Building a PC for photo processing...

af_thefragile

As I got back into photography lately, I'm planning on building a little computer mainly for processing the many photos I've been taking recently. My tired old laptop cannot handle working with big RAW files too well and hence I decided I need to get a proper rig to work seriously on my photography (and some film/animation) skills.

What do you guys suggest would be the thinks to look for when building a PC primarily for photo processing in Lightroom, Photoshop, HDR in photomatrix etc.
What sort of processor would you recommend and how much RAM would you reckon would be sufficient? I was working on some panoramas I took on my friend's computer and Photoshop alone was using up around 5GB of RAM processing those images.

Would I need a powerful graphics card or what sort of graphics card would be good? And such... A few questions... And to keep it sort of reasonably inexpensive...

Thanks for the help.
Sorry if this is not the right place for asking this question...

melekalikimaka

looking myself, google hackintosh, some serious beasts of machines, like seriously fast, custom build with mac osx seems to be amazing by all accounts... provided you pick it right at the start

challengemaster

melekalikimaka wrote: »

looking myself, google hackintosh, some serious beasts of machines, like seriously fast, custom build with mac osx seems to be amazing by all accounts... provided you pick it right at the start

illegal first of all

secondly, if you run into incompatibility issues at all you're screwed.

Hank Scorpio

Try asking here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=842

af_thefragile

melekalikimaka wrote: »

looking myself, google hackintosh, some serious beasts of machines, like seriously fast, custom build with mac osx seems to be amazing by all accounts... provided you pick it right at the start

I was looking into those but they seem to be too much of a hassle to get everything working right and proper. I don't know much about computers so its something beyond my capability to make a proper hackintosh build. Hence I decided to stick with windows PC.

I thought it'ld be good idea to ask here cuz many of ye guys might be using LR/Photoshop and such programs regularly so ye might know what might be the best set up to get the most out of these programs...

Like I don't want to know what specific motherboard or processor or graphics card I should get.

I'ld like to know what my set up should be like to build a smooth photo processing and editing. Like should I focus more on getting a fast processor and lots of ram and do I need a powerful graphics card for photoshop or can I do with something less powerful and cheaper... Stuff like that...

kfish2oo2

CPU and RAM will be your biggest considerations here. I'm assuming you'd pick current gen processors, so that would be Intels Core iX and AMDs K10. You'd need DDR3 RAM to pair with those CPU's and since you'll be doing animation too 4GB should be your absolute minimum. If you keep an eye out you could pick up 6GB or 8GB for a reasonable price, especially since DDR3 memory has taken a massive price drop recently. An SSD harddrive would also be something to consider, especially as they have massive read write speeds so loading up photos would be really snappy - they are costly however, and you'd need to pair one with a standard HDD if you want anything approaching standard storage volumes.

As for GPUs - the whole range of Adobe products have GPU acceleration nowadays (as of CS5) so it'll help having a dedicated GPU. However, with a powerful enough system it won't be as necessary.

As for a recommended, low cost build; a Core i5 with 5GB of RAM, a 120GB SSD and a 500GB HDD, 640w PSU, motherboard and something like an nVidia 460 will set you back somewhere in the regoin of €600 to €800.

af_thefragile

I've pretty much decided on going with an i5 with 8GB RAM (as I take a lot of panoramas and I've found out they use lots of RAM in photoshop).

I've not been able to decide on the GPU though. Would a powerful GPU like 480GTX or ATI 6950 be any beneficial or would a cheaper GPU like 450GTS or ATI 5770 be good enough? I heard photoshop doesn't use a lot of GPU power so you don't need to get a powerful gaming spec GPU for photoshop and light video editing...

melekalikimaka

na nothing mental gfx wise, any last gen will be perfect.

5gb ram? , ig do with 8 also if i were you, ssd good idea, and remember the screen is very important. consider calibration tools also like spyder

bernard0368

I recently built a system for myself and its great A 560ti graphic card is perfect for the job, 8gb Ram, I5 -2500k cpu, a ssd hard drive for the operating system and PS is just amazing, super fast. and a couple of 1TB standard hard drives for storage (you can never have enough)
Full component List
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX
8GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1333 CL9
Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB Retail
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti OC, 1024MB GDDR5, PCI-Express
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB, SATA II (HE103SJ)
Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B, CPU cooler
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 650W
Cooler Master HAF Mini 922M (a little big but has plenty of space for extra hard drives)

af_thefragile

DO you think 64gb SSD would be enough to store and run the OS and programs off it?

I've heard about people using a separate hard drive/SSD as a scratch drive for photoshop, ye guys know about this?

Also I have a gaming spec monitor which I got to play my PS3 on. I could try calibrating it but I doubt it'll be super accurate. Which I think would be alrite for now as I'm still in the learning/getting better phase. But sometime in the future if I have the money, it'll be nice to buy a proper monitor for photo editing and such...

Promac

I got a new HP Pavilion laptop recently and it's more than capable of handling anything I throw at it. Core i7 Processor, 6GB of DDR3, HD6770 Radeon 1GB graphics card. I can even run modern games at max settings on this thing.

I would always have said that building your own tower was the way to go but this is far easier and nicer to use.

Don't know why anyone would consider a hackintosh - some people just like throwing money into a black hole I guess.

64gb of SSD is enough for windows and a few programs but you should be able to find a bigger one for not that much more.

melekalikimaka

Promac wrote: »

Don't know why anyone would consider a hackintosh - some people just like throwing money into a black hole I guess.

when you compare price, its something to consider, windows after osx is a chore tbh, and when you consider mac pro's performance vs pc, the hackintoshs are not something to brush aside

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=623&Itemid=38&limit=1&limitstart=4

bernard0368

The 64gb SSD is fine for the OS and photoshop with space left over, I just put everything else on the other hard drives. Works great for me.

Balfey1972

bernard0368 wrote: »

I recently built a system for myself and its great A 560ti graphic card is perfect for the job, 8gb Ram, I5 -2500k cpu, a ssd hard drive for the operating system and PS is just amazing, super fast. and a couple of 1TB standard hard drives for storage (you can never have enough)
Full component List
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX
8GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1333 CL9
Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB Retail
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti OC, 1024MB GDDR5, PCI-Express
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB, SATA II (HE103SJ)
Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B, CPU cooler
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 650W
Cooler Master HAF Mini 922M (a little big but has plenty of space for extra hard drives)

Bernard, do you mind me asking rough idea on price for the above system. Looking for a new pc as I type for photo processing.

Thanks
Derek.

bernard0368

Derek, It cost about €850.00 from these guys www3.hardwareversand.de. I already had the OS so you might want to factor that in.