help me purchase a new PC

[garrison_k.]

Most see going to Mac as a disadvantage, Ken. That's why they are 3% of the desktop market.

[ejchem101]

<p>I'll vote for building a PC. If you can find someone that will allow you to watch them put one together, you'll never go back to buying one from a company again. It is as simple as putting together a lego set, especially if you can watch someone do it the first time.</p>

<p>The most time-consuming part is determining which parts to get (which you do when you buy one anyway). The computers I build now take me on average about 30mins of hardware time... and maybe 2 hrs of software work before it is up and running.</p>

<p>I know you said that building a computer is not what you're going for... for myself, I'll never buy a pre-made PC again.</p>

<p>P.S. I am not a computer tech, and I put together my first computer after watching another home-builder and thought.... wow that was easy.</p>

[glenjo]

<p>Willam,</p>

<p>My company uses Dell as our corporate provider, and we have tens of thousands of Dells deployed everywhere. We use them right out on a fairly dirty factory floor and I have been impressed with the reliability of the product. I've seen a super grungy Dell (installed too near a high pressure water jet cutter throwing up gritty spray) survive when an industrial PC right next to it died.<br>

I have no recent experience with HP, but their older products (I'm talking old HP-UX workstations) were the most reliable PCs I've seen. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it, but we just retired some EXTREMELY old (HP 900 series) HP-UX boxes off of the factory floor. These were getting rather difficult to support, but considering their age (most 12+ years old), these were very reliable.</p>

<p>It's be interesting to know how long the big PC makers "burn-in" a new PC before considering it satisfactory to ship. I previously was in the US Navy, and we did rather extensive burn-in testing (including thermal/electrical shock) of all new/repaired black boxes prior to issuing them to the fleet.</p>

[gkgerber]

<p>William,</p>

<p>If I may, let me qualify Erik's advice a little bit. First, I've homebuilt dozens of pc's over the last 20 years, and Erik is correct that it is easier than many people think. HOWEVER, sometimes things can go very wrong as well. You need to evaluate your own techie knowledge and skill with a screwdriver and thumbs (usally about the only tools you need). Do some reading on the internet, there are lots of howtos out there. I have heard that many places have clubs (for example at a library) to learn to do this.</p>

<p>The most important part to get right is matching the CPU, memory, and motherboard. If you don't, you can get anything from parts that don't fit to parts that melt and even the best online places frown on accepting melted return parts. And buy a decent quality power supply - untold numbers of homebuilt PCs are unreliable due to poor quality power supplies.</p>

<p>If you are a bit adventurous and have the time, resources, and patience to do some swapping or returning of parts if things don't go right the first time, then definitely try it! If you want to start out with a little more help, many online places (like newegg) sell "barebones" systems with at least the CPU/Memory/MB combo worked out for you.</p>

<p>Last, while sometimes you can save a little money, I have found over the years that building your own PC really doesn't save very much money, especially if you count the time invested in putting together a nice PC. Plus, it's hard to resist a cool looking case that will eat up all your savings.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

 

[jim_ducey]

<p>This works good for me <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220696">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220696</a><br>

Add 4 more GB of memory and a fast solid state disk in place of the mechanical one and it is very close to desktop speeds and you are still under 2K I was a little concerned about the screen resolution but on a screen of that size its not a problem. The added benefit of have USB 3 port for external drive connections is an attraction for me as I use some external drives for storage.<br>

Jim Ducey</p>

[jim_ducey]

<p>The laptop above does have an Intel I7 process with quad cores , the slowest thing about most computers is the hard drive. Changing over to solid state disk makes a huge difference but you need to read up on them first to avoid some expensive mistakes. The OCZ forum has a lot of good information. I replaced four WD raptor drives in raid O on my desk top with solid state drives in raid O and the speed difference was very surprising to me. Video editing takes about half the time it used too.<br>

Jim Ducey</p>

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>Here I have used Solid state disc drives for several years now. Many are actually slower than mechancial ones; and in laptops actually use more power and thus one has a lower battery life. A broad brush statement that SSD's are better is VERY simplistic and SUPER dangerous. One really needs to explore which EXACT SSD one is planning to use and runs some tests on it to see its performance ; or lack of.<br>

<br /> One can buy the latest fangled computer this week for 1 to 2 K and one will be able to buy the same box at walmart for 300 bucks in a year or two.<br>

<br /> One pay a huge penality for buying this weeks latest settup; at times here in printing we have down this. In the SF Valley a place I consulted for spent 10,000 bucks for a beta 486 computer. Here out old 286 was 5800 bucks. Our 75Mhz Photoshop dream machine with wahoo contoller and fast HDA was about 3800 bucks. Our dual cpu PPros with 200MHz was a 6000 dollar box.</p>

<p>Macs are probably better for folks want to surf the web too; alot of folks with PC's just get them all hosed up after a few years due to dog turds they have walked into; or a mess of dumb upgrade conflcits.</p>

<p>An old rule of thumb is ones computer drops in value about 1 percent per week; 50 percent per year. Thus 2000 buck box as dream machine today will be like a common 1000 buck box 1 year; a 500 buck box in 2 years; 250 bucks box in 3 years.</p>

<p>In practice it is often worse; ie an old corporate 3000 buck desktop settups are often on ebay for 100 bucks in 3 years; closer to almost a 70 percent drop per year. And after a few more years they are worth less than the shipping cost, ie you buy a truckload ie pallet of them to drop one costs. Thus that dream IBM pentium III rig with 667Mhz that cost 3 grand new is worth less than shipping; thus one buys a pallet of spares and pays 90 bucks for the pallets freight cost when buying 12 spares at 20bucks each.</p>

<p>A dumb 300 buck computer at walmart today is faster than an ultimate dream computer of 2.5 years ago that cost 3000 bucks.</p>

[jim_ducey]

<p>I have had more failures with mechanical drives over the past 30 years than I have with solid state drives several on mechanical and 0 on solid state so far. I have used Intel and OZ drives and you are right they are very different, if you try to plug and play you will probably have problems that is why I recommend reading up on them on the OCZ solid state forum.<br>

Remember the Lisa, 10 megabytes of storage and ten thousand dollars and a green screen, things have changed a bit.<br>

Jim Ducey</p>

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>SDD drives due fail; they have a limited number of writes. Here I worked in the disc drive industry for over two decades. The Compact flash card when designed was designed for IDE useages. Thus we sued them in stuff like gasoline pumps; one has a dinky non mechanical drive running NT in an embedded situation. In commerical usage one uses a better grade flash card or SSD drive; since they do fail. IN space applications we placed mechancial HDA's in a container that is pressurised. In the disc drive industry one can see waves of failures. One might have a grease; bearing; recording head issue that doesnt tend its ugly head until out in the field; they are rare but do happen. The early external HDA's often ran too hot; this often caused issues.. I placed a 40 gig SSD in a laptop two years ago.With the many SSD drives I have personally tested; many test lower than the marketing chaps claims. There have even been lawsuits in this area; SSD's are hawked to the lay public and they consume more power than a mechanical one.</p>

<p>I have seen SSD's that tested fast; then when one sets one up they runs way slower. I got involved with one where just by formating the darn thing for the laptops config made it work way less quicker than a plain Jane mechanical HDA. IN a power surge thatn happened last Thanksgiving; a couple of my mechancial HDA's of 2 dozen in use got some sector issues; and one SDD is dead as a doornail. One issue with SSD's is there is alot of older tech stuf/crap still in the pipeline that is not what you think it should be. A so called quick SSD I got last summer to experiment again for fast scratch was a big disapointment. In enbedded stuff I run some flash card on IDE's to replace dinky hdas used here in printing. Personally having worked with this solid state stuff for over 10 years; I have seen mixed performance. SSD has been around along time; Here I have 100, 80, 40, 32 gig SSD's and a mess at 8 gigs; used for old NT stuff that require dinky HDA's somewhere I have some 2 gigs units for DOS.</p>

<p>Some marketing chaps who hawk this stuff use read write tests that make the SSD's lookk good to the lay public. You buiy one and then set it up your your application and find it runs not as one expected; ie you were hucksters; ie fooled. On Ebay I have seen were the labels are used like they are the quicker variant. It is the same fake slow flash card trick dlsr users fall into; you make a holigram nice label and put it on the older tech SSD and hawk it as the faster one. I bought some for a client last year from two different outfits; they were about the same price; one unit is 3 times faster than another; the slow guy has alot of idle current. The counterfeit unit is the slow one. It is a lucrative market.</p>

[garrison_k.]

Kelly, that's great info. But, they have come a long way. For real world usage and reports, I keep an ear to some of the gamer forums. SSD's are going to be the norm soon. Just make sure you buy a motherboard today that does 6 gb/s SATA so you can future proof yourself a bit and take advantage of the speed of SSD's.

 

In a year from now, it will be mainstream to RAID O a couple SSD's, and at 6gb/s SATA, things will be very snappy.

[craig_big]

Ask photographers if you need help selecting a camera, and even then you'll get widely varied and inevitably biased opinions, but at least they'll be sound opinions. For advice on computers, you need to ask in a computer forum. From what I know of computers, the answers on this thread have been widely ignorant and opinionated, with little basis in reality or fact. There are a couple exceptions, but good luck sorting those out from all the useless and conflictory answers.

 

I recommend you not listen to anybody in here, and go consult with someone who knows computers. Obviously, this does not include the salesmen at retail stores. If you still can't find your answers, just go buy any computer at random, and your chances will be the same that you will find what you are looking for as if you had taken advice from this thread.

[itai]

<p>Really, the problem with laptops is that even the best ones still have mediocre color-reproduction which makes it very hard to do anything with colors accurately. If you want to go that route, then you can obviously get a laptop and a separate monitor but that may leave too little budget for a laptop. Also, unless you get an expensive laptop your disks are going to be slower than with a desktop, that is quite a penalty with Lightroom as it access the disk very often.<br>

As for a desktop, a few months ago I built a new and very powerful machine and it cost me just around $1000 USD. This is truly a high-performance machine for photography. I published an article which documents all the parts and decisions:<br>

<a href="http://www.neocamera.com/feature_photography_computer.html">http://www.neocamera.com/feature_photography_computer.html</a><br>

One or two parts may have slightly changed since then but all the advice and consideration are still valid.<br>

- Itai</p>

[dom1]

<p>After nearly 20 years of Dell I got tired of the Dell packages with limited RAM - raid configuration so I had Digital Storm in California build my last one. <a href="http://www.digitalstormonline.com">http://www.digitalstormonline.com</a> They build gaming machines but the power makes PS/LR really fast. I don't wait for anything, but with Win 7- 64 bit, an overclocked Intel quad core, RAID 0, a big NVidia video card, and 12G RAM, I shouldn't have to. And no excess junk installed so it's very clean. I did not want to build my own. This way I have tech support if I need it and real people to talk with. <br>

Hope you let us know what you end up with!</p>

[jfinzi]

<p>I just came across a couple of links that might add to this conversation (about which PC... not MAC)... The first link is a PCWorld buying guide article that is very current (this month) and gets into the differences between different chipsets and components... http://www.pcworld.com/article/191581/desktop_pc_buying_guide_the_specs_explained.html.<br /> The second link is to a fairly new addition to the HP desktop line which I might consider for our next main powerhouse desktop.<br /> http://www.amazon.com/HP-Pavilion-Elite-HPE-170t-PC/dp/B0034UGK8Y/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1269867646&sr=8-12<br /> I'm getting tired of replacing our desktop units ever few years and am thinking that when we upgrade we should get the highest technology (in terms of specs) that we can afford so that even if the unit moves to the back of the line every few years at least it won't be SO underpowered by the then-to-be "today's" standards.<br /> A few years ago you'd have to spend 5 grand for the specs in the HPE-170t. BTW, apparently, this is a totally customizable unit. Nice. I would stay away from their displays though--at least the moderately priced ones. I'm a fan of Viewsonic) I've got an HP laptop with a terrible display and just sent back one of their 23" pivot displays that was harsh and uneven.<br /> As aside here, I've bee a pc guy since '85 or so and have also run macs (I currently have 2 Windows laptops, 2 tower PCs one mini-tower HP Pavilion (which I love, but it's tight and hot in that small cabinet--already into our second GPU in 1 year) and one G5 Mac (2.8/8 gigs). Although I have some hassles on the PCs (usually because of sloppy third party installs or drivers) I never have the number of freeze-ups that I've had on MACs. That damned spinning ball of death is seen a lot more often on the MAC than the Windows dreaded blue screen of death. Admittedly, I am more of a power user on PCs than I am with MAC, so if something goes wrong I can usually fix the problem on a PC. With MAC, I'm not sure if there are the same level--or rather--depth of under-the-hood things to tinker with. So perhaps the MAC is just oh-so-mysterious and quirky. I dunno.<br /> Anyway, back to the subject... I think we need to look at WHAT you need to do with a computer. Do you do location and need portability or do you do all your editing and digital darkroom work indoors or in the studio? I'm mainly a studio shooter myself, but do want a small laptop for location tethered capture. I can't picture editing or retouching images in the field though. With studio work, I need lots of ram for large files (I used to shoot 8x10 and 4x5 but still can't afford to move up to the really high res shooting equipment yet.)... a good medium range graphics card is key too. When I work on composites I'll have lots of image files open at a time and tons of layers building up in Pshop. I'm not into games so don't need to pay attention to those sorts of specs. Anyone else have ideas about types of computer specs for different uses?<br /> Reading the PCWorld article helped sort our all the newer options (Jeeze, it's hard to keep up with all the terminologies and jargon... upgrade every three years, learn the jargon, work in your happy world a few more years and then, blam... what... er... I never heard of those chips!)<br /> I'll be honest though... I'm surprised when some people are still recommending "2 gig ram" when you look around and see so much more available at very decent prices. Heck, I just upgraded a 5 year old laptop to max out at 2 gigs ram. If in fact, you are all talking about the needs of full time pro photographers, then anything under $1000 would be like putting a cheap lens on a good body.<br>

BTW, Dominic... NICE article on how you built your own. It really tempted me, but I'm already spending too much time as our in-house company geek when ever something goes wrong or needs updating. (g) Picture that geek character on Saturday Night Live as my wife b*tches about some problem or other and I impatiently yell to her to get out of her seat "M O V E !" and clickity-clack and fix it in no time.<br>

(I actually hate having to get "under the hood", even though I do it rather that hire out...)</p>

<p>Jerry Finzi</p>

[MattB.Net]

<p>As far as HP vs. Dell, they are basically all the same components. From what I understand their support is relatively similar too, which means it will probably be ok but there are horror stories from both vendors. If one has a better deal or config more suited to your needs, I say go for it.<br>

I always buy the latest tech, from <em>last</em> year. I could get more performance from this year's latest, but the price point of last year's tech is usually right for me. This is also why I often use AMD processors. They are generally not the fastest thing out there, but I find them to be a better value and plenty fast for the majority of my needs (especially at home). But this is a personal choice. I prefer great value and good performance to the best possible performance.<br>

That's also why I usually buy <em>almost</em> new cars too.</p>

[william-porter]

<p>Jerry, thanks for the link to that PC World article, which was informative.</p>

<p>You asked what I need to do with the computer. I thought I'd explained that in my opening post: It will be my primary computer. It would be nice to get a laptop—that's what I've been using mainly for years—but I think I need power more than portability. The most demanding application I will run would be Lightroom (and now and then another couple of image processing apps). I spend many hours in Lightroom and would like it to be more responsive. If I could cut down the time it takes for an image to load or render in Lightroom from, say, 3-4 seconds to just 1 second, I would literally save many hours pretty quickly. However, balanced against this desire for a more responsive Lightroom, is a very limited bank account. So while I'd be delighted to spend $2-3K on a super duper system, I don't have $2-3K to spend. Basically, I need as much as I can get for around $1K. </p>

<p>It's come down the HP vs the Dell. Both i5 processors, but the HP has more RAM and more hard disk storage, yet costs about the same. I will make up my mind this week and place an order. If the advantage were on Dell's side, I'd have placed the order already. I just don't know anything about HP. I suspect it will be fine.</p>

<p>Will report back here when I do make up my mind. Thanks, y'all. </p>

<p>Will <br>

<br /></p>

[maxfx]

<p>Great discussion, especially the clarity provided by the links Jerry put up. In the same situation myself.. upgrading because my older system 'exposed' by using RAW etc. and motherboard being maxed out with 2gig RAM. However Apple ceasing (apparently) production in Feb on the 27" iMac 2.66 because of screen problems has stopped me drooling at their set up in a local shop...I am a long time PC user at home and a 12 month old Mac user at photo school! Like the last comment about last years technology price point difference. Have a great day everyone.</p>

[itai]

<p>William,<br>

OK, so the system I proposed only has 8 GB of RAM compared to the $2K HP.... but not only did I pay $1K, you can save about $200 by not putting in the Blu-Ray burner. If you want you can either keep the difference or invest it into another 8GB.<br>

With regards to other specs, the system I built still has more processor power and a 1TB RAID-0 for images and a separate 1TB disk for the OS and applications which will cut in half the time it takes to load images. Yes, for less than $1K. Here is the blog post which had the exact configuration: http://blog.neocamera.com/?p=562<br>

I use that system every day and I am truly happy with its performance. I've never seen it even close to 100% resource usage, so it should be good for a while.<br>

- Itai</p>

 

[yvonne_selnick]

<p>PC's are foreplay...MAC's are LOVE. Period.</p>

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

<p>The stupid Mac remarks are enough to put me off from *ever* buying one.</p>

[garrison_k.]

<p>I know. Every single Mac user I know feels a little inadequate. There's always something that they are left out of and this gnaws away at them deep inside. Most can control it, but others can not and have their little outburst.</p>

<p>I've stopped wondering why in all the "My Mac wont..." threads you never see "Get a PC like the other 93% of us" :)</p>

<p> </p>

[brad_smith8]

<p>All this MAC vs. PC will be moot soon since the Google Android OS will take over, and we'll be worshiping and talking up our new master while we run CS7 on our phones...</p>

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>Just wait until Win 8 comes out which is 128 bits</p>

[garrison_k.]

<p>Yes, Brad. And working in the clouds. I'm looking forward to it.</p>