Building the Photoshop computer

[cmphoto1]

I am going to buy a new barebones system in the new year. The

heaviest thing it will be doing is running PS CS2 and handling files

as large as a medium format scan from an Epson 4850. There is some

bulk scanning I will be doing with an LS4000/SA30 set up. I will

need firewire either on the main board or thru an expansion card.

The HDD situation will be covered. I have been a fan of AMD. A Mac

is out of the question.

 

Whenever I ask a computer nerd about what I need, they start talking

about 512Mb of memory and super fast 3d graphics and 7.1 sound

(because I occasionally play solitaire). I know enough to know that

approach is off.

 

So, what do I need? I have $500-$600 for a board (with firewire if

possible), video card, memory, decent power supply, case.

 

Who makes a good barebones system? What brand should I look at for

main boards? What do I need to do for graphics?

 

Thanks

chad

[patricklavoie]

the nerd you talk to is not far from the reality! you will need at least 512 meg of RAM, a

minimum i can say, and yes a pretty good video card, maybe not the super expensive one,

but a good one that have around 128 meg of video RAM. I dont realy know things about PC,

but a lot of people on this forum use to say < dont brake your head and go by a Dell already

built or a Gateway>...if that could help. If you want a good machine, on a Mac platform buy a

Imac G5, it come with everything CD/DVD burner, firewire, usb 2 etc....

[scott_eaton]

Given your budget you can get a 2ghz AMD 64 for $140, a decent motherboard (Asus, Gigabyte) for around $100, and 2-gig of DDR 400 of good breeding like Crucial for $190. Personally I think you're an idiot to even consider running CS2 on anything less than 1gig of RAM.

 

A decent, budget power supply will cost *no less* than $45, but generic cases you can pick up for $20. I can not stress enough to avoid cheap power supplies, or cheap case/PSU combos, or cheap RAM.

 

If you don't intend to use the rig for serious gaming, $40 will easily get a you a FX5200 or GF4MX400 128meg video card that will work just fine with Photoshop.

[derrick_morin___fallon__ne]

Wow. $600 for an effective PS machine seems extremely optomistic. I am not really a computer geek, but as far as bang for your buck, your priorities should be 1) processor speed (my old 1.2 GHz is insufficeint - look for 2.0 minimum. 2) RAM, 512 could be limiting depending on your file sizes and how many you work with at once. RAM is cheap - buy more. 3) Hard disk space - PS implies lots os large files. Plan for more than you think you'll need. Hard drives are cheap - get at least 100GB onboard and archive externally. Fast graphics are not really important unless you'll be working with video or video games, so you can save a few dollars there. Try newegg.com for building the system yourself. They also have some barebones systems ready to go. Good luck!

[cmphoto1]

Thanks Patrick. 128mb min on the video card is good to know. I am thinking I need at least 1 gig of ram because of the file size handling.

 

I know Macs are built for this very application, I just have too much invested in PC software and to replace it will thriple my investment.

 

So, I have to go PC. There is no need for me to buy all the extra garbage that comes with a Dell or Gateway. I am a lot more self sufficient than that.

 

Thanks

chad

[scott_eaton]

Quick revision here: if you're going the AMD route, stick to socket 939 processors and motherboards. This will likely add about $30 to the price of the processor - big deal - it's worth it.

 

The reason is that unlike Intel, AMD gives you a legitimate upgrade path that doesn't require a new motherboard with every new processor series. A year or two down the road you can stick a much faster dual core X2 processor on that same motherboard and get massive performance increase.

[cmphoto1]

Scott,

 

Thanks, that helps a lot! Thanks for getting me started! I will definately look at the 939 socket.

 

It helps the budget quite a bit when I do not need to purchase another monitor, hard drive space, or keyboards or mice. $500-$600 just for the box.

 

chad

[eric_richardson2]

$96 EPoX EP-9NDA3+ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813123222

 

$321 AMD X2 3800+ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562

 

$68 pqi POWER Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141215

 

$38 GIGABYTE Geforce FX5200 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814125191

 

The above is ~$525. Pretty nice system that will do the CS2 stuff nicely. You just need to add PSU and case.

[conraderb]

from the little I know, I also have read that high end video cards will only make a difference if you are doing high end gaming.

 

but, this might help - http://www.pcmech.com/build.htm

 

http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/

 

http://www.mysuperpc.com/

 

http://www.daileyint.com/build/

[leo s.]

Listen to Scott... he knows what hes talking about!

 

About RAM:

I just upgraded my RAM from 1Gb to 3Gb, to accommodate the 95Mb uncompressed 16 bit Tiff files produced by the 1DSM2, and am finding that I could easily use more RAM when working on more than a few files at the same time.

 

No need for super fast L2 RAM I don't think (again - unless you are into gaming/OC'ing)... but I myself have wondered if features like ECC and dual channel may be worth having ?

 

In the end, I ended up getting non-ECC/single channel... but I will probably build another system soon and it would be good to know if the features are worth paying extra for.

[joe_dorsey]

Hi Chad,

 

A lot of good considerations have already been mentioned. My only contribution is to echo those who have said buy a lot of RAM. 2GB should be sufficient. I work on a single image at a time, often with a significant number of layers. During processing, a file size of 300-400MB is not unusual. In this situation the performance difference between 1GB versus 2GB of RAM is massive. I've yet to need more than 2GB but YMMV.

 

- 1 more - buy all of your ram at the same time. The Athlon 64 is very particular about matching sticks of ram. You may not be able to just add more ram later because of minor but critical differences.

 

Good Luck & Merry Christmas

jd

[dan_meyers1]

Chad,

 

One other thing to consider is a small (16-40 GB) but FAST HD for your scratch disk.

[rolf_smithy]

I had an LS 4000 and I was *shocked* by how much faster it ran (especially post processing) under an Optiplex dual core machine vice a bargain basement Dell Dimension. I think it was the processor/bus because both machines were similar in terms of RAM.

[kelly_flanigan1]

One of our boxes I use with Calander design deals with files of say 120 megs; with sometimes 100 layers, alot of which is text. The amount of memory photoshop is using is about 1.3Gig, when one uses task manager to peek at the usage. The video card is a 10 year old diamond stealth with 2 megs of ram. This card works with some of our old DOS boot session programs than make direct calls to the card. A modern card gives klingon text when used in the pure DOS session. I added a nice PCI 128meg gamers card after the box was built, and discovered the DOS stuff was wonky. So we added back the old card on the P4, so dos was happy. With flight simulator the gamers card was radically better. <BR><BR>Office box store sales chaps often push a video card over ram because there is a spiff. There is nothing wrong with having a high end big buck video card, they are not required for digital images. Some do have better calibration tools. <BR><BR>A common failure for a weak el-cheap box is a power supply failure due to a monster video card which may tax a wimpy supply. One ancient emachine here has a 96watt supply, another 2 have 112 watt supplies. These boxes are boxed in to 256megs of ram. Beware the low end box might have a lower ram limit, a whuss supply. Some of these boxes will last along time with the stock settup. One of my 566Mhz Celeron/emachines only draws 28watts total for the entire box. Is used it with an inverter during Katrina. <BR><BR>My preference is to have a box with alot of ram first, over the concerns of cpu speed or fancy video cards. With one of my Piii 550Mhz boxes with 768 megs of ram, the processor usage during a flatbed scan is about say 7 percent. <BR><BR>CS2 is another matter, it needs when using "Bridge" the browser more CPU and ram than one can buy. Here I use Cs or PS7 for alot of browsing, which is quicker. CS2 is the most disapointing PS release I have seen since I started with PS at version 2.5. The bog factor is annoying. <BR><BR>The most common mistake with a PS box is not having enough ram. One Pentium 75Mhz box here on the LAN has 72 megs, this was once the top dog and was bought for photoshop. This retouching box I am at now has a 333Mhz Pii and 512megs of ram. <BR><BR>I always want to know what the max ram a target new or used board/computer will support, and the number of slots, how it will be filled. Many times the office box stores boxes will have 2 slots, both filled. Thus if you get 512megs you get both stuffed with 256megs sticks. Here if I had to start with only 512megs I would ask what one single stick of 512 would be be in the quote. Thus one has a free slot where one could add either a 512meg or 1 gig chip.<BR><BR>

[kelly_flanigan1]

A long standard rule is you want 3 to 5 times the ram, as the file size you are working on. Using 16bits, layers adds to the effective file size.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here is a weird example of where an old warhorse Photoshop box bogs due to not enough ram. The file size is 978Megs, the ram is 512megs, the OS win2000, the cpu's dual 333Mhz, the contoller card is a 133UDMA, the hda a 7200rpm 80 gig maxtor. <BR><BR>Since the ram to file size is poor, it takes 525 seconds to rotate the 978meg imagee 90 degrees.<BR><BR><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/PSCS2%20978MB%20333dual/rot525sec.jpg"><BR><BR><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/PSCS2%20978MB%20333dual/curve.gif"><BR><BR>To do a curve took 343 seconds. The bog is there is not enough ram for the 978meg image<BR><BR> <img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/PSCS2%20978MB%20333dual/curve343sec.gif"><BR><BR>Adding some sci-fi hue took 290seconds<BR><BR><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/PSCS2%20978MB%20333dual/hue290sec.gif"><BR><BR><BR>

[kelly_flanigan1]

With a 90meg image the obsolete box mentioned above will rotate the image 90 degrees in 7 seconds with both CPU. I practice the box is used for MF images all the time. With the "healing brush" feature a slower box has some bog when retouching. <BR><BR><BR>When I do batch file conversions of a big directory of files, the fastest CPU box machine with alot of ram is used. <BR><BR>Todays "dream machine/compurter" will grow old too. Here the older boxes are still used where there is less horse power needed, like scanning, retouching, storage, emailing, printer stations.<BR><BR>

[conrad_hoffman]

Socket 939 Athlon64 like a 3500+. Put it in an inexpensive motherboard like an MSI, having on-board video designed expressly for the Athlon (ATI Radeon X200). Get 2G of the better Kingston memory in the form of two identical sticks. It will then run dual path for maximum speed. The video will use up 128M (or more) of that, and when the operating system is done loading, you'll have at least 1G free. Add decent power supply, case, and drives, and you'll have an extremely fast machine for very little $$.

[will goodman]

Here is my 2 cents:

 

ATADC CAB101-BK Black 0.5mm SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 400W Power Supply - Retail $26.00

 

GIGABYTE GA-K8NSC-939 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $63.00

 

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail $162.00

 

pqi TURBO 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model PQI3200-2048DB - Retail $175.00

 

ASUS N6600/TD/128 Geforce 6600 128MB 128-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail $118.00

 

The board uses AGP instead of PCIE which will keep the cost of your videocard down.

 

Will G.

[robvine]

Chad, a budget is a budget. People will tell you to spend loads of money because it's not there's to spend. Recently I explained to a friend that you should purchase a PS system with the following priorities:

1. Monitor + calibrator

2. Memory

3. CPU

4. Hard Drive (fast AND big)

 

Everything else in a PS system is of little concern, especially the video card - don't bother getting an expensive one! anyone who tells you that you need one is wasting your money! A standard power supply will be ok too, hot rod power supplies are for high-end video cards and overclockers. A more expensive motherboard will not change much, buy a well known brand which has the features you need.

[bill_t__new_mexico_]

Hello Leo, you mentioned you had upgraded your memory to 3GB. Was wondering how this is working out for you in the long term. Are you using 2 or 3 sticks on the RAM channels?

 

I frequently edit 1GB PS files, and even my 2GB memory looks pretty meager with files that size. I tried 3GB a few months ago and got it to run with the "3GB switch." Unfortunately with 3 sticks on each RAM channel the system was not completely stable, so I went back to 2GB rather than risk a disc crash.

 

Never thought I'd see the day when 2GB was not enough...

[thomas_sullivan]

I've been doing this for 5 years now. I've had various versions of Photoshop, including PSCS2, on a variety of machines.....my own, freinds and ones at work.....and the biggest difference in speed of operation is RAM. Put as much RAM in that sucker as you can fit in. I have 2GIG of dual channel ram right now, and there are times I think I should get more...albiet these are few, so I haven't actually done it. CS2 on a machine with only 512 of RAM is deathly slow....beleive me.

 

graphics card means almost nothing for PS....so a nice 128mb is fine. However, having just added a second monitor to my system, I would recomend at least buying one that has dual monitor capability. One screen for the pic and one screen for the tool boxes is heaven....believe me.

[leo s.]

Hi Bill,

 

I have 2 sticks of the same (but not matched) RAM on each channel, and have had no problems with crashes. CS2 does run much better, but when I tried opening up and editing 7x 95mb files at the same time, processing times shot up, and my scratch disc filled up to the point I had to juggle some data between drives(something I need need to look into!). I'm also running winamp, firewall etc so that may be one of the reasons RAM is being used up(another thing I need to look in to).

 

I would like to try making a stitched panorama of more than 7 frames, so a new CS2 dedicated system seems the way to go at this point in time, although I think I can just about get by for the moment.

[bill_t__new_mexico_]

Thanks Leo. With my 2GB RAM stitched images above about 200 megapixels are a major endurance trial, even with only 1 layer. I'm holding off on a new system, waiting for non-beta 64 bit Windows AND 64 bit PS CSx. Gonna be a while, I think...but what a day that will be.