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.