PC for Niche Interest - Gigapixel Image Processing

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My thing is creating gigapixel images using a program called Autopano Giga (or APG). I use Photoshop to edit the images produced. N.B the image files can be over 100GB and I do mean giga.

Kolor - who make APG - are strangely reluctant to give any advice on what sort of architecture is best for running their program. All they will say is "it uses a lot of multithreading" and I happen to know that in one phase of the process APG uses GPUs where available. So the more cores the better and a higher-end graphics card seems in order. With regard to memory, even if I could afford 256GB it isn't clear that would be enough so M.2 strikes me as a possible alternative. (APG is like PS in that you can configure scratch disks.) My budget is max £2500 for CPU, mobo, RAM, M.2 (if used) and graphics card. £1500 would be a lot better though.

I am tying myself in knots thinking about the choices. What I would like is a small set of specs with difference in price and performance clearly set out. That may be too much to ask for but maybe someone will be kind enough to point out any inconsistencies in what I think I know - maybe that will make the choices clearer.

  1. The Ryzen has 8 cores - excellent. I would have to get an 1800 if I want more than 32GB RAM, but even then it seems that it is not straightforward to configure a system with more than 32GB. (Neither ***Removed Competitor*** nor OcUK offer this as a standard option.)
  2. An i7 6800 has only six cores and is ?£400 more expensive. It is however a known quantity which means there are no problems with (a) stuffing RAM into it and (b) overclocking - should I wish to go that way.
  3. I'm keen to buy soon so a Ryzen 1800 with 64GB RAM doesn't seem like an option. That would mean getting a 6800 or I could stick with 32GB and add an M.2 card. That way I wouldn't even need a Ryzen 1800 because the 1700 supports 32GB.
  4. With respect to overclocking, the Ryzen is designed with overclocking in mind but my feeling is that it is too new for people to have much experience with that (perhaps I am wrong though) and that makes me think 6800 is the way to go.

So: a 6800 with 32GB (64 if I can afford it) and the biggest M.2 I can afford, overclocked if I can afford that and it is a sensible thing to do?

Any thoughts very gratefully appreciated,
 
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Thanks for drawing my attention to the 32GB "limit" which seems not to be a limit at all. That's exactly the kind of help I was looking for :-)
 
I have it on what I consider to be good authority that the Ryzen is to be avoided for now because it could be considered "unstable". Of course there will be people who have successfully built Ryzen systems that push the envelope to the max but given my circumstances/needs I will be sticking with Intel for now. One factor that may not be an issue for other people is that I am not prepared to wait. What really put me off AMD was that one of the people I spoke to regularly builds PC and tests them for a US computer magazine. He says that they go through AMD boards really quickly even when they are kits supplied by AMD. His view: 64GB and over-clocked? Forget it.

FWIW I've decided I want a machine with 8 Intel cores, 128GB, dual M.2 and an 8GB graphics card. Everything else is negotiable and have come up with this draft spec:

Competitor links.

which comes in at around £3500. Any comments gratefully appreciated.
 
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I don't completely understand the problem. I am surprised that partpicker is considered a competitor because I want someone to build my machine for me and partspicker doesn't do that. Would it be acceptable for me to type in the list of parts I chose a partspicker i.e. the same info without a link?
That leaves no contains competition names+prices which is against forum rules.
It is difficult to understand what you are trying to say with "that leaves no contains" do you mean "That link contains"?

However, thanks for your input, I will look at it more closely later.
 
I'm now a lot closer to taking the plunge and the spec you provided above is almost enough for me to go for it.

Three questions:

M.2 slots. I want to be able to add a second M.2 drive without taking a performance hit because the m/b I chose happens to be such that the second slot's lanes have to be shared with another device. A m/b where this not the case is a requirement now. Can you change the m/b for one that meets this requirement if the board you chose previously doesn't? (I'm not sure I can tell.)

Is there any advantage to getting a 5960X rather than a 6900K? I am not particularly interested in overclocking because the machine is for running multithreaded apps not gaming. I also feel that if I am spending £1k on a CPU then there should be a definite reason for choosing the one I get :)

Finally, despite what I said above, if the machine can be over-clocked without too much of a hit on price (I'm thinking of the RAM needed for o/c) and noise, then I am interested in what you might be able to deliver.

Thanks,

H
 
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