New Build - Photo Processing only

EyeBlinks

Hi,

Never did this before so apologies for all the questions.

I'm looking to build a PC for Photo Processing only. Would like to future proof it as far as possible. Won't ever be gaming so don't want stuff geared to that.

1. What is your budget? Whatever it takes

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Photo Editing

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? Yes

5a. If yes, what size do you need. At least 27"

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [Keyboard/Mouse/Wireless Card/Card Reader/Speakers/Bluetooth etc.] Yes( to all)

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay? Credit Card/Laser

9. When are you purchasing? in the next month

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? no

Any advice appreciated ?

Serephucus

What's the budget? (Really, it's there for a reason)
What sort of photo editing? Are we talking removing red-eye with the family photos, or heavy RAW composites?
Do you want anything else out of it? Small size, quiet operation, looks, security, backups?

EyeBlinks

Budget -

I'm not looking to skimp on this. Would hope to use it for 10 years or so, so future proofing is much more important. As I've never gone this route before, I'm not sure what would be normal. For the monitor I would expect to pay at least €700.

Photo Editing - Serious photo editing. Files can be 300mb + and as cameras evolve further in the future maybe even larger.
No video at the moment but may expand that way at some stage.

What do I want out of it.

Speed
Reliability
Upgradeability

Looks aren't important and I have adequate external storage as is.

Xenoronin

I advised my sister to get this monitor when ordering her rig. http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&sku=210-ADOF

Might be something better out there though.

EyeBlinks

Many thanks Xenoronin.

Any other advice on components would be greatly appreciated.

ED E

I get the impression this is either professional or high end enthusiast for you, would that be correct?


If it matters to you, which it sounds like it does, then a few essentials:
1. Monitor calibrator, a al ColorMunki, €100-150
2. Monitor itself, many options here, a good 1440p should be plenty, better that than a lesser 4K. Unless you're doing A1 prints 1440 is more then enough.
3. A Backup solution/process. I'm only a hobbyist but my images are stored on workstation, replicated on a NAS and then pushed to Minneapolis. 3 is 2, 2 is 1, 1 is none. At the minimum budget €60 pa. for an offsite backup like Crashplan, Carbonite or Backblaze.
4. (Optional) Decent reader, something standalone so you don't need to rummage at the front of the tower, USB3. Obviously you can use a cable to your camera but MiniUSB is only good for about 500 insertions and with multiple cards a reader is faster.
5. PC itself: Really the least important part, I've got an 12" tablet that'll run PS just fine (or LR), a mid range i5 and 16GB of RAM is all you need, throw in an SSD for good measure and a couple of 4TB drives.

EyeBlinks

Thanks ED E

Yeah a high end solution is what I'm looking for.

I have more or less settled on this Monitor

Thanks for the storage solution information, some of which was new to me. A good card reader is of course essential.

I'm more concerned at this stage with the nuts and bolts, as I have no skill at all is that area though. Any advice is much appreciated.

the_syco

EyeBlinks wrote: »

I'm not looking to skimp on this. Would hope to use it for 10 years or so, so future proofing is much more important. As I've never gone this route before, I'm not sure what would be normal. For the monitor I would expect to pay at least €700.

I get new RAM/CPU/Motherboard at least every 4 years. 10 years is a nice number, but not very realistic. RAM is very expensive when it first comes out, drops to a low'ish price when it's not so new, and then goes back up in price when no-one is making it but people still want it. Thus upgrading the RAM may be expensive if you wait too long, and your motherboard may limit you on that as well.

Get a SSD, for Windows, your main programs, and lots of space free to be used as a scratch disk. Although my photos are only 14MB (450D), if I'm doing a decent panorama it'll take all the RAM I have. Thus for RAM, althought I'd say the more the merrier, it may be cheaper to just get a SSD as a cache drive? Never really tested the cache drive out myself, as my newest SSD was nearly full of games within a week.

Gehad_JoyRider

the_syco wrote: »

I get new RAM/CPU/Motherboard at least every 4 years. 10 years is a nice number, but not very realistic.

Yes it is if your a photographer your computer gets worked,I've had my rig 3 years I've booth gamed and worked on it. I think I've edited close to 120,000++ images. Worked on countless Premier pro projects.

Eyeblinks at the moment, I'm currently building a system thats booth a gaming rig and photography rig. ( as I work from home)


Hers's my current Build list - Slightly different because I game on my work rig too.

Asus X99-PRO Intel X99 Motherboard

Intel Core i7 5820K 6x 3.30GHz CPU I do recommend it being overclocked to about 4.2 ghz bye overclockers.co.uk they offer warranty

cpu cooler water cooling is your best bet.


PSU 1000 Watt Corsair hxi Series Modular 80+ Platinum

256GB Samsung 950 Pro M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 I'll be using one as my current work folder.


128GB Samsung SM951-NVMe M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 operating system drive and PS/LR/BR/Capture one

GPU 4096MB Sapphire Radeon R9 380X

240GB HyperX FURY 2.5 ssd export folder.


ram 32GB HyperX Predator DDR4-2400 I think the ram is pretty expensive its cheeper at Ebuyer.


Case NZXT H440 its a quite case.

EyeBlinks

Many thanks Gehad_JoyRider, that's a great help.

Just wondering is there anything you'd change if you weren't a Gamer as well?

ED E

Drop the graphics card completely, change platform from Haswell-E to haswell or broadwell so you can use integrated graphics (Assuming you do no video work).

EyeBlinks

I don't do video at the moment, but want to leave the option open. Would be very basic stuff at most though.

Gehad_JoyRider

EyeBlinks wrote: »

Many thanks Gehad_JoyRider, that's a great help.

Just wondering is there anything you'd change if you weren't a Gamer as well?

No problem dude.
My planned rig has a x99 Asus sabertooth and has a different GPU. But more or less the same.

ED E wrote: »

Drop the graphics card completely, change platform from Haswell-E to haswell or broadwell so you can use integrated graphics (Assuming you do no video work).

Have you ever, had to edit 1500+ raw images and now your saying a sure put it all on the cpu? That's idiotic every single photographer I work with and have worked with has always had a dedicated graphics processing unit. Unless there plain idiotic and a have an I mac which doesn't bare thinking about.

But your also lacking the knowledge of whats happening with-in the industry in terms of booth raw file size and general image file size in two years files size's in some case's have gone steller.

i built that system to take into account whats happening with in photography. But also where its going.

EyeBlinks

Many thanks again Gehad_JoyRider .

I would be processing large amounts of RAw files, so I think I would need the GPU.

EyeBlinks

Is there anywhere other than Mindfactory, people could recommend? I'm not a big fan of German customer service !

ED E

Gehad_JoyRider wrote: »

Have you ever, had to edit 1500+ raw images and now your saying a sure put it all on the cpu? That's idiotic every single photographer I work with and have worked with has always had a dedicated graphics processing unit. Unless there plain idiotic and a have an I mac which doesn't bare thinking about.

But your also lacking the knowledge of whats happening with-in the industry in terms of booth raw file size and general image file size in two years files size's in some case's have gone steller.

i built that system to take into account whats happening with in photography. But also where its going.

Only about 200 at a time, as above hobbyist, but you have to take a reasoned approach here.

If you look at benchmarks of a 4400(slower last gen) vs a 7970 you only see a 50% improvement. That sounds like a lot, but its a 50% improvement on very specific tasks that typically last circa a second or less purely using a mid tier CPU. If you spend say for example 3 minutes editing each shot, at most you'll spend 5-6 seconds applying filters/transforms without a dedicated card. In that case its at best 180s vs 185s, that'd be a 2.7% increase. For €300 or more. If your job is 100% editing go for it, but otherwise the value proposition is poor.

And to claim the photog industry is really going anywhere when we're talking PC builds is pretty comical IMO. Its comparatively a turtle of an industry (see here).

IMO Spend your money on:
Fast CPU
Fast iGPU
Fast Storage

That is unless you're talking video where GPU acceleration is actually a huge deal and you'd be crazy to omit it, but the OP seems to be on the fence here.

/2cents.

EyeBlinks

Video is not relevant tbh.

Nice to have but not a "Red Line" as the current buzzword is

Gehad_JoyRider

ED E wrote: »

Only about 200 at a time, as above hobbyist, but you have to take a reasoned approach here.

If you look at benchmarks of a 4400(slower last gen) vs a 7970 you only see a 50% improvement. That sounds like a lot, but its a 50% improvement on very specific tasks that typically last circa a second or less purely using a mid tier CPU. If you spend say for example 3 minutes editing each shot, at most you'll spend 5-6 seconds applying filters/transforms without a dedicated card. In that case its at best 180s vs 185s, that'd be a 2.7% increase. For €300 or more. If your job is 100% editing go for it, but otherwise the value proposition is poor.

And to claim the photog industry is really going anywhere when we're talking PC builds is pretty comical IMO. Its comparatively a turtle of an industry (see here).

IMO Spend your money on:
Fast CPU
Fast iGPU
Fast Storage

That is unless you're talking video where GPU acceleration is actually a huge deal and you'd be crazy to omit it, but the OP seems to be on the fence here.

/2cents.

Hi sorry if I was a little abrasive, with my previous post it wasn't my intention, lack of sleep.

I think your looking at photography from your own method, I feel for me personally on a big edit I can spend as long as 2 hours on a picture depending what kind of shoot, does it need to be cleaned retouched... It takes time. For wedding I have a preset on Light room which applys most of the things I need it to then its a retouch croping. I do that for my stock photography as well.


Your link is dated to 2012, we're in 2016, every camera released in the past year is 18 mega pixels and above.

Look at Canons 5dS its 51 mp Nikon D810 is 36 mega pixels its going up all the time they have to or there going to start loosing out to Hasselblad and Phase One.

The only reason I put the 380 on the list is because majority of photographers these days are asked can we do video its a very normal request. You turn it down you loose a job, and a potential client for the future.

If your working in photography. I've genuinely learned this the hard way, say yes to every god dam job that comes along. Honestly that's why at this stage I'm building the rig I'm building

ED E

Don't get me wrong, the rig is appropriate for you, just question if the OP has the same requirements.

I've a friend who runs a large photog business and ticks over fine on a 2500k era rig (not sure of GPU in that box).


That chart isn't about resolution, its about rate of growth. Sensor density increases far slower than even recent intel performance gains (where they've slowed way down, roll on Zen). Its really quite slow, the growth is in video where we've gone from 720 to 4k in just a few years.

Cuddlesworth

Gehad_JoyRider wrote: »

Hi sorry if I was a little abrasive, with my previous post it wasn't my intention, lack of sleep.

I think your looking at photography from your own method, I feel for me personally on a big edit I can spend as long as 2 hours on a picture depending what kind of shoot, does it need to be cleaned retouched... It takes time. For wedding I have a preset on Light room which applys most of the things I need it to then its a retouch croping. I do that for my stock photography as well.


Your link is dated to 2012, we're in 2016, every camera released in the past year is 18 mega pixels and above.

Look at Canons 5dS its 51 mp Nikon D810 is 36 mega pixels its going up all the time they have to or there going to start loosing out to Hasselblad and Phase One.

The only reason I put the 380 on the list is because majority of photographers these days are asked can we do video its a very normal request. You turn it down you loose a job, and a potential client for the future.

If your working in photography. I've genuinely learned this the hard way, say yes to every god dam job that comes along. Honestly that's why at this stage I'm building the rig I'm building

New iGPU's can run multiple 4k screens with 2d rendering at no real effort and lightroom only introduced GPU offloading(openGL) with the intro of CC last year.

What does lighroom offload to the GPU for processing? A quick google indicates that really only the "develop" tools are and the effect is really only noticeable at very high resolutions(4k+). And unless you are buying the very best equipment, its not worth your while as in some cases it can reduce performance and really not worth it if your not running at least 4k.