Let's Build Me a Computer

[iflynething]

Well at least get the components. I started a thread a while back but couldn't find the information, it's been a while. I'm looking at $700-900 for case and all the guts. I'll worry about a monitor later

I'd love to go the i7 route and have everything else fit that high standard......let's go the i5 route. Probably going to go NewEgg. I have a shopping cart with a case, memory, motherboard, etc. I'm up to $1,000. Reasonable What do you have in store. I'll be doing obviously photography.....that's the biggest thing. I'm running 2GB on a AMD Quad core laptop(Inspiron 1521) and it's just not cutting it. I want a desktop (nothing right now, at all) and have plenty of space, plenty of space (thinking 1TB for internal and partition it or have a 500 for OS and other and and 2 500GB for photography ONLY or 1 1TB for photography only. Not sure I guess I"ll need a case to fit that amount of drives also. Either way, I'll definitly be partitioning. Let's see what you have. Oh.....I think 6GB RAM would be enough?

Thank you for your help

~Michael~

 

[Mtalicarox]

i have 16 gigs ram, 4.5 TB (1 tb internal which is broken up into 2 500 hdd raid 0 setup) 3.5 external... 2 1 gb vid cards, liquid cooling. built myself. windows vista 64 bit.

used for gaming.. / photoshop cs 3. 24 inch 780 P monitor.

 

[Mtalicarox]

oh, and an i7 processor

 

[Jay30]

If you buy online, take a look at Bing. You can save some coin.

 

[Garbz]

Not any more it can't. Bing scrapped its cashback program.


What will you be using this computer for primarily? Is it photography? Is it going to be a multi tasking beast or will it be for photography.

I would happily take last year's Core2duos with 4GB of ram and a single 1TB hard disk coupled with an awesome monitor like the NEC Spectraview 2690WUXi over any over built Core i7 with 6GB which will sit around most of the time at 0% cpu utilisation.


Here's a bit of food for thought:
- All your harddisks aren't worth a damn without offsite backups. I suggest 2 HDDs. One internal with a 100-200GB OS partition, and the rest of the TB for other. (reparitioning is hard, and there's no need to dedicate an entire partition to just photos. Folders were introduced as a way of sorting files for a reason). And put the other harddisk into a USB caddy make your backup and take the damn thing with you to work incase your house burns down.
- A Core i7 is nice but total overkill for photography. May be good for future planning.
- A Core i7 is nice, but AMD chips have a far more attractive pricing scheme at the moment. I am an intel fan but the computer I purchased 2 months ago went AMD for this very reason.
- Your RAM usage will depend on the work you do with images. Will you work on images in Lightroom, or in Photoshop with 16bit and a few layers? Will you work on multiple images, or panoramas? To put it in perspective I have a 170mpx 16bit image with 3 layers. When it's open photoshop uses around 3GB of RAM. Again future proofing there's no reason not to get 6GB with the price being so cheap, but you have to really wonder if there's a point in getting more than that.
- Don't skimp on the video card. More and more 2D applications are 3D accelerated these days, photoshop included.

- I already mentioned a monitor above, but let me mention it again. Get a decent screen. IPS panel if you're serious about photography. Budget $90 for a calibration unit too.

 

[Johnboy2978]

Garbz, I too keep my OS on a separate partition, but 100-200 Gigs just for the OS? That seems like a big waste of space to me. What do you know that I don't? Hell, I don't even have a 200 gb drive in my current pc.

 

[Flash Harry]

40 GIG HDD for the os, stuck with xp as didn't like the new versions, 200gig internal, partitioned to 150 for pics the 47 or so divided for files and secret stuff, 2 gig ram to run cs1 as its all I need to make money and a new dell monitor, new laptop for backup, music and showing punters.

Keep out all the spyware and other nasties, useless programs and turn off all the phone home stuff in services and thats all you need. I think there's more money than sense floating around this forum, anyone sold a print here yet. H

 

[ecr111]

I rebuilt my AMD machine recently with a Core i5-750, a Gigabyte UD4P P55 MB, 4G of DDR3 1600, a 1TB WD Black HD and a Sapphire Radeon 5850 for about $800.

This has been plenty fast for PP (seems like no wait for render of PS .psd) and will also play hi-end games like Crysis on Win7.

 

[er111a]

I rebuilt my AMD machine recently with a Core i5-750, a Gigabyte UD4P P55 MB, 4G of DDR3 1600, a 1TB WD Black HD and a Sapphire Radeon 5850 for about $800.

This has been plenty fast for PP (seems like no wait for render of PS .psd) and will also play hi-end games like Crysis on Win7.

haha you name is way to similar to mine

 

[ecr111]

.

haha you name is way to similar to mine

Yes.
That's my initials.
I have had them for a long time.

Regards

 

[JClishe]

Bing Cashback ends on July 30th, so if you're buying / building soon you can still take advantage of it.

You didn't mention an operating system. What OS do you plan to use, and do you already own it? If you're going to be running Windows 7 and you still need to purchase it, that's $200 that you need to factor into your budget.

I'm personally not a fan of partitioning my disks into multiple logical disks but this largely boils down to personal preference.

Jason

 

[Garbz]

Garbz, I too keep my OS on a separate partition, but 100-200 Gigs just for the OS? That seems like a big waste of space to me. What do you know that I don't? Hell, I don't even have a 200 gb drive in my current pc.

You're right. I answered from the hip in my experience. I have some software here like PCB design tools that take up 20GB just for the one software package. Really 50GB for the OS should be plenty.

But also remember by default the user libraries are placed under C:\Users. If you don't move them elsewhere the My Pictures folder could fill up very damn quickly. I also keep my Lightroom imports in My Pictures so that's just over 100GB, but I have moved the entire user profile to another drive

I'm personally not a fan of partitioning my disks into multiple logical disks but this largely boils down to personal preference.

It's a flexibility some people like and others don't. From a sorting point of view it makes next to no sense, we have folders for that. However the reason I partition is also the reason I don't run any virus scanning software. My OS is on it's own partition, no user files are kept on it, and there is a ghost image of it compressed on another computer. When my OS craps itself for whatever reason re-installing everything takes minutes and not days.

Really unless you have a desire for that flexibility there's no reason not to keep data on your OS drive unless you run the risk of filling up that drive. Haven't done it on Windows 7 yet but I know Windows XP slows to a snail pace when the OS drive is full.

 

[skieur]

I recently picked up a 3.2 ghz quad with 8 gig ram, 1 terrabyte SATA drive and Windows 7. I am also still using a 3.2 ghz dual core with a tuner and multiple DVD drives with Media XP. I am considering a Notebook for on-the-run type work.

The hotspots for wireless Internet are getting much larger. One RV resort even has aerials to boost wireless throughout their whole rather large property area.

skieur

 

[bp78]

Nobody is suggesting a Solid-State-Disk for the OS? SSD prices are plummeting and although price per gb is still very high. The performance gains of keeping your OS on an SSD drive and perhaps some of your most-used apps is stellar.

I'm surprised no pro's have suggested an SSD. Wouldn't Lightroom/photoshop/nx2 or other software really benefit from having been installed, or a least using swap files on an SSD?

The Intel x25m 80G SSD standard drive is now <$200. Others are dropping quickly too. 80 to 100Gb should be plenty of space for Win 7 plus several of your favorite apps.

 

[dhilberg]

Nobody is suggesting a Solid-State-Disk for the OS? SSD prices are plummeting and although price per gb is still very high. The performance gains of keeping your OS on an SSD drive and perhaps some of your most-used apps is stellar.

I'm surprised no pro's have suggested an SSD. Wouldn't Lightroom/photoshop/nx2 or other software really benefit from having been installed, or a least using swap files on an SSD?

The Intel x25m 80G SSD standard drive is now <$200. Others are dropping quickly too. 80 to 100Gb should be plenty of space for Win 7 plus several of your favorite apps.

+1

When I build my next computer, the OS and installed programs will be on an Intel x25m, either the 80GB or 160GB version, unless something better comes out before then. The 160GB version is a little spendy, so probably the 80GB version. I'm planning to upgrade to Windows 7 when I build the new comp, but don't know how much space the install takes up.