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Thread: Planning to build a new PC

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    Default Planning to build a new PC

    I am in the beginning stages of planning to build a new super duper PC! I've not done this before but will have the help of my nephew who has built a gamer machine. We are looking at possibly using a 6 core mother board with Windows 7, which I know nothing about, but that will be the foundation. Below is my wish list of components. Any helpful suggestion would be greatly appreciated (No, I'm not switching to MAC!):eek:

    Tower with usb ports and memory card readers in front,
    4 to 8 gb of ram (depending on cost of fast versus less-fast cards),
    2, 1 to 2 tb internal hard drives,
    10 or 12 usb ports (2.0 or 3.0?),
    A good but not great graphics card,
    wireless internet card,
    A big power supply,
    A DVD rom writer and/or maybe a blue-ray writer

    HELP!
    Last edited by Dan Brown; 03-17-2011 at 09:10 PM.

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    Well Dan, I am getting ready to upgrade and move to Windows 7 64.

    According to every thing I read, an SSD drive for your programs and Windows
    is one of the biggest increases in speed you'll find.

    I buy all of my components at NewEgg and there are lots of reviews of different
    options there.

    Good luck, it is a project for sure.

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    You must use Win 7 (32 or 64) to get the wear leveling capability needed to use a SSD (unless you want premature death).

    I've already built several Sandybridge systems, here's where I'd spend the money.

    1) 160GB or 256GB SSB

    2) Second fast SATA drive with 64MB cache. Sweet spot is 1.5TB to 2.0TB. Put the Photoshop cache here, not in the SSD. You'll have plenty of space for other data files as the Photoshop cache does not take that much space...just don't fill up the disk.

    3) Get a Sandybridge i7-2500 or i7-2600. 4 core (you mention 6...you're not building with an older Westmere/Nehalem.? 6 core parts for Sandybridge aren't out yet and I can't tell you when). And AMD won't have anything like Sandybridge out until Bulldog late in second half (they say). Remember to buy that cooler fan and some Tim (grease-like materials) material.

    4) Get a good, but not extreme, motherboard with LGA 1155 socket. Be absolutely certain to get the B3 variant of Cougarpoint. You can buy an B2 motherboard some places, but that's the one with the issue on 4 of the USB ports (of 6) that had the issue with higher voltage at one of the PLLs that causes failure over time. See intel website if you want information on this - Intel has enough bucks to be able to pay to replace all the bad components and there is a way to get your board replaced if you bought after Jan 9 with the chipset with the issue).

    5) You absolutely must have Win 7 (I prefer 64 bit over 32) to ensure you have wear leveling for the SSD. That SSD has flash in it, and flash has a limited lifetime (100K erase/write cycles). Vista and XP don't have this. Flash does either block erase or block write which means its not just toggling a single bit. Wear leveling ensures that bits are worn evenly. And yes there is redundancy for remapping some number of failed blocks but its not enough to cover everything. that wear in flash occurs when charge gets trapped in the floating gate. IF I were building your system, I'd look at the 160GB SSD - a sweet spot. This will give you more space for other programs as well, and if you have data you read a lot you can put it there too for performance.

    6) Get some midrange SRAM - DDR3 appropriate for your particular motherboard (motherboard manufacturers list all the SRAM that they're tested in the booklet packed in the box.). I find 8GB gives a significant (for me) speed improvement over just 4G or 6GB. I've bulit with 16GB - and find it is significantly faster. You'll need to check your motherboard for number of slots and capacity supported by the Board/Bios.

    7) And if you've got cash burning a hole in your pocket - I'd buy a second SSD to put the Photoshop cache on. (I don't like putting this on the SSD used for the operating system. Some people do this and it works, but at some point wearout will occur. YMMV).


    Good luck - you'll have fun with a screw driver. It seems daunting but you'll have fun. Its easier the second time. You can't hurt things if you follow the instructions - except be certain to use a ground strap around the wrist when installing the CPU.

    Have fun
    Don
    Last edited by Don Nelson; 03-18-2011 at 01:07 AM.

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    Dan I agree with Don on the RAM requirement. Why put just 4 gigs of RAM in a powerhouse machine like this? I would say the range for consideration should be 8-16 gigs.

    I'm a Mac user since 1984 and I must say the prospect of building a Mac computer like you can do on the Windows side is attractive. Lots of people run the Mac OS on traditional PCs these days so maybe Mac users are there already.
    Last edited by John Chardine; 03-18-2011 at 06:24 AM.

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    Default Building a new PC

    Dan
    I was a confirmed PC user for 30 years and when returning to digital photography with PS (and other programs) post processing capabilities it became clear that MAC was the best choice. I settled for a Macbook Pro with enough memory - 8 Gigs - and the best graphics card available. these latter two elements are the rate limiting steps in the response rate of your computer. I had to do some iterative calibration of my HPw22 monitor but have achieved good color rendition. I have been ecstatic at the smooth and flawless operation of my Mac, the speed in loading large files from my card reader, the ability to run many applications simultaneously and no need for virus protection and flawless operation of my other programs such as MS Office for Mac, CS5, and Phocus (a Hasselblad program for managing RAW files and compatible with numerous other models of digital cameras). In addition Apple has provided excellent immediate response support as part of the 3 year warranty and their "1 to 1" support lets the transition from PC to Mac become relatively painless.

    If I wanted to upgrade to another machine it would be the iMac which comes with a high resolution screen and my ideal would be something along the lines below;

    2560-by-1440 resolution - 4GB (two 2GB) memory - monitor and graphics card are factory calibrated to achieve about 96% accuracy of color rendition
    2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
    16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB
    2TB Serial ATA Drive
    8x double-layer SuperDrive
    ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5 SDRAM - this is probably more than sufficient but upgradable to a dual card if you want to run multiple monitors
    Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English) & User's Guide
    Magic Mouse

    All of this for ~$3K and it is delivered in a week and assured to work.
    Software is your choice

    Kind regards

    Andre

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    Dan,

    See also this thread from a couple of weeks ago. In pane 15 I give a parts list for an I7 system.

    http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...erating-system

    Roger

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    Thanks guys, this gives me lots to go with!

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    Roger's list is for the processor prior to Sandybridge.
    The newer Sandybridge cores have 4 digits rather than 3. (the 3 digit are Westmere).
    The motherboards are NOT interchangable - his listed board is not the correct socket for Sandybridge but 1366 socket for the server part known as Bloomfield -- Sandybridge is socket LGA1155. We haven't released the Sandybridge server versions...

    One further note on the Intel Quad core i7(Westmere) and i7 2nd generation (Sandybridge) -- they both have the Hyper Threading technology turned back on. When you start task manager, you will see 8 cores, not 4, on the the performance tab. The Hyperthreading technology uses the resources of a core to get about 1.8 cores performance out of the single core. (this is, of course, dependent upon the threads that are active.

    And Photoshop is well optimized for multiple threads, and Sandybridge is particularly effective with Photoshop.

    Don
    Last edited by Don Nelson; 03-19-2011 at 12:41 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Andre van As View Post
    ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5 SDRAM - this is probably more than sufficient ...
    Sure, but won't make the PC a super duper one. That's more like a mid-level or even lower level graphic card by today's standard You need at least a 5950 or higher

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    You need to not skimp on the RAM speed. putting 8 gigs in a machine will actually tend to slow things down if not using fast RAM. The machine will have to seek through memory to find things otherwise. RAM is dirt cheap now so no reason to skimp

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cody Covey View Post
    You need to not skimp on the RAM speed. putting 8 gigs in a machine will actually tend to slow things down if not using fast RAM. The machine will have to seek through memory to find things otherwise. RAM is dirt cheap now so no reason to skimp
    No, the machine doesn't "have to search through more RAM and this slows it down"...the machine knows exactly (and what address) the data/instructions exists in the memory heirarchy L1, L2, (L3 if exists particularly in server, e.g. XEON), RAM, (SSA if in system), and hard disks. It goes precisely there and is not slowed down searching through more RAM.

    MORE RAM IS BETTER, and unless you are a gamer you don't need the fastest RAM, either.

    Actually, having more RAM dollar-for-dollar than faster RAM will improve system performance. Here's why: If the machine finds the page resident in the RAM, it does not have to make the EXTREMELY SLOW access to hard drive to load the data (or the SLOW access to SSA if you have it in system). (and if it needs to write dirty pages out to hard drive to make room in ram, this means an even longer time). So having MORE RAM means more and more data and program instructions are found to be resident in the relatively fast RAM, and the computer runs faster as it does not have to wait for the data on the very slow disc drives (even those with cache on the drives are very very slow to the processor). Now having bigger L2 and L1 caches on the die means the machine runs even faster if the data and program is resident in L1 or L2. (If you want to study caching, LRU strategy, cache snooping algorithmes, dirty bits, performance modeling - there are excellent books available.)

    Editing images means that unless you have a lot of RAM, you are going to spend a lot of time waiting for pages to be cached in and out of the hard drive.

    See your PS selections on EDIT->PREFERENCES->PERFORMANCE
    Notice that you are giving PHOTOSHOP a section of the RAM to manage? and that you've selected one or more discs for a scratch disk cache for editing the image.
    The more RAM you have to give PS, the faster it will run. More RAM means less paging to/from the EXTEREMLY SLOW scratch disk while editing. That scratch disk is there for PS to use when it can't put everyting in RAM.

    The assumption that only the fastest RAM helps means you are paying a lot for the few binned out fast parts that gamers pay a premium for. Gamers are willing to pay for fastest systems - these aren't needed for normal Photoshop image editing by most bird photographers.

    Bottom line for PS users - get a new Sandybridge machine (i7-xxxx digits("second generation"; not i7-xxx), put at least 8GB of 1333 or 1600(12GB, 16GB or 24GB would be even better), use a 64 bit operating system, and you'll be fine.

    And by the way, Get your RAMs now. A certain amount of SRAM capacity was in northern Japan (unlike processor production where there is ZERO Japanese production and zero Japanese assembly). And if you are building your own system, be absolutely certain to check the motherboard manufacturers information as to which of the RAMs have been tested. Not all manufacturers actually meet the specs. Not surprisingly, these are also the suppliers that generally have the cheapest prices.
    Last edited by Don Nelson; 03-27-2011 at 01:40 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Don Nelson View Post
    No, the machine doesn't "have to search through more RAM and this slows it down"...the machine knows exactly (and what address) the data/instructions exists in the memory heirarchy L1, L2, (L3 if exists particularly in server, e.g. XEON), RAM, (SSA if in system), and hard disks. It goes precisely there and is not slowed down searching through more RAM.

    MORE RAM IS BETTER, and unless you are a gamer you don't need the fastest RAM, either.

    Actually, having more RAM dollar-for-dollar than faster RAM will improve system performance. Here's why: If the machine finds the page resident in the RAM, it does not have to make the EXTREMELY SLOW access to hard drive to load the data (or the SLOW access to SSA if you have it in system). (and if it needs to write dirty pages out to hard drive to make room in ram, this means an even longer time). So having MORE RAM means more and more data and program instructions are found to be resident in the relatively fast RAM, and the computer runs faster as it does not have to wait for the data on the very slow disc drives (even those with cache on the drives are very very slow to the processor). Now having bigger L2 and L1 caches on the die means the machine runs even faster if the data and program is resident in L1 or L2. (If you want to study caching, LRU strategy, cache snooping algorithmes, dirty bits, performance modeling - there are excellent books available.)

    Editing images means that unless you have a lot of RAM, you are going to spend a lot of time waiting for pages to be cached in and out of the hard drive.

    See your PS selections on EDIT->PREFERENCES->PERFORMANCE
    Notice that you are giving PHOTOSHOP a section of the RAM to manage? and that you've selected one or more discs for a scratch disk cache for editing the image.
    The more RAM you have to give PS, the faster it will run. More RAM means less paging to/from the EXTEREMLY SLOW scratch disk while editing. That scratch disk is there for PS to use when it can't put everyting in RAM.

    The assumption that only the fastest RAM helps means you are paying a lot for the few binned out fast parts that gamers pay a premium for. Gamers are willing to pay for fastest systems - these aren't needed for normal Photoshop image editing by most bird photographers.

    Bottom line for PS users - get a new Sandybridge machine (i7-xxxx digits("second generation"; not i7-xxx), put at least 8GB of 1333 or 1600(12GB, 16GB or 24GB would be even better), use a 64 bit operating system, and you'll be fine.

    And by the way, Get your RAMs now. A certain amount of SRAM capacity was in northern Japan (unlike processor production where there is ZERO Japanese production and zero Japanese assembly). And if you are building your own system, be absolutely certain to check the motherboard manufacturers information as to which of the RAMs have been tested. Not all manufacturers actually meet the specs. Not surprisingly, these are also the suppliers that generally have the cheapest prices.
    I'm not saying that only the fastest will improve your system. I'm saying that faster RAM is going to help when you have 8GB of RAM to seek through. And it does have to seek through the RAM. Not in the same way that a hard disk does though. The RAM addressing can be compared to a spreadsheet where you have rows and columns. It knows that what it needs is in AA81 but it has to seek to get there. This is what the Latency you see in RAM is referring to. While more RAM is pretty much always better it does have diminishing returns and having 1gig less RAM but being the faster version will help more than the 1 gig more of RAM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cody Covey View Post
    While more RAM is pretty much always better it does have diminishing returns and having 1gig less RAM but being the faster version will help more than the 1 gig more of RAM.
    I have seen statements like this before, but it is not my experience. I have systems ranging from 4 GBytes, to 6, 8, 12, 24, 32, 64 and 168 GBytes. In every system, more ram is better. The 168 GByte system flies in comparison to all other systems, even though the clock speed is slightly lower (2.9 GHz) than other systems (up to 3.07 GHz).

    Roger

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    Lots of good advice here.

    If you don't want to build your own box, consider having Lenovo build you a workstation. I did that to build a 64-bit Windows system with 6-GB of RAM. I added Firewire to speed moving files to my external 2TB HDs and added a card reader panel to load in my 32GB CF cards. For example, I loaded 20GB from my CF card in about five seconds this weekend. Those are small items, but prevent workflow bottlenecks that used to drive me crazy.

    Roger's right, more RAM is better. I got as much as I could while keeping my total price below $1500.

    Also, consider keeping your internal HD space minimal, but going for speed here also. For backup and safety, external HDs is the way that I've chosen to go. I've two 2-TB LaCie HDs, keeping one at home and one at the office and synching them monthly. Until I sync the external drives I keep copies on my Lenovo, but once they're moved and backed up I delete those files.

    I'm really pleased with the seamless 64-bit OS with Windows 7. I haven't had a bit of trouble with device drivers. I think you'll love it, particularly if you image files are large.

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    Quote Originally Posted by David Stephens View Post
    Lots of good advice here.

    If you don't want to build your own box, consider having Lenovo build you a workstation. I did that to build a 64-bit Windows system with 6-GB of RAM. I added Firewire to speed moving files to my external 2TB HDs and added a card reader panel to load in my 32GB CF cards. For example, I loaded 20GB from my CF card in about five seconds this weekend. Those are small items, but prevent workflow bottlenecks that used to drive me crazy.

    Roger's right, more RAM is better. I got as much as I could while keeping my total price below $1500.

    Also, consider keeping your internal HD space minimal, but going for speed here also. For backup and safety, external HDs is the way that I've chosen to go. I've two 2-TB LaCie HDs, keeping one at home and one at the office and synching them monthly. Until I sync the external drives I keep copies on my Lenovo, but once they're moved and backed up I delete those files.

    I'm really pleased with the seamless 64-bit OS with Windows 7. I haven't had a bit of trouble with device drivers. I think you'll love it, particularly if you image files are large.
    Great info David and all! David, what CF reader did you install that was that fast! I want that!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Brown View Post
    Great info David and all! David, what CF reader did you install that was that fast! I want that!
    It was on the build option page for their S20 ThinkStation, described as "20-in-1 Media Card Reader" and costing all of 20-bucks. Heck of a deal! It's built right into the front of the chassis for easy access. I haven't tried an SD card on it yet, but the CF card flies.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Brown View Post
    Great info David and all! David, what CF reader did you install that was that fast! I want that!
    I would be interested as well because there is no computer component I know of that moves 4 gigs of data per second. Especially not with the write speeds of hard drives today. Even fast SSD's only write at around 750MB/s

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    Quote Originally Posted by David Stephens View Post
    I added Firewire to speed moving files to my external 2TB HDs and added a card reader panel to load in my 32GB CF cards.

    For example, I loaded 20GB from my CF card in about five seconds this weekend.
    David,
    USB3 supports much higher speeds than firewire.

    20 gb/5 seconds = 4 GBytes/sec = 32 gigabits/second. That's faster than the latest sata (3 to 6 gigabits/sec), and faster than the fastest CF cards I've seen on the market (90 MBytes/sec) by a factor of 44. So is that time a mistake? If true, I REALLY REALLY want to know how you did it (I want that system too).

    The fastest numbers I've been able to achieve with sata is 56 MBytes/second disk to disk on the same controller, or 86 MBytes/sec disk to disk with disks in different controllers (sata 3, linux, 5900 rpm 2 TB disks)

    The fastest CF rates I've gotten are around 25 megabytes/sec (with a 32 GB 60 MByte/sec sandisk card, windows 7 laptop, haven't tried linux yet). This is not on a usb3 controller. I will test that soon, but I need a usb 3 CF reader.

    Roger

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    USB 2 is faster than firewire (just barely and only technically )

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cody Covey View Post
    I would be interested as well because there is no computer component I know of that moves 4 gigs of data per second. Especially not with the write speeds of hard drives today. Even fast SSD's only write at around 750MB/s
    I think it's reading in place on the CF card. I just checked and it displayed 9-GB of files as large icons in about 1/10th of a second. I only move the files that I plan to process to my HD. I preview off the CF card (I shoot RAW plus jpeg to facilitate the review), then drag the files to the HD. I usually make a list and drag the files one at a time, which is instantaneous (as fast as I move my mouse).

    As you see, I don't use Lightroom or Bridge for organizing my images. I'd rather just not save or mess with the files that don't want. With my method only the "keepers" get on my drives.
    Last edited by David Stephens; 03-29-2011 at 06:07 PM. Reason: new thought

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    Just to confirm, I Copied 9.95-GB of files from the CF card to the HD and it took 5 minutes 29 seconds. Clearly, in the fraction of a second it's only reading the CF card and producing icons. Given the way I work, that's really nice.

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    Ahh Okay, Yeah when you said loaded in your first post I assumed you meant loaded from your CF to your drive, which of course takes no time at all. Misunderstanding, although I had hopes there was some technology I didn't know about that really would transfer that fast.

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    Quote Originally Posted by David Stephens View Post
    Just to confirm, I Copied 9.95-GB of files from the CF card to the HD and it took 5 minutes 29 seconds. Clearly, in the fraction of a second it's only reading the CF card and producing icons. Given the way I work, that's really nice.
    Oh ok, well, still good info from you and all, David! Thanks a bunch!

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    Quote Originally Posted by David Stephens View Post
    Just to confirm, I Copied 9.95-GB of files from the CF card to the HD and it took 5 minutes 29 seconds. Clearly, in the fraction of a second it's only reading the CF card and producing icons. Given the way I work, that's really nice.
    David,
    That is more consistent. That is a data rate of 30.2 MBytes/sec, very nice, but near the limit of USB2.

    Roger

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