Rambling questions around a computer for a photography hobbyist

McGrauniad

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Me again, last time I asked some questions here I got some very useful responses, so I'm hoping for more?

I am building a PC for my sister that is a keen amateur photographer. Currently she process her photos on an old laptop I bought her some 7 or more years ago. I was lucky with the laptop, it had a very good screen for the time with nice resolution of 1280x800. She is still running her old Adobe CS2 that I bought and installed as well, so I felt she was due a new PC. I'm rather disenchanted with most laptops nowadays, especially for photo work, except maybe the Apple range, but I can't stretch to the $$$ for those. Hence my decision to build her a small form desktop.

So I did some research on components and it took about 2 months just researching things. What I learned was that the important parts are the components that make up the workflow path for the images. If any one component on that path is unable to maintain the photo color information (6-bit, 8-bit, 10-bit or eve 12-bit for top-of-the line equipment) then she will be SOL.

I also know that Adobe publishes a list of qualified video cards that works well with Photoshop CS 6 (which I will be buying as well). Now I'm clearly under a budget of "as little as I can get away with", but I also want to get her something good.

The things I had little trouble deciding on was the processor (Intel i5-3750K), 3TB hard drive, 16GB memory and an external backup disk. The graphics components is where my questions arise.

1. Graphics card. I read in the Adobe FAQ that the Intel HD Graphics built into the above processor is supported. The 3750K processor is one of the few with the most recent Intel HD 4000 graphics included. Alternatively, I thought I might get her the NVidia Quadro K600 (a low-end, low-profile graphics card). My first question for the readers of this forum is: Will the HD4000 graphics in the Intel i5-3750K be sufficient or should I spring for the extra $200 for the video card? I can find no benchmark information that tells me how the K600 compares to the Intel DH graphics processing for photography (or anything else for that matter). Also, does anyone know how I can find out what bit-depth is supported by either of those two products?

2. Monitor. My sister lives in space-constrained accommodation. I think that a 27-inch monitor will be too large for her and also I can not really afford the $600+ of those very nice monitors. But I've read that the 16:10 aspect ratio is more desirable for photography than the 16:9 of the more traditional 1920x1080 resolutions. I looked a lot and found the Asus ProArt PA248Q IPS panel on sale at Newegg for $280. Now I know going that the color depth in this is not optimal, since it only has 16.7 million colors (8-bit?) rather than the 1.07 Billion colors of a 10-bit monitor, but I'm kind of hoping this will be sufficient. This is my second question of the reader: Will this monitor be sufficient for a hobby photographer?

As an aside, In January there were a number of press articles that said that Asus has announced a replacement LED Monitor, the PA249Q, with 10-bit color support. But I can find no mention of it since the January press articles. The only other monitor that appears suitable is the $400+ Asus ProArt PA256Q, but that little guy is not even with LED backlighting so it is heavier, thicker, probably uses more power and will be more costly to ship to my sister once I have this system assembled.

I would also like to know if there is a critical factor that I may have overlooked in assembling the components that would make this computer inferior or not suitable for digital photo processing?

Thank you for your time in reading all of this.
 
More Ram will not hurt.
Ah yes, indeed. unfortunately, the little Motherboard will only support the maximum 16GB, so I maxed it out already. Should be a welcome increase from the current 2GB, though. :)
 
Since I am not a gamer needing rocket-speed video or a printing company that requires absolutely perfect colors (1+ billion of them?), when I built my computer about a year ago I was looking for a video card that didn't have to be the fastest kid on the block or have all sorts of bells and whistles I wouldn't need. So I settled on a rather low-end, no-video-fan-needed ATI card. My big concerns were for CPU processing speed and storage.

I'm also a devoted AMD processor customer, so I went with a 4 processor FX-4150 on an ASUS mobo. I've built perhaps 50-60 computers around AMDs & ASUS for the past 20 years, give or take and never had one fail. I considered an 8 CPU processor, but my thinking is that the overhead needed to manage 8 processors probably eats up a good part of one of them, and few, if any software programs can use more than 3 or 4 simultaneously. So 4 was, and probably still is, a good number of processors. I put on 8GB if high-end RAM and may someday go to 16GB. The difference basically is how many images can be 'open' at one time in PS Elements 11 that I use.

My next concern was for storage speed. Nothing tops Solid State Devices (SSDs) for storage. So, I bought a 128GB SSD for Windows and My Documents. Any photo 'shoot' I am working on is stored primarily on the SSD for close to instantaneous loading. For storage, I have a 1TB hard drive. Once I'm done with all my processing of a shoot, I copy it to the HD and remove it from the SSD.

Since you are building the computer, be sure to get a good power supply, too. I've used nothing but PC Power & Cooling for my own computers for over 20 years and NONE have ever failed. I currently have a 1998 PC&P power supply in my 'big' XP computer 15 years old) and a 2000 PC&P in what I built as a hard drive cloning/testing/CD burning platform 13 years ago. Both of my secondary computers get used several times per week.

The other major design consideration was backup. So, I have a duplicate of both the SSD and HD, and everything is on 'slide in/out' mounts. I back one up to the other on a semi-regular basis and the entire shooting match to a 1TB USB drive I normally keep off site. I don't know if your sister has any great concerns for backups, but I do, so it's a design consideration. Too many times on this web site and others one reads of somebody 'lost it all' when their hard drive crashed.
 
Good point about backup. I did buy her an external 3TB hard drive for backup. I absolutely agree with the importance of backup.

None of the components I chose are "gamer" type components, or at least not from that perspective. The idea of an SSD is intriguing, but I worry about adding another component and I don't really know how much it will add to the loading speed. My sister is not computer-knowledgable and I don't want to burden her too much with having to move documents around, etc.

I chose the i5-3750K, since it has hte same basic performance as the i7-3770K, but without the hyperthreading that allows 8-way processing. I too doubted the efficacy and thought less overhead might be incurred with native 4-way processing.

I did read recently where the AMD A-series APUs seem to have much better graphics performance than the Intel HD graphics. Unfortunately I haven't used MAD since about the late 90s, so I'm more familiar with Intel processors.

You will also note that I mention the Quadro video card range, since that is considered the professional line of Nvidia cards. Not that I an specifically find out why they are more suitable to digital image work rather than gaming, but still... I think it may have to do with the bit-depth of color in the workflow.
 
The Asus PA248Q that I ordered arrived today and I'm not a visual expert, but I was blown away by the color and detail of a few images I looked at. I hope my sister is happy too. :) All my other displays now look paltry. I'm glas I got it on that sale, the price has gone up again on Newegg and there's no indication of the PA249Q that I was looking for shipping anytime soon.
 

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