Photo and Video build

[turnpike]

Hi,

I'm hoping for a bit of advice for my new Photo and Video editing desktop build. I'm a semi pro tog so image size in RAW is quite big and my present machine is showing its age. Also just getting into video editing. I'm not convinced I need a Quadro so will probably get a GTX 570 for graphics. I don't need the latest greatest, just a respectable system to make my image management/editing more fun to do!

How does this look?

Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail
Corsair Obsidian 550D Quiet Midi Tower Case - Black
Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC128D/EU)
TeamGroup Elite 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED316G1600HC11DC)
Gigabyte Z77-DS3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply

Are there cheaper cases out there which are screwless, minimal and fit SSD or should I stick with this Corsair I found in other recent threads here.

I assume I don't need a separate CPU cooler with no overclocking planned.

I've gone for the Gigabyte Z77 instead of the Z77X as I doubt I'll need SLI and to save a few pennies.

I have read one real advantage of the i7 CPU is for things like adobe premier, but provided it works reasonably fast I am not in a huge hurry. I just want a decent GUI editing experience.

I've already got 1TB SATA drives to add. I expect I'll add another SSD at some point. I reckon 8GB RAM would be enough but the price is decent on 16GB right now.

Cheers!
Carl.

 

[turnpike]

Thanks. Really helpful.

I'm not after a game machine.

I also want to do video editing and if I get into it more in the near future I could end up with Adobe Premier Pro. I hear that does use GPU? So a GTX 570 would then be useful for HD work. I could do without for now I guess.

 

[turnpike]

Great, thanks both.

I might even hang fire initially on any graphics card and stick my old radeon in, just to see how it does..

 

[turnpike]

Probably 6 (educational discount). My radeon is ancient though, so still wouldnt help. I think the CPU and SSD might give me enough improvement for now. Thanks for the link. Didn't realise they'd added opencl for AMD cards.

Going to sleep on this and maybe order something this weekend.

 

[turnpike]

Thanks again, I've ordered

Picked up 2x SSD so I can have OS on one and Lightroom staging on the other.

Haven't got GPU yet, going to see what my existing performs like and decide how much I end up using Premier over the next few months before getting something.

 

[turnpike]

I've had this build for half a year now and although it works well I've had no end of trouble with the SSD's failing. I seem to get corruptions now and then. Oddly the boot errors etc go away if I just open the box and fiddle with the ssd cabling a bit. Which makes me wonder if I need some more secure plugs maybe 90 degree ones.

Also I'm now thinking of upgrading from the onboard graphics card. I'd like to do the odd bit of gaming so going to look at the GTX 570 unless anyone can suggest a new budget good gpu. I guess things may have changed in 6 months!

Cheers and Happy New Year!

 

[turnpike]

As above in thread. The Samsung 830.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-146-SA

 

[turnpike]

AMD Radeon HD7950

Have found the Sapphire version (2GB) for under 150 quid so will add that to my list, cheers.

 

[turnpike]

I've ordered some sata cables with 90 degree connectors. Best to rule out the simple things first.

So now I'm just reaidng up on mid range graphics cards. I do like the look of that HD7950, ta.

 

[turnpike]

Well after reading around I did go for a 7850. Put it in today and get nothing but crashes in a game demo I tried (xcom).

I have a console for games, but even so I'd expect this to work. Tried *everything* you can imagine e.g. drivers, bios etc and was all ready to send it back when I just now decided to unplug 3 hard drives (I had 4 on the go).

It worked. It seems it needed more power to stop the crashing?? I thought a 600W PSU was ample.

A google search for "7850 crash" is scary. Lots of complaints. However, basic process of elimination really seems to point at a lack of power. I find that strange, unless my hard drives were taking a lot more than I thought they did.

 

[turnpike]

Coolermaster.

I've been testing it all evening. I might be wrong about power, it did seem strange. As you say it shouldn't need much more for a few hdd.

I've put all the HDD back in and no crash yet.

I missed one other significant difference to earlier tests. This time when I installed the AMD catalyst drivers, only the driver itself worked, all the other parts of catalyst e.g. control panel etc failed.

So it may (more likely) be something the full catalyst packages install does, e.g. default overclocking?

Now I've got all drives back in, but only the gpu driver installed, it seems to be working. Only found that due to some other bug where catalyst starts failing to install stuff..

 

[turnpike]

Hi,

It's the one above in the thread.

Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply [RS600-AMBAD3-UK]
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-166-CM

I installed the latest catalyst from the AMD site after autodetecting the card there. Will check what version at lunch time.

I also tried the version on the sapphire disc etc and did drive sweeps in safe mode inbetween.

Id just about given up when it started working i.e. not crashing every time I played the xcom game demo. I thought it was because I'd unplugged a few HDD as discussed but have since put them back in and it still isn't crashing. The only other change is the fact that the catalyst driver suddenly decided it couldn't install any of its parts except the driver.

I can't get catalyst to install properly and fully in order to test that is why its working.

Cheers.

 

[turnpike]

Well I don't know why but it's not crashing anymore. It's a little worrying how unstable the GPU seemed to be. All the forum complaints about black screens/crashing had me ready to send it back but maybe all modern GPU have software/driver issues. If you google it you'll find all the people who have been unlucky.

I noticed I had loads of C++ redistributables installed so got rid of them all and catalyst 12.10 installed fully. Still no crashes. I don't know what caused it and what fixed it but here's hoping that's the end of it!

 

[turnpike]

It's crashing again.

The only things installed today are
ms visual c++ 2010 x64 redistributable 10.0.30319
ms visual c++ 2008
ms visual c++ 2005
adobe flash player 11 activex

I reckon its related to one of them. For some reason flash had been taken off. My other half said she had to reinstall flash in her browser.

Certainly seems software related and not the hardware though.

 

[turnpike]

Yes although I'm not on a beta one. I need to go back to the last non beta release bios but same problems with all.

I find it unbelievable the problems vanished then returned today. Doesn't seem to be those installed programs I listed. Somethings changed and broken it today though. My partner installed flash again and I installed another game from steam. Something causes crashes.

I need to find an easier way to reproduce it instead of playing the same demo over and over again. Now I know why I bought a console.. PC's and driver issues are a nightmare.

Thanks.

 

[turnpike]

Weirdly it's not crashing now. There's only 3 possibilities I can think of.

1. Or it's to do with temps, clocking and bios freq settings etc which I haven't touched yet.
2. I unplugged a disk drive which is just used for backups. I don't know if it's possible a drive can cause crashes in games, even if its not got the game/os on it?
3. It's entirely random and is going to suddenly start crashing again..

Thankfully I'm now playing Dishonored which auto saves so I am no longer going mad playing the same xcom demo again and again It was also crashing in the same way as XCOM earlier.

 

[turnpike]

Thanks for your help. Taking hdd out seemed to work but just had another crash after about an hour. I'd rather not send it back but really flummoxed.

 

[turnpike]

I've given up on the 7850. Doing a return and picking up a GTX 660. Atleast if I get the same problems I'll know it isn't the GPU.