Building new computer

[wmchauncey]

I do a lot of PS CC image stacking using my 22MP Canon 1Ds3 and, am planning on upgrading to the high MP Canon DSLR should it ever come to fruition.
As I will be putting my OS and PS CC on a SSHD and using a small SSD as a scratch disk, and http://www.microcenter.com/product/434176/Core_i7-4790K_40GHz_LGA_1150_Boxed_Processor
with new video card and 24GB of RAM, and ancillary stuff...using old 2 and 1 TB HD's.  Anything else pop into your mind?       

[armand]

Why 24 GB RAM?

[jerryrock]

"If your startup disk is an SSD, there is no benefit to selecting a different disk for your primary scratch disk. Using the SSD for both your system startup disk and your primary scratch volume performs well."

Quoted from Adobe Photoshop Help - Optimize Performance | Photoshop CS4, CS5, CS6, CC .

[robertvine]

Here's a great article that discusses every component of a computer build and how it relates to imaging performance.
http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/141/Build+a+powerful+PC+for+Photoshop+and+other+imaging+applications

[zr_photo]

Here's a great article that discusses every component of a computer build and how it relates to imaging performance.
http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/141/Build+a+powerful+PC+for+Photoshop+and+other+imaging+applications

I'm looking at building/having a laptop built and this was a great read! I'm glad I found this in the search. My question is though, I am going to go w/ a Sager and it looks like I will have either a 250 or 500GB Samsung mSSD as my Boot Drive. From there I will also have a 7200 1TB in the HDD#1 spot and the #2 HDD spot I'm unsure of...

In the article above it states:

Hard drive 2 - Photoshop Scratch & Lightroom Catalogue Drive: Consider having a very small but very fast second hard drive that is used exclusively for Photoshop scratch files & your Lightroom (or Capture One etc.) catalogues. Because you never really use Lightroom and Photoshop at the same time as such, this drive can share these two roles nicely, and it keeps your scratch/catalogue operations separate from operations on your actual files which are on the next drive.

Hard drive 3 - Fast Working Drive: I store current working projects on this drive. This is also an SSD drive (128GB in my case), which means all my current and day to day stuff is very quickly accessible.

Since I have only the mSATA, HHD1 and HDD2... what would the best solution be for getting the most out of what I have to work w/?
What if I went with a Optical Drive Bay/SSD and used an external Blu-Ray Reader/Writer - DVDRW/CDRW Combo Drive?

[robertvine]

I'd go with 2x HDD in a RAID 0 configuration. While not as quick as an SSD you get a lot of space that can be read faster than a single HDD.

Don't stress too much about the scratch SSD, I don't run one in my laptop and with 16gb of memory the bottleneck in processing is still the HDD where the images are stored and CPU.

[Torbjörn Tapani]

Wrong. Using HDD for storage is not a bottleneck for image processing. A fast SSD for scratch will help. It can be the same as the system drive if you have only one, no problem. But Adobe will use the scratch drive no matter the amount of RAM installed. For a laptop just get the biggest SSD you can. In a desktop it's always possible to add more later.

[tived]

Torbjorn

I will have to disagree with you. SSD's for image processing have for me performed a lot better i.e. faster then it ever have for HDD's

Its been discussed here for years. Having multiple drives also helps, at this is both the case for Mac and PC/Windows and *nix systems

a HHD will become a bottleneck in a system with a current CPU/RAM/GPU, its the slowest part, SSD is also relative slow, but is an improvement over HDD.

PS does still not take full advantage of the hardware technologies that are currently available and therefore isn't always able to fully benefit from state of the arts systems. It would be great if it did.

Happy New Years

Henrik

PS: Torbjorn what system do you use?

[zr_photo]

Right now it looks like this is what I'm going to be going with... I've changed it up/changed my mind about 1000 times already. Feel free to comment on the set-up.

Sager NP7378
72% NTSC Panel (I did decide against IPS panel) - External Dell monitors for color critical work...
4th Gen (haswell) i7-4710MQ / 2.5 - 3.5GHz / 6MB Intel Smart Cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M (2GB) DDR 5 PCI-Express DX11 w/ Optimus
24GB HyperX Impact Black Series (8GB x3 (max RAM for 7378))
500GB Samsung 840 EVO mSATA SSD (Boot Drive, C:)
1TB 7200 HDD (HDD Drive #1)
250GB Samsung Pro 850 SSD (HDD Drive #2)
250GB Samsung Pro 850 SSD (Optical Drive Hard Drive Caddy)

Programs:
Capture One Pro
Phase One Media Pro
DxO (All three... Optics Pro, Film Pack, View Point)
Sony Vegas Pro Suite
Corel Draw Graphics Suite
iClone
3DXchange
BlinkBid
Microsoft Office 13' Home Ed.
Windows 8.1
.... I think that's it for the most part?!?

[tived]

is this a laptop ? which one?

Henrik

Right now it looks like this is what I'm going to be going with... I've changed it up/changed my mind about 1000 times already. Feel free to comment on the set-up.

Sager NP7378
72% NTSC Panel (I did decide against IPS panel) - External Dell monitors for color critical work...
4th Gen (haswell) i7-4710MQ / 2.5 - 3.5GHz / 6MB Intel Smart Cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M (2GB) DDR 5 PCI-Express DX11 w/ Optimus
24GB HyperX Impact Black Series (8GB x3 (max RAM for 7378))
500GB Samsung 840 EVO mSATA SSD (Boot Drive, C:)
1TB 7200 HDD (HDD Drive #1)
250GB Samsung Pro 850 SSD (HDD Drive #2)
250GB Samsung Pro 850 SSD (Optical Drive Hard Drive Caddy)

Programs:
Capture One Pro
Phase One Media Pro
DxO (All three... Optics Pro, Film Pack, View Point)
Sony Vegas Pro Suite
Corel Draw Graphics Suite
iClone
3DXchange
BlinkBid
Microsoft Office 13' Home Ed.
Windows 8.1
.... I think that's it for the most part?!?

[zr_photo]

Yes, it is a laptop... Sager NP7378 (Clevo W370SS)

[Torbjörn Tapani]

Henrik, sure the HDD is the slowest part in a system but once you have read a relatively small raw file you are done, the rest of the processing is carried out in cpu, ram, scratch and when working and saving in PS the disk write is much faster than the compression of PSD so while working I prefer uncompressed TIFF even when working to a HDD.

My system is a i7, 16 Gb, 3 separate SSDs for system, scratch, working files and HDDs for storage. 95% of the performance boost comes from that first SSD the others are added because I can in a midi tower.

[tived]

Hi Torbjorn,

Maybe it doesn't make a huge difference to your workflow, I work on files from 1-20gb, multi-layered panorama's composites and I can assure you that every little bit of speed helps.

I use a Dual Xeon, 48-96GB of ram, 20 SSD's and 8 HHD's spread over two raid controllers. going from just a few SSD's to 20, spread over 3 arrays, OS/APPs, SWAP/SCRATCH/TEMP disk and Data Storage and then of course a Backup unit. If you look at this page here.

All the best

Henrik

Henrik, sure the HDD is the slowest part in a system but once you have read a relatively small raw file you are done, the rest of the processing is carried out in cpu, ram, scratch and when working and saving in PS the disk write is much faster than the compression of PSD so while working I prefer uncompressed TIFF even when working to a HDD.

My system is a i7, 16 Gb, 3 separate SSDs for system, scratch, working files and HDDs for storage. 95% of the performance boost comes from that first SSD the others are added because I can in a midi tower.

[deejjjaaaa]

24GB HyperX Impact Black Series (8GB x3 (max RAM for 7378))

if it is a new notebook then Clevo (Sager is Clevo's reseller) has a lot of models with 4 slots... why 3 ?

[zr_photo]

if it is a new notebook then Clevo (Sager is Clevo's reseller) has a lot of models with 4 slots... why 3 ?

I figured I could manage with 24GB rather than 32GB in the laptop... I'd like it to be reasonable budget wise, if it were a desktop I was putting together I'd feel a little better about opening up the budget.

Is 8GB RAM going to make a huge difference?

[deejjjaaaa]

I figured I could manage with 24GB rather than 32GB in the laptop... I'd like it to be reasonable budget wise, if it were a desktop I was putting together I'd feel a little better about opening up the budget.

Is 8GB RAM going to make a huge difference?

I think that unless you have some other specific issues then go for 4 slots... I think to have the best memory performance you need to have DIMMs working in pairs... so 2 x 2 is better then 2x1 + 1

[zr_photo]

$255 is about what it would cost me to bump to 32GB... You are saying that I will see $255 worth of performance  by going to the 8GB extra?

I think that unless you have some other specific issues then go for 4 slots... I think to have the best memory performance you need to have DIMMs working in pairs... so 2 x 2 is better then 2x1 + 1

[John Nollendorfs]

Going from 16 to 32 gig of ram will not work, if you are using Windows 7 Home Premium. You have to upgrade to Pro version to recognize the additional memory!!

[zr_photo]

Going from 16 to 32 gig of ram will not work, if you are using Windows 7 Home Premium. You have to upgrade to Pro version to recognize the additional memory!!

The 7378 has a Max RAM of 24GB (3 slots), I was going to max out the RAM @ the 24GB.

The 8278 has a Max RAM of 32GB (4 slots)...

I'll be using Windows 8.1 (NOTE: Windows 7 Pro or Higher OS Required for 24GB (or 32GB) RAM Configuration.)

[deejjjaaaa]

$255 is about what it would cost me to bump to 32GB... You are saying that I will see $255 worth of performance  by going to the 8GB extra?

you mean that notebook with 4 slots costs $255 more than yours with 3 slots ? because one 8gb so-dimm of your memory retails around $80 ...