Best Computer setup for Digital Photography

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technician

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Paul
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Hi Guys / Gals

i am new to the forum , and was wondering if you could give me a spot of adivce please

i have been asked to build a computer for a guy who has Uses a Cannon EOS 5D Digital SLR (Approx £1000) With Prime Lenses (means Nothing to me!)

Usiing Photoshop CS3 Software and Lightroom 1

The basic specification i have been given is

4 GIG Ram.
1 TB Sata Hard Drive.
2 x Graphics Cards.

My Question is What Is the Best Specification of Components?

1, What are the best Graphics Cards to use, based on the fact that he has requested 2?

2, WHat CPU / Speed and Motherboard would you recommend

As I Am not photo oreintated, and money seem to be no object (Within Reason) i though i would ask you the experts.

Any Help or advice is appreciated

Paul
 
No idea why he wants two graphics cards yet only one hard-drive?

I have built a few using AMD ATHLON 64 X2 6000+ 1MB SKT-AM2 ; ASUS SKT-AM2 M2N-SLI DELUXE S/L 2000MT/s ; 9500 or 9600GT PCI-E Graphics card ; couple of 500gb Sata HD's and 4 to 6 Gig DDR2 800 RAM.

Works fine on Win XP 64.
 
Hi

Thanks for the reply

he does want to hard drives, should have said that, he has an original 500 gig that will be stripped from his old computer. I was unsure of why he requires two gfx cards as well

thought there must be something i was missing

Paul
 
Maybe he's a Gamer too?
 
2 gfx cards suggests he likes to play games as well?

edit: SNAP! :lol:
 
Hi

nope no games play

he did say something about colour matching?????


He is to old to play games


Needs to be a windows system i think. a MAC would blow his mind
 
can anyone think of any good reson to have two GFX cards in a computer used just for Internet / Photo editing?
 
technician said:
can anyone think of any good reson to have two GFX cards in a computer used just for Internet / Photo editing?
Click to expand...

To have a separate monitor profile on each one. :)
 
he is to old to get a grasp of MAC .

I personally like them , but he has taken a few years to get used to windows.

I wouldnt want the grief of teching him how to use one :-)


thanks for the comments though
 
I would go for a powerful Intel Quad Core CPU for multitasking, editing etc.

As for graphics cards, you only need one, 2 is unnecessary. If he's talking about colour, then he should buy monitor calibration thing (i forget what its called) but it costs a fair bit though.

I would get at least 2 hard drives, probably 4 so you can have improved performance through RAID 0, but also have RAID 1 for mirroring the RAID 0 (so you dont lose any information if one hard drive failes.

XP 64 will do the trick.

I would make sure you optimise the system once you've installed everything so the system will run faster.
 
To be brutally honest, you could build a cracking machine for £300 (excluding Operating System and Monitors) which would run all of that stuff fine.

People gets nuts about processing power, but I am in the position of being able to AB machines in 'real world' tests and can tell you that the difference between a top of the line Quad Core (I am yet to get my hands on an i7 core CPU!) machine and an entry level Core2Duo is not as much as you might think for the majority of tasks.

Oh, and go Seagate for the drives - we recently placed an order for 300 and not a duff one, plus a rather handy 5 year warranty :)

Cheers,
James
 
The essentials for photo-work are:

1: Reasonably powerful CPU - no need to go too overboard, but Core2Duo Intel, or AMD X2 5600+ as a minimum.
2: 4GB of memory is good, 8GB is better. You'll need a 64-bit version of Vista to get the use out of it though.
3: Hard drive space. It fills up rather fast... 1TB drives are ~£70, chuck 2 in to start.
4: 1 mid to high range card is plenty, unless he needs to calibrate 2 monitors, then go for a mid-range SLi/Crossfire setup.
 
Doesn't Photoshop CS4 take advantage of GPUs?
 
Thanks for the info guys, especially on the monitor calibrator. I knew nothing about them, and that does make sense after reading a little about what they do

thanks to all who have commented

Paul
 
technician said:
Hi Guys / Gals

i am new to the forum , and was wondering if you could give me a spot of adivce please

i have been asked to build a computer for a guy who has Uses a Cannon EOS 5D Digital SLR (Approx £1000) With Prime Lenses (means Nothing to me!)

Usiing Photoshop CS3 Software and Lightroom 1

The basic specification i have been given is

4 GIG Ram.
1 TB Sata Hard Drive.
2 x Graphics Cards.

My Question is What Is the Best Specification of Components?

1, What are the best Graphics Cards to use, based on the fact that he has requested 2?

2, WHat CPU / Speed and Motherboard would you recommend

As I Am not photo oreintated, and money seem to be no object (Within Reason) i though i would ask you the experts.

Any Help or advice is appreciated

Paul
Click to expand...

how much would it cost to a build a pc with this spec... you can get similiar spec acer 5535 laptop from tesco for £370
 
Most important thing is the monitor. Don't just get the biggest thing you can find, you need one with large viewing angles that can show all the colours correctly. The majority of LCD displays that you see for sale are woefully inadequate IMO.
 
jayeshpp said:
As for graphics cards, you only need one, 2 is unnecessary. If he's talking about colour, then he should buy monitor calibration thing (i forget what its called) but it costs a fair bit though.
Click to expand...

You are totally right that what is needed is a proper calibration tool but it doesn't replace the need to apply the corrections it comes up with to something that generates the signal to the monitor.

No two monitors are the same, so if you calibrate both you end up with two sets of corrections and a single graphics card cannot apply one set of corrections to one port and separate corrections to another.

Although, reading reddeathdrinker's post, I'm guessing that there are dual cards available now that presumably are two cards in one, for just this purpose.

Most peoples workflow does only require one monitor to be calibrated though and the other displays the tool palettes to work with.
 
Heh, so much stuff i could comment on there, but i'll give you a quick run down of what i would get.


--> Vista 64bit - XP64 is crap, dont waste your money on that)
--> Core2 Quad - Q6600 is cheap and should do the job, plenty of overclocking headroom as well)
--> 2x 1Tb drives - RAID1 or just make sure you backup proceedures are very good....better still put one in an external case for even better backing up
--> Gigabyte mobo - imo the best brand, asus are known to be very unreliable and in fact last week my mates asus mobo which is my high-end than my board packed up after <1year
--> 2x 22" monitors - 2 screens is a must for a 'photography' pc and though you cant use SLI or CF they are of small benifit anyway. 22" seems to be the best value for money, 24's are pretty expensive still
--> Razer Krait mouse - £25 for a class mouse = great value, even if it is 'only' 1600dpi, get a nice mat as well, i got a Sharkoon '1337' gaming mat for under £5 which works brilliantly with the razer
--> 4gb of ram - 2x 2Gb of PC2-6400 should do the trick, OCuk are doing a kit of OCZ gold for £35 atm, this allows for 8gb if required (ps, always buy the cheapest ram since overclocking it makes virtually no difference)

Choice of motherboard and graphics are upto you and depend on how much overclocking and gaming you anticipate. And aftermarket cooler is a must if overclocking.

As for monitor calibration and quality thats up to you, i've never really been that bothered about colour accuracy but some are, top end monitors are big money though.
 
If you decide to use a hardware Raid setup make sure you get Enterprise Hard drives, the bog standard ones don't have a complete instruction set which can and will cause havoc.
Remenber to have the scratch disk on a seperate fast HDD what ever you decide to do.
Get a 3rd party Defrag app (diskeeper is good) which are a lot faster than the std one and you can shedule.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Doesn't Photoshop CS4 take advantage of GPUs?
Click to expand...

Correct, CS4 was designed to use GPU's for faster processing of graphics. 2 cards running Sli would be rather nice, maybe 2x Nvidia GeForce GTX 295's! Hell, if money's no worry why not? Quad core, 8gb decent ram (800mhz+ in 4x2gb sticks so that you can dual channel them) and raid the hdd's - you're all set to run NASA! :lol::lol::lol:

Ps. Don't forget to put a huge power supply in there, at least 1000W cos you're going to need it to run all that hardware.
 
andiphoto said:
how much would it cost to a build a pc with this spec... you can get similiar spec acer 5535 laptop from tesco for £370
Click to expand...

Erm, only 250GB (he wants 1.5TB) and not a gfx card in sight (he wants two)?

I think you're way off the mark there.
 
dazzajl said:
To have a separate monitor profile on each one. :)
Click to expand...

Any half decent card these days will allow a separate gamma ramp/LUT for each monitor - even the cheapo GFX9500 in my machine does it :thumbs:

CS4 uses some 3D features to allow zooming and rotation but it's gfx memory that will cause problems there not power.
 
Sarin said:
Ps. Don't forget to put a huge power supply in there, at least 1000W cos you're going to need it to run all that hardware.
Click to expand...

600W is plenty, 1000w's are very expensive and you'll never use it.

Imo i wouldnt worry too much about the gfx card (asnd defo wouldnt go down the route of 2) A half decent one like a 4850 or 4870 would do the job for CS4 and could handle modern games with ease. I doubt gfx card does much in PS, it is probably just a work in progress.
 
thanks for all your input guys

As previously said , this machine will never see a game being played on it whatsoever. The most demending jobs it will do it Photo editing and possibly website creation / maintenance.

Having read some of your comments especially on the colour matching side, i can now understand why he asked for two GFX cards, as one motitor may display the colours differently to the other monitor

I honestly did not know about the monitor Calibration tools.

I had already decided on Quad Core technoclogy, and Yes he did want at least a 1 gig hard drive, coupled with his old, one, but seeing as his old drive will be and IDE, i think this requires replacement as well.

Once again many many thanks for everyones input. it has been most beneficial to me

Paul
 
Ok so ive just found this, and i bet i wont get any reply's as its almost 4 years on lol.
But im just looking into building a pc for my photography.

Why is it essential to have 2 monitors?? what is the benefit of this ?
Cheers
 
neil_g said:
holy thread dredge..
Click to expand...
Yes, I wondered how a thread on computers for photo processing had got to two pages and I hadn't commented :lol: (but now I have so I'm at peace now...)

neil_g said:
its not essential to have 2 screens. just helps in terms of real estate, Lightroom can utilise 2 screens etc.
Click to expand...
:agree:
 
Wow well I didn't expect to have any reply's Well done guys :thumbs:

So if im not really using lightroom there's no need for 2 monitors.

and sorry for my Pc stupidity, but what is this raid 1 and 0 all about.
I understand having one hard drive for all your programmes then another for just photo storage etc thats a good idea :)
 
B B Leo said:
tell him to get a mac :D
Click to expand...

Why? WOuld make no difference, other than learning a new OS...

jayeshpp said:
I would go for a powerful Intel Quad Core CPU for multitasking, editing etc.

As for graphics cards, you only need one, 2 is unnecessary. If he's talking about colour, then he should buy monitor calibration thing (i forget what its called) but it costs a fair bit though.

I would get at least 2 hard drives, probably 4 so you can have improved performance through RAID 0, but also have RAID 1 for mirroring the RAID 0 (so you dont lose any information if one hard drive failes.

XP 64 will do the trick.

I would make sure you optimise the system once you've installed everything so the system will run faster.
Click to expand...

Why XP x64? One of the worst OS's (supported at least) in the last decade or more.

Unless he is going for twin 27/30 inch 2560x**** then graphically all he needs is integrated graphics.

I'm currently looking at building a mainly photoshop machine with an Asrock m-ITX board (with displayport), 16GB (2x8GB) RAM, i5 3570K CPU an 128GB SSD and an internal 2TB HDD with a backup HDD of the same size. Easily powerful enough for photoshop for a very long time, except if he needs twin 27" monitors.

EDIT: Someone didn't check the start date of this thread... Quickshooter, personally I'd go for a higher resolution screen over two smaller lower resolution screens, for example a singl 27" 2560x1440 screen over two 20" 1680x1050 screens for example.

RAID 1 and 0 do slightly different things, not sure entirely which each one does but basically one will copy the same data onto both HDD's so when you ask for data they both send it, doubling (ish) the speed in which you get it (say you have two drives that max out at 100MB/s, with a RAID array you will get a "single" drive that will give you a speed of 170MB/s, for example).
 
Last edited:
Amp34 said:
Why? WOuld make no difference, other than learning a new OS...

Why XP x64? One of the worst OS's (supported at least) in the last decade or more.

Unless he is going for twin 27/30 inch 2560x**** then graphically all he needs is integrated graphics.

I'm currently looking at building a mainly photoshop machine with an Asrock m-ITX board (with displayport), 16GB (2x8GB) RAM, i5 3570K CPU an 128GB SSD and an internal 2TB HDD with a backup HDD of the same size. Easily powerful enough for photoshop for a very long time, except if he needs twin 27" monitors.

EDIT: Someone didn't check the start date of this thread... Quickshooter, personally I'd go for a higher resolution screen over two smaller lower resolution screens, for example a singl 27" 2560x1440 screen over two 20" 1680x1050 screens for example.

RAID 1 and 0 do slightly different things, not sure entirely which each one does but basically one will copy the same data onto both HDD's so when you ask for data they both send it, doubling (ish) the speed in which you get it (say you have two drives that max out at 100MB/s, with a RAID array you will get a "single" drive that will give you a speed of 170MB/s, for example).
Click to expand...

Dude, waaaaay old thread ;)

As for raid, 0 will give you speed but dangerous for storage. 1 is mirroring but for storage it's a waste as you're halving your space. Plus it's no substitute for a backup.
 
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