PC for photo-editing

Astraeus

Astraeus

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Name
Ciaran
Edit My Images
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I'm about to upgrade my PC and have been trying to juggle the spec between gaming, efficient performance and cost. What I've come up with is the following:

Gigabyte P43-DS3 motherboard
Intel Dual Core E5200 CPU
Corsair XMS2 4GB RAM
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB HDD
Corsair CX400W PSU

Does anyone have any thoughts on this as a photo-editing machine? I assume having the 4GB of RAM will make it happy enough to do complex graphics tasks in Photoshop and Lightroom? I'm adding a very respectable graphics card into the mix - does that really affect performance for photo-editing and such?

Thanks for any input! :shrug:
 
If you plan on using Pan software, most of the better ones can make use of the separate cores in a quad core machine, This makes a great time saving.

PTAssembler or PTGui can do this.

This is becoming normal in new versions of most photo editing software.
 
Astraeus said:
I'm adding a very respectable graphics card into the mix - does that really affect performance for photo-editing and such?
Click to expand...
I've asked the same question recently as I'm getting a new PC for photo editing as well. The sensible answers that I got said that it's the processor and the RAM that's important, not the graphics card. A good graphics card is only required for gaming and video editing.
 
IMHO get 8gb of RAM. Lightroom is very hungry once you get into applying adjustment brushes and the like. I've had several shoots which I've had to split into several collections and even then Ligthroom goes upwards of 5Gb by itself when in the develop module.
 
kalibre said:
IMHO get 8gb of RAM. Lightroom is very hungry once you get into applying adjustment brushes and the like. I've had several shoots which I've had to split into several collections and even then Ligthroom goes upwards of 5Gb by itself when in the develop module.
Click to expand...

What CPUs and mobos will recognise more than 4GB of RAM? I thought that was a limitation of a lot of current-gen components?
 
chris_f said:
also, get a 250gb HDD for your OS and save the 1tb for storage, that way if it all goes pete tong with the OS you wont have lost any images.
Click to expand...

My intention was to partition the 1TB to OS/Programs & Games/Storage.

As for the RAM, are 2GB modules the biggest you can get? So I'd need a CPU capable of holding four slots?
 
If you are using a 32 bit OS for example XP or Vista you can go to Microsoft's website and as long as you have a valid key you can order the 64 bit OS for about £7 postage which will allow you to use more than 4 gig of RAM.

My system now contains the following:

Windows Vista 64 bit
Antec 900 Gaming case
Asus P6T Deluxe V2 Motherboard LGA1366
Intel i7-920 Quad Core 2.66GHZ 8MB 1366
12 gig DDR3 PC3-12800
1GB Nvidia Zotac GTX285 DVI PCX GDDR3
300GB Western Digital Velociraptor Sata 2 16MB 10KRPM for OS
1TB Samsung Sata 2 7200RPM 32MB HD for storage
EdgeStore DAS400 hard drive enclosure with 4 500GB Seagate Barracuda Sata 2 hard drives
Buffalo 350 GB USB drive used to speed up system
2x22' LG monitors

Its taken a while to get the system right but no doubt it will be out of date by next week.
 
Astraeus said:
My intention was to partition the 1TB to OS/Programs & Games/Storage.

As for the RAM, are 2GB modules the biggest you can get? So I'd need a CPU capable of holding four slots?
Click to expand...

Big no no for the HD thing. This is the checklist you need for a performant processing monster:

1) 64-Bit OS
2) =>8Gb RAM
3) 2 or 3 Physical Disks (not shared partitions) to allow OS, OS PF and Adobe PF to be on on different bits of kit.
4) Probably twice the storage you actually think you need. I.e at least 2TB.
5) Monitor calibration gizmo if you're taking it seriously.

Now, I could go into a million ways to manage your Lightroom catalog and associated pics but needless to say you need to think about backup. If you've got 1Tb of pics have you got a medium to back them up to?
 
kalibre said:
Big no no for the HD thing. This is the checklist you need for a performant processing monster:

1) 64-Bit OS
2) =>8Gb RAM
3) 2 or 3 Physical Disks (not shared partitions) to allow OS, OS PF and Adobe PF to be on on different bits of kit.
4) Probably twice the storage you actually think you need. I.e at least 2TB.
5) Monitor calibration gizmo if you're taking it seriously.

Now, I could go into a million ways to manage your Lightroom catalog and associated pics but needless to say you need to think about backup. If you've got 1Tb of pics have you got a medium to back them up to?
Click to expand...

I'll agree with this and I work with PC's. I have all the above except the memory, which I'm doing next.

Although I'd be adament about running programs off a different drive than the OS, there is no real benefit to it.

I would suggest you look at intel's SSD drives which are blisteringly fast and have now dropped by 60% in value due to the newer tooling they have employed.
The bottleneck in most PC's is the speed the HDD can get the information into the RAM, and SSD's are fast!
 
Q. Is it still cheaper to build than buy? I was led to believe there's no cost advantage in building now - except the fun of it.
 
Astraeus said:
My intention was to partition the 1TB to OS/Programs & Games/Storage.

As for the RAM, are 2GB modules the biggest you can get? So I'd need a CPU capable of holding four slots?
Click to expand...

No, you can get 16GB modules, but I really don't think you would want to spend out for one. (let alone a pair!)
 
chris_f said:
The bottleneck in most PC's is the speed the HDD can get the information into the RAM, and SSD's are fast!
Click to expand...

Still seem to be very expensive from what I can see. Surely high-speed SAS is more cost effective at the moment?
Am I looking at the wrong prices? A 250Gb SSD appears to be ~£500
 
zeugma said:
Q. Is it still cheaper to build than buy? I was led to believe there's no cost advantage in building now - except the fun of it.
Click to expand...

I still reckon it can be cheaper to build your own if you need a particular spec.
Most mass market pc suppliers load the price of any changes from their standard spec (have a good laugh at option prices at Dell, like £50 hard drives for £150+), or are unable to supply the required specs, or walk away from any warranty if you open the case and start changing stuff. And then there's also the problem of the big suppliers (Dell again comes to mind) where they use non ATX standard parts so any replacement parts need to be sourced from them and upgrade options become limited.
If you go to the small PC builders they'll use standard ATX parts and build to spec, but there tends to be a build charge on top of the parts.
 
coldpenguin said:
Still seem to be very expensive from what I can see. Surely high-speed SAS is more cost effective at the moment?
Am I looking at the wrong prices? A 250Gb SSD appears to be ~£500
Click to expand...


the SAS drives still have a massive access time compared to SSDs, and you need to use SAS drive controllers. The SSDs are available for about £130+vat at the 60GB size now, so they're becoming price feasible, but really only for system and software drives, unless you have money to burn or a special requirement for shock proof. I'd still look at conventional drive technology for big SATA drives for data storage on a PC.
 
have there been any updates on the speed degredation issues on SSD?

id agree with those above saying at least 2 physical drives, one smaller for the operating system and programs, one for data storage (with an external as backup), and preferable another for photoshop scratch etc.
 
chris_f said:
Kingston do rebranded intel drives....

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-001-KS&utm_source=froogle
Click to expand...

I didn't think Intel were letting their controllers be used by anybody else so I had a look around and apparently there are some high end Kingston SSDs that do use Intel (the E and M series). But these V series do not look like they are in the same league, the read/write speeds look terrible, a bit of digging on the internet shows they are the infamous and cheap JMicron (http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2489&Itemid=23). And just to confuse I found reference to a new Kingston SSDNow V+ series that have much better speeds (guessing they are newer and using indilinx or samsung controller).

Many of the brands available do share technology, partly because many of the fancy names are different branding for a small number of parent companies, and anyway there are a limited number of specialist developers supplying the controller technology and the memory. The latest and greatest of the non-intel drives are using Samsung or Indilinx controllers instead of the poorer performing JMicron controllers which are being offered on older design and lower priced SSDs (... or higher margin ;) ). Beware: not all SSDs are created equal.

I'm watching and waiting for the technology to get a bit cheaper, and a bit more technically mature, it should not be far off now. There's some really good info on SSDs here: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/

and in particular this mega-article which explains the slow down problem: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1
The great hope for solving this is "trim" software in windows 7.
 
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