Build for photography

vasek

vasek

vasek

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Joined
30 Oct 2007
Posts
110
Would like to have a rig just for photography, just Photoshop,etc, no internet, no games!

I have an external drive, and a 80gb Intel SSD, keyboard,mouse and monitor. Just need the rest!

Was thinking of:
OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-16000C10 2000MHz Dual Channel Kit 171.98
Asus P7P55D-E LX Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £116.98
Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £99.99
Gainward GeForce 9800 GT Green Edition 1024MB PCI-Express GDDR3 £94.99
OCZ StealthXStream 500w Silent Power Supply £46.99
Asus Xonar DS 7.1 PCI Sound Card £38.99
Asus TA-D31 Case - Black £28.99
Samsung SH-S223L/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1156 / 1366) £15.98

Total : £645.69

But any tips or comments are welcome!
 
You don't need a 9800GT for photoshop, I use an ATI HD4350 512mb passive cooled for CS4 and have no problem editing on a 1920*1200 monitor.
 
Also just re-read and saw you choose 2000MHz ram! Thats for serious overclockers you wont see any difference using 1333 ram.
 
If you are running Photoshop the Core i7 920 seem to not offer much of a performance improvement over the Core i5 750 unless you are overclocking:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2901/8

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...e-i5-750-core-i7-870-processor-review-14.html

This is due to the fact that the Core i5 750 has more aggressive TurboBoost than the Core i7 920.

This is what I would look at getting:

Core i5 750 ~ £170

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-299-IN

Asus P7P55D-E LX ~ £117

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-394-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1693

Has USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0

4GB low latency 1333MHZ DDR3 ~ £95

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-085-GL&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1516

Point Of View GeForce 9800 GT Green Edition 512MB GDDR3 ~ £77

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-025-PV&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=

Only get this if you need to use any of the CUDA accelerated features in Photoshop

Zalman Z7 Plus case~ £43

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-033-ZA

Corsair VX 450W ATX Power Supply ~ £58

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-006-CS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=

Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter ~ £16

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-038-OT&groupid=701&catid=10&subcat=

Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB SATA-II 64MB Cache ~ £81

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=1657&catid=1660&subid=1665&sortby=priceAsc

The total comes to around £657 excluding postage.
 
Take the memory out of the RAM and invest it in the CPU.

Jimmy, the CPU does the majority of the work in photoshop, it's not continuous rendering, it's making a change to a 2d or sometimes 3d image then leaving it as memory.
 
to be completely honest. your intel x-25m will be the most significant component as will your CPU. RAM will only come into effect if you are seriously doing multi-tasking. But as you have clearly stated that you will only use it for photography i doubt this will be an issue? correct me if i am wrong.

as the other folks said that the sound card is probably just a practical consideration. although i think if you are editing for long periods of time you will need something to lsiten to other than the fan(s) humming in the background.
 
nayenshah said:
to be completely honest. your intel x-25m will be the most significant component as will your CPU. RAM will only come into effect if you are seriously doing multi-tasking. But as you have clearly stated that you will only use it for photography i doubt this will be an issue? correct me if i am wrong.

as the other folks said that the sound card is probably just a practical consideration. although i think if you are editing for long periods of time you will need something to lsiten to other than the fan(s) humming in the background.
Click to expand...

I assume that you will be using a 64-bit OS? it would be completely insane to not use 64-bit especiially with your X-25. I changed from 32-bit to 64-bit recently and the change is absolutely phenomenal! and im still using HDDs
 
Ksanti said:
Take the memory out of the RAM and invest it in the CPU.

Jimmy, the CPU does the majority of the work in photoshop, it's not continuous rendering, it's making a change to a 2d or sometimes 3d image then leaving it as memory.
Click to expand...

Really? I've always found CS4 to be quite RAM hungry, the more you have the more it likes to use. Although I can see the benefit behind having a quick CPU as well, and indeed a reasnable gfx card for the 3d aspects that are creeping into PS.
 
Thanks for all the tips, taking this information into account, would this be better:
5688bab5cdb9.jpg
 
Without trying to be condescending I will conclude from the replies no-one here uses Photoshop beyond resizing some images for web :p

For Photoshop you need,

1) A quad core.
2) As much ram as you can realistically afford. Depending on the size of images you work with I would suggest at minimum 8GB to at least offer you some longevity.
3) A seperate scratchdisk, ideally a RAID0 volume consisting of a couple, or again as many as you can afford to shoe-horn into it.

It's a system balance. No point having the best CPU in the world with 2GB of ram. No point having 32GB of ram with an Atom N270. And no point running PS on a computer with sod all free disk space for temp files.

So, drop the soundcard for a start. Spend that on a hardrive for a scratchdisk. A 320GB F1 should add no more to your budget. Scratchdisks are always something people overlook with Photoshop, and they are far more important to stable performance than people realise.

Look into saving some on the GPU. If Adobes attitude with CS5 is anything to go by the features that actually need GPU acceleration (IE not smooth zoom, about all we have in CS4) they will be withholding for the top dog cards anyway. So a 9800GT, 8600GT, etc, neither will make a blind bit of difference.

Buy slower speed ram but lots of it. There's no point spending loads on overclocking ram because that's the only place you'll see any difference, overclocking. You will see no difference between 1033mhz or 1600mhz ram in PS.
 
Thanks for the input, in terms on hard drives ive got a 80gb SSD, 80GB normal sata drive and an external 1tb disk. So you would reccomend even more? How would this "scratchdisk" option be configured?

Also will there not be no sound at all without a soundcard or are there now built-in options on the mobo? I mean music sometimes does come in handy..

And also, what would you choose for a rough budget of 600, prefferably less. No need for os, mouse,keyboard,monitor
 
vasek said:
Thanks for the input, in terms on hard drives ive got a 80gb SSD, 80GB normal sata drive and an external 1tb disk. So you would reccomend even more? How would this "scratchdisk" option be configured?

Also will there not be no sound at all without a soundcard or are there now built-in options on the mobo? I mean music sometimes does come in handy..

And also, what would you choose for a rough budget of 600, prefferably less. No need for os, mouse,keyboard,monitor
Click to expand...

Ths scratchdisk is configured from within photoshop. To windows it just looks and acts like another internal hardrive (and can still be used as such, though I wouldn't recommend it). In Photoshops preferences under the Performance tab you can see the option to configure your scratchdisk. You can have as many as the computer holds (including external drives) but it's best to keep it to one single volume internally for speed.

The motherboard will have onboard sound too, so no need for a soundcard.

I'l have a browse on OCUK when I get home if I can spec up anything better. Though I would guess dropping the soundcard for a hardrive would be about the only thing to do within budget. I'l have a ganders :)
 
Adrianr said:
Without trying to be condescending I will conclude from the replies no-one here uses Photoshop beyond resizing some images for web :p

For Photoshop you need,

1) A quad core.
2) As much ram as you can realistically afford. Depending on the size of images you work with I would suggest at minimum 8GB to at least offer you some longevity.
3) A seperate scratchdisk, ideally a RAID0 volume consisting of a couple, or again as many as you can afford to shoe-horn into it.

It's a system balance. No point having the best CPU in the world with 2GB of ram. No point having 32GB of ram with an Atom N270. And no point running PS on a computer with sod all free disk space for temp files.

So, drop the soundcard for a start. Spend that on a hardrive for a scratchdisk. A 320GB F1 should add no more to your budget. Scratchdisks are always something people overlook with Photoshop, and they are far more important to stable performance than people realise.

Look into saving some on the GPU. If Adobes attitude with CS5 is anything to go by the features that actually need GPU acceleration (IE not smooth zoom, about all we have in CS4) they will be withholding for the top dog cards anyway. So a 9800GT, 8600GT, etc, neither will make a blind bit of difference.

Buy slower speed ram but lots of it. There's no point spending loads on overclocking ram because that's the only place you'll see any difference, overclocking. You will see no difference between 1033mhz or 1600mhz ram in PS.
Click to expand...

Agree with above saved me saying it. for scrtch discs i use 4 500gb f3 samsungs in 2 raid0
 
As someone who does what you want to do OP... you will need


  • A very good CPU as mentioned (I would say i7... it's what it is built for.)

  • Lots of RAM (I personally think 6GB is enough, depending on your system RAM usage)

  • SSDs... I think this is the only way to go. I've tried RAID 0 500GB blacks, and applications like lightroom still lag a bit when you have large libraries open (1000 photos). Save a mechanical HD for scratch disks.
If you invested in a nice setup now, it will last you a good few years if photo manipulation and processing is what you want to do. Eventually upgrading your scratch disks to the likes of SSDs would give you more performance in years to come as prices decrease.
 
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