Building an editing computer

[uplander]

Without going overboard. I want to build a computer with photo editing, web building, some video editing and storage in mind. What processor would you go with?

i7, i5 or other and which version and why?
is 8 GB DDR3 enough or should I load 16 GB or even more?
What video card?
Internal hard drive.
2TB RAID 0 striping
1TB RAID 1 mirror (2 x 1TB )

Ext storage
Seperate stand alone large 1TB or bigger HD's
or go the toaster route with with smaller hot swappable internal HD's

Another thought is going with a a single 1 or 1.5 TB internal HD in the computer and a toaster/ HD duplicator and make a complete mirrored internal HD with OS in case of HD failure.

Another question to throw out there is. If you have a RAID 0 (2x 1TB) internal setup which has your OS on it. Can you mirror each of the HD's on a duplicator and and swap both out if you have a HD failure and get a successful restart of the computer and software? I would have all the other files backed up elsewhere to easily reload. I just would like to have a quick and easy way of getting back up and running in case of a failure without all the OS and program reloading.

I know I'm throwing a lot of ideas out there, but I'm just trying to think all my options through and getting input to what I might be missing. I'm hoping that picking the collective Photo Forum brain can save me time and money and maybe enlighten others here too.

Discuss!

 

[ghache]

what you should consider for an editing pc is, a decently fast cpu, alot of ram (8 gig is enough) and a lot of storage space.
raid is a good idea.

 

[inTempus]

I would go with either an i5 or i7, not a major issue... cost is more of a concern there.

Get 8GB or 16GB of RAM... whatever you can afford.

For storage, get a NAS if you're serious. Here's a good one: ReadyNAS NV+ - NETGEAR.com

For video, if all you're doing is image editing and not gaming or video editing, get just about anything mid-tier from ATI or Nvidia.

 

[Garbz]

i7, i5 or other and which version and why?

Irrelevant. For the most part this will only play a role on filters being applied to large images or heavy work such as batch image processing. In this department my Core2Quad is sufficient, as was the Core2Duo preceding it. Though that started showing signs of age when applying unsharp mask to a 60mpx image.

is 8 GB DDR3 enough or should I load 16 GB or even more?

Working on 20mpx images with multiple layers in 16bit in Photoshop while having Lightroom open I am peaking at around 4GB. 8GB will be fine. When rendering large panoramas (100+mpx) The more ram you have the more points you can extract from your images. Generating 15points per image on 15 images chews about 3GB. Generating 50 ground my computer to a halt when the 4GB of ram ran out. I don't see why you would need that many but this is definitely an area where more ram = better. If you work with large pictures then go 16gb, it's not like the stuff is expensive.

What video card?

Don't skimp. More and more programs come out now with GPU acceleration in both the UI and the calculations. Photoshop's zooming functions are now GPU accelerated, as is AutoPanoPro 2.0's panorama rendering and the GPU is much faster at these tasks than the CPU. I suggest an Nvidia 285 series, or ATI 4870 series at a minimum. Will make for a decent gaming system too.

Internal hard drive.
2TB RAID 0 striping
1TB RAID 1 mirror (2 x 1TB )

What's important, uptime or speed? Don't think RAID1 is a backup solution it is NOT. I go for speed and would say get a 2TB Raid0 array. (what I currently use so I may be biased )

Ext storage
Seperate stand alone large 1TB or bigger HD's
or go the toaster route with with smaller hot swappable internal HD's

Is this backup? Then don't go hotswappable or some other fancy thing that stay permanently plugged into your computer. Plug it in once, do a backup, take backup to work (don't leave it in your house). A backup should not perish if your house gets robbed, burnt, or taken out by lightning. Bring it home once a month or once every 2 months and do a backup again and then back to work it goes. If you cry about a disaster taking out your data then you're doing it wrong, also if you cry about your backup failing your also doing it wrong. If both backup and computer fail at once you're one unlucky man!

Another thought is going with a a single 1 or 1.5 TB internal HD in the computer and a toaster/ HD duplicator and make a complete mirrored internal HD with OS in case of HD failure.

Backups take time, and the longer a backup the more chance of screwing it. I don't recommend mirroring your entire HDD as a backup option. Just the critical files. I would advocate though making a single backup image of your windows partition straight after you installed all your programs. This kind of a zero day image combined with a backup is why I look forward to harddisk failures since they give me an excuse to start with a fresh windows install but at the same time it only takes me about an hour to do it with all settings intact. It's a good thing to consider from the get go.

Another question to throw out there is. If you have a RAID 0 (2x 1TB) internal setup which has your OS on it. Can you mirror each of the HD's on a duplicator and and swap both out if you have a HD failure and get a successful restart of the computer and software? I would have all the other files backed up elsewhere to easily reload. I just would like to have a quick and easy way of getting back up and running in case of a failure without all the OS and program reloading.

This is called RAID0+1, RAID1+0 or sometimes RAID10 and seems to be somewhat standard on raid controllers these days. Needs 4 HDDs though.
I separate my highspeed and high availability duties. I have a separate computer (but a fancy NAS box will do) that acts as a file server and runs RAID1. My main machine runs RAID0. My photos are on the file server, as are anything else that's important, that takes care of availability. Once every 2 months I backup the RAID1 array to an external HDD and take it to work that covers me from all angles.

1. Simple hardware failure is taken into account by the RAID1 array.
2. Catastrophic multiple hardware failures are taken care of by the backup.
3. Catastrophic destruction of the house is taken care of by the backup being off site at my work.
4. Catastrophic destruction of this city is taken care of by the backup being in my desk at work which is in an explosion proof building, although I admit that may be overkill

 

[uplander]

i7, i5 or other and which version and why?

Irrelevant. For the most part this will only play a role on filters being applied to large images or heavy work such as batch image processing. In this department my Core2Quad is sufficient, as was the Core2Duo preceding it. Though that started showing signs of age when applying unsharp mask to a 60mpx image.

is 8 GB DDR3 enough or should I load 16 GB or even more?

Working on 20mpx images with multiple layers in 16bit in Photoshop while having Lightroom open I am peaking at around 4GB. 8GB will be fine. When rendering large panoramas (100+mpx) The more ram you have the more points you can extract from your images. Generating 15points per image on 15 images chews about 3GB. Generating 50 ground my computer to a halt when the 4GB of ram ran out. I don't see why you would need that many but this is definitely an area where more ram = better. If you work with large pictures then go 16gb, it's not like the stuff is expensive.

Don't skimp. More and more programs come out now with GPU acceleration in both the UI and the calculations. Photoshop's zooming functions are now GPU accelerated, as is AutoPanoPro 2.0's panorama rendering and the GPU is much faster at these tasks than the CPU. I suggest an Nvidia 285 series, or ATI 4870 series at a minimum. Will make for a decent gaming system too.

it goes. If you cry about a disaster taking out your data then you're doing it wrong, also if you cry about your backup failing your also doing it wrong. If both backup and computer fail at once you're one unlucky man!
What's important, uptime or speed? Don't think RAID1 is a backup solution it is NOT. I go for speed and would say get a 2TB Raid0 array. (what I currently use so I may be biased )

Is this backup? Then don't go hotswappable or some other fancy thing that stay permanently plugged into your computer. Plug it in once, do a backup, take backup to work (don't leave it in your house). A backup should not perish if your house gets robbed, burnt, or taken out by lightning. Bring it home once a month or once every 2 months and do a backup again and then back to work

Another thought is going with a a single 1 or 1.5 TB internal HD in the computer and a toaster/ HD duplicator and make a complete mirrored internal HD with OS in case of HD failure.

Backups take time, and the longer a backup the more chance of screwing it. I don't recommend mirroring your entire HDD as a backup option. Just the critical files. I would advocate though making a single backup image of your windows partition straight after you installed all your programs. This kind of a zero day image combined with a backup is why I look forward to harddisk failures since they give me an excuse to start with a fresh windows install but at the same time it only takes me about an hour to do it with all settings intact. It's a good thing to consider from the get go.

Another question to throw out there is. If you have a RAID 0 (2x 1TB) internal setup which has your OS on it. Can you mirror each of the HD's on a duplicator and and swap both out if you have a HD failure and get a successful restart of the computer and software? I would have all the other files backed up elsewhere to easily reload. I just would like to have a quick and easy way of getting back up and running in case of a failure without all the OS and program reloading.

This is called RAID0+1, RAID1+0 or sometimes RAID10 and seems to be somewhat standard on raid controllers these days. Needs 4 HDDs though.
I separate my highspeed and high availability duties. I have a separate computer (but a fancy NAS box will do) that acts as a file server and runs RAID1. My main machine runs RAID0. My photos are on the file server, as are anything else that's important, that takes care of availability. Once every 2 months I backup the RAID1 array to an external HDD and take it to work that covers me from all angles.

1. Simple hardware failure is taken into account by the RAID1 array.
2. Catastrophic multiple hardware failures are taken care of by the backup.
3. Catastrophic destruction of the house is taken care of by the backup being off site at my work.
4. Catastrophic destruction of this city is taken care of by the backup being in my desk at work which is in an explosion proof building, although I admit that may be overkill

Thanks for the time to reply Garbz.

On the idea of a hotswappable HDD dock instead of stand alone ext HDDs .With the hotswapable dock, instead of the cost and cumbersomeness of ext HDDs, the docks use regular interal HDDs ( cheaper) you make two copy's and keep one at home and one in another location. The dock stays connected to the computer but the HDDs just pop in and out like bread slices in a toaster ( hence the nickname). You put the HDD back in its box it came and label it, no cables to fuss with ,smaller in size they store on a shelf or where ever easier. In effect it's the same thing you are doing with ext HDDs but cheaper and easier. Another plus is getting a dock that uses eSATA ports instead of USB 2

here's one
StarTech SATADOCK22UE Hard Drive Dock - 2-Bay 2.5"/3.5" SATA to USB 2.0, eSATA at TigerDirect.com

 

[usayit]

In regards to HDD docks...

Two more advantages:
* your are not constantly plugging/unplugging the data connection.
* your not adding to the mess of unlike power supply/adapters for each brand. No mess.

Buy a few disks and archive to them as a rotation.. that way you have some sort of incremental type of storage. Store at least one of those disks off site... Mine is at work.

Two brands that I've had good results:

Thermaltakeusa Â» Storage Â» Docking Station
Voyager by NewerTech- Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility

I see the thermaltake branded ones at Best Buy occasionally.

 

[Joves]

Myself I like to build a top of the line gaming machine, which as a side benefit will process equally well. I plan on doing this later on this year so, Im going to be reading alot on what is now available. The box I have now is starting to show its age.

 

[uplander]

I'm not a gamer and will prolly never use the machine for games but down the road a bit Iknow I will need to edit edit video. I want to get it right now and not have to go "I should have done this" down the road

 

[Joves]

I'm not a gamer and will prolly never use the machine for games but down the road a bit Iknow I will need to edit edit video. I want to get it right now and not have to go "I should have done this" down the road

Well I dont game much anymore but, they are built for speed so, they work out as good editing machines as a side benefit. This one i built is just now showing its age a five years old so, I see it as best bang for the buck.

 

[Garbz]

I have one problem with HDD docks (and I will say right now I haven't used them and haven't come across the problem myself).

These docks are brought from a "design restrictions be damned" mentality. They provide functionality that SATA was never designed for and eSATA was designed to address. Namely the insertion rating of the SATA connector. The connectors on motherboards, and harddisks were only ever rated to 50 insertions after which there is no guarantee that the incredibly thin connections haven't worn away from the connector surface. This kind of damage is one of the things the far more rugged eSATA connector addresses (5000+ insertions).

You may notice a lot of dedicated solutions to this problem which specifically state the insertion rating of the device. I highly recommend you look into a proper external harddisk case with hotswap caddies. The hdd is inserted once into the caddy, and the caddy has connectors with very different ratings on back designed for constant removal and re-connection.

It's not an isolated problem and I saw a while ago a thread on WD's community forums about a rejected warranty claim with a link pointing to the WD website explaining that a sata connector is only designed for single connection applications.

This is your data, so do yourself the favour of spending the few dollars extra.

 

[wheresnifty]

you may think about getting a high end workstation video card... or 2 of them and set them up in SLI if they are nvidia card.

Also, is raid 5 still in? THats mirrored with striping as long as you have 3 identical hard drives... its kind of the same thing as raid 1+0 which uses 4 hard drives.

maybe invest in large SSD cards in striping for super speed then 3 i terabyte drives in raid 5 so you have the speed + backup...

lol.. its just a thought, i have never worked with raids.

 

[RyanLilly]

Don't forget a a good or at least decent IPS display;There no sense in spending all that money on a computer if you cant see the results accurately. I would go for multiple displays myself. I seem to be much more productive viewing different info on each screen.

As a side note:
Does anyone know If light room will work with more than 2 monitors. I would love to have one screen for the main view, one Loupe screen for landscape oriented photos, and one screen in portrait orientation. Can you view two Loupe windows at once? can it be configured To display images on correctly oriented screens automatically?
Anyway I guess I could email Adobe.

 

[beckm]

You could just go buy a HP or Dell workstation class system and get a second monitor and you will probably be happy with that. The information below would be for a very large and expensive dedicated system that can do photo and video post processing when time is more important than money.


CPU: Go for the i7 975 if you can afford it. Two words Hyper Threading. Photoshop benefits from Hyper Threading in the i7 processor combine that with the higher speed of the 975 and you have a nice mix. The i5 does not have Hyper threading.

RAM: Get as much RAM as you can afford 8 GB is enough but if your motherboard supports get 16 or 32. Photoshop CS4 64 bit can use an unlimited amount of RAM. This means less drive caching and translates to faster performance. How big are your files? Are you going to run Lightroom, Bridge, and Photoshop at the same time? Never skimp on RAM and remember you must run a 64 bit operating system to address more than 3.5 GB of RAM.

VIDEO: Get any card that supports Shader Level 3.0/OpenGL 2.0/DX10 with at least 256MB of VRAM. I would recommend 512MB of VRAM. Also make sure the card support PCI-E x16 buss speeds. This is a motherboard consideration as well.

DRIVES AND STORAGE: In this case we want speed for the OS and Scratch disks. This dictates using RAID 0. With Raid 0 you get no redundancy and are sometimes called strip sets. A single disk failure destroys the entire array because when data is written to RAID 0 drives, the data is broken into fragments. The number of fragments is dictated by the number of disks in the array. The fragments are written to their respective disks simultaneously on the same sector. This allows smaller sections of the entire chunk of data to be read off the drive in parallel, increasing bandwidth.

That being said for the OS or “C” drive 2 or more drives 10,000K, 15,000K SAS, or Solid State SATA in a RAID 0. Photoshop needs a scratch disk to store working files. This should not be on the OS drive or on the drive you are storing the system swap file.
For each scratch disk you want a minimum of 1 better with 2 repeat the configuration for your OS Drive. Now for your storage drive you need to use RAID 6. With Raid 6 you can lose 2 drives without losing any data. This is an improvement over the traditional RAID 5 because RAID 6 uses a second parity bit. As far as your backup goes If you are a home user buy an external Drive USB or ESATA and connect up to backup your Pictures and database files. You may also want to think about an online backup solution or even using Windows home server to automatically backup your system on a daily basis.

 

[eric-holmes]

While the subject is being discussed, no to hijack a thread, but what brand would you guys recommend? I currently own a gateway and I have never had any problems with it. But I am looking to upgrade.

This? Gateway - Desktop with Intel® Core™ i3 Processor - DX4831-01e

 

[beckm]

That depends on use. If this is for a business I would recommend a Dell or HP workstation. Mostly for you ability to get 4 hours on site service stipulated in the warranty. If it is for home use you can go more budget minded E-Machine or Gateway. Also consider a refurbished machine; if you buy from the manufacturer you can still get a warranty.

I hope this helps.