Desktop and monitor?

stabo

Hi I'm looking for a desktop and monitor for editing raw files using Lightroom,bit lost on all the specs out there.Budget is around €700. Anything I should be looking out for in specs to run LR?

Effects

€700 seems a little low for both a desktop and a monitor I'd think.

5uspect

Ideally a quality monitor, tho an IPS panel is probably out of your budget.
Apparently you can get 'seconds' panels from Korea or somewhere which are the same as those used in iMacs and Dell's Ultrasharps but cheaper. Not a bad option if you can live with a dead pixel or two.
http://techreport.com/review/23291/those-27-inch-ips-displays-from-korea-are-for-real

Any half decent PC will do the job. Obviously images will process faster with a more expensive CPU but there are diminishing returns on the cost/performance curve.

RAM is cheap so you'll easily get 8GB for about €50. Any mid spec GPU should be fine, I can't remember if Lightroom uses CUDA (just nVidia cards) or OpenCL (any card) to accelerate some of it's features. Tho it's not really essential. You could just get an Intel CPU with integrated graphics.

Of course think about backups, maybe mirrored drives.

stabo

Thanks, I'm thinking €500 on tower with 8gb ram i5 processor, and 200 on monitor. Will look into it more. I would only be using it for photography.

Telchak

Post a thread here, the advice will be invaluable (:

Wabbit Ears

For inexpensive ips monitors look at getting an Asus proart monitor.

Eg http://www.customlaptops.ie/asus-pa238q-23-wide-ips-monitor-proart-134987-p.asp


For lightroom work you'll want something like 12 gig of ram, a SSD for your main system disk and a caviar black or similar fast disk for your photos.

depending on which monitor you get would determine if you need a motherboard or graphics card with a displayport jack but really if you have an I3,I5 or I7 processor and HD intrgrated graphics on the mainboard you should be ok resolution wise.

Paulw

Depending on your Lightroom catalogue, it can chew memory. I have 16gb of ram in my PC, and I have seen Lightroom take up 14gb of that when doing a large import.

BlastedGlute

what in heavens are you people processing hahaha! Also, put the money into an accurate and powerful monitor. No point in having an all powerful gaming rig if your pictures look muck on other screens because yours isnt calibrated correctly.

I'm selling a setup i've used for a long time now including a 27" Dell IPS ultrasharp. Will be posting it on adverts after i have my backing up done. Lightroom doesn't require insane power threshold and unless your working to a strict time limit or your on a shoot set processing in real time, forget about going SSD and getting crazy quad core cpu's and video cards. You could burn into serious finances trying to get that stuff for the sake a few seconds here and there in processing speed.

Keep it simple, if your machine is for one program alone, and your RAW files aren't from a 50mp medium format digital back, then the regular 30mb files etc will be grand in any modern CPU.

- this is obviously just my opinion, everyone feels they need different things, most important point is do not skimp on the monitor, resolution is only one aspect, colour profiles for print accuracy is top priority if you ask me)

Wabbit Ears

Any new pc build should use a SSD as a OS drive, once you go SSD you never look back.

Effects

BlastedGlute wrote: »

I'm selling a setup i've used for a long time now including a 27" Dell IPS ultrasharp.

Are you selling it all together or would you part with the monitor separately?

stcstc

i put 3 ssd drives in my main machine, 1 for OS, 1 for work files, and 1 for photoshop cache

man it makes a huge difference

Effects

I use an SSD for my OS and some Photoshop and a few other programs. Cache is running off a standard drive but think I might get a new SSD for it.

ScumLord

BlastedGlute wrote: »

what in heavens are you people processing hahaha!

For basic colour correction you don't need a lot of horsepower, I'm not sure how big lightroom files can get but I have photoshop files well over a gig when open. Although they are 1500x800mm pull up posters. I've had photos get up to nearly a gig. Having a lot of horsepower makes working very smooth, everything happens instantly.

The big killer for me is HD video though.


I think it's worth buying two identical hard drives and setting them up for raid (you can buy more if you like but a minimum of two is required), I've already had a HD fail on me but I was able to take it out and sync it with a new drive meaning I lost nothing.

stabo

Thanks for the info folks, ill look into it a bit more and try stretch the budget a bit.

Wabbit Ears

If you're using SSD's as scratch disks you should be checking the number of failed blocks periodically using the manufactured toolkits, for example:

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9328/~/ssd-toolkit-support-information


SSD's read really fast but have a finite number of writes per block, My SSD in my HTPC died recently as it was being used as a live TV buffer constantly. Still haven't replaced it and man is the speed drop noticeable!!