Would this computer build be overkill?

[catcher]

<p>I'm going to build my first pc. I've done lots and lots of searching on pc building and my head is spinning!<br>

My current desktop is nearly 7 years old (HP Media Center with Quad Core 2.4Ghz running 32 bit Windows Vista. 4GB RAM.) My old unit has served me well but it's starting to feel really slow. The limitations I'm running into are primarily, but not only, with video editing. I recently purchased Premiere Elements 12 to edit family videos. It's cumbersome and slow. Furthermore, I'm planning on purchasing lightroom 5 and I think my 32bit system will come with limitations.</p>

<p>So, since it's been nearly 7 years, my wife agreed to let me start all over (in hopes it might last me another 7 years!). This computer will be mostly for photo editing (Using Lightroom and CS3--No need for me to upgrade to newer PHotoshop version) and some moderate video editing (fairly simple and relatively short family videos). No gaming. </p>

<p>So, here goes. For the new computer I'm thinking:</p>

<ul>

<li>Intel i7-4790k (fast 4ghz, but I'm not planning on overclocking. So maybe the i7-4790 or 4790s would work?)</li>

<li>ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer Mother board</li>

<li>16GB Ram</li>

<li>SSD for OS, programs, and LR catalogs (HDD for storage) --no need for separate scratch disk if using SSD?</li>

<li>Windows 8.1 64 bit (I've got 8 on a laptop and I don't mind it. I've read it's a bit less resource intensive than Win7)</li>

<li>I'm shooting for around $1000 (including case, power, etc.)</li>

<li>From what I can tell, Premiere Elements 12 won't make much use of a Graphics card?</li>

</ul>

<p> I'm not necessarily interested in having the highest spec'd computer for the sake of it. I've read quite a bit about benchmarking but I don't have much of a feel for what that all means in the 'real world.' I don't want to pay money unnecessarily for a computer that will save me a few seconds on video or photo editing. But a few minutes, I'll pay for! And again, I'd quite pleased if it would last me another 7 years.</p>

<p>Thoughts?</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

You still have a need for a physically separate scratch disk. A small (128~250Gb) SSD would be a good choice.

 

More RAM wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

Is your display seven years old as well? Definitely think you should replace it if that's the case.

[JDMvW]

<p>As to the RAM, even for, maybe especially for, CS3 I would think 16GB might be tight.</p>

<p>I'm using CS5 still, and it feels much more comfortable on my 32GB machine with 500GB of SSD for the programs and such than it did on a 16GB machine that I still have. I have a dim memory of CS3, but as I recollect it did a lot of switching on and off disk, back in the day.</p>

[EricM]

<blockquote>

<p>SSD for OS, programs, and LR catalogs (HDD for storage) --no need for separate scratch disk if using SSD?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Requirements for scratch disk each will be different for individual users. On Windows, I never dipped into scratch with 16gb of ram and stopped allocating one all together with my new machine of 32gb of ram.</p>

<p>Having only one ssd for OS, apps, LR catalog, AND your images to read and save to, is too much to ask for one drive to handle imo. Instead, I keep OS and LR catalog on the C Drive ssd, and noticed an improvement in speed when I had a second ssd to import my image files to and have it read/write. I like the samsung evo 256 ssd's at the moment</p>

<p> </p>

[catcher]

<p>Thanks for the quick responses. <br>

I've seen different recommendations on the RAM. My Photoshop use is actually light. Most of my editing would be done in Lightroom, plus the video editing in Premiere elements. If Photoshop use is light, would 32GB RAM still be worth it?<br>

As for the scratch disk, I'd seen some things online suggesting that an SSD effectively took care of it simply because of the faster read/write times. But, it sounds like some of you have had experiences where two is still worth it. Is this primarily for Photoshop or Lightroom as well?</p>

[catcher]

<p>Eric, I see you were saying having two SSDs, but not for a scratch disk. Rather, one for OS and LR and another for importing and editing images. Do you have a 'feel' for how much of a speedup you saw? LR went from clunky and stuttery to smooth as butter? Or . . . </p>

<p>Also, CS3 is the older 32 bit version which means (I think) that it can only access 2-3GB of RAM anyway. If that's the case, how much difference would 16-32GB make? (I wouldn't be doing lots of things in the background at one time). </p>

[catcher]

<p>From Adobe: "If your startup disk is an SSD, there is no benefit to selecting a different disk for your primary scratch disk. Using the SSD for both your system startup disk and your primary scratch volume performs well. And, it's probably better than using a separate hard disk for scratch. "<br>

<br>

This specifically addresses Photoshop CS4 and above, but I'm assuming it would be the same for CS3? Lightroom too? (This presumably assumes that you SSD is large enough as well, of course).<br>

<br>

But, it sounds like one or more of you have had a different experience. I'd value what you think of the above advice in light of your experience. Tech pages don't necessarily match the real world! And, again, this page doesn't directly address Lightroom (nor Premiere Elements 12)<br>

<br>

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-performance-photoshop-cs4-cs5.html#main_Scratch_Disks</p>

[EricM]

<p>Just dashing out the door here Arron, making this quick, but from my understanding, scratch disk has nothing to do with hard drives and everything to do with maxing out available ram. You should look up swap files and page files.</p>

<p>I wouldn't be putting money into a new computer if you're not upgrading from 32-bit software that only uses 2.7gb of ram. Creative Cloud is $10 a month and with going 64-bit and using your 16gb of ram, this is where you will notice the most speed increase.</p>

<p>If you stay with 32 bit CS3, then yes, you will need a scratch disk. I'd check also on Adobe User Forums with Premier users as I think they all recommend a scratch drive as video editing is intensive on ram, even with 16 gb.</p>

<p>And gpu...? You should have a decent video card.</p>

<p> </p>

[Dave410]

<p>Just a few comments:</p>

<p>If you have a lot of RAM, the scratch disk and paging file become less important but a small SSD just for them is kinda nice. That's what I do.</p>

<p>Consider how you're going to back up all this stuff. Keeping photos on the HD and the Lightroom catalog on the SSD complicates your back up plan. That's no problem as long as everything gets backed up. It would be a shame to have a melt down and realize either your photos or all your edits have disappeared.</p>

<p>Don't dismiss overclocking. Not only is it fun, but you can really improve performance. My 7-year-old homebuilt machine has a 2.4 GHz CPU but it's running cool and stable at 3.2 GHz. I could probably go higher, but it's an old machine and I'm reluctant to push the CPU voltage much higher.</p>

<p> </p>

[thirteenthumbs]

<p>About two years ago I got this Dell XPS 8500, i7 3770 3.4ghz and upgraded it to 16gb ram, Win 8 to 8.1, and added a second hd.<br>

I was running CS2 32 bit. The non activation version Adobe made available to registered users was slow and glitchy. <br>

Your 32 bit CS3 will be no better than it was on your old machine.<br>

I'm not a fan of cloud based anything let alone monthly fees and a stand alone version of CS6 was out of reach.</p>

<p>I searched ebay for a few weeks and came across a CS5 upgrade 64 bit NOS for a reasonable price. It installed registered, and activated without a glitch. Some are deactivating their older versions of CS4 through CS5.5 as they upgrade and they are transferable to new users as well as new computers. Upgrade to a 64bit version.</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>16 GB of ram is probably fine, my two computers I use for photo editing get along fine with that. As far as a scratch disk, I don't know that you need one. I've never ran into serious disk swapping in the last 5 years. It used to happen some when I had a build it your self Windows computer back when I was using Win 2000. Just for perspective, my heaviest use is for weddings which can be working with many images and sync changes in LR etc. and I've never had any swapping with 16GB on my macs. That includes importing a thousand raw files and exporting several hundred tif's at a time. If doing heavier video work, maybe, but I still haven't had a problem with the video I've worked with, admittedly not heavy use, just editing, transformations and text in FCPX. Again no problem. So I'm not sure you need a scratch disk. If you pushed your ram to 32GB, I'm pretty confident for the way you described your use, you will not over tax you drives ever until they are filled up, but that's a different issue. Also it is better to have programs on the boot drive, and data on separate drives. Good luck. </p>

[catcher]

<p>Thanks all, for the feedback. I think I'll probably give my original list a go since Photoshop CS3 will be a minor part of what I do overall. Lightroom and Premiere Elements will be my main workhorses. I'll keep checking back here if anyone else has more thoughts or suggestions. </p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<ul>

<li>Intel i7-4790k (fast 4ghz, but I'm not planning on overclocking. So maybe the i7-4790 or 4790s would work?)</li>

<li>ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer Mother board</li>

</ul>

<p>Sorry, a bit late....<br /> Fir the CPU, I'd get the K-model all the same; it simply is 400MHz faster which won't make a huge difference, but a few years down the road, it might be welcome. That said, I'd rather have a second SSD and a Core i5, if budget dictates such limits.<br /> For the mainboard - why this one? It's quite a "gamers" mainboard with a lot of added features that are of very limited use for what you describe. I'd personally get a much simpler Z97-chipset based mainboard, possibly even a mATX one to enable a smaller casing. Plus, invest in a decent powersupply, do not go cheap on that part. It is the least glamorous bit in a PC, but pretty important. Something Seasonic. You won't need a >600W powersupply with your specs, get a solid, good and energy efficient 400W-450W one.</p>

<p>Finally, for a scratchdisk - Photoshop will create one, being a 32-bit program it can only address 2GB even if you have a lot more available. I'm using PS Elements 9 (=32 bits) on a system with 32GB, and it creates a scratchdisk for itself. I have it on a regular drive, and it doesn't slow down noticeably, as I do not use very big files nor a lot of layers. If you do use large files with lots of layers, putting the temp files to a SSD may help a bit. But indeed, I'd primarly use a second SSD for the LR catalog and previews. That will really speed things up.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>With regards to the GPU: for what I find, Premiere Elements 12 makes no use at all of GPU acceleration itself, so getting a dedicated GPU isn't strictly necessary. The integrated Intel graphics work fine for anything that doesn't require GPU acceleration (PS CS3 doesn't use it, nor does Lightroom). So, if you do not have any other software that makes good use of it, you might want to stick to the integrated graphics - one less fan means less noise and less thermal considerations.</p>

[EricM]

<p>I'm inclined to believe that relieving the gpu tasks of the cpu by simply adding a video card, helps both cpu and gpu performance.</p>

<p>I agree with Wouter. No need for that i7 cpu and motherboard if you are sticking with 32-bit software. I'd go i-5 and a basic motherboard. With the savings, get a second ssd. The Samsung Evo 256 are only $130 each.</p>

[catcher]

<p>Thanks Wouter and Eric. </p>

<p>I picked that motherboard because it was one that Newegg suggested with the cpu. I don't know anything about mother boards. I'm doing some more research. In your view, what do I NEED on a motherboard. What could I live without? I wanted to make sure it has USB 3 for quicker file transfer times (but maybe they all do now?).</p>

<p>I agree about the powersupply. In my research (and to my surprise) that was one of the items people/sites repeatedly said not to skimp on. So, I've learned a bit about that and have in my budget room to pick a good one. </p>

[steven_clark]

I see some overkill, yes. You could probably go with a

Core I5 and get most of the performance of that i7 for

2/3rds the price. While a chip with hyperthreading can

perform better in certain situations, I've really only

seen it pan out in some easily parallelizable physical

simulation benchmarks. You might still want to consider

a graphics card, AMD cards are good for doing raw math

so certain operations may be accelerated if you have

one. With a large enough SSD of sufficient quality a

separate a scratch disk should not be necessary. On the

other hand SSD capacity on the good drives eats your

budget fast, not as fast as it did last year though.

Consider choosing a quality power supply like a Corsair,

it's a pain to troubleshoot later. A removable drive

bay is cheap and very useful.

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Aaron, for a mainboard, look for a model with the Intel Z97 or H97 chipset; that in itself will give you all features you need. Make sure it has 4 slots for memory, and at least 4 SATA (6Gbps) ports on the mainboard itself (for use for internal drives); most will have 6 probably. USB3 is standard now, there should be 2 or 4 ports of those on the rear panel. A PCI-Express 16x slot, and a PCI-Express 1x slot, and you're good to go. A good brand (Asus, Asrock, MSI, Gigabyte - you will always find anecdotes about any brand on "how bad they are", but these 4 are generally reliable brands).<br>

I'd probably choose something like <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128727&cm_re=gigabyte_z97-_-13-128-727-_-Product">this one</a> or <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130780&cm_re=MSI_Z97-_-13-130-780-_-Product">this one</a> (but I'd read up some reviews first, this is just those I found relatively quickly for a nice price!). I like smaller PC casings, so I actually prefer the smaller mATX boards; if you're going to buuild a large® tower, there are full size ATX board in the same price range with identical specs.<br>

__<br>

For the GPU:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...doing raw math so certain operations may be accelerated if you have one.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>True - <em><strong>IF</strong></em> software supports it, and all main software titles mentioned (PS CS3, Lightroom and Premiere Elements 12) do <strong>not</strong> use the GPU for anything. It is easy to add one later if newer/upgraded software would be able to use the extra power, but for now for the OP it adds nothing.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>..relieving the gpu tasks of the cpu by simply adding a video card, helps both cpu and gpu performance.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It doesn't make a change; the GPU part on the CPU is a dedicated seperate area, so it doesn't interfere with the CPU operations any more than a seperate GPU would. The GPU performance doesn't come into play if there aren't any applications using it.<br>

For the OP, there really is no reason to add a graphics card at this point. I've been running a Core i5 with its integrated graphics for over a year now, and it really just works fine. I'm only adding a graphics card now because I have software that can use it (CaptureOne uses OpenCL for raw conversions) and a game coming up I'll probably like to waste time on, but otherwise you really do not loose a whole lot using the Intel graphics, but you gain less noise and less power consumption, at less cost.</p>

[EricM]

<blockquote>

<p>It doesn't make a change; the GPU part on the CPU is a dedicated seperate area, so it doesn't interfere with the CPU operations any more than a seperate GPU would. The GPU performance doesn't come into play if there aren't any applications using it.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

thanks for that, Wouter.<br>

</p>

<blockquote>

<p>With a large enough SSD of sufficient quality a separate a scratch disk should not be necessary. </p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Operating systems need a scratch disk when they run out of available ram. It has nothing to do with hard drives or their speed</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>onOne Software utilizes OpenGL for previews and needs a good GPU or the overall performance lags and the masking brush/bug tools are unusable. I don't know whether other photo and video editing developers plan to make use of the GPU, but it makes sense. You may not need a particularly high end gaming level GPU but a mid-grade video card should do for now.</p>

[steven_clark]

Also Photoshop CS6 has openCL support. CS 3 may not use

the GPU but any later upgrades would.

 

My comment on the scratch disk is that a good SSD

controller chip will handle I/O in a completely random

pattern with no problem. There is therefore no great

need to put the Windows page file and the Photoshop

scratch file on separate disks from each other anymore

as the disk being accessed by 2 or 3 things at once no

longer causes performance to plummet the way it used to.

Also modern SSDs have vastly under rated write

capacities and you don't really have to worry about

using them for these virtual memory tasks.

 

Plus, managing multiple disks is a royal PITA when it

comes time to fix a computer through things like

restoring a backup.

[catcher]

<p>I appreciated very much everyone's suggestions, so I thought I'd briefly update what I did. I ended up building essentially the system in the OP. I also added a second SSD. I use it for first importing photos/videos and editing them. Then, once done, move the files off to HDDs for storage. <br>

The system flies. Even though CS3 can't make use of the extra ram the processing is noticeably faster. Bridge works smoothly. <br>

Premiere Elements 12 is as smooth as butter--I'm actually not dreading going back and sorting through and editing old family videos anymore. <br>

I still plan on getting Lightroom, but haven't yet. <br>

So, again thanks for the help. Also, for anyone else considering building their own machine, it's actually not that hard. I'd never done it before, and wouldn't consider myself particularly knowledgeable about computers. But there's plenty of information online to help. I'm not sure that I saved much money, but I was able to get much better parts, and only get exactly what I wanted for the money. </p>

[EricM]

Thanks for coming back and updating us, Aaron.