Building a computer

Keep in mind this is essentially a photography site and not a computer building forum. I think you should Google computer building sites to better answer these kinds of questions. Photoshop users are not necessarily computer builders....just end users.

Andrew, look for a mother board with sata II capability. This is what will deliver 3GB transfer rate capability. The seek time on the hard drive is what you are looking at. IE you can purchase a 7200 rpm with either 12ms or 4ms seek time. 10000 rpm drives should have a faster capability, but check your seek times. Make sure that drives are Sata II capable as well. Later you can ad external drives that are Sata II as well.

Andrew, building your own is fun and not terribly difficult. I built my first a bit over a year ago, and my second several months ago. It is great learning experience, it's enjoyable and rewarding, and it's something that Mac people can't do :-p

Here's some specific comments: Intel boards used to be considered the rock of stability. Not so much any more. I recently used an Asus P5K-PRO, which is a great board with firewire, many USB ports, IDE support, etc. That's one version back though ... the current design is P5Q-PRO. A "retail" packaged motherboard should come with all the cables you need to connect the headers (on the motherboard) to the case connections.

If you buy a "retail" processor, it comes with a factory heatsink/fan. No need for a different one unless you are overclocking. In fact, using a different one technically voids the warranty.

For a video board, ATI are much preferred over Nvidia. It is considered stronger with 2D (meaning Photoshop) use. The 3850/3870 are quite reasonably priced these days and perform admirably.

The key to selecting memory is choosing RAM whose voltage and latency is supported by the selected motherboard. You can find specs for the motherboard and RAM on the manufacturer's web sites.

10k RPM drives are favored by video editors and serious gamers. A Seagate 7200.11 or your chosen size will be a great performer, it has a larger cache (32MB) than any of the other makes. SATA is the choice of format.

Optical: I haven't used Sony. I've had fine luck with NEC, Samsung, and Asus opticals. They're so cheap, I simply put one DVD-ROM in ($20) and one DVD-RW ($30).

It isn't a bad idea to have a floppy on hand. Some diagnostics and some driver installations still rely on floppy. You can get external ones, or you can pick up an internal one (less than $10) and just have it on hand *in case*. Only mount it in the case if you need to.

Antecs are well regarded and high quality. I personally like to choose a power supply separately, as I can pick one with the exact specs, shop around, etc. Corsair are great units, PC Power and Cooling, Seasonic. The one in the Antec case is fine I"m sure, and 500W is plenty for what you're putting in it. I like to choose an 80+ certified PSU because they are the more efficient units. Meaning, the PSU is not wasting energy by creating heat ... it's using electricity to convert electricity.

Get a decent surge suppressor/UPS.

Monitor/keyboard/mouse or tablet.

Just to be more helpful...visit this site http://www.extremetech.com/ They have computer build configurations to suit several budgets and review many of the components you may be interested in.

Michael; many computer building sites have little experience witrh photoshop; thus they end up making the computer a gamers machine. Andrew's configs is still boxed in to 4 gigs of ram; sicne thats ALL CS3 can address since its just a 32 bit program. CS4 for a PC will be 64 bits and open up the usage of radically more ram; but the regular XP is just a 32 bit OS. With regular XP you are building a dream machine handicapped by its 4 gig ram limit; sort of like building a dream analog TV. With a new computer settup for Photoshop one should plan on expansion; here my new ones are not going to be boxed in to the 4 gig barrier due to using an older 32 bit OS. It might be that the 4 gig ram limit is not a problem with Andrews new box and he will just build another box; or upgrade to a 64 bit os when Cs4 comes out in a month or two.

good advice especially LJ Kirk true many think in therms of sa "gamers machine" on these sites. but there are som close similarities-- the ability to process graphics. choose a good Lcd monitor. 19 or 21 inch consider at least looking at a wacom tablet as editing photos with a mouse can get tedius, a " pen tablet" is easier ( you can have bioth)

someone recently said that LaCie external hard disk support was very poor. and LaCie is NOT a hard drive manufacturer. Buy an external drive made by a well known company with a top quality drive. connect it to the PC to copy new information and then store it away safely.

i talked to someone today about the trials and tribulations of Vista and it alter ego Mohabi. eventually, Microsoft will fix it and give is a good 64 bit OS. but right niow there are problems with it. You choice of windows xp and the service pack is a good but conservative choice.

you want to be able to working on, not working with the computer. meaning the PC should be like a stainless steel saucepan, bit a cheap aluminim pan with dents and corrosion. something you can turn on and use,. not fiddling around with until it works properly.

i think the 64 bit advice is most valid. if you are building from scratch and new then do not go for 32 bit. 64 bit is the present and perhaps a future too. i remember building my first pc in 1997 with just 16mb ram and windows 95. those were the days!

I am quite sure 256MB in your graphics card would be insufficient for dual monitors. Maybe 512MB would be better.

All ram does with a video card is define the max pixel size of the image; ie the what the monitor is set to. The old computer I am on now has two monitors; one for the photoshop image; one for tools. The main monitor has a 16 meg number nine card; it can go up to a 1200x1600 display with 32bits. The tools monitor has an old S# card thats got 2 megs of ram is and is at a 600x800 setting. This box can process a 100 meg image with ease and its just a 1 ghz Piii with 1 gig of ram.

Dual monitors can mean one seamless image made with two monitors that are alike; or just an old clunker 2nd monitor used to display ones tools. Do not assume that an ACME card with dual outputs will allow one to calibrate two monitors to be calibrated as one giant monitor.

Many thanks to all for the advice.

I appreciate the 64- vs. 32-bit consideration, but I am not planning to upgrade to 64-bit Vista or CS4, or at least not anytime soon. I have other software (not related to Photoshop) that is too old to run on Vista, but it does what I need it to and upgrading all of it would seriously downgrade my wallet.

I am looking to build something that I can run until the hardware drops, not until the next software update comes out.

I should have said that in principle I am all for forward compatibility. But given a fixed number of dollars, in a contest between current performance (speed, reliability, compatibility with my existing software) and forward compatibility I will go for current performance. Can the 64-bit folks suggest a way to maximize forward compatibility without compromising current performance and with no (or only incremental) additional spending?

The kind of suggestions I am envisioning are "Buy this motherboard/CPU/etc. instead of that one."

Thanks again, Andrew

I as well love building my own box. Although I have trouble with some of the deeper bois stuff and raid settings, I find it gratefully rewarding. It’s in-expensive too, if you start with a great case and power supply and just keep up-grading.

I’m two weeks into a new box and would love to share my parts list as I’m really pleased with the performance for the cost.

First though, I wouldn’t go for the higher-end and newer CPU’s like the Q9550. There is new architecture on the horizon (Nahalem) and these CPU’s will drop in price very soon. If you’re comfortable with over-clocking, the Q6600 can be taken to 3.2 ghz very comfortably with a $40 cpu cooler. More importantly, three things are dependant on a fast Photoshop box; cpu, ram, and hard drives. With your parts list, you have other bottle-necks and will not be using your Q9550 to full potential as your ammount of ram and hard drive speed can’t keep up with what the Q9550 is capable of. If this was a car you were building, you are about to drop a very powerful motor into a car with a weak transmission and tires that can’t take the speed. So I say save yourself a couple hundred bucks and go with the Q6600 for the time being. In a year from now, this same Q9550 will be cheap and swapping it out will only require a bois flash. Ten minutes work. In the meantime, build your car up with great tires and a strong drive train. Meaning, the back bone of a system is hard drive speeds and lots of ram.

The fastest 7200 rpm drives on the market at the moment are the new Western Digital 640’s. They are $85.00 each! Two of these 640 drives in Raid O are faster than the new $300.00 Velociraptor. If not aware, the Velociraptor is the fastest drive going, a 10,000 rpm speed demon. There likely won’t be much more improvement in mechanical hard drive speeds as everything is going solid state.

Ram is cheap and the simplest upgrade one can do. 8 gigs of DDR-2 1066 ram can be had for $250. The only way, at the moment, to use 8 gigs of ram is with Vista 64. Vista 64 uses ram differently than other Windows OS. Vista 64 data, that normally goes to scratch disk on 32 bit systems and apps, is now stored in the remaining ram one has over 3.2 gig. Meaning, when CS3 runs out of ram at 3.2 gig (when you are running Vista 64 or Leopard with 8 gigs of ram) the OS will use the remaining 4.8 gigs of ram for what is normally sent to scratch disk. Speed improvements with Photoshop on 8 gigs of ram with a 64 bit OS, while emulating 32 bit applications, is greatly noticed. It’s great, finally, to see via a Vista gadget, that 7 gigs of ram is being used when the system is under load.

Vista 64 SP1 is a great OS as long as it is installed on new hardware. The SP1 actually has a different kernel than the original Vista 64. One can forget everything they’ve heard about Vista over the last couple years as SP1 has only been out since March and are, in essence, different OS’s. The upcoming CS4, like Lightroom 2, will be 64 bit native on Windows. This will allow windows users to run wild with ram. If this is just a Photoshop box, I definitely wouldn’t consider anything other than Vista 64.

Onto the goodies…

Motherboard: Asus P5Q-Deluxe. But the P5Q-Pro will do great. $200.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131297

CPU: Intel Q6600. $185.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115018

CPU Cooler: Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer 4. (CR-CCTF) $40.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835207004&Tpk=CR-CCTF

RAM: 8 gig of Patriot, 2 X 4GB PC2-8500 DDR2-1066. (PVS24G8500ELKR2) $250.00

(link)

Hard Drives: 3 X WD SE 16 640GB (WD6400AAKS) $255.00

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Video Card: EVGA 512-P3-N944-LR GeForce 9400 GT 512MB. $60.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130389

Optical Drive: Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20X (DVR-216DBK) $30.00

(link)

OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit. $180.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116493

Case: I like the Antec P182. $130.00 (no PS)

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Case: Sonata III. $130.00 (with PS)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129024

This is an extremely fast box for $1330.00. Other than the OS (I’m running the new 64-bit Server 2008 with Vista 64 packs) it is what I’ve just built up to make do for the next year until Nahalem is mainstream. If this is a little too much (you didn’t mention budget), I’d downgrade from Vista Ultimate to Vista Home. Trim more off by dropping from 8 gigs to 4 gigs of ram and wait until you can get the extra 4. If however it is well within budget, then I’d consider a total of four 640 hard drives for Raid O. If you still have room to play, go for 16 gigs of ram.

I’ve listed 3 quantity WD 640 drives. Two are meant to be Raid O for your OS and applications and the third for your scratch disk. If you can afford a fourth 640 drive, it would be worthwhile to Raid O two of them as well just for your scratch drive. The Intel Matrix Raid software is great. The price on these drives is incredible.

With that said, I wouldn’t get too carried away with mechanical hard drives. The SSD (solid state) is the next drive we will be using and the performance of these are expected to be incredible. Some are already on the market (OCZ) but aren’t doing as well as hoped.

If you go with the 640’s, you must google “AAM Western Digital 640”. AAM stands for Automatic Acoustic Management and needs to be disabled for proper performance. You also need to do it before you setting up your raid.

I mentioned that I like the P182 case. This is a great case. It is well thought out, attractive, and takes 7 hard drives. And mine is stuffed full. The air movement is fantastic and can take a few extra fans as well. Cooling means stability and longevity. Even if you aren’t over-clocking, I still go with great third party CPU coolers and case fans.

The video card I listed wont play games. But it is a dual dvi output card with 512mb and is in the 9000 series. Works great. And for $60.

Additional forums to check out are the Adobe User to User forum for Vista 64 users/advice, and The Overclockers Forum @ www.ocforums.com for hard ware compatibility. The OC Forum is filled with knowledgeable adults, is greatly moderated, and the participants are very helpful with noob questions.

"Can the 64-bit folks suggest a way to maximize forward compatibility without compromising current performance and with no (or only incremental) additional spending?"

I've had good luck running my older 32 bit applications on 64 bit. Vista took most of it as it emmulates it just fine. The other alterntaive is to make a partition and load XP32 on one, and Vista64 on the other. Dual-boot, in other words.

The mobo you listed is for DDR-3 ram and x38 chipset. It's very expensive getting a decent amount of ram when going DDR-3 and x38 isn't getting the same rave reviews as the P45 chipset. I'd stick with DDR-2 boards with the P45 chipset. The Asus P5Q-Deluxe (or pro) is a great board.

Good luck.

With many of my boxes I just build then to be upgradable by making several spare logical drives. The upgrade OS just goes into the second or third boot. Thus one ancient box has win98se on the first boot; win2000 in the second; xp pro in the third; ie triple boot. Thus an application thet requires a full dos can use Win98se; stuff that wont run under Xp can use old win2000. After awhile uses the old OS less and less. Here I have two SSD (solid state drives) already. Beware that there is alot of hype and some wrongs with sales info for SSD's for laptops. Some actually consome MORE power than a regular drive when at idle; thus your battery life can be LESS when a SSD is used. Also the read and write speeds can be low; the older slower ones being flushed out on Ebay. With a SSD I bought; reformating it into 2 logical drives goofed up some internal patch they have that helped the read write thruput'; after formating the SDD is slower; later I got an email from the Ebay seller saying to never reformat the SSD! (maybe thats why they are on Ebay?) :)

# Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2
i will go with Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP3
# Graphics software: Adobe Photoshop CS3
Good , but u may look in CS4 since it will support NVIDIA CUDA 2.0 , it performance will be better by 4x-10x
# Motherboard: Intel DX38BT (up to 1333 MHz FSB)
I will go with X48 for full X16 support (2 slots) or P45 if u do not plan to use CrossfireX
# CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (12 Mb L2 cache, 1333 MHz FSB, LGA775 socket)
good .
# Overclocking: No
You maythink about it with a good cooler for stable 3.6 GHz++
# CPU cooling fan: TBD
Q: Presumably I need one. Any recommendations?
# Video card: nVidia NVS 290 (256 Mb, dual DVI, PCIe x16)
Note X38 motherboard do not support SLI , so it do not make a big sense to get such motherboard X38 , then use a NVIDIA card , in this case P45 is pretty enough , As a video card i highly recommend the 9800GT (120$) or 9800GTX+ (about the same as teh GT but with additional 12 Stream processor (124 vs 112) and higher clocked frequencies can be fixed by some overclocking :-) )
# Memory: 4Gb (OCZ DDR3 1333 MHz, 2 DIMMs)
Do not waste your Money with DDR3 , get some DDR2 (1066) it will perform even better . DDR is good only is u look for 1600-1800 Mhz ++ and even 2000 Mhz , lower frequency will result in worse performance due to the large latencies , GET 4GB (1066) OCZ for about 90$ (from newegg)
# Primary hard drive: TBD (SATA, probably 10k RPM)
10 K HDD are a complete waste of $ , it u need fast access and high bandwidth u may look for seagate HDD they have a low acces (no as good as the 10k WD) but it is acceptable , the bandwidth is about the same , moreover for the price of 1 HDD 10k u can go with 2x750 GB hdd in raid 0 which will perform better in file transfer and intensive hdd tasks
# Case: Antec Sonata III (including 500W power supply)
500w in our day in note recommended , yes it is enough but i u plan to update the video card soon then u may have to change with 650w or more . So my vote is for 650w (brand name quality PSU).
hope that my answer was clear enough
john

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