First build: photo/video editting workstation

JMcL

Hi all,

I'm looking to replace my ageing desktop with something more up to the job, and getting ready to take the plunge and build it myself.

The primary use will be Lightroom 3, Photoshop (currently CS3 but CS6 whenever it appears), and Cyberlink Powerdirector for video. Gaming isn't at all a priority, other than that, some software development and other stuff like browsing, OpenOffice etc.

I'm figuring on the following:

i5 2500K
ASUS P8Z68-V Pro
Corsair TX650 V2 PSU
16Gb (4x4Gb) Corsair XMS3 cl9
Corsair 120Gb Force 3 SSD
4 x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb drives
Antec 300 case

DABS price €912.72 delivered, Harwareversand I think roughly €50 cheaper

I need Z68 as I want to use Quick Sync for video (PowerDirector will use it), but also a bit further down the line want to have dual monitors (more on this to follow). Loads of RAM as Lightroom and PS will use it (CS3 won't really benefit that much, but CS6 will). Biggish fast SSD for OS + apps, and use as PS and Lightroom scratch disk. The 4 HDDs to configure as 3Gb of RAID 5.

I haven't specified a graphics card which would be needed to drive a second monitor, and I haven't a clue when it comes to current graphics cards so any recommendations of a decent low cost one would be welcome. PowerDirector can make use of GPUs, but if it can use Quick Sync, that isn't an issue.

Other than that, I'm going to scavenge the DVD drive from my old PC, and I haven't included Windows as I think I can source it through work.

Any advice or comments on the above are welcome. Is the PSU overkill for what I'm looking for, and the motherboard for that matter? Is the RAM ok (I'm probably not looking to overclock, but never say never)? Would a 90Gb or even a 60Gb SSD do?

Thanks,

John

deconduo

This should suit you pretty well

Total build cost: €799.55 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155 €175.58
2 x 8GB-Kit G.Skill RipJaws-X PC3-10667U CL9 €40.79
4 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ) €45.14
ASRock Z68 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX €92.81
Crucial M4 128GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5") €171.14
Xigmatek Asgard II Midi Tower - black/silver, ohne Netzteil €31.91
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W €41.11
Sapphire HD5450 512M DDR3 PCI-E HDMI / DVI-I / VGA €24.86

Cheaper motherboard, and probably better quality. ASUS have been pretty bad with their Sandy Bridge boards.

If the GPU is just for a 2nd monitor, that one will do you fine.

Better value case. The Antec 300 was good in its time, but its age is showing. The Asgard has nice tooless options, and is a nice case.

M4 is a nicer SSD

PSU is overkill, that SuperFlower will do you fine.

Serephucus

I'd switch the HDDs to two of these. It works out €60 cheaper, and the drives are actually slightly faster than the ones you've selected, despite being Green drives. (I have both).

HWVS are out, so I got them from Dabs. Free delievery though, so it makes no odds.

JMcL

Thanks for that deconduo, that's exactly the kind of info I was looking for (and a much nicer price!)

Serephucus wrote: »

I'd switch the HDDs to two of these.

I want to configure them as RAID 5 for speed and a bit of fault tolerance, so unfortunately I need at least 3 drives for that. I did set up a RAID 0 array once on 2 disks which, while it hummed along nicely in terms of speed, always made me nervous.

Serephucus

JMcL wrote: »

I want to configure them as RAID 5 for speed and a bit of fault tolerance, so unfortunately I need at least 3 drives for that. I did set up a RAID 0 array once on 2 disks which, while it hummed along nicely in terms of speed, always made me nervous.

So get three 2TB drives instead. It only works out about €6 more expensive.

deconduo

Serephucus wrote: »

I'd switch the HDDs to two of these. It works out €60 cheaper, and the drives are actually slightly faster than the ones you've selected, despite being Green drives. (I have both).

HWVS are out, so I got them from Dabs. Free delievery though, so it makes no odds.

The 7200rpm F3s are a fair bit faster than the 5400rpm F4s. You were probably looking at the benchmarks for the 7200rpm F4 which is a small bit faster.

For Photoshop, F3s at RAID5 are exactly what he wants.

Serephucus

Actually, I have 5400RPM R3s. And 7200RPM F1s. The 2TB drives are a good 20MB faster than the F1s.

For noise, money, and storage space, I'd go for the 2TB drives, but it's up to you.

deconduo

Serephucus wrote: »

Actually, I have 5400RPM R3s. And 7200RPM F1s. The 2TB drives are a good 20MB faster than the F1s.

For noise, money, and storage space, I'd go for the 2TB drives, but it's up to you.

Except those are F3s not F1s :P

EDIT: You can check out the benches yourself:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/compare,1010.html?prod[3016]=on&prod[4717]=on

The F3 wins in every performance bench. The only ones it loses are power (1-2W difference, totally negligble compared to overall system draw) tempeature (41C vs 37C, again a tiny difference) and load noise (49dB vs 48dB, you wouldn't even notice it.)

In fact the F3 is quieter than the F4 when idle.

Tea_Bag

I run a HTPC with an f4 green drive as a boot drive (budget limits) and its not impressive tbh. stutters often enough to notice and is louder than my f3. could be a dud though.

anyway, reason I commented is you need to add a few SATA cables to your basket!

af_thefragile

Hey, I'm building a PC for photo/video editing as well.

I'ld say if you're seriously going to be getting into it, I'ld go for an i7 2600k as it has hyperthreading which most photo and video editing softwares make use of. I'ld say it'ld be worth it for the extra 80eur you pay...

Also if you're a student, you'ld wanna check out this:
http://www.software4students.ie/Adobe_Production_Premium_CS5_5_Student_and_Teacher__PC-details.aspx

Its amazing what all you can get for so little money!!

Also if you're planning on working with Premeire Pro, it only supports these graphics cards for its mercury engine GPU acceleration:
GeForce GTX 285 (Windows and Mac OS)
GeForce GTX 470 (Windows)
GeForce GTX 570 (Windows)
GeForce GTX 580 (Windows)
Quadro FX 3700M (Windows)
Quadro FX 3800 (Windows)
Quadro FX 3800M (Windows)
Quadro FX 4800 (Windows and Mac OS)
Quadro FX 5800 (Windows)
Quadro 2000 (Windows)
Quadro 2000D (Windows)
Quadro 2000M (Windows)
Quadro 3000M (Windows)
Quadro 4000 (Windows and Mac OS)
Quadro 4000M (Windows)
Quadro 5000 (Windows)
Quadro 5000M (Windows)
Quadro 5010M (Windows)
Quadro 6000 (Windows)
Quadro CX (Windows)

Though there is a simple hack to get around it, I'm not sure how future proof that hack is going to be, i.e. if Adobe wanna be assholes and come out with an update that the hack won't work on...

Here's my build if you're interested:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056354322
Should be ordering it soon hopefully...

Nforce

deconduo wrote: »

This should suit you pretty well

Total build cost: €799.55 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155 €175.58
2 x 8GB-Kit G.Skill RipJaws-X PC3-10667U CL9 €40.79
4 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ) €45.14
ASRock Z68 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX €92.81
Crucial M4 128GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5") €171.14
Xigmatek Asgard II Midi Tower - black/silver, ohne Netzteil €31.91
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W €41.11
Sapphire HD5450 512M DDR3 PCI-E HDMI / DVI-I / VGA €24.86

Cheaper motherboard, and probably better quality. ASUS have been pretty bad with their Sandy Bridge boards.

If the GPU is just for a 2nd monitor, that one will do you fine.

Better value case. The Antec 300 was good in its time, but its age is showing. The Asgard has nice tooless options, and is a nice case.

M4 is a nicer SSD

PSU is overkill, that SuperFlower will do you fine.

I ordered something similar yesterday,except I went with the 2600k and an ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3).
My Pc is mainly used for video editing,Photoshop and some gaming.

JMcL

Serephucus wrote: »

So get three 2TB drives instead. It only works out about €6 more expensive.

A 4 drive array will give me better performance in RAID5 than a 3 drive, in theory 3x read/write as opposed to 2x. It's the speed I'm after more than raw capacity. As well as that, if it's too big, it's a PITA to back up!

Tea_Bag wrote: »

anyway, reason I commented is you need to add a few SATA cables to your basket!

True, good point!

af_thefragile wrote: »

I'ld say if you're seriously going to be getting into it, I'ld go for an i7 2600k as it has hyperthreading which most photo and video editing softwares make use of. I'ld say it'ld be worth it for the extra 80eur you pay...

I thought about this long and hard. Hyperthreading can apparently actually degrade PS performance in some instances according to this post/thread (bit short on specifics unfortunately - though he does finish by saying get an i7). This seems to be largely borne out by a few different benchmarks I've seen around the net. The i7 is for sure by those same bechmarks a fair whack faster than the i5 for PS in general. Most of the stuff I do in PS that takes time tends to be IO bound - large stitches for example. To this end, I'm banking on shedloads of RAM and fast storage to take the edge of this. I think much the same applies to Lightroom.

Where hyperthreading is undoutedly of benefit is with video, but for me, video will be splicing together fairly short clips of the kids - I just don't have an Apocalypse Now in me . I'll have a think about it over the next couple of days though.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Also if you're planning on working with Premeire Pro, it only supports these graphics cards for its mercury engine GPU acceleration:
:
snip
:
Here's my build if you're interested:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056354322
Should be ordering it soon hopefully...

I'm going to use Cyberlink Powerdirector, which can use Quicksync, as well as a bunch of Nvidia and ATI cards - though not sure it'll use both in parallel. I tried a few video editors, and liked it the best in terms of interface, and a lot of bang for the buck.

Best of luck with your build - looks like a nice one!

Cheers again for the input everybody, it's been a big help!