Spec for super Photoshop workstation.

Llew21

Llew21

Llew21

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Joined
26 Mar 2009
Posts
9
**I have already posted this in the mobo forum. I was advised to repost here*
I would welcome any advise or suggestions as to the ideal spec for a Photoshop work station. I may also use it for video editing on a small scale. The ideal would be for a very speedy PC that copes well with large files.

I have considered a dual CPU quad core Xeon aside from the expense I dont know if this would be any better than some of the 6core i7.
16Gb+ ram and Win 7 64bit although Im not sure if the home edition is sufficient.

2 Raid stripe discs for OS and a raid 5 for storage.

I have no ideas on mother board.

I hope I have come to the right forum for this if not please tell me which would be more suitable.

Thanks
 
You be wanting to state a budget?

Then exactly what parts do you need?

Base unit? operating system? monitor, keyboard+mouse etc?
 
Yes I will build it myself although I have though of buying a ready made.

Budget £1000-1400 although I would consider more if it bucked the diminishing returns law. I will need just the box and it's contents. Monitor keyboard are sorted for now.
 
And the OS?

Also, do you have any preferences on a case?

And how much storage do you need?
 
Last edited:
You don't need a dual CPU system for Photoshop, even for dealing with large format images. It's lots and lots of RAM you want.

You could run with a i7 2600K and a massive cooler to overclock to 4.8GHz and drop in 16GB RAM - that'll be enough grunt to deal with anything. Similarly, you don't need RAID for boot and apps as it won't take that long to fire up. Again, you won't need RAID 5 for storage if you have a good backup process to external hard media.

Video however is a different kettle of fish. I'd still go with the i7 and 16GB RAM, but you're then looking at a big RAID 0 for your footage. Depending on the software you use I'd see if you can grab a reasonable GeForce card for the CUDA acceleration - Adobe Premiere paired with a GTX 560 for CUDA-accelerate Mercury Playback seriously rocks (although I still do final renders CPU-only to keep the final quality - all the hardware-accelerated encoders seem to have a few niggles in output quality).
 
home edition of windows 7 can use up to 16GB RAM. this will include the RAM in your graphics card as well as on the motherboard. so, unless you want to spend a fortune on four 8GB sticks of RAM home premium will be sufficient in that respect. Win7pro and Win7ult can use up to 196GB RAM, so there will be no problem with them no matter what system you use.

here is a comparison of the other features of the different versions of Win7:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/compare

you'll have to make your own mind up on what you need, but 99% of the time home premium will be fine *edit* (no idea what the N versions are, but it looks like something to do with networking)

as for the components it will broadly depend on what you plan on using it for other than photoshop. if you will be doing some gaming you will need to get a graphics card, and if you will be doing a lot of video encoding i would get an Nvidia graphics card because its cuda cores speed up video encoding dramtically

you will not need to use RAID for the OS and main programs drive. use a large (~128GB) SSD for this and you will get FAR greater speed.

i'm not sure about RAID for the storage drives, i doubt you'll need it but i'll be the first to admit i'm not to hot on that topic
 
Last edited:
Buchanan0204 said:
No it's not. Oh dear!

It's got absolutely nothing to do with a network.
Click to expand...
i saw the word networks in the description of one of the windows 7 N's and just assumed it was something to do with networks. if you could tell me what its for that would be great


Buchanan0204 said:
You do not want to go Raid0 for storage. Unless of course you want to lose it all. Raid1 is what you want, if one drive fails, you fall back on the other. Not the case with raid0.
Click to expand...

i think the OP wanted raid 0 for the programs and OS, while using RAID 5 for the storage drives
 
Llew21 said:
**I have already posted this in the mobo forum. I was advised to repost here*
I would welcome any advise or suggestions as to the ideal spec for a Photoshop work station. I may also use it for video editing on a small scale. The ideal would be for a very speedy PC that copes well with large files.

I have considered a dual CPU quad core Xeon aside from the expense I dont know if this would be any better than some of the 6core i7.
16Gb+ ram and Win 7 64bit although Im not sure if the home edition is sufficient.

2 Raid stripe discs for OS and a raid 5 for storage.

I have no ideas on mother board.

I hope I have come to the right forum for this if not please tell me which would be more suitable.

Thanks
Click to expand...

What sort of photoshopping and video editing are you doing? Is this on a corporate level? Or is it just home photos and videos? Retouches etc?
 
Reaper 392 said:
i saw the word networks in the description of one of the windows 7 N's and just assumed it was something to do with networks. if you could tell me what its for that would be great




i think the OP wanted raid 0 for the programs and OS, while using RAID 5 for the storage drives
Click to expand...

Sorry. I came across a bit of a D**K there. It wasn't my intentions!

The "N" versions are the versions of Windows without Windows media player.

You are indeed correct. You wont want to go raid0 at all. An SSD is ideal for photoshop.

However the other user was recommending he go raid0. Which is of course not a great idea.
 
Other uses of PC? Well I dont do any gaming and aside form audio storage, office stuff and web browsing there isn't much else. Maybe a few virtual machines when I want to assess another OS.

I didn't mention I REALLY like a quiet PC so lots of high speed fans are out. Might consider one of the really neat water coolers though.

So is a 6core i7 the match of a workstation Mobocracy and 2 Xeon quad cores?

I like a PC with a snappy response to anything I throw at it. Current PC is a based on a Q6600 (I hope I've got that right) and 8 Gb ram with 2x500Gb stripe 0 storage all backed up to a windows home server. I am finding that the current set up is slower than I would like and it is a few years old and needs a reinstall.

I have read else where that SSD raid stripe makes the OS work very quickly and is separate from the data so reinstall is easier. I suggested Raid 5 because I believe it would be faster that a single drive but is a lot more fault tolerant.

Cases? I like Antec cases although if there was something of equal or better quality along with power supply I could be persuaded.

I read somewhere and I can't verify that Photoshop can use hardware acceleration from GPUs. Is this true? Type of work I am doing is general photo processing but I occasionally do stitch panoramas involving 20-30 images. The last one I did was a 6Gb psd file. Yes I know there are other ways of doing it to keep the sise down. I wanted to see if it could handle it.

So just to recap Dual Xeon or i7?
16gb
 
I'll be the 1st to spec.

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Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £239.99
(£199.99) £239.99
(£199.99)
Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £156.98
(£130.82) £156.98
(£130.82)
Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £146.99
(£122.49) £146.99
(£122.49)
Antec P183 V3 Super Midi Tower Case - Gun Metal Black Antec P183 V3 Super Midi Tower Case - Gun Metal Black £124.99
(£104.16) £124.99
(£104.16)
OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card OcUK GeForce GTX 460 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £109.99
(£91.66) £109.99
(£91.66)
Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit £68.40
(£57.00) £68.40
(£57.00)
Options applied to the above product:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
Antec TruePower New Modular 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply Antec TruePower New Modular 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £59.99
(£49.99) £59.99
(£49.99)
Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1333C9D3B1K2/8G) Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1333C9D3B1K2/8G) £47.99
(£39.99) £95.98
(£79.98)
Prolimatech Megahalems Rev B CPU Cooler (Socket 775/1155/1156/1366) Prolimatech Megahalems Rev B CPU Cooler (Socket 775/1155/1156/1366) £47.99
(£39.99) £47.99
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Pioneer 24x Internal S19LBK DVD Rewriter including Labelflash - Retail Pioneer 24x Internal S19LBK DVD Rewriter including Labelflash - Retail £19.99
(£16.66) £19.99
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Akasa AK-FN058 Apache Black Super Silent 120mm Fan - 4 Pin PWM Akasa AK-FN058 Apache Black Super Silent 120mm Fan - 4 Pin PWM £14.99
(£12.49) £29.98
(£24.98)
Sub Total : £952.71
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £14.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £193.49
Total : £1,160.95
Click to expand...

I went with the Antec case as the fractal case build quality & packaging are questionable.
 
Reaper 392 said:
i saw the word networks in the description of one of the windows 7 N's and just assumed it was something to do with networks. if you could tell me what its for that would be great




i think the OP wanted raid 0 for the programs and OS, while using RAID 5 for the storage drives
Click to expand...

The N versions have just got the media player striped out, Nothing a service pack wont sort out. It was some kind of ruling saying it was noncompetitive for them to ship it with it. But hardly any OEMs stock it as the demand is not great. If you can get it a little cheaper go for it. But its nothing to go out of your away and get.
 
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