upgrade for photography

philburt

philburt

philburt

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27 Oct 2011
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21
I want to upgrade my system - that was suggested by you guys about 5 years ago. I now have Intel core i5 -2500k 3.30GHz (sandybridge), 550w 80 plus power supply, MSI H61-E33 Intel 61 DDR3 motherboard, Crucial ballistix (2x4gb) and Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler. The graphic card is a Nvidia GeForces GTX 260. My individual photo files start at about 25mb and get bigger so need something that will handle that and also better download speeds from Compact flash cards. I have a couple of USB 3 ext drives that I use via an extra card I added on to the system but it ain't great!

Any ideas what I can do with not a lot of money about 250 quid?
Thanks
 
I've been using my 2500k for Lightroom and Photoshop with no major issues, though more cores/hyperthreading or overclocking will help of course.

My first suggestion would be getting an overclock on your chip if you haven't already. Most will/should hit 4.3ghz happily enough and will help you out.

More ram is always a help with lots of photography stuff too, you could get 16GB of 1600mhz for £50. If you're only running Win7 Home though you can only have 16GB, you need Win7Pro or Win 10 to run more.

A 500GB Samsung Evo 850 is £130.

As for your transfers from CF, you probably want a usb 3 card reader. Either one that plugs in the back or one that connects to a front USB3 header on a motherboard and sits in a 3.5" bay. Your board doesn't have a front USB3 header I don't think so an external one like this should help out.

So for £196.93 buying new you've doubled your RAM, got a nice fast SSD, overclocked your CPU and got a USB3 card reader that will fit your existing board because it just plugs in the back.

Obviously you could get some of this stuff cheaper used.

Hope that's some help!
 
CPU and RAM is fine, personally I'd just stick in an SSD and keep it until you can do a complete overhaul. I'd add more RAM if you were actually using over 8GB but I don't think I have even got close on a similar system using LR.
 
I don't think you can overclock on an H series motherboard. I'd be tempted to pick a second hand board up but it's a lot of hassle.
 
Thanks Mistadave for comments. One thing I'm not sure about with fitting a SSD, is What does it do/replace? IS it A) to replace my existing hard drive that has all my operating system and software or is it b) for storing the files on?

So if it's option a, then a complete reboot is necessary 9I presume)- would it then be worth thinking about upgrading to win 10 and there fore more being able to add more RAM (I have win 7home premium)if I need to, at a later date.


Another question - sorry! You mention a second hand board - would one with more USB3 ports also solve the downloading problem? I don't mind the work - the PC is due a clean out!

My camera is Canon 1DX and I use LR and Photoshop plus photomatrix a lot.
 
The SSD is an extremely fast version of your standard hard drive in simple terms. What you would do is install your operating system and programs on it and then use your hard drive as storage.

Upgrading to Win 10 is definitely an option and why not if you are doing all of this work.

If you got a new board then yes you can get one with more USB3 ports etc
 
You can copy the entire contents of your HDD onto an SSD (most come with the software to do this) and then remove the HDD or wipe it and use it for storage - you wouldn't have to reinstall anything.
 
Thanks Minstadave and Biz.Kid09 for your help and patience in sorting me out!
I'll change to SSD and look for a new board with USB3 ports, upgrade to Win 10 and maybe up the RAM.

Thanks again guys!
 
If you do upgrade the board definitely come back and ask about overclocking. You should get 4.5ghz out of your CPU with a half decent cooler.
 
been thinking...dangerous I know! What motherboard would you guys recommend to be able to overclock and USB3 ports, I notice they vary in price a lot so about 100 quid new or secondhand.

thanks again
 
I'd definitely go second hand, not worth spending £100 on an old board. Anything from the p67/z68/z77 range will allow for an overclock and have USB 3 ports - see what you can find and post back.
 
Your current system doesn't look too bad, apart from the lack of USB3 for fast card transfers.

The most significant upgrade you can make that will breathe new life (and speed) into your system is a SSD. Everything will feel a lot faster with Windows and Photoshop etc installed on the SSD and your data on a HDD. Get a minimum of 250GB (500GB is ideal).

As for the USB3 problem, maybe worth looking out for a second hard board with USB3 support but then you have to deal with the system rebuild, plus you'll likely have Windows chipset driver issues to fix etc.

There's also PCIe USB3 headers, but I'm not sure how well these work (perhaps someone can comment).

What you spend your money on depends how important the fast transfers from CF card are to you. Personally I'd spend the money on a decent 500GB SSD as this will transform your current system, then re-evaluate once you've done that.
 
As the others have said, an SSD for OS/programs and scratch space for editing would be nice. Getting into a routine of downloading them onto the SSD and later archiving them to your external drives might work well.

Before hunting for a new motherboard investigate an expansion card as Cern says. If you have a free PCIe slot this is surely the answer, one can be had for about £15.
 
i have some experience with usb3 cards, some dont fit well mechanically, but maybe ive been unlucky, but you should get around 200meg a sec transfer speed or so from them (limited by pci-e 1x slot) or maybe 400ish with gen 2 pci-e 1x slot and card and everything working well. (a more modern system with proper native usb3 support can do more?, but i cant remmber if z77 has native usb3, possibly some non native but bundled in motherboard usb3's might reach higher also depends on the card speed etc etc

any usb3 is going to blow usb2 away though, so deffo worth 10-20quid on a usb3 card :)

looks like lexars fastest cf card does 160mb read and so your unlikely to bottleneck much on any component anyways.

other things are to check if your raw processor supports graphics card accelloration, on capture one theres a big jump in performance with that and a r9 390, but a 380 gets you most of that gain :)

and photo mechanic is great for sorting pics, its what pro's use for sporting stuff, sso that might speed things up too
 
It's unlikely to get 200-400MB/s from any CF card over USB3.0 though.

I have a good, fast CF card reader and Sandisk Extreme CF cards... along with Sandisk Extreme SD cards... the most I ever see is 120-140MB/s read speed and that's straight to a raid-0 NVMe array capable of writing sequentially at 2500MB/s

Still better than the 30-40MB/s you get from USB2.0 though.



For the OP... Like others have suggested, a replacement second hand motherboard so that you can overclock your CPU (your Gelid CPU cooler is good enough for a good overclock, you don't need to replace that - just make sure you have some new thermal paste when you swap).

SSD will be a massive upgrade... it ideally replaces your main hard drive and it is possible / easy to clone the drives so that you don't have to install everything from scratch.

With replacing the motherboard though, you will have to get a new version of Windows (unless you have a full retail version of Windows 7 Home already) as the OEM version is licensed to the motherboard. If you have the retail boxed version of Win 7 Home, you can move that to a new computer.

With only 8GB ram, you will see an improvement upgrading to 16GB... but beyond 16GB you won't see much benefit in lightroom - so don't upgrade your operating system for that alone.

For £250, I would get:

£50-100 - New/second hand motherboard to overclock your CPU
£50 - 16GB RAM
£125-130 500GB SSD (Intel, Samsung or Crucial)

Giving you a total expense of £225 to £280.

Although it is possible, as mentioned above, that you may also be forced to purchase a new version of windows with the motherboard upgrade - which might add to the cost. However, the person selling the motherboard might have a copy of Windows that is linked to that motherboard and they might be willing to share.
 
Thanks for the roundup Crinkleshoes! I think I now know what to do apart from the last part

So, If I
get a Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD, - 120 quid
clone my current OS which is Win 7 Home Premium ( I have the original disc and box)
upgrade my RAM with to Team group Elite Black 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3. - 50 quid...that bit is fairly clear to me now!

Motherboard - my exisiting CPU is described as a socket LGA 1155, do I have to replace it with the same - secondhand it appears as I can't find any new ones- or can I use, say a ASUS Z97 LGA 1150 which will have USB 3? If the secondhand route is the only way then I would have to add a USB 3 card - am I correct?
 
You're correct that your CPU uses socket LGA1155

But no, you can't put an LGA1155 CPU in a socket 1150 motherboard or vice versa.

I see what you mean re: stock... I can't find any new 1155 motherboards for you either.

There are a number of them for sale in the members market here, but you don't have enough posts on the forum to access it.

Best places to look would be AVForums and eBay.

I just had a quick look on eBay and there are quite a few new and second hand motherboards on there that would be suitable for you.

Search for a "Z77" motherboard... that will give you overclocking options and most (if not all) come with a couple of USB3.0 ports onboard.

For a Z67 motherboard, yes - you would need a USB3.0 PCI card.
 
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