Need help with building a photography computer

[rahul_agarwal1]

<p>I want to build a new computer for my photography needs. I was wondering what would be the best bet to get a blazing computer that allows photoshop, bridge, picasa, spotify, and chrome to be constantly running. I was thinking about getting an SSD for speed and then hard drives for data (currently I have 3TB internal and 4 TB external for backup, should I RAID instead?). Thanks for your suggestions.</p>

[john_deerfield]

<blockquote>

<p>should I RAID instead?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>For backup, no. A RAID is not a backup. The ONLY thing a redundant RAID protects you from is hard drive failure. Period. It does not protect you from directory corruption, human error, file damage or a host of other issues since the redundant RAID is an <em>exact</em> copy of the info. If you accidentally delete a file one drive, it is deleted on the RAID. Which simply means you still need a backup! And since you now have a backup, you don't need a redundant RAID (waste of money and resources, unless each are unlimited). You could build a RAID for speed but I won't comment on that other than to say that for most users it simply isn't worth the $$ to run effectively.</p>

<p>As what computer to build, can't help you there, I'm a Mac guy. I will say that you will want to load up on as much RAM as you can. I don't follow PC's. but I wouldn't accept anything less than 8GB of RAM now-a-days. And I would definitely want to run dual monitors. Those to things alone will make you more <em>productive</em>. Which in the end is better than being <em>faster</em>!</p>

[frank_skomial]

<p>Ask yourself question: How many computers did I build in the passed ?</p>

<p>If the answer is None, then go and get ready made computer off the shelf. Just make sure it has what you need.</p>

<p>I do no see importance in having open so many applications at the same time, but perhaps it is your style?</p>

[DELETE THIS ACCOUNT]

<p>For a business machine, you might justify a RAID solution. For a high end personal use machine, maybe not. Don't settle for "software" RAID if you are going to go that route, be sure your drive controller implements the RAID level you want in hardware.</p>

<p>Some motherboards provide fast hardware level support for simple RAID capability such as RAID level 1 - drive mirroring. RAID 1 might give somewhat improved read performance. Maybe that's enough for your purposes, maybe not.</p>

<p>Our most powerful machine here at Chez Watkins where all our photo and video editing is done has multiple drives in RAID 1 configuration, in order to provide some operational protection from a single drive failure. As was said above, RAID does not equal BACKUP but probably you know that. Consequently we also back up our data to other drives on the network.</p>

<p>As for building out a machine from parts, personally I love to do this but I don't enjoy providing parts lists to others. At the moment in time when I'm ready to build a machine I need to dig in and research what current best-buy near the state of the art is; a few months later all that has changed. </p>

<p>Probably your ideal machine should be a Core i5 or i7, not necessarily the fastest processor in the line up but close to fast enough; a good powerful video card is a must and those draw power and create some noise due to on-board fans so if noise is an issue, factor that into your research. 8GB or more RAM should be your target and that means a 64 bit operating system, likely Windows, is a must. I wish I could meet all my needs by running Linux or FreeBSD but I can't so unlike my primary machine, this workstation runs Windows.</p>

<p>If going down this route, buy a really good case and power supply and if noise is an issue for you, buy one known to be quiet. I like the Antec P183 cases (understated looking, low noise features) paired with the Antec CP series power supplies. You don't want to under power a machine that will be loaded with drives and a high end video card. I look at such a case as a fixture - we'll swap components into that type of case for at least a few generations of upgrades. When we need to upgrade that machine (not for some time) the motherboard will be swapped out into perhaps a slightly lower end case and moved off to some other purpose or gifted to someone.</p>

<p>If shopping for monitors my preference at present is for IPS based designs; I quite like the nicer Dell IPS displays and they come with a nice tilt and swivel stand that is quite stable, lots of ports (USB and otherwise) that helps reduce cable tangle. Often the not much cheaper Samsungs et al lack some ofthese niceties. Do some research on rendition fidelity and try to buy something appropriate for the task.</p>

<p>Good luck, have fun doing it.</p>

[georges_walker]

<p>The problem with disks is the risk they suffer about. The more capacity they have, the more chances to loss more information if one disk get damage.<br>

I would recommend a backup strategy that allows you to store your backup files in a different location where you work everyday. If someting bad happens to your office, yo still have your backup keeped in a different location.<br>

Backups should be run based on The following strategy: Daily, weekly and monthly. But use the incremental option in order to reduce the amount of data you may need. On the other hand, considering you may have specific projects, all the files involved in a same project should be in the same set of media that you used for the backup, and this media should be stored outside your office. If your files have a high monetary value, consider a provider such as Iron Mountain to store your backups.</p>

 

[rahul_agarwal1]

<p>John - Good call with the RAID, didn't think of it that way. Why are you a MAC guy? (for computer purposes). Also, I asked about an SSD to see if that is the better way to go, I was thinking RAID because I have a bunch of 1tb drives that I could link together and increase speed on the DATA side. (I wish I had space for dual monitors!)<br>

Frank - I have built computers, my last computer was a DELL and I dont care for the lack of quality parts. <br>

Michael - Why do you recommend a powerful video card? (I've heard Photoshop now uses a GPU along with the CPU, is this why? I'm currently running an evga gts450). I'm also looking at doing 12-24gb of ram because of the resource hog photoshop is. as for a PSU what wattage would you recommend with the above specs and an i7. <br>

Jorge - my current backup strategy is as follows: each drive has a daily backup to an external drive with incremental backups using goodsync. Deleted files are removed 120 days after they are deleted on main drives. Then each photo session is uploaded online via crashplan.</p>

[waltflanagan]

<p>I have the OS installed on an SSD and it has dramatically sped up boot and program start times. </p>

<p>Avoid RAID-0 but you can get increased performance in a 2 drive RAID-10 configuration. I would actually stick with software RAID. Why? If you go with a hardware RAID card then you need to find out what the on disk RAID format is. If it is something proprietary to the specific RAID card and your RAID card dies you will need to replace it with an identical card. I have seen this happen twice in the last 15 years at various jobs. After a day or 2 messing around they ended up just restoring from backups. The "hardware" RAID on many motherboards using the Intel ICH#R chipset is basically software RAID anyway.</p>

<p>I have yet to find any Photoshop benchmarks showing how much faster using the GPU actually is. Unless you are playing lots of 3D video games any card in the $50-75 range will be fine.</p>

<p>I've got a 450W PSU. Using a "Kill-A-Watt" meter my Core i7 quad core with 4 hard drives never even goes over 250W even when all cores are busy. I've seen some benchmarks of video games using 3 Nvidia cards in triple SLI mode and they were using around 850W.</p>

<p>You say you don't have the space but I think monitors are a far better use of money. I have dual 30" LCDs each running at 2560x1600. It helps out a lot.</p>

<p>The current Sandy Bridge i7's are limited to 2 DDR3 channels for a maximum of 4x4GB modules = 16GB total. If you need more memory you either need to wait for Sandy Bridge-E, Ivy Bridge, or go back to the older Core i7. You can look at Xeon server chips and registered memory if you need more.</p>

[john_deerfield]

<blockquote>

<p>Why are you a MAC guy? (for computer purposes).</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I prefer a quality computer that I don't have to build. I prefer virtually any version of Mac OS X over Windows, including W7.</p>

[Brad_]

Just a note, especially if you're editing tool of choice is Lightroom.

 

Great performance is strongly driven by CPU type; ie Sandy Bridge, and amount of RAM. And not

strongly driven by storage medium; ie hard disk, SSD, RAID.

 

That said, an SSD certainly offers impressive system boot and LR boot times. I installed a Sata-3 interfaced

SSD in my 13" MacBook Pro, and system boot takes about 12 seconds. Lightroom cold boo,t 3-4

seconds.

[rahul_agarwal1]

<blockquote>

<p>Just a note, especially if you're editing tool of choice is Lightroom.<br>

Great performance is strongly driven by CPU type; ie Sandy Bridge, and amount of RAM. And not strongly driven by storage medium; ie hard disk, SSD, RAID.<br>

That said, an SSD certainly offers impressive system boot and LR boot times. I installed a Sata-3 interfaced SSD in my 13" MacBook Pro, and system boot takes about 12 seconds. Lightroom cold boo,t 3-4 seconds.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I use Bridge and Photoshop, Won't having an SSD speed up running actions in Photoshop?</p>

[DELETE THIS ACCOUNT]

<p>Having a powerful video card rather than using on board video may be an extra you can do away with. It sounds like this machine is all business no play, anyway.<br>

Truth be told Lightroom running on my Sandy Bridge based X220 Thinkpad doesn't feel that much slower as compared tp running LR on the big machine on the network here. I continue to be blown away at how fast this very portable laptop is.<br>

What sort of collection of images are you currently maintaining? Where do you expect it to reach to?</p>

[mariosforsos]

<p>The only thing that will speed up PS is RAM. Not the graphics card, not the processor,not your monitor and not your hard drive. PS loads up as much of the image as it can on your RAM (and it takes space equal to = the image size * the colour space * 50%, so for a 500MB RGB image you'd be looking for 2,5GB approximately PLUS some space for layers, depending on what they are! - and that's the amount PS reserves BEFORE you apply any filters on the image or anything!), so if you have enough RAM for all the applications you intend on having open, then you should be okay.</p>

<p>MIND the following though: Windows (unless you're running the 64-bit version of EVERYTHING) does NOT free memory reserved by an application when that application quits, so sometimes even if you have enough RAM, you may not have enough - if you know what I mean.</p>

<p>Also, while SSD will resolve loading speeds for your OS and your applications, it's cost-prohibitive to go the SSD way when considering storage. However, do make sure you go for VERY FAST drives (min. 7200 rpm) and equally fast interfaces (USB 3.0 or FW800 or SATA II minimum) otherwise ALL your wonderful processing power will amount to nothing as the computer will simply sit idle while waiting for your 5400 drive through USB 2.0 to bring the data across...</p>

<p>Finally, since you're doing photography, make sure you leave some money behind for colour management and calibration hardware - you cannot live without this!</p>

[tom_rhyne]

<p>Anybody have a recommendation on off-the-shelf versions of HP vs Dell vs ASUS vs. Thinkpad?</p>

[rahul_agarwal1]

<blockquote>

<p>What sort of collection of images are you currently maintaining? Where do you expect it to reach to?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm not sure what you mean by this question<br>

Marios - Thanks for the advice. Someone mentioned that the max the Sandy Bridges can have is 16gb. If that is the case then 16gb is what I am going to get because my current build only has 4gb and it is noticeable! As for drives my current drives are caviar blacks WD 1tb. I plan on keeping those as Data drives and possibly raiding them and then sending those to a backup along with an online backup.<br>

As for Calibration hardware and colour management, what do you recommend? I currently use a spyder pro.<br>

Tom - Thinkpads are solid machines, I'm not a fan of HP's. Dells are ok and ASUS are as well. That's just my two cents.</p>

[szrimaging]

<p>I love Thinkpads and HP. Both have been rock solid for me with great customer service. Buy from the business end, not the consumer end and you get better customer service and more solid hardware. ASUS, I believe, is also supposed to be doing pretty good builds, but I have never had one.</p>

<p>Unless you are processing larger MF or LF images, you don't need to overkill the system. As you step up the RAM and such, it will be diminishing return vs dollar payed. For a pure photo rig with the requirements I saw, 8GB should be fine.</p>

<p>If you wanted a video rig, that entire statement goes out the door.</p>

[photom]

<p>SSD depends on your budget. A smaller one for your operating system and a few programs might be nice, but it is not the best bang for the buck at this time.</p>

<p>RAM is cheap so get a board that can use a lot of RAM. I started out with 6 Gigs and recently doubled it because RAM is so cheap now.. And get a name brand. Check user comments on Newegg. I use Intel processors so I do not know about AMD. If you go Intel, then get an I7, probably the newest 1155 socket which just came out this year. Look for a MOB that has a lot of options including USB 3.0 and triple channel memory access. I personally do not spend much on video cards for photo editing because I am cheap. Maybe I am wrong there.</p>

<p>Also, plan on getting an improved cpu cooling system. The faster cpus use more power and get hotter. Just some thoughts. Have fun.</p>

[rahul_agarwal1]

<p>These are all great responses. Thank you all so much!</p>