€3000 max build for Photographer

steoc

Hi i am ready for a build.
A friend is helping me in Wexford. He uses Scan.co.uk not sure if there is much of a price differance from Hardwareversand.de?
I am a photographer and nedd my pc to zip through large files when i am editing. Cpu i was looking at is i7 ivy Bridge.Looking for 16-32 Gb Ram. Drives for operating system,scratch disk for photoshop,working drive and a drive for storage.
Thanks.

1. What is your budget? €3000

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Photo editing. Photoshop,Lightroom,Photomatic and Internet.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No

5. Do you need a monitor? I have a NEC PA27 would like a second monitor.

5a. If yes, what size do you need. 24" or 27"

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? 2560 x 1440

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Wireless key board

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay? Anyway

9. When are you purchasing? One to Two weeks

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Wexford

BloodBath

Hi, well that's a big budget. I'll start you off with something spending all of it. A beast of a pc that you really should overclock. The 4930k with that cooler should push to at least 4.5ghz which will give you a big boost to performance.

There's enough left for you to get a nice 27" 1440p monitor.

The case also comes in white with black accents.

Prices were got using www.geizhals.de

Item|Price
Intel Core i7-4930K, 6x 3.40GHz, bx, ohne Kühler|€483.60
Cooler Master Nepton 280L Watercooling System|€98.46
ASRock X79 Extreme6, Sockel LGA2011, ATX|€175.63
32GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series VLP DDR3-1600, CL9|€241.81
Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 WindForce 3X, 4GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort|€355.98
Samsung SSD 840 EVO Basic 1TB SATA 6Gb/s|€443.15
2 x WD Red RD1000S 4TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB|€314.98
NZXT H440 schwarz mit Sichtfenster, schallgedämmt, ohne Netzteil|€109.89
Corsair Enthusiast Series RM1000, Modular, 80 Plus Gold 1000 Watt|€155.31
Shipping|€12.99
Total|€2391.80

SterlingArcher

BloodBath wrote: »

Hi, well that's a big budget. I'll start you off with something spending all of it. A beast of a pc that you really should overclock. The 4930k with that cooler should push to at least 4.5ghz which will give you a big boost to performance.

There's enough left for you to get a nice 27" 1440p monitor.

The case also comes in white with black accents.

Prices were got using www.geizhals.de

Item|Price
Intel Core i7-4930K, 6x 3.40GHz, bx, ohne Kühler|€483.60
Cooler Master Nepton 280L Watercooling System|€98.46
ASRock X79 Extreme6, Sockel LGA2011, ATX|€175.63
32GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series VLP DDR3-1600, CL9|€241.81
Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 WindForce 3X, 4GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort|€355.98
Samsung SSD 840 EVO Basic 1TB SATA 6Gb/s|€443.15
2 x WD Red RD1000S 4TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB|€314.98
NZXT H440 schwarz mit Sichtfenster, schallgedämmt, ohne Netzteil|€109.89
Corsair Enthusiast Series RM1000, Modular, 80 Plus Gold 1000 Watt|€155.31
Shipping|€12.99
Total|€2391.80

Got the h440 in there .... Nice

BloodBath

Yeah she's a beauty, gonna pick one up myself I think.

steoc

This is what i am looking at at the min.


Have to type it out so here it goes so far...

3 Gb Pny Nvidia Quadro k4000 graphica card £749.28

240 Gb Corsair neutron Series 2.5"SSD £170.69

Corsair h80i Hydo Cpu cooler £76.56

128GB Corsair Force Series GS 2.5"SSD,Sata111-6gb/s £63.74

Creative T63000 5.1 Suround Sound Speaker system £59.41

2x 2TB WD wd20ezrx Green 3.5" HDD,sata111 6gb/s £127.68
Asus p9x79E-ws,Intelx79,S2011,DDR3,sata111-6gb/

ssata raid,Pcle 3.0(x16)cep £339.35

32 GB (4x8) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance pro series silver £287.18

850w Corsair RM series cp-9020056-UK Quiet fan £118.62
Intel core i7 4930k extreme,2011 Ivy bridge 6 core
3.4 ghz,3.9ghz turbo,5gt/s dmi,34xratio,12mb cache £427.40

NZXT Phantom 530 Full Tower Chassis Black £100

Windows 7 pro SPI 64 bit £87.70

Let me know what you think please.

papu

steoc wrote: »

This is what i am looking at at the min.


Have to type it out so here it goes so far...

3 Gb Pny Nvidia Quadro k4000 graphica card £749.28

240 Gb Corsair neutron Series 2.5"SSD £170.69

Corsair h80i Hydo Cpu cooler £76.56

128GB Corsair Force Series GS 2.5"SSD,Sata111-6gb/s £63.74

Creative T63000 5.1 Suround Sound Speaker system £59.41

2x 2TB WD wd20ezrx Green 3.5" HDD,sata111 6gb/s £127.68
Asus p9x79E-ws,Intelx79,S2011,DDR3,sata111-6gb/

ssata raid,Pcle 3.0(x16)cep £339.35

32 GB (4x8) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance pro series silver £287.18

850w Corsair RM series cp-9020056-UK Quiet fan £118.62
Intel core i7 4930k extreme,2011 Ivy bridge 6 core
3.4 ghz,3.9ghz turbo,5gt/s dmi,34xratio,12mb cache £427.40

NZXT Phantom 530 Full Tower Chassis Black £100

Windows 7 pro SPI 64 bit £87.70

Let me know what you think please.

Anything wrong with the specs put together by bloodbath there?
Do you need a Quadro for photoshop? I think that 290 will be a much better option.

steoc

Hi Papu,

I dont know anything about computers.
Just posting what a friend is recommending for me. Im sure bloodbath's build is ok. Looking for advice really.
Thanks

Luck100

It's my understanding that digital photography processing is no longer GPU-intensive. The quadro cards are specialized for rendering/cad and you pay a hefty premium for that. Quadros are not good for gaming and are terrible value if you aren't doing rendering/cad. Even a high-end gaming card like a r9 290 or gtx 780ti is overkill for photography (assuming you're not interested in gaming). Something like a gtx 760 or r7 270x is probably more than enough for the few cases where there is gpu acceleration available.

See this discussion, it's exactly on topic and it's from a very good digital photography site (dpreview).
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3580280

steoc

Luck100 wrote: »

It's my understanding that digital photography processing is no longer GPU-intensive. The quadro cards are specialized for rendering/cad and you pay a hefty premium for that. Quadros are not good for gaming and are terrible value if you aren't doing rendering/cad. Even a high-end gaming card like a r9 290 or gtx 780ti is overkill for photography (assuming you're not interested in gaming). Something like a gtx 760 or r7 270x is probably more than enough for the few cases where there is gpu acceleration available.

See this discussion, it's exactly on topic and it's from a very good digital photography site (dpreview).
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3580280

Thanks very much Luck100
Ill look into it later

smcclaw

I'm currently building something very close to Bloodbath's posted spec and have the same CPU and 32GB of RAM also.

The two main considerations for me have been what GPU and how to structure the disks. I'm still not decided whether to go with separate SSDs for each of OS, scratch and current projects or whether to RAID 0 maybe 4 SSDs - will probably just go with the three separate disks so I wont have to worry such much about one disk failing and brining down the array. I'll have a load of 3/4TB HDDs for longer term storage.

Luck100's advice about the GPU is in line with the many articles I've read in the last while. It seems that currently in Photoshop only a few tools are subject to GPU acceleration. The Quadro cards look like awful value to me. I am kind of tempted to at least see what a 10bit system looks like in practice and I would love to have a 30/32" 4k display but there'd be no budget left for the rest of the build then!

Let us know what you end up building

BloodBath

Don't go with separate smaller ssd's. The larger ones work out cheaper per GB, are more durable and will have faster speeds. Just partition it. SSD's don't really fail too often. Going with 3-4 smaller ones is actually increasing your chance of a failure.

All your important data will be stored on the HDD's anyway. Raid those.

I know the 290 is overkill but the budget allowed for it and at that price it's great value and if you did want to do a little gaming at 1440p it's more than up to the task. If you want to save money there go for a 760gtx or even an R9 270.

wex96

any serious photographers i know all have Apple
27" screen
3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB
3TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Wireless Keyboard (British) & User's Guide (English)
Accessory Kit
€3,048.99

AlmightyCushion

wex96 wrote: »

any serious photographers i know all have Apple
27" screen
3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB
3TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Wireless Keyboard (British) & User's Guide (English)
Accessory Kit
€3,048.99

If I was spending €3,000 on a computer I'd want a high capacity SSD in there at least.

BloodBath

You can build a much higher spec PC for less. An overclocked 4930k would be twice as powerful as that apple i7.

You're also getting big extras like a 1tb ssd, 2 x 4tb hdd's.

Only hipsters use apple. If it's raw horsepower you want you can't beat PC.

Stainless_Steel

BloodBath wrote: »

You can build a much higher spec PC for less. An overclocked 4930k would be twice as powerful as that apple i7.

You're also getting big extras like a 1tb ssd, 2 x 4tb hdd's.

Only hipsters use apple. If it's raw horsepower you want you can't beat PC.

I think the photographers that choose apple do so for the software rather than the hardware.

If you don't use Apple software then a self-build windows machine will always give better performance per euro.

BloodBath

I would have thought most professionals would be using professional software like Adobe's which is available on both PC and mac.

Stainless_Steel

BloodBath wrote: »

I would have thought most professionals would be using professional software like Adobe's which is available on both PC and mac.

Yeah think that's the most widely used software. I do know that apple have aperture which is for pros.

steoc

Hi again,

Just about to make a purchases on this.
I am going to get Scan to do the build also.
What do you think?
Am i missing anything?

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/shared/d7c6f726-bb4d-4e95-aed2-a5974863c01f

Tea_Bag

steoc wrote: »

Hi again,

Just about to make a purchases on this.
I am going to get Scan to do the build also.
What do you think?
Am i missing anything?

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/shared/d7c6f726-bb4d-4e95-aed2-a5974863c01f

we cant see the parts through your link. could you post them here?

If its the same as you posted above, i urge you not to.
If its the same as Bloodbath's, then go ahead, that'll be a very very fast machine. you'd be hard pressed to much find one much better in any studio.

wex96 wrote: »

any serious photographers i know all have Apple
27" screen
3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB
3TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Wireless Keyboard (British) & User's Guide (English)
Accessory Kit
€3,048.99

is apple actually serious? 775M. oh lawd :rolleyes:

BloodBath

Seems a bit mad paying so much extra for a lower spec PC. I can understand though if you don't want to built it and overclock it yourself.

Anyway you could go for a 4k monitor as well if you wanted. Double the resolution of 1440p and 10 bit color which should be good for photography.

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/SAMSUNG-U28D590-28-4K-UHD-3840x2160-Displayport-DP-HDMI-1ms-10bit-TN-Monitor-/131142918355?pt=Computer_Monitors&hash=item1e88ba20d3