Computer being built - what should be under the hood?

[steelerdirtfreak]

A friend is going to build a new computer for me. He asked what I want, spec wise, to be able to work efficiently on my photos and web design.
I'm not to 'up' on specs and hardware, so what do I want under the hood? I use Photoshop Elements 6, Lightroom 2.2, and soon to add CS4.

I'm interested in what you would say is the 'minimum' I'd need, as well as the 'optimum' set up.

Thank you for any advice, suggestions, and ideas.

[Ultra Magnus]

That all very much depends on how much money you have to spend!

I'm no expert, but I'm undergoing the same exercise right now, except I'm going to be the one doing the actual pc building. I kept my budget at just under $1000. Speed is very dependent on what you consider to be fast enough, so it's really hard to say what's the minimum. All I know, is that my current pc, is probably a bit under the minimum required to run large batch processes of RAW files in LR, as it hangs a lot. You just have to walk a way, and hope it catches up and doesn't need to be reboot from time to time, but it's a 6+ yr old pc.

One piece of advice I got from an IT friend of mine, is to shy away from the latest and greatest hardware. Sometimes it's not 100% compatible w/ all the software and other bits of hardware out there, and you will be paying a premium. Here's a list of what I purchased (after countless hours of research)-

Case- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129042
Power Supply- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153038
Mobo- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128358
CPU- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115037
Video Card- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814143161
RAM- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231246
HDD- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136320
Card Reader (UDMA Compliant, a must)- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820176015

I'm still waiting for the case- it's hung up in Roseberg, Oregon for some reason. It's been over a week now, which is uncharacteristic for Newegg. The internal drive I selected is only 500gb, which isn't very much storage for photos, but it is only for the operating systems (plural- will run more than one), and software. All my photo storage right now is on an external, insecure, un-backed up, 1tb drive. I've got room for 6 drives in the case, and if I understand the mobo owner's manual right, I can set up two raid arrays. Two drives on one, and up to 6 on another (but, only four more would fit inside). So, I'm speculating I could get another 500gb and do a raid 1 on the system drives, and get four 1tb drives (now I'm dreaming), and do a raid 5 for a total of 3tb of photo storage. As file sizes contiue to increase with each generation of camera, I like having hte flexibility to expand in the future.

BM

[OldClicker]

"but it is only for the operating systems (plural- will run more than one), and software."

What operating system and why? - TIA, TF

[Ultra Magnus]

"but it is only for the operating systems (plural- will run more than one), and software."

What operating system and why? - TIA, TF

I am [gasp!] going to give Ubuntu Linux a whirl... and run a windows inside of parallels for windows specific apps, like LR and PS, although I hear that PS runs under Wine inside of Ubuntu. There are a number of ways to run dual OS's, so I'm not 100% decided one which is best, but that's the idea I have right now...

I get nervous about running Ubuntu from time to time, but hey, Dell, Walmart, Best Buy, etc., are selling Ubuntu machines so it has to be ok enough, right!?

[rant]
I'm very frustrated with MS junk. There's too much crap runnign in the background, loading junk on the computer, bogging it down. Just google PC bog down or something synonymous and you can find 100's of sites on the subject. Linux is supposedly free from viruses, spyware, and immune to the pc bog down. It kind of, from my basic understanding (or lack thereof), works a bit like Mac OSx regarding security.

For work I have a top of the line (at the time) Dell Precision M6300 laptop, all decked out w/ almost every option- cost my boss almost $6000 (I'm sure a couple grand of that was for the Dell logo, but it's got on-site support, accident insurance and all that jazz). At first it was blindingly fast (I do 3d CAD modeling), and now it's mediocre. Loading SolidWorks or Pro E takes forever. I strip my msconfig startup items, defrag, etc., and I get some back, but never all of it. It's horribly irritating. After about a half day of hard use I need to reboot it to get back some semblance of performance.

Running MS I feel like Bill Gates own my PC, and I'm just a user subjected to whatever is included in the next service patch security upgrade what not... Running Linux may require more effort, but I'm somewhat tech savvy, even though the last OS I installed was DOS 5 some 15yrs ago, I'm willing to learn again.

Right now there are add banners on the bottom of my IM window- and I see that as a sign of what's to come in the future. I will not be at all surprised when some future release of windows is running add banners on your desktop, or makes you watch some commercial every time start up outlook instead of the current splash screen.
[/rant]

BM

[Canuck935]

I went with 64bit OS so I could load up on RAM, and RAM is cheap!! Just thought I'd throw that out there.

[Ultra Magnus]

I went with 64bit OS so I could load up on RAM, and RAM is cheap!! Just thought I'd throw that out there.

did you run into any issues going 64 bit? From all the googling I've done on the subject, it's still not 100% baked yet.

How much RAM are you running anyway? From what I understand a 32bit os can only 'see' 3.2gb of ram.

BM

[flyinion]

If you have the money and plan to do any video editing you might want to look at an i7 quad core from Intel. They will smoke everything else for video encoding. Even if you can't afford the i7 at least one of the other Intel quad cores would be a good choice. Otherwise something like in the links above from Newegg should be fine for photo only work. 64 bit OS is great if you have the RAM to support it.

I'm running CS3 version of PS and Premiere Elements 4 with no problems at all on Vista 64 bit. The bonus to 64 bit is that it's also more secure in terms of some viruses as well. Even if they're able to run, the way a 64 bit OS runs a 32 bit program it would be much harder for viruses that do destructive things like deleting files to execute.

You're right about 3.2GB being the max RAM for a 32bit OS. A 32 bit OS literally can not use anything over that because it is not able to assign addresses to it. RAM is so dirt cheap now you can easily get 4GB though. As an example, 2 years ago I rebuilt my system and put in 2x1GB sticks for 160. A year later that same exact package was like $60 and now it's $30. A few months ago I bought a 2x2GB package and moved to 64bit Vista. Same mfr. of RAM but higher end specs and it cost me $65. Less than 1/2 what I paid for 1/2 as much the first time.

[CaraRose]

As someone already said, a lot depends on how much you want to spend.

Being very generic, some things I'd want for a good machine for photo processing...

Good CPU -- doesn't need to be great, supersonic quad core or anything, but I'd say going with a decent speed dual-core is a good idea.

RAM- While there's a lot that effects computer speed, in general terms RAM can be looked at as "cheap" speed. Go at least 2 gigs, I highly recommend you going 3-4.

Motherboard- One that can take more memory than you're currently putting in is always a good idea. That way you can add RAM at a later date without having to do the hassle of a whole mobo change.

HDD-- At least one good size harddrive. Photos add up to taking a lot of HDD space. At the current prices, I wouldn't go less than 500 gigs I also like having a second hard drive just for storage. Right now I store my photos on my main hard drive, and back them up to a second external hard drive (and when I think about it I try and copy them to DVD for one final backup). Having had a HDD have its power supply short and become unusable, it's always good to have anything you don't want to risk losing in two places.

OS- If your going Windows, have a dual core, and you want more than 3 gigs of ram, you should use a 64 bit version. I have XP 64 on my homebuild. Unfortunately driver support for XP 64 is almost non-existent, so without knowing how to get around certain issues you may have problems with printer connections (my dell printer/scanner didn't have an XP 64 driver, so I had to convince a vista 64 version of the driver to install on my pc).

Unfortunately, windows option number 2 is vista. If you've used and like vista, you won't have a problem. I can't stand vista. At all. Ugh. My new laptop has it and I hate it. However there is far better Vista 64 driver support out there.

Linux is a great OS if you have decent technical know how and you want another option. I can't see my parents using it though, it would confuse them. Not that windows doesn't, but they're familiar with that confusion!

Don't forget to thank your friend. You're probably going to get a better system for less money because you're not buying from dell or pre-packaged.

[flyinion]

Ubuntu is really great for starting out with Linux, it installs very easily and they've made huge leaps in making it very easy to install/update things like device drivers. I've never used it other than to play with as a dual install beside Vista but it always worked well. They also have a version called Ubuntu Studio which comes pre-loaded with a lot of the more popular photo, video, audio editing apps.

I know Vista is a love it or hate it thing pretty much. For those not happy with Vista though Windows 7 should be out in the fall, and it is supposed to improve on a lot of the things people were unhappy with in Vista. I personally think they got a lot of things right in Vista, but at the same time I'll certainly agree it has it's annoyances and quirks compared to XP.