New photo editing build

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I am looking to upgrade my machine, which was built about three years ago and has served me well over the years. I am hoping to reuse the following components to keep costs down and I only ever use LR3 on the system.

1 x Samsung HD753LJ 750GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm *32MB Cache*
1 x Optiarc AD-7191S 20X DVD±RW/DL/RAM LightScribe Serial ATA
1 x Sapphire ATI HD6450 1GB GDDR3 PCI-E HMD

I am looking to buy the following for the new build

1 x Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL9 1.5V unbuffered
1 x Asus P8H61/USB3 H61 Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard
1 x Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2 Socket 775, 1156, 1155, 1366, AM2, AM3 Heatpipe CPU Cooler
1 x Seagate ST3200641AS ES.2 2TB Hard Drive SATAIII 7200rpm 64MB Cache - OEM

I haven't put a PSU in yet, but I am wondering if i'll ever need anything more than 350-400W.

Any help of guidance on the compatibility would be very much appreciated.
 
id ditch the H61 motherboard for an Asus P8P67 in whichever flavour. had nothing but bother with the H61 before i returned it and went P67. plus you have the K unlocked processor which is pointless with the H61.

power wise id run at least a decent 480w from bequiet, corsair etc. checked the specs on that graphics card, it needs at least 400w.
 
I'd agree with Neil. Get an Asus P67 based board (or Z68 one) and overclock the K processor (very easy to do). Also budget for a decent PSU. I run 650W Corsair PSUs in all my PCs even quite simple ones.

The SATA3 is pointless on the HDD though. If there is an equivalent SATA2 drive that is cheaper, get that instead. Got the budget for an SSD as system disk?
 
Agreed, stick with a good quality PSU as you will get better service from it.
You can use this configuration tool to work out what power you need.

http://www.corsair.com/learn_n_explore/?psu=yes

Also have you considered a SSD for your windows drive (makes things a lot quicker)
The crucial M4 is a very good drive.
SCAN do these on their today page quite often.
http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/

They normally do better deals on a Friday (after 14:00 ish) for the weekend :)
 
No point buying the retail version of the CPU if you're getting a separate cooler, only saves a tenner or so but every little helps !
 
Agreed there is a small saving when you purchase OEM (£7-9 depending on retailer)
The big difference is the OEM version has only 1 year warranty & the full retail version (with cooler) has 3 years.
This all depends on how long you intend keeping the chip.
Personally I always purchase the retail version (for the warranty) & fit after market cooling.
 
Thanks guys, been very helpful, will put a revised build on here before I finalise the build.
 
If you are in no rush, AMD is bring out a new chip very soon & Intel is bring out another chip before christmas.
These chips will be for the 'enthusiast' but should push the prices down on the rest of there range (fingers crossed).
The price of RAM & SSD's is very low at the moment also.
 
piggin said:
If you are in no rush, AMD is bring out a new chip very soon & Intel is bring out another chip before christmas.
Click to expand...
Ah.. the sound of the greener pastures just over the hill...
 
arad85 said:
Ah.. the sound of the greener pastures just over the hill...
Click to expand...

lol, yep bulldozer has been spoken about for a very long time & has not materialized yet (makes me think of other mythical things like unicorns) :)

There will always be the 'next big thing' but this close to a release date, maybe worth holding out for a little longer.
 
neil_g said:
I heard builder was going to be a bit of a flop.. supposedly
Click to expand...

It depends where the rumours are coming from.
I have not purchased an AMD chip for years as they are not performing & will not overclock.
 
what would be the best way to make use of a SSD? Would I install Windows and LR to it? If so, what about the catalog and raw files, should they sit on a larger HDD?
 
arad85 said:
.........
The SATA3 is pointless on the HDD though. If there is an equivalent SATA2 drive that is cheaper, get that instead. ....QUOTE]

I will be building a new computer in the next month or two and a couple of those drives were on my list.

Why do you think SATA 3 is pointless on a hard drive?
Click to expand...
 
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hsuffyan said:
what would be the best way to make use of a SSD? Would I install Windows and LR to it? If so, what about the catalog and raw files, should they sit on a larger HDD?
Click to expand...

I doubt there would be enough room for RAW files but would think having the catalog on the SSD would be advantageous speedwise.
 
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the LR catalogue isnt usually too big but itll also depend on the size of your SSD. speed wise if it'll fit then SSD it.

the way i have mine setup..

60Gb SSD - windows and program files (LR3, CS3 etc)
1Tb internal - LR Catalogue sits on this
7Tb NAS - RAW files sit here

you can easily move files and catalogues with LR so you can always tweak it later.
 
Mikesphotaes said:
arad85 said:
.........
The SATA3 is pointless on the HDD though. If there is an equivalent SATA2 drive that is cheaper, get that instead. ....QUOTE]

I will be building a new computer in the next month or two and a couple of those drives were on my list.

Why do you think SATA 3 is pointless on a hard drive?
Click to expand...

depends on the drive youre considering. i looked at 1Tb sata 2 and 3 drives a month or two back and seek/read/write times werent too disimilar.
Click to expand...
 
Thinking of 2 Tb, probably Samsung.

I always thought SATA111 was twice as fast as SATA11 ?
 
Mikesphotaes said:
Why do you think SATA 3 is pointless on a hard drive?
Click to expand...
Because you can't max out SATA 2 with current HDD technology. Max streaming rate is ~100Mbytes/sec which is well inside the 3Gbps achievable with SATA 2. It's a physical limit of the drive rather than a limit on the interconnect.

It's kind of like building an Autobahn with a 300km/hr speed limit and then only putting mopeds on it....
 
samsung dont make a sata3 2tb drive for starters so lets compare to the seagate ST2000DL003.

about the same price, same rpm, the seagate has double the cache.

seek time is faster on the samsung, 8.9ms vs 12ms. sustained data transfer rates are the same at 144mb/s.
 
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neil_g said:
sustained data transfer rates are the same at 144mb/s.
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That's 144MB/s ;) which is about 1Gb/s, far less than the 3Gb/s of SATA 2

BTW, typically B means Bytes, b means bits when quoting speeds in shorthand (a byte = 8 bits, just in case there is confusion). And m is normally milli, M mega ;)
 
neil_g said:
the LR catalogue isnt usually too big but itll also depend on the size of your SSD. speed wise if it'll fit then SSD it.

the way i have mine setup..

60Gb SSD - windows and program files (LR3, CS3 etc)
1Tb internal - LR Catalogue sits on this
7Tb NAS - RAW files sit here

you can easily move files and catalogues with LR so you can always tweak it later.
Click to expand...

OP, I would go with Neil's comments & have a smaller SSD for the operating system & programs (64Gig will do but there is a Crucial M4 drive @ 128Gig for £140-150)
Then have your work spread over a few drives (better this way, if you have a problem with one drive you don't lose all your work).
You can always go with a NAS system or just purchase two 1 - 1.5 TB drives & place them inside your case.
From personal experience the Samsung drives have been very good & I have had no issues with them.
Regarding the issues of SATA 2 or 3 for the hard drives. As previously mentioned SATA 2 is not maxed out on most hard drives & you will never see the real world difference (you will see the difference on your operating system)
 
Thanks very much for all the info, should save me some money.

Strangely enough, I have mostly Seagate drives in my PC's but had seen how Samsung were talked up.

Sorry to have hijacked the thread a wee bit.
 
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neil_g said:
60Gb SSD - windows and program files (LR3, CS3 etc)
Click to expand...

To be honest, I wouldn't count the old hard disk you have. Unless it is relatively new, I would be concerned with warranty/reliability.

Also, a 60GB ssd may not be large enough. My laptop is 64GB. The windows7 directory has grown to 18GB. MS now has this idea of downloading all patches to a directory called winxs, and keeping them there. The contents of which are large, and not too easy to delete without bricking the machine.
I have photoshop, MS office and Libre office installed and emails on the SSD, and ~5Gb spare, I keep my images on a seperate disk.
 
coldpenguin said:
To be honest, I wouldn't count the old hard disk you have. Unless it is relatively new, I would be concerned with warranty/reliability.
Click to expand...

huh?

Also, a 60GB ssd may not be large enough. My laptop is 64GB. The windows7 directory has grown to 18GB. MS now has this idea of downloading all patches to a directory called winxs, and keeping them there. The contents of which are large, and not too easy to delete without bricking the machine.
I have photoshop, MS office and Libre office installed and emails on the SSD, and ~5Gb spare, I keep my images on a seperate disk.
Click to expand...

60gb is fine if you can manage the space, im currently running about 50% space used with W7-64 ultimate, PS CS3, LR3, couple of games, other utils blah blah blah.

the biggest issue i had were due to having 16Gb RAM so the hibernate file, which although hibernate was turned off the file remains until you manually delete it via command line, and the swap file which ive now resized to 2-4Gb.
 
neil_g said:
and the swap file which ive now resized to 2-4Gb.
Click to expand...
You can put the swap file on another drive. Unfortunately, you can't do that with the hibernate file. I have hibernation disabled on my machine....
 
arad85 said:
You can put the swap file on another drive. Unfortunately, you can't do that with the hibernate file. I have hibernation disabled on my machine....
Click to expand...

yeah but its faster on the SSD. you can drop it that low with 16gb without any issue, ive got it on auto size between 2 and 4 and its never risen from 2.

to remover the hib file its a command line, i'll find it..
 
neil_g said:
yeah but its faster on the SSD. you can drop it that low with 16gb without any issue, ive got it on auto size between 2 and 4 and its never risen from 2.
Click to expand...
With 16G you have to be pushing the system hard to be hitting the pagefile much at all...

And SSDs can actually be slow. Try writing a large video file (which is already heavily compressed) to a Sandforce (which uses compression to speed up read/writes) based SSD. It's as slow as ;)
 
arad85 said:
With 16G you have to be pushing the system hard to be hitting the pagefile much at all...

And SSDs can actually be slow. Try writing a large video file (which is already heavily compressed) to a Sandforce (which uses compression to speed up read/writes) based SSD. It's as slow as ;)
Click to expand...

yup, however some apps throw a hissy if there isnt a page file so its best to have one ideally but in reality its not used hence it hasnt grown.

(mind you ripbot occasionally while demuxing audio streams has hit 15.9gb total usage.. not entirely sure why it needs that much memory lol)
 
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neil_g said:
yup, however some apps throw a hissy if there isnt a page file so its best to have one ideally but in reality its not used hence it hasnt grown.
Click to expand...
I didn't say get rid of it, I said move it ;)

neil_g said:
(mind you ripbot occasionally while demuxing audio streams has hit 15.9gb total usage.. not entirely sure why it needs that much memory lol)
Click to expand...
That sounds like a badly designed program or a memory leak bug....
 
I said something along the line of not trusting the older disk
neil_g said:
huh?
Click to expand...

Personally, with a new computer, I would purchase a new disk, and use the old one as an archive only. The older the disk, the higher the likelyhood that at any given time of being on, it will fail. (cumunulative errors + deterministic probability). So my preference is to purchase a new disk for the computer, copy all the data from the old disk onto it if necessary, then mothball the old disk (and probably system in one piece).

neil_g said:
60gb is fine if you can manage the space, im currently running about 50% space used with W7-64 ultimate, PS CS3, LR3, couple of games, other utils blah blah blah.

the biggest issue i had were due to having 16Gb RAM so the hibernate file, which although hibernate was turned off the file remains until you manually delete it via command line, and the swap file which ive now resized to 2-4Gb.
Click to expand...

I am running on a laptop, so I have left pagefile and hiberfile in place (so ~8GB in use).
Also, Photoshop has created itself an 8GB temporary file, so that takes case of 16GB easily. I have a virtual machine too, so that is a chunk gone. I am still concerned though as to how fast winxs is growing, I think my desktop is 16GB, and the laptop one is ~12GB in size, neither of these are more than 10 months old.
I did a search when I started to run out of space, it seems that other poeple are loosing data space even faster.

My desktop I have a 128GB SSD in (choose carefully, some of them are slower than others), and this is much more comfortable. If you are playing with large files (so for example I have a 2.2GB image open in photoshop on the laptop), loading from SSD is a much nicer experience than an older SATA disk (even if the SATA has a decent cache)
 
coldpenguin said:
I said something along the line of not trusting the older disk

Personally, with a new computer, I would purchase a new disk, and use the old one as an archive only. The older the disk, the higher the likelyhood that at any given time of being on, it will fail. (cumunulative errors + deterministic probability). So my preference is to purchase a new disk for the computer, copy all the data from the old disk onto it if necessary, then mothball the old disk (and probably system in one piece).

I am running on a laptop, so I have left pagefile and hiberfile in place (so ~8GB in use).
Also, Photoshop has created itself an 8GB temporary file, so that takes case of 16GB easily. I have a virtual machine too, so that is a chunk gone. I am still concerned though as to how fast winxs is growing, I think my desktop is 16GB, and the laptop one is ~12GB in size, neither of these are more than 10 months old.
I did a search when I started to run out of space, it seems that other poeple are loosing data space even faster.

My desktop I have a 128GB SSD in (choose carefully, some of them are slower than others), and this is much more comfortable. If you are playing with large files (so for example I have a 2.2GB image open in photoshop on the laptop), loading from SSD is a much nicer experience than an older SATA disk (even if the SATA has a decent cache)
Click to expand...

I'm not recommending an old disk, I was just saying samsungs have always been fault free for me on those particular models.

Sure if you can always buy the largest you can afford, personally I'm not looking to upgrade my 60gb ssd for some time as I'm just not seeing any space issues.
 
UPDATE

I've tried to hold out but need to get a faster machine running now.

So I'll be adding the following:

Asrock P67 PRO3 SE Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard
G-Skill 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz RipjawsX Memory Kit CL9 (9-9-9-24) 1.5V
Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor

to the following existing components:

1 x Samsung HD753LJ 750GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm *32MB Cache*
1 x Optiarc AD-7191S 20X DVD±RW/DL/RAM LightScribe Serial ATA
1 x Sapphire ATI HD6450 1GB GDDR3 PCI-E HMD

I was thinking of adding the Rasurbo EAP 450W ECO and Power Quiet PSU from Quietpc. But was just wondering if someone could check if it had all the right connectors for running what I have currently but also another SATA II HDD in near future and potentially a SSD in the future.

Thanks!
 
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