OK forget the upgrade, let's build a computer for PSCS2

[shawngibson]

Part II of my previous thread, I suppose. I'll just buy parts as I

can, and build a new machine. What would be the best configuration

that is still 'in this world' price-wise, i.e., very good but not the

best of the best, for a motherboard, processor, and 4G of RAM. From

there, what drive configuration for a machine is solely to run PSCS2?

I don't even plan on hooking it up to the net, I'll just create a

routered network and open it up when needed for filesharing.

 

I'll buy piece-by-piece, and generally speaking, I can make individual

purchases at any point of around $500-$750.

 

What do you guys recommend for motherboard, processor, and RAM, when

considered for PSCS2 only? And drive configuration. Names, models,

things to look for, etc.

 

I work with 500M-1G+ files, generally they seem to be around 750M or so...

 

I will be printing with my Epson 1280, and in the new year, with a DJ

130, I believe. If that matters...

 

Shawn

[shawngibson]

...My point, sorry, was: I SUCK at saving. I can spend up to $750 for a motherboard, then $750 for a processor, etc....upper limits.

[msitaraman]

Shawn, save your money. I've gone this route and in my humble opinion

 

It is next to impossible to beat Dell's promotions, especially those they have in June-July before school opens. This year, $379 for a 3.0Ghz with a 17" Ultrasharp screen was the lowest they went. You can't build an equivalent for the same money. Another great bargain was a 24 inch Ultrasharp monitor with a very capable PC thrown in for $1074. Again, impossible to beat. Memory and drive capacity can be bought cheaper though, from say www.newegg.com.

 

Check out www.dealnews.com to monitor prices. They are quite good at tracking computer deals...

[patricklavoie]

Buy a Mac, G5 2x2.3, 4 gig of RAM with a 23 LCD cinema display. If you are on Mac...or can

afford it : )

[the shuttered eye]

If you are not on a Mac, then save yourself some money and get a dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor and the appropriate motherboard and you will do quite well (don't forget to download Windows XP 64-bit version to take full advantage of the chip.

[steve_dawson1]

I suppose the Mac/Windows decision is crucial. If you go for Windows, as someone else said, there are packages available which beat the price of building yourself. Unless you're looking for a 'project', I'd take a look at Dell's website. That's my view FWIW.

[genec]

I love the way people post every answer except what is asked.

Here goes.

 

TYAN S2865G2NR mother board

 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ dual core CPU

 

4 gigs ram 4 - 1gig ecc chips

 

high end ATX 2.x Power supply

 

ATI radeon X700 dual head video adapter.

 

2 Western Digital SATA 74gig Raptor 10000 rpm hard drives as RAID0

 

Western Digital 300gig data drive

 

200 gig external USB2 backup drive

 

1 Plextor SATA DVD burner

 

This will nicely flatten your bank account and give you a system that should be good for a few years at least. This is essentially what I built for myself except for the Tyan board and the ECC ram which I wish I had. :(

[shawngibson]

Thanks Everyone. In a sense, I do want to built it myself, largely because I have a bit of an investment in a good tower, a very good dual-display card, and (moot here) a very good audio card...so I'd like to chunk the tower and video into the equation, at least. From there, I will take the other parts, shove them into something cheap, and use that for surfing, MS Office, etc. And probably sound, since who needs it for PS...

 

Also, money-wise, I have the ability to get a loan, which can be either a printer (DJ 130) or a computer (I'd probably go Mac, but I've no heartfelt inclinations there...XP is fine).

 

To that end, it's a heck of a lot easier for me to use the loan for a printer, and buy a new computer piecemeal, replacing only what I really want, and keeping my video card and tower, shoving everything else into it as I get it...

 

Thanks kindly for the replies. I will look into the items listed in the post above, as to prices...

 

I knew going big, stitching HDR images, would be taxing, but it's really worse than I thought. Blah.

 

Shawn

[lex_jenkins]

Ditto, Gene's advice. If you live near a Fry's or some place like that you can probably buy most of it locally at a decent price. Otherwise there are many sources for ordering components at very reasonable prices. But don't count on being able to get the best prices for everything from one source. For example, newegg is a pretty popular source but they don't have the best prices on everything.

 

Keep in mind that with DIY computers you're on your own when it comes to gathering drivers and fiddling with compatibility issues. It can be a real headache. The last time I did a DIY PC was an MMX generation. I made headaches for myself by getting a non-mainstream mobo/chipset. The only reliable sources for drivers were user groups. No way I'd do that nowadays since too many jackasses spread viruses through user groups. So go for components that are well supported by the manufacturers' own websites. I couldn't suggest anything better than what's on Gene's list. I've never had a Western Digital HD fail, while I've had a handful of Maxtors, Quantums and Seagates poop out. But that was quite a while ago.

 

While it's true that companies like Dell, Compaq, etc., offer unbeatable deals on entry level machines, those machines have a limited upgrade path. And you can build your own machine for less money than a powerhouse from Dell, etc.

 

Besides the price it's mainly a matter of how much you value the convenience of a single source that supports the machine vs. having to do it all on your own.

[shawngibson]

Thanks Lex. I'm a DIYer, for better or worse, typically. Actually, typically worse LOL.

 

I've already run into the driver issues many times, both from having built this system, and also from the fact that every laptop I've ever owned has come with some retarded install package (XP Media CRAP, OEM sofware, kitchen sink...50 things no one needs...etc.), which I promptly throw out and start with my core XP...and find all the drivers I need from there. I may not be the smartest person when it comes to knowing the different hardware, but I usually get the job done...

[steve_dunn2]

<p>I don't have any specific product recommendations, but definitely, do not skimp on RAM. "More" and "faster" are the key words here, particularly with the huge images you manipulate. I need a gig just to handle images from my 20D (8.2 MP times 3 colours times 16 bits works out to around 50 MB, or a fraction of what you're doing). Also, some motherboards do memory interleaving, and some do not; interleaving speeds up memory access, so if you can find two boards which are otherwise similar but differ in this regard, go for the one which supports interleaving.</p>

 

<p>I've read that AMD's CPUs tend to run Photoshop faster than Intel's; I have not done any reading to find out how big a difference this is. You might want to look into that. Much of Photoshop is multi-threaded, so it can take advantage of multiple CPUs to do some of its processing in parallel, and with the advent of hyperthreading and dual-core CPUs, you no longer need to buy an expensive multiprocessing board and two or more expensive CPUs to get this performance boost. I have no idea how much, if any, advantage Photoshop takes of 64-bit CPUs.</p>

 

<p><a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/" target="_blank">Tom's Hardware Guide</a> is a good site for tech info and for tests of various components, including motherboards and CPUs. I'd highly recommend poking around there for a while.</p>

[conrad_hoffman]

Yup, build what Gene said. My only comment is that you should, or may even have to, put it on the 'net. Todays software usually wants to "phone home" to authorize itself, and you'll never keep Windows and other programs up to date and bug free (ha!) unless you have a 'net hookup. I've tried doing upkeep by transferring from disks, and it's just not very practical anymore.

[shawngibson]

Thanks Everyone. Conrad, I never thought of that. Well, I can just, again, open the router when I need to update, tyhat is not a problem I suppose.

 

I'm not sure what exactly all of these drives are going to be doing:

 

2 Western Digital SATA 74gig Raptor 10000 rpm hard drives as RAID0

 

Western Digital 300gig data drive

 

200 gig external USB2 backup drive

 

1 OS/PS

 

1 Data/images

 

1 PS Scratch?

 

(the BKUP is obvious...)

 

(I'm a slow and thoughtful reader, apologise for not responding directly to every point...)

[kaiyen]

<p><i>2 Western Digital SATA 74gig Raptor 10000 rpm hard drives as RAID0</i>

 

<p>This is clearly for the system drive. The faster you can get, the better, and the Raptor's are some darn nice drives. The only thing I'm unsure about is why you'd need 2 of them in a RAID 0. Just as the system drive, that is. I would think a single drive would be sufficient.

 

<p><I>Western Digital 300gig data drive</I>

 

<p>File storage, yup. I haven't kept track of recommended HD configurations - is it sufficient to put the PS scratch disk on your file/storage driver? Is there a reason to not put that second raptor drive as scratch?

 

<p>allan

[EricM]

"I have no idea how much, if any, advantage Photoshop takes of 64-bit CPUs."

 

about a gig of ram. adobe states on thier site that running under 32 bit the most ram that can be used is 1.7 gig. with 64 bit systems it can use at most 2.7 gig.

 

Gene and Lex have responces I'll row along with. Deffinately build a 64 bit system as CS3 has been promised to be a 64 bit sytem. This means utilizing more ram, finally.

 

I just built a graphics box with four western digital hd's raid o and 4 gigs of ram. The speed is unreal. It was a matter of how much my time was worth batching and applying actons/filters etc. Now I'm just looking forward to Adobe to catching up with 64 bit. But consider raid 5 as well. a bit slower but safer. Keep your old box for the net and email like i have a couple systems ago now. any problems on it i just wipe it with a ghost.

 

Have fun, you'll love CS2 opening in less than 3 seconds and applying heavy filters with a snap of your fingers.

[briany]

Is your video card that you want to carry over PCI-E or AGP? This will affect your motherboard options. Also, is the power supply in your tower up to snuff? I too am a DIY-er, but after having build a system a year ago and finding it much more painful that the one I built 4 years ago (among other difficulties, XP install kept getting blue screen errors 50-80% of the way through (bad memory stick after a lot of debugging)), I may wimp out and buy a stripped down high performance Dell and upgrade it on my own next time.

[bennyboy]

Shawn, I'm not sure how DIY you want to go, but I have a dual 3.2Ghz Xeon system that cost way less than you are wanting to spend, I built mine a year ago and am sure that prices are far better now.<br><br>

 

Here's my spec suggestion:<br>

Asus NCCH-DL Dual Xeon board ~150 dollars or Abit DH800<br>

Your existing AGP card<br>

Your existing monitor<br>

Your existing HDD's (the board has 2 SATA controllers that both do RAID, I have 6 drives (4*120 & 2*250) in 3 logical mirrors..)<br>

Your existing case, DVD/CD/Floppy<br>

Tagan EPS 480W PSU or higher rated EPS PSU of your choice ~100 dollars<br>

2*2.4GHZ LV Xeons (The low voltage bit is important), these are available from ebay in matched pairs pre-tested overclocked to 3.2ghz. Don't panic about the overclocking, these chips are INCREDIBLY stable. You should be able to pick a pair up for much less than the 400 dollars I paid a year ago.<br>

A pair of good heatpipe coolers for the Xeons (Nocona style required for this motherboard). ~ 100 dollars<br>

Memory - 4*1GB PC3200 DIMMS - branded, I use Kingston value without any issues (only 2GB though). not sure on RAM prices but probably about 300 dollars?<br><br>

 

So worst case thats 1050 dollars, way less than the 1500 you were willing to spend. I can assure you that my PC is a photo editing beast.<br><br>

 

I'm more than willing to give you any info/advice you need via e-mail.

[kahheng]

Brian's brought up a very important issue: The new motherboards tend not to have AGP slots - all the latest ones use PCIe for graphics. If you're using an AGP card now, you'd have no choice but to buy a new one.

 

I'd still go with Matrox cards for 2D applications. The Parhelia APVe or the lower priced P650 PCIe 128 would be my choices.

 

The suggestions for the AMD X2 cpus are excellent. They do beat the Pentium Ds, at a price premium though.

 

For the X2, I'd go with an ASUS board. Personally, if I were building a new PC, I'd use the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (and the 3800 X2 CPU which I think is quite a bargain).

 

RAM wise, I'd still use non-ECC value modules even at 4 gigs. As long as you're not overclocking, the value series from each of the known brand names are ok. See reviews here: http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2392 (the OCZ branded modules would be my choice)

 

Drive-wise, mosey on down to http://www.storagereview.com and see what the latest and greatest SATA drives are. ;-)

 

Personally, I still won't use an LCD panel for critical photo work. The seriously good ones (like a particular NEC) are still unaffordable (for my bank account), the affordable ones (like the oft touted 24" Dell) are still not good enough IMO. If you can afford it, a Sony Artisan CRT would be ideal.

 

And then I'd buy the best gaming mouse you can find.

[EricM]

that's the board i'm using, the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe. everythings great so far...

[kahheng]

Shawn

 

Come to think of it, for a Matrox card, I won't recommend the APVe for general use - it's an overkill if you just intend to hook it up to at most two monitors.

 

The PCIe P650 card would be the more sensible choice.

[erickpro]

One thing I suggest is that you should save the money instead of buying a piece at a time. I suggest this because in the long run you may encounter that the piece you bought a month ago is not fully compatible with the newer models or so.

 

Tomshardware.com is a great site to find processor comparisons. I currently have a Dual Athlon MP1800+ that is about 3.6 years old that I built.

 

I suggest that you buy AMD processors, the most expensive you can afford but not the newest top of the line because they are overpiced and within a year or less you will find them for $300 USD less.

 

Go with a Dual Processor with a dual core as well. Get two DualCore AMD processors. At least 4GB of RAM. The HDD is important as well but you can wait on that since it is not essential. Video card power is not essential either. You should also get a PowerSupply of at least 450W and some ventilators for the case or go fancy and get water-cooled.

 

I DO NOT suggest to buy Dell, Compaq or any other type of stores. Although it seems to be cheaper, you do not get what you really want and need. Besides they always make their own drivers that sometimes are corrupt and won't let you add your own hardware.

 

DualCore PowerMacs are pretty nice if you want an already built machine. Go to www.alienware.com to compare some Xeon and AMD workmachines.

[wayne_haas]

A word of caution regarding RAID 0: if any one of the drives in the array die, all of the information contained on the array is lost.

 

A safer and more suitable hard-drive set-up would be:

 

boot/apps drive: 7.2K or 10K SATA (36+ GB)

 

scratch drive: 10K SATA (36 GB)

 

archive drive: 7.2K (300+ GB -- see storagereview.com for recommendations regarding make/model that is most reliable)

[shawngibson]

OK, seems my video card is AGP, so I'll have to replace it. That's OK (keep it for the surfing/MS Office computer). Just don't tell my buddy at work; it will just give him one more reason to bug me to switch to a Mac:( (Wouldn't be HIM replacing his PSCS2, so it's an easy decision for him LOL...)

 

I have more than I could have ever asked for in these replies, thank you very much, Everyone. Now the hard part, narrowing it down and commiting myself knowing I have to go bit by bit, and worry something 'better' will immediately make me cringe...or just save for a couple months and buy all the main components (board, RAM, processor) at once...

 

Thanks very much:)

 

Shawn

[gary_berg]

For information on building a computer yourself, plus some sample configurations, check out the Thompson's "Building the Perfect PC":

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596006632/002-1293490-6100066

[scott_eaton]

<I>Besides they always make their own drivers that sometimes are corrupt and won't let you add your own hardware</i><P>Award winner for dumbest post I've heard on Photo.net this month. I usually order Dell's without the OS and install my own OEM of XP, and 99% of the time XP loads without asking for a single damn driver other than a sound card or something.<P>My first recommendation would be a for a higher end <b>Dell</b> like a Dimension 9100 or even better, a Precision. I've no issue with going the DIY route, but I need to remind our audience again of the decreasing quality I've experienced with DIY motherboards, power supplies, etc., is dismal compared to what I've experiended with the better Dell systems. Going DIY involves throwing dice and a taking a greter risk than the higher end mainstream workstations.<P>If you insist on going the DIY route I second the nod for a dual core AMD X2, and Asus motherboard. The one particular advantage this option has is the price of memory. The Dell systems usually require expensive DDR2 and cost a fortune with 4gig of RAM, while 4gig of generic DDR on the Asus/X2 system will be a lot cheaper.<P>You guys can also hold your breath for 64-bit CS3. If CS3 is twice as fast as 32-bit CS2, this makes CS3 half as fast as PS7 given what a piece of $hit CS2 is in terms of performance. What difference will quad Raptors in RAID 0 make given CS2 seems like it was benchmarked against a celeron 300?