Let's build a dedicated Photo Editing PC...

Mongrel

Hello 'all',

I'm kicking around ideas for building a dedicated photo editing (only) 'work station' (PC) and would like your input...

Some parameters:

Photo editing *only*. No mp3's, games, video, surfing, etc.

Intel or AMD OK

Dual Core (no overclocking or 'other' fun 'n games)

2GB minimum memory

Storage options are open, but please no RAID arrays (I just can't wrap my head around RAID at all). Just a good system drive will do, I have plenty of drives for storage and back up 'manually'.

On board video ok, BUT prefer a fanless dual DVI output card (Asus makes one I belive).

Motherboard-nothing fancy! I don't need wifi, multiple raid setups, or any bells and whistles-AT ALL. Just a good solid MB from a reputable maker (I'm leaning toward and Intel board for Intel CPU and an Asus board for AMD, let me know your thoughts).

Small FF or 'media' style case preferred, let me know if you have a favorite.

Software I use: CS2, BreezeBrowser PRO, DPP, possibly iView Pro (or other catologing software).

Looking for speed (batch converting RAW) *and* stability, some future-proofing would be good but not necessarily a deal-breaker if the build is cheap enough-lol. I know that prices are set to get shaken up around the end of July, so take that into consideration if you like.

I'm currently using a home-built Socket A Barton 2800+ with 2GB DDR400 on an nForce2 Gigabyte mb. System is rock-solid but getting a wee-bit long in tooth. Looking for something that will be noticeable faster without breaking the bank (yea-I know, aren't we all?).

Budget?

Case, Memory, motherboard, processor, (1)system hard drive SATA, and vid card (if necessary) $500-$600.

Impossible?

Thanks in advance for ANY constructive help,

Anthony

Vich

Don't get our slang "long in tooth". Current one not performing I presume. Just a few thoughts.

Performance triangle: Memory, CPU, IO, and the bonus corner, misbehaving software. There's always a bottleneck. It's very likely you could improve your current system substantially. Here's some suggestions.

Memory's cheap, you could add 2GB. Windows only accesses 4GB but the way it allocates improvements can be seen even above that mark.

For IO, download the Executive Software defragmenter. It's the absolute best. Run the demo to get things back in line.

If you just have just 1 HDD, consider adding a 2nd to install your photos on. That will prevent "thrashing" in your system buffers as you load photos. Your programs will mostly get loaded and stay in memory as you run things, but there's all sorts of buffers (esp. virtual memory) that have constant IO. SATA drives area a LOT faster than IDE.

If you use Norton Antivirus, it'll drag you way down. Some HP MFC printer drivers do the same. Trash Norton and get NOD32. It's by far faster and safer. WELL worth the $40 and annual renewals are cheaper. Better protection too.

Do ctrl/alt/del and check memory usage if your system ever drags. You may see HP print drivers at the top. If so, Google resolutions or replace it.

Of course; building a new system can be a lot faster. Consider getting one that permits dual processor. That way, next time you get dissatisfied a simple second processor purchase will give you amazing improvement. 2GB will be OK, but 3GB would be better. Get SATA drives, as fast as you can affort. Get dual drives.

If you decide to get Mirrored drives, and if you can load Windows XP Server, it'll support software mirroring. The extra drag of mirroring is more than made up for while all disk reads are shared between them. You'll also be much "safer". I believe this may even be a wiser use of 2 drives than splitting the OS / Programs onto it's own volume. Once a photo is loaded, I don't think there's much thrashing about. Of course "hardware mirroring" is even higher performance and not expensive, but be warned, it has issues on Windows Professional XP (I know, I have it on my work WS and our server guy said it's a Windows problem that vanishes on the Windows Server version).

The Server version comes licensed with all sorts of Academic licenses - if you happen to be a student, you should be able to lay your hands on one. I'm getting a full Visual Studio (includes personal version of Win Server) for $35 due to the extension class I'm taking. If you look around, stuff like that's available. Most software and drivers work on the Win Server version - I have 5 servers (at work) and have never had an issue.

Of course; if performance were really really an issue, and you had $10K, then 6 15,000 RPM SCSI drives in RAID 1 + RAID 6 configurations and two dual core processors plus 3GB RAM would build one kick-ass machine (it's what we're getting next week) but 2 SATA drives with one dual core processor will be half that, but only about $2K and still Kick-A

Good luck!

mwgrice

Vich wrote:

If you decide to get Mirrored drives, and if you can load Windows XP Server, it'll support software mirroring. The extra drag of mirroring is more than made up for while all disk reads are shared between them. You'll also be much "safer". I believe this may even be a wiser use of 2 drives than splitting the OS / Programs onto it's own volume. Once a photo is loaded, I don't think there's much thrashing about. Of course "hardware mirroring" is even higher performance and not expensive, but be warned, it has issues on Windows Professional XP (I know, I have it on my work WS and our server guy said it's a Windows problem that vanishes on the Windows Server version).

Hey, he said not to talk about RAID! This is RAID-1, more commonly known as mirroring.

RAID really isn't that difficult. You add one or more disks, and at the expense of disk space you add redundancy.* There are a couple of different "levels" of RAID, which is where it gets a bit confusing.

You can do it in hardware, and you can do it in software. I usually prefer to do it in hardware, although with cheap RAID cards it often doesn't matter.

Once you've set it up, you really don't have to worry about it except when a hard drive fails.

For a home user, though, you'd be fine if you just copied all your data onto a second hard drive. I think of it as a manual mirror. I'd recommend automating it (e.g., run a batch file or a script which copies all your data onto the second hard drive at 3:00 AM every day). That way you don't have to worry about setting it up, or about what happens when your cheap RAID card hiccups.

I'd also make sure to do regular backups in addition to the manual mirror.

* The exception being RAID-0, which offers no redundancy and which I've never actually seen anyone use.

Mongrel

Thanks for your input so far guys...
Re: "Long in tooth", an expression that basically means getting old-; as in "Mongrel is getting long in tooth"

Re: RAID...

It's not so much that it would be *too* difficult to learn or understand, but whether it's worth the time and effort to do so? Using a system drive for programs and two larger drives for storage and backup (one probably USB2.0 or even firewire) seems *simple* to me. Work on one drive backup on the other, burn DVD\CDs for additional insurance.

One of the reasons for having a dedicated machine is to avoid bloating and to simplify general maintenance. I will have a 2nd machine for testing out software, surfing, and whatnot. This way I can leave the editing PC as clean as possible. What's happening now is if I want to demo say iView Pro, Supercat, or any number of other programs, I wind up having a bunch 'o crap on my machine that I'm not really using. I remove programs which always leaves junk on the registry, now I have to clean the registry, and so on and so on...

The ultimate goal is to have a *very* simple fast system that is stripped down to only what I need for photo editing. In a worse case scenario it can be 'F' disked and reloaded without missing a beat.

With the release of Intel's Conroe processors I expect current dual core processors to drop quite a bit making it quite attractive price-wise to upgrade. The only thing hanging me up is the release of motherboads that support Conroe but that will run 9XX D series chips for now, or whether to go am2 or 939 for AMD. (AMD's X2 dual-cores at currently holding at around $300 for the bottom rung X2 3800, but that is expected to change shortly).

Ultimately I'm looking for...

A small quiet case that fits my desktop
Dual-core processor
4GB DDR2
(1) fast system drive
(2) 300GB or larger SATAII hard drives
Dual DVI output video card to support (2) 20" LCDs
USB2.0 and firewire 'B' to support (2) printers, backup HD, and scanner
built in NIC for uploading pics

I really think this is can be done for a very reasonable price.

My current AMD system is still running well and should continue to for awhile. It does everything else I need to including ripping cds and playing a few games.

Thanks again for your thoughts,

Mongrel

Vich

My point on RAID was performance. It's a relatively cheap way to bump a system. When reading, the drive head has to move to the right place. Reading from mirrored drives, there's 2 different drives that simultaneously retrieve different parts of the request. The OS drive is constantly doing IO. Data protection is a bonus.

The new GHOST will do scheduled incremental backups of backup images (compressed). That's an alternative that could make life easier if you do ever have to reload. If you can keep an image of D on C, and visa versa, that would help out for disk creashes a lot. You could also get a cheap NAS (network attached storage) and schedule the image to that. Then you may even survive a theft. I think a 400GB is about $300. Still, having everything on DVD is essential.

A simple copy will NOT work well as a drive backup, esp. for your OS. You have to use specialized backup software (Ghost, Symantec, Windows built in, etc) to make it usable for a full reload.

Mongrel

Hi Vich,

Vich wrote:

My point on RAID was performance. It's a relatively cheap way to bump a system. When reading, the drive head has to move to the right place. Reading from mirrored drives, there's 2 different drives that simultaneously retrieve different parts of the request. The OS drive is constantly doing IO. Data protection is a bonus.

The new GHOST will do scheduled incremental backups of backup images (compressed). That's an alternative that could make life easier if you do ever have to reload. If you can keep an image of D on C, and visa versa, that would help out for disk creashes a lot. You could also get a cheap NAS (network attached storage) and schedule the image to that. Then you may even survive a theft. I think a 400GB is about $300. Still, having everything on DVD is essential.

A simple copy will NOT work well as a drive backup, esp. for your OS. You have to use specialized backup software (Ghost, Symantec, Windows built in, etc) to make it usable for a full reload.

From the benchmarks I 've been able to find, RAID will not offer that much of a performance boost over a dual-core non-raid setup. Dual-cores fly in photoshop benches.

As far as backup...

I don't care if my OS is backed up or not. That's the point of having separate storage and OS drives. As long as my pics are backed up, I just re-format re-install XP and CS2 and start over. I have software now that does a full system backup and it's rather a PITA even when set to backup automatically. Especially when I'm up late editing and it pops up and starts it's back up

I'll take it under consideration, and read up on it some more. My current motherboard supports raid and up to four SATA drives, so I could actually do this on my existing machine.

thanks again,

Mongrel

Enoch

Looks like you are making some smart decisions to me. As I am in the process of putting together a new system, I am having to make some of the same decisions that you are.

I personally am going for the Raid 1 (mirrored) route. Simply because I am lazy, and don't want to have to do regular back-ups. Their is one "flaw" in this method. If there is a fire, lighting destroys my hard drives, a tornado comes through, or in the unlikely event (in your dedicated systems case) of a virus, I could lose all my data with no back-ups. This is the only reason I have considered using an external drive for back up. You would back up at least once a week, if not everyday, and then unplug your hard drive (minimum) or carry it to work (a different location) with you.

Because I have all my data inside my case, I am going with the expensive route of backing up on tapes. It is much more practical then burning Cd's, and you can be as redundant as you want/need to be.

A couple other things you should consider, if you haven't already. Buy a case that will hold many hard drives, so you can easily and cheaply add on into the future. Mine will hold 6, but would like even more since I am mirroring. Also, be sure your hard drives are SATA 300, not 150. From the sounds of it, you have already thought this threw as well, just thought i would mention it.

One final thought. Some motherboard will encrypt your data for "security." The problem is if your motherboard goes bad, you may have to look for a replica motherboard to be able to see your data. I was advised, and since I'm going the RAID route, to buy PCI RAID adapter cards to run my "data" hard drives off of. Of course, the OS can be encrypted for all i care.

Nutter

Head over to www.hardocp.com and check out their chip and motherboard reviews. These guys push the hardware to the limit and give VERY detailed reviews of the hardware. If it holds up to their abuse (yes they oc everything they can) it will defianately be stable. On the flip side you might want to look into server class motherboards from Tyan or Supermicro. I have a supermicro motherboard with dual xenon PIII 450mhz server i bought 8 years ago or so and it is still kicking after running damm near every hour save a hdd or five And most of the new low end server stuff comming out supports dual core.

Best of Luck!

-Ken