Spec me a Tower

Kryptix

Kryptix

Messages
1,730
Edit My Images
Yes
I'm editing 2,000+ 25mB RAW (CR2) files very often and my laptop grinds to a halt each and every time. It's taking me forever even with 4gB on DDR2.

I've decided I'll create a high-spec box to store all my images on, almost as a server with various post processing tools like Photoshop, Lightroom and so on. I intend on remote connecting to the box and do all the editing from my laptop over the Gigabit network.

Is this possible? I'm using the normal Remote Desktop Connection and the colours aren't wonderful. I'm going to need it to look as if I'm in front of the computer as colours are very important.

Unfortunately, I simply don't have the space to have a desktop in my room although I have other options if this is not possible.

I've been out of the custom-PC phase for some time now, so can someone please spec me a decent PC that'll handle what I chuck at it as quickly as possible?

I'm going to have 1x 1gB or 1x 1.5gB, but I want the option to add another 2-4 drives at a later date. It'll be running Vista but I'll upgrade to the next Windows when it comes out. Can you think of any reason to use XP?

Will I need any fancy graphics card if I'm just editing? No gaming or anything like that.

I'm also after a plain matt black case, almost a 'budget' case. Completely boring. It needs to be very discrete as it's going to stand behind my TV.

Ideally it'd be very quiet too as it'll be in my bedroom, but if this is a problem I can bung it in the loft.

So yeah, please spec me something up using eBuyer for the bits. If you could explain why you chose each part that'd be helpful too.

Cheers lads, if I go with what you design I'll chuck you a few quid as well so I'd appreciate you doing some research and so on.
 
I've used remote desktop and you really can't do anything approaching quality editing work on it. I appreciate where you are coming from, let the remote unit do all the donkey work and your existing laptop simply send the commands. But I'm not sure you are going to get the results you want as far as quality is concerned.

If you were just using Lightroom you might be able to make it work by storing the images on the "box", but keep the database on your laptop. Edit the images on the laptop, then with LR running on the "box" and using the laptop database get the box to run then render the images. It would mean that you would have to have LR on both machines, but that's OK as you can with the Adobe EUL. A bit messy but workable.

Photoshop would be a nightmare I think

I don't know what you budget is, but you may be better off looking at a new laptop. There are some real bargains out there at the moment.
 
I suppose I could sell this one and upgrade, but what do you think would be the minimum spec I'd need?
 
Just after x*** I bought the bits to build a PC, here is the list, all of it came from ebuyer, to a value of £676:

Item: Coolermaster Sileo 500 Black Case - No PSU
Qty: 1Cost: 60.86

Item: Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII *32MB Cache* - OEM
Qty: 1Cost: 63.96

Item: Asus 9500GT OC 512MB DDR3 DVI VGA HDMI HDCP PCI-E Graphics Card
Qty: 1Cost: 50.99

Item: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium - Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - DVD - 64-bit - English
Qty: 1Cost: 72.74

Item: Enlight Black 26-in-1 Internal 3.5" Card Reader - Retail Boxed
Qty: 1Cost: 8.68

Item: Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler
Qty: 1Cost: 13.92

Item: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair) Retail Boxed Processor
Qty: 1Cost: 133.00

Item: Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5 Lifetime Warranty
Qty: 1Cost: 35.82

Item: Asus P5Q PRO P45 Socket 775 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Qty: 1Cost: 85.15

Item: LiteOn 20X SATA DVD±RW/RAM Black, Beige & Silver Bezels, Nero & Power DVD - Retail
Qty: 1Cost: 16.02

Item: Arctic Power 700W PSU - With PCI-E, 4x SATA, 20+4, ATX12V, 8pin +12V Connectors - Retail Boxed
Qty: 1Cost: 36.03
 
Laptop screen aren't the best for editing on at the best of times, infact I'd only use it when I'm on the road, the rest of the time I hook upto a proper monitor. I can image that even on the highest quality settings remote desktop will be slow and the colours won't be as accurate as if you were sat infront of the computer.
 
I would agree with Craikeybaby. Although the new IBM machines tend to get fairly high reviews for their displays.

I would look at how much a tower system would cost and then see if that's a reasonable budget, and see what sort of laptop you can get.

Are you happy with the quality you are currently getting from your laptop display. Ideally an external monitor would be better, but then the cost keeps going up. The answer may be to get a decent laptop and add a monitor latter.
 
Just a thought

if its going behind your TV why not plug it into the TV and use that as a monitor? If its LCD then you can get a decent graphics card with HDMI outputs and use a HMDI Cable to connect them up

a wireless keyboard and mouse and happy editing
 
depending on your budget then a fileserver would be the best way to achieve it, with the processing software running on your laptop. I would use mirrored disks (raid1), as high spec as you can afford, which would be running on a linux server with a samba share to make these drives available to your laptop, or any other computer on the network.

potentially you could then get an old cheapo computer running a firewall (ipcop) then grant access to your fileserver even if you are not at home, over your broadband.
 
chrisuk said:
How many files do you have open at once?
Click to expand...

That's what I was wondering. If you're batching 2000 files at a time you're really asking a lot of a system.

For what it's worth though I'm currently running the spec below although I'm considering upgrading the cpu to a quad and the memory to 8GB. Current spec easily handles batching 500ish images at a time using scripts in CS3 although it can slow down a bit if I've got a lot of other stuff open as well.

Dual core 8400
4GB PC6400
Vista 64bit (Home premium I think)
CS3
8800 GTX
2X 1TB samsung
2X 640GB WD
1X 500GB Seagate
1X 320GB WD for applications and OS
 
If you've got the money, and you really want to speed up your processing then I would use two western digital raptor 10,000 rpm drives in raid 0 as a scratch disk for processing, then archive to a slower but larger disk such as the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB afterwards.

Couple that with a 64-bit OS, 8GB of fast RAM, a beefy processor such as the core i7 or Q6600 and you'll be tearing through image batch processing.
 
dod said:
That's what I was wondering. If you're batching 2000 files at a time you're really asking a lot of a system.

For what it's worth though I'm currently running the spec below although I'm considering upgrading the cpu to a quad and the memory to 8GB. Current spec easily handles batching 500ish images at a time using scripts in CS3 although it can slow down a bit if I've got a lot of other stuff open as well.

Dual core 8400
4GB PC6400
Vista 64bit (Home premium I think)
CS3
8800 GTX
2X 1TB samsung
2X 640GB WD
1X 500GB Seagate
1X 320GB WD for applications and OS
Click to expand...

how do you get cs3 to open 500 images at the same time, mine says' too many files' hence why I have to use CS2
 
if a script is ran it will open each at a time, do the process and close so wont have them all open at once
 
whitey said:
if a script is ran it will open each at a time, do the process and close so wont have them all open at once
Click to expand...

ah, that'll be it then, my workflow has a large number open simultaneously, works in CS2, but CS3 and CS4 just do the old 'computer says no'

Then again I find each of the upgrades to photoshop has been a retrograde step in basic functionality while adding unnecessary 'cleverness'

thx
 
mid_gen said:
If you've got the money, and you really want to speed up your processing then I would use two western digital raptor 10,000 rpm drives in raid 0 as a scratch disk for processing, then archive to a slower but larger disk such as the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB afterwards.

Couple that with a 64-bit OS, 8GB of fast RAM, a beefy processor such as the core i7 or Q6600 and you'll be tearing through image batch processing.
Click to expand...

Raptors aren't what they used to be. Not really worth the extra any more.

Two high quality 1TB drives, such as the Samsung Spinpoint F1's in RAID0, are pretty much just as good...and the extra space far outweighs the negligible difference in the array speed.
 
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