you be willing to go though all the hassles with water cooling stuff if you need a decent PC to process photos? The CPU you have is 4 cores with hyperthreading (means 8 virtual CPU/execution paths) which is plenty of power to handle current Adobe LR/PS needs and also accommodate for the future increases. This hardly does need any overclocking at all.

Secondly, I agree with what was said here - 500GB HDD is way too little for photo applications. You need to start looking for a couple of 750GB or 1TB disks to have some decent storage and not to worry of it running out. Plus, if you really care about making your system fast with Adobe PS/LR, I would strongly advise to have a MB with SATA RAID support and have at least 2 HDDs configured as one of the stripped RAID volumes - this will increase the writing speed (it will be writing even single file in parallel onto two disks) and make you file operations faster and system more responsive.

As an example, my 3 year old system has dual core Pentium 3.2GHz (without hyperthreading), ASUS MB with hardware supported RAID-5 (2x750GB Hitachi dtives) and optimally tuned hardware settings on MB (memory speed, CPU and PCI-E settings). As a result - LR is very fast (even local edits) and PS is very good either.

 

[The_Bulb]

[

Total overkill....

An Intel E8400 775 CPU will do you rather than throw money at an i7 CPU and a relevant Gigabyte motherboard.
1TB Hard drives are now cheap enough so get 2 and run a mirror RAID array.
You certainly don't need an 800W PSU.

You can easily overclock an E8400 to 3.6ghz if you must insist on overclocking.
It seems that you've not had experience with serious overclocking for a while and although I am not trying yo put you off, going for watercooling is best left to those who have a better understanding of overclocking.

Thanks for your reply - I have no experience of overclocking TBH, well apart from what I have read today on the net :nuts: sounds like it could be back to the drawing board!

would the overkill be massive - i.e with what I want to do with the system what percentage of the system would I be using?

 

[The_Bulb]

This seems like a massive overkill unless you are planning to use it for heavy gaming.

Firstly, why would you be willing to go though all the hassles with water cooling stuff if you need a decent PC to process photos? The CPU you have is 4 cores with hyperthreading (means 8 virtual CPU/execution paths) which is plenty of power to handle current Adobe LR/PS needs and also accommodate for the future increases. This hardly does need any overclocking at all.

Secondly, I agree with what was said here - 500GB HDD is way too little for photo applications. You need to start looking for a couple of 750GB or 1TB disks to have some decent storage and not to worry of it running out. Plus, if you really care about making your system fast with Adobe PS/LR, I would strongly advise to have a MB with SATA RAID support and have at least 2 HDDs configured as one of the stripped RAID volumes - this will increase the writing speed (it will be writing even single file in parallel onto two disks) and make you file operations faster and system more responsive.

As an example, my 3 year old system has dual core Pentium 3.2GHz (without hyperthreading), ASUS MB with hardware supported RAID-5 (2x750GB Hitachi dtives) and optimally tuned hardware settings on MB (memory speed, CPU and PCI-E settings). As a result - LR is very fast (even local edits) and PS is very good either.

Thanks very much, I had no idea you could get a motherboard with support for raid built in - thanks for the advice I will have a look at that

 

[Fuuudge]

I have to agree with the others, its more than you need, but that wouldn't stop me from buying it


I have a Quad Core Q6600, 8GB DDR2 RAM, P5K Motherboard and a 9600GT GC and I have no issues handling large images. I often have CS4, LR2, FF and a few other apps running and can easily switch between them with no waiting. I am sure I have even encoded video files while photo editing with no hassle. So hopefully this shows you don't need all that, although if you do, it will certainly last you a good few years.

I would recommend getting a raptor HDD for your OS and having 2/3 seperate drives for storing your large images, setup for RAID of course.

 

[SteveA]

My first thought would be to just buy rather than build. Unless you're the sort of person who'll actually enjoy bolting the thing together.

Otherwise... I agree with hashcake.

 

[The_Bulb]

I have to agree with the others, its more than you need, but that wouldn't stop me from buying it


I have a Quad Core Q6600, 8GB DDR2 RAM, P5K Motherboard and a 9600GT GC and I have no issues handling large images. I often have CS4, LR2, FF and a few other apps running and can easily switch between them with no waiting. I am sure I have even encoded video files while photo editing with no hassle. So hopefully this shows you don't need all that, although if you do, it will certainly last you a good few years.

I would recommend getting a raptor HDD for your OS and having 2/3 seperate drives for storing your large images, setup for RAID of course.

Thanks for your comments - if the motherboard supports RAID do I then not need a PCI or PCI-e RAID card?

 

[The_Bulb]

My first thought would be to just buy rather than build. Unless you're the sort of person who'll actually enjoy bolting the thing together.

Otherwise... I agree with hashcake.

I am that sort of person TBH - I also priced up a Dell machine with the same processor and RAM and the dell machine without the 24" monitor was the same as the self build machine WITH the 24" monitor!

 

[The_Bulb]

Below is an extract from the Motherboard spec from the OP - does this mean I can buy 2 SATA HD's and setup a RAID in the bios?

Storage Interface

South Bridge:
6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_0, SATA2_1, SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10

GIGABYTE SATA2 chip:

1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
2x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (GSATA2_0, GSATA2_1) supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices
Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1 and JBOD

 

[mrgubby]

Q6600 Cpu (mine runs at 3.2Ghz)
2 x IT SATA2 HDs with backup to NAS (NAS is sloooooow & crap to load photos from)
A lower spec 512Mb graphics card
Why the Bluray drive ?, only if you're watching films ??
Buy the best card reader you can get
Not sure if the watercooling is worth it, but whatever cooling you use make sure it's quiet
850W CPU is overkill, again , make sure what you buy is quiet
Unless you are going to spend days in the case or it's on show to the world buy the cheapest you can fit the kit in

and buy a nice comfortable corded mouse / keyboard. The batteries go flat on the wireless stuff & kids hide the mouse......


I built my first PC when 286 was the latest kit & I've never bought a ready built one



*don't bother with RAID striping, if one goes pop you lose ALL the data

 

[dod]

Q. Why buy a Ferrari when the speed limit is 60 MPH?

A. Because you can, go for it

 

[neil_g]

total overkill buying 12gb memory, the most youll need at the moment is 8gb.

i wouldnt bother with RAID to be honest.

 

[The_Bulb]

Q6600 Cpu (mine runs at 3.2Ghz)
2 x IT SATA2 HDs with backup to NAS (NAS is sloooooow & crap to load photos from)
A lower spec 512Mb graphics card
Why the Bluray drive ?, only if you're watching films ??
Buy the best card reader you can get
Not sure if the watercooling is worth it, but whatever cooling you use make sure it's quiet
850W CPU is overkill, again , make sure what you buy is quiet
Unless you are going to spend days in the case or it's on show to the world buy the cheapest you can fit the kit in

and buy a nice comfortable corded mouse / keyboard. The batteries go flat on the wireless stuff & kids hide the mouse......


I built my first PC when 286 was the latest kit & I've never bought a ready built one



*don't bother with RAID striping, if one goes pop you lose ALL the data

Thanks for your advice

Q. Why buy a Ferrari when the speed limit is 60 MPH?

A. Because you can, go for it

Now that's my way of thinking!

total overkill buying 12gb memory, the most youll need at the moment is 8gb.

i wouldnt bother with RAID to be honest.

Thanks - I know it is probably overkill, I think I was just amazed how cheap memory is these days and got carried away!

 

[FranchiseJuan]

Unlike most people in this thread, I would say that you should definately go with the i7 and overclock (you could do this with an air cooler instead of water quite easily and get to 3.5-4ghz).

Also get as much RAM as you can afford to put in it. Photoshop loves RAM, and you really need about 8gigs for it to be really comfortable (just remember to put RAM in sets of 3 so that you get the maximum bandwidth). Also the increase in RAM bandwith from Q6600 to i7 is worth the extra money.

Also if you can afford it, you will notice a very big boost in responsiveness from using an SSD drive rather than a normal HDD. You only need to get a 64gb for your OS and install, and you will notice things launch faster and the computer is better to use overall.

 

[strax]

I have recently just built a similar system.

I was just going to go for a core quad upgrade but when you factor in the motherboard and processor, the jump to a far faster i7 system was only £100ish.

I have a 920 i7 running quite happily below default voltage at 3.6gig. I went for the 6gig of ram and run 2xSSD's in raid and a 1tb and 500gb drive off another two of the sata ports.

Water cooling is not necessary for this, get a Noctua HSF, it will do the same job just as quiet.

I havent seen any convincing argument for 12gig over 6gig of ram yet although you need to be running a 64bit OS to get the benefits of either. Look on it as futureproofing. My last core2duo system did me for 3 years before I decided to upgrade, if this does the same I will be happy.

 

[lazaroonie]

500GB not enough. Consider a mirrored raid array and external backup
1 terrabyte drives only cost£40 plus vat and delivery

if you are sorted for 'non system' storage (photos, music etc) I would seriously consider a SSD for your operating system and programs.

 

[Fuuudge]

and buy a nice comfortable corded mouse / keyboard. The batteries go flat on the wireless stuff & kids hide the mouse......

Haha, must suck having to look for the mouse

I have a wireless Microsoft K/M and I love it. The keyboard only needs charging once every month/month and a half (using 2500mAh batteries) but the mouse is a pain. That requires charging once per week, although if the red light starts flashing on it I can usually last the day and charge it at night. So I wouldn't rule it out entirely, saves on cable clutter.

 

[divine`]

Q9550 is where the peak 'bang for buck' will lie for photoshop use (E8400 is pointless, no point going dual core for image editing unless you really can't afford a good quad), with 8GB of RAM. An i7 won't be beaten for raw power though, they are very fast CPUs.

Graphics wise, HD4890 is a waste unless you are gaming.

9600GSO or something would do you better (and much cheaper) if it is solely for imaging and as a bonus will enable CUDA GPU acceleration in CS4 if you use that.

One thing I will say is that Intel Core i5 and Radeon 5000 series are pretty much dead cert to arrive in October along with Windows 7, so you may want to wait for those, they may provide a better solution for you than either the Q9550 or i7 920

I just built a Q9550, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Gigabyte EP45-UD3L, 650W Corsair PSU, 640GB WD HDD, DVD-RW, new case etc. for £550, then added a GTX260 for £110 shortly after. I have the Q9550 running at 3.4GHz (Stock is 2.83GHz) and it could go a lot further (3.8GHz easily, 4GHz with a bit of fiddling and maybe some extra fans), I just don't really need any more power than that at the moment.

If you take on the SSD advice, do a lot of research there are cheaper drives out there that will big up their read speeds but the write speeds can be abysmal. Newer (and more expensive) models have improved write performance though.

Oh and another thing - the CoolIT Domino ALC is nothing special, you're better off with an air cooler like a Titan Fenrir, Noctua NH-U12P, Thermalright 120...

 

[dalex_257]

Thanks very much, I had no idea you could get a motherboard with support for raid built in - thanks for the advice I will have a look at that

I think all manufacturers do them now - ASUS certainly does quite a few.

 

[dalex_257]

total overkill buying 12gb memory, the most youll need at the moment is 8gb.

i wouldnt bother with RAID to be honest.

Memory is never an overkill - the OP mentioned Vista x64 and that can use up to 128GB of RAM (depending on the version). So to OP - don't listen to that the more memory the better. Your system cache and LR/Photoshop will be flying...

i wouldnt bother with RAID to be honest.

Care to explain you reasons, pls? From my humble experience with building Windows systems previously with SCSI now with SATA, RAID vastly improves Windows performance overall.

 

[divine`]

Well, RAID 0 whilst giving a performance increase effectively doubles your chances of a disk failure causing total data loss. It somewhat makes a mockery of the name Redundant Array of Independent Disks as it's actually the opposite of redundant and the disks are dependent on each other.

RAID 1 gives you somewhat safer storage but obviously only against standard disk failure. Fire, power surges, water damage and so on and so forth would likely kill both disks and give you no benefit.

Whichever way you do it you also run the risk of the RAID controller corrupting your array, though this risk is very small and i've never personally seen it happen.

 

[hashcake]

You could go one stage further and run RAID 5.
However I've run Raid 1 on every box I've built for years.
I use a lot of massive music creation tools and the last thing I want is to reinstall the O/S and over 100GB of apps.
I have seen a RAID controller fail but that been down to chipsets I don't rate but I've never seen an Intel RAID fail.

 

[The_Bulb]

Thank you all very much for your responses - I have a lot to be considering with all your excellent posts - looks like I#ve got some more bedtime reading to be doing to make the right decisions!

 

[dalex_257]

Well, RAID 0 whilst giving a performance increase effectively doubles your chances of a disk failure causing total data loss. It somewhat makes a mockery of the name Redundant Array of Independent Disks as it's actually the opposite of redundant and the disks are dependent on each other.

RAID 1 gives you somewhat safer storage but obviously only against standard disk failure. Fire, power surges, water damage and so on and so forth would likely kill both disks and give you no benefit.

Whichever way you do it you also run the risk of the RAID controller corrupting your array, though this risk is very small and i've never personally seen it happen.

Run RAID5 with at least 3 disks and you will be protected against single disk failure whilst doubling your write speed. With modern disks, chance of two of them failing in exactly the same way (same level of corruptions or total failure) are miniscule. Besides how having a single HDD compared to RAID of any level is safer? I have been using hardware and hardware assisted RAIDs for more than ten years in 24x7 heavily used database environments and have never seen an unrecoverable failure.

 

[dalex_257]

Thank you all very much for your responses - I have a lot to be considering with all your excellent posts - looks like I#ve got some more bedtime reading to be doing to make the right decisions!

If you will consider RAIDs - look at Intel chipset supported one. They are easy to move to a new motherboard with newer versions of Intel chipsets if you will decide to upgrade in a future and have been out there for a while.

 

[neil_g]

those mentioning SSD drives, have they fixed the problems with the water leveling process causing speed degredation over a period of time yet?

Memory is never an overkill - the OP mentioned Vista x64 and that can use up to 128GB of RAM (depending on the version). So to OP - don't listen to that the more memory the better. Your system cache and LR/Photoshop will be flying...

im sure vista can but as far as i am aware there are no applications that can use over 8gb at this present time. feel free to correct me on that ***.

Care to explain you reasons, pls? From my humble experience with building Windows systems previously with SCSI now with SATA, RAID vastly improves Windows performance overall.

yeah sure. unless your seconds cost you £££ striping isnt really worth it. mirroring while handy for small failures as mentioned previously wont protect from fire/theft or a controller failing and nuking your array.

Besides how having a single HDD compared to RAID of any level is safer? I have been using hardware and hardware assisted RAIDs for more than ten years in 24x7 heavily used database environments and have never seen an unrecoverable failure.

no one said that a single drive is better. you should always have a 2nd device with a copy of the data on. in my 12 years of IT/server support i have seen on more than 1 occasion a server level controller fail and has fried the data on all attached disks forcing a restore from tape.

in server environments raid is essential as a tool to keep mission critical systems up and running while the drive is replaced and the array restored to full working capacity. however take the SAN at work, we also have a tape library attached because the worst can happen (eggs in one basket and all that) and we'd be stupid to take that chance. personally i dont see the point on a home system for the sake of a few milliseconds read/write.

 

[dalex_257]

im sure vista can but as far as i am aware there are no applications that can use over 8gb at this present time. feel free to correct me on that ***.

Where this info is coming from? The 64 bit apps can use the whole 64 bit address space minus all the system stuff so it is pretty much close to 128 GB on Vista 64 Ultimate.

yeah sure. unless your seconds cost you £££ striping isnt really worth it.

It is worth at least from the point of improving writing and reading speed as the read/write operations of a single file will go onto two devices simultaneously. This increases overall system performance. In turn if you use PS/LR with large files and existing RAM is not enough, then faster disk access will increase their overall speed as well. In the context of OP question - how is that not "really worth it"??? The cost wise - 2 SATA HDDs of 500GB and single 1TB SATA HDD are roughly the same when comparing the same model/manufacturer (the difference is up to 10 quid on Dabs - just checked). The replacement cost of a single drive failure is less though for 2 drives setup versus single larger one.

mirroring while handy for small failures as mentioned previously wont protect from fire/theft or a controller failing and nuking your array.

But neither will backup for the things you specified. Besides I never said anything about mirroring.

no one said that a single drive is better. you should always have a 2nd device with a copy of the data on. in my 12 years of IT/server support i have seen on more than 1 occasion a server level controller fail and has fried the data on all attached disks forcing a restore from tape.

You are missing the point really - the OP quest was for speed using LR/PS. I am sure reliability is important somewhat but more so speed that is why I suggested RAID. And I never said RAID replaces a need for backup. My point was that two disks of the same size in a RAID-0 set have the same consequences of failure as single HDD (both will result in a need to restore system and getting a new drive) yet it will be faster than a single drive. Adding a third disk and using RAID 0+1 (or 1+0) set will give you a reliability in case of a single disk failure as well but to me that's an overkill. We are not talking about server system either so the OP PC will hardly be running 24x7 churning the data constantly which is what usually leading to HDD failures.

in server environments raid is essential as a tool to keep mission critical systems up and running while the drive is replaced and the array restored to full working capacity. however take the SAN at work, we also have a tape library attached because the worst can happen (eggs in one basket and all that) and we'd be stupid to take that chance. personally i dont see the point on a home system for the sake of a few milliseconds read/write.

In server environments the reason you specified for using RAID is correct but is not the only reason. Striping, in most cases is used to improve write performance especially if it is not software driven. If RAID was to be used only for reliability and ability to hotswap - mirroring would enough.

 

[divine`]

It is worth at least from the point of improving writing and reading speed as the read/write operations of a single file will go onto two devices simultaneously. This increases overall system performance. In turn if you use PS/LR with large files and existing RAM is not enough, then faster disk access will increase their overall speed as well. In the context of OP question - how is that not "really worth it"???

Well let's consider RAID 0 first. The performance gain in something like Photoshop is a few seconds at best. In an article explaining the virtues of RAID, Tweakers.net showed a pair of WD 740GB Raptors in RAID 0 could open 25 8MP image files in 39s, compared to a single drive at 44s.

Now that isn't a lot of performance considering that to get that you have to pretty much double your chance of disk failure by running 2 dependent disks. As well as this, it costs considerably more. Say we wished to have a 1TB volume. As a single disk this will cost £60 for a Samsung F1 drive. To make that volume as RAID 0 you would need 2 500GB drives, at £45 each. A £30 (50%) premium purely in drive costs for what is a fairly small boost. £30 could buy you almost another 4GB of RAM in a Core 2 PC. So RAID 0 gives you a small increase in loading speed at the cost of reliability/security and money.

If we move to RAID 1, immediately we lose the increased likelihood of data loss, instead gaining reliability because a disk can fail in RAID 1 and you'll keep your data. Read speeds under RAID 1 can be great, because the disks can both access the same information and this can often be faster than RAID 0, however write speeds suffer as both hard drives need to be written to and this can occasionally slow things a touch. However, here the cost is a bigger issue than before as a RAID 1 volume will cost double the amount of the single disk volume, due to the disk mirroring. In the case of 1TB volumes, the extra £60 would be far better spent in other areas I would suggest, such as more RAM, or a better cooling solution to improve overclock speeds maybe.

In short, whichever path you choose, you gain only a small benefit, as in seconds, from running a RAID array and either your reliability or wallet will have to suffer for it.

 

[dalex_257]

Well let's consider RAID 0 first. The performance gain in something like Photoshop is a few seconds at best. In an article explaining the virtues of RAID, Tweakers.net showed a pair of WD 740GB Raptors in RAID 0 could open 25 8MP image files in 39s, compared to a single drive at 44s.

This is rather simplistic view isn't it. It is like saying that performance of the whole Windows id defined by how fast it opens files... Opening of a single image is hardly constitutes the PS work you do on a photo. My main point was not about reading speed - those are already pretty fast and with RAID will improve marginally. Writing speeds and sequential writes of a single drive are where striped RAIDs are better. Besides having RAID improves the overall system speed as well.

Now that isn't a lot of performance considering that to get that you have to pretty much double your chance of disk failure by running 2 dependent disks.

Let me guess - you have read the Wikipedia article showing their probabilities for RAID-0... That is actually quite wrong - the chances of two disks failed at the same time are significantly lower especially since you have your load distributed in across 2 drives equally (so combined MBTF is actually larger over time). And a single disk failure are the same in both cases. The single disk failure will actually cost you less in RAID setup because you only have to replace a single cheaper drive.

As well as this, it costs considerably more. Say we wished to have a 1TB volume. As a single disk this will cost £60 for a Samsung F1 drive. To make that volume as RAID 0 you would need 2 500GB drives, at £45 each.

Hmm - when I checked in Dabs a few moments ago - 500GB Seagate cost 37 quid and 1TB Seagate is 69 - to me the difference is only 5 quid between 2x500GB and 1x1Tb - hardly a saving you should be concerned when you build a system where CPU alone costs 180 quid.

 

[divine`]

This is rather simplistic view isn't it. It is like saying that performance of the whole Windows id defined by how fast it opens files... Opening of a single image is hardly constitutes the PS work you do on a photo. My main point was not about reading speed - those are already pretty fast and with RAID will improve marginally. Writing speeds and sequential writes of a single drive are where striped RAIDs are better. Besides having RAID improves the overall system speed as well.

Obviously opening an image file is not the only work you do on an image, however it is one of the operations most affected by your hard drives speed. When working on your photos (which I would guess time wise, dwarfs any time spent opening/saving the actual files) hard drive performance is only really called into question when you don't have enough RAM and it needs to start paging a lot, which takes you back to the point I made about just spending the extra on more RAM.

As for general system performance, i've yet to see any kind of non synthetic benchmark demonstrate any noticeable or useful increase from RAID 0. If you love staring at PCMark all day, it's awesome.

Let me guess - you have read the Wikipedia article showing their probabilities for RAID-0... That is actually quite wrong - the chances of two disks failed at the same time are significantly lower especially since you have your load distributed in across 2 drives equally (so combined MBTF is actually larger over time). And a single disk failure are the same in both cases. The single disk failure will actually cost you less in RAID setup because you only have to replace a single cheaper drive.

You'd guess wrong.
The disks array is dependant though, chances of simultaneous failure is irrelevant. If we assume a single disk has a 5% chance of random failure in the next 3 years (completely hypothetical number to illustrate the point), then in a RAID 0 array you have 2 disks with a 5% chance of failure. Because the data on those disks is dependant on the other, these effectively combine and give you a 10% chance of losing the data (compared to RAID 1 where both would need to fail at the same time to cause data loss which would be 0.25% chance of failure causing data loss). It's very basic probability. Whilst load spreading will reduce the load on a hard drive, this is very rarely the cause of a premature failure, which is what is likely to screw you over, a good hard drive will work away for a solid 6 or 7 years so the lifetime of a drive is rarely an issue, 'old age' isn't what will cause you a problem. A single disk failure in RAID will be physically cheaper (but only by half the amount you originally paid as a premium assuming equal costs, so you're still down overall) but you still lose all your data, which is obviously by far the more important 'cost' to consider in such a scenario.
[edit- i just looked at wiki out of curiosity and it would appear i've just picked exactly the same numbers, except they calculated the final probability properly to reach 9.75% instead of the rough 10% I gave]

Hmm - when I checked in Dabs a few moments ago - 500GB Seagate cost 37 quid and 1TB Seagate is 69 - to me the difference is only 5 quid between 2x500GB and 1x1Tb - hardly a saving you should be concerned when you build a system where CPU alone costs 180 quid.

I checked Samsung F1 drives on Scan as the Samsung F1 drives are well respected and fast drives. Though just looking and there is a 1TB Seagate drive on Dabs for £60, though Dabs are pretty awful at product labelling so i've no idea which of the 1TBs they sell is a 7200.12 drive like the 500GB. [edit - looking on Dabs site, the £63 1TB drive is the 7200.12 drive, equivalent to the £37 500GB]

RAID 0 is marginally faster in real world usage, costs more and is less reliable. I really believe the small extra performance is not worth the costs, both monetary and reliability wise.

 

[david1701]

have you considered an SSD scratch disk for PS work? PS puts its version of the page file on a drive with vvvv fast seek times, but the drives are v dear so gets expensive do use for whole computer

 

[dalex_257]

Obviously opening an image file is not the only work you do on an image, however it is one of the operations most affected by your hard drives speed. When working on your photos (which I would guess time wise, dwarfs any time spent opening/saving the actual files) hard drive performance is only really called into question when you don't have enough RAM and it needs to start paging a lot, which takes you back to the point I made about just spending the extra on more RAM.

The opening of the file is not the only real operation you'd do on PS - scratch disks come to mind as well. Speaking of LR I can pretty much guarantee you that opening of the file time is least impacting on the overall performance. LR constantly writes to it's catalog database and refreshes its image cache generating previews in background so it will benefit from faster writes no matter how much RAM you throw at it.

As for general system performance, i've yet to see any kind of non synthetic benchmark demonstrate any noticeable or useful increase from RAID 0. If you love staring at PCMark all day, it's awesome.

Ironic, I was giving my advice not based on some lame tests - I agree none of them gives real world examples (which is why I don't know why base any advice to someone on them). I am giving advice from my own experience building a PC 3 years ago specifically to run LR/PS. And I did experiment with single vs RAID0 performance and yes it was significantly faster. In fact it brought my system performance for disk transfers inline with my slightly older one where I used SCSI UW320 drives - I was really surprised at that time and
decided to stick with RAID0. I personally don't care about ability to recover - I have my backups for that.

The disks array is dependant though, chances of simultaneous failure is irrelevant. If we assume a single disk has a 5% chance of random failure in the next 3 years (completely hypothetical number to illustrate the point), then in a RAID 0 array you have 2 disks with a 5% chance of failure. Because the data on those disks is dependant on the other, these effectively combine and give you a 10% chance of losing the data (compared to RAID 1 where both would need to fail at the same time to cause data loss which would be 0.25% chance of failure causing data loss). It's very basic probability.

True it is basic probability, you should also remember that probability is never calculated blindly - you should take into accounts all known facts about involved subjects and only then attempt to calculate probability. Like in this case, using 2 disks in RAID0 spreads load equally (unlike in any generic 2 disk volume) which means that over the same period of time single disk will have twice more chances to fail than any single disk from the RAID0 array. After you combine their probability using this fact, you will get a very different numbers.


I'll leave it at this point - I don't think we will agree on anything so I don't see a reason to continue. To OP: I stand by my advice - it is based on my personal experience building PC with similar goals.

 

[divine`]

Agree to disagree then, I personally think it is a waste of effort and money that can be better spent elsewhere in a system.

 

[neil_g]

Where this info is coming from? The 64 bit apps can use the whole 64 bit address space minus all the system stuff so it is pretty much close to 128 GB on Vista 64 Ultimate.

pass. i dont bookmark everything i read. im pretty sure that if for example an install of SQL server with about 250 clients accessing it runs at about 1.5-2Gb memory im pretty sure Photoshop wont need that much.

But neither will backup for the things you specified. Besides I never said anything about mirroring.

im confused about that comment to be honest. i suggested copying data to a 2nd device as a backup? you may not of mentioned mirroring, i was just making a point.

You are missing the point really - the OP quest was for speed using LR/PS. I am sure reliability is important somewhat but more so speed that is why I suggested RAID.

and i said i didnt think it was worth it for the sake of a second or two here and there. like you say the OP isnt going to be churning data 24x7 so i cant see it making any if at all difference to his work.

i think divine has hit the nail on the head, with the comment that money would be better spent elsewhere.. it was kinda where my point was going (albeit badly no doubt).