Photoshop / Homebuilt Recommendations Requested

  • Thread starter Thread starter Freeport Maine
  • Start date Start date
F

Freeport Maine

I'm about to tackle my first homebuilt and would appreciate some
recommendations. Beyond the usual email, networking, etc., this is a
machine that will get heavy photoshop/image processing use. Typical files
are 100+ megs. Occassionally my kids will use it for games, but that's
rare.

One mobo criteria is firewire support -- I've got a number of items with
firewire connections, including disk drives, card readers, dvd burners and
scanners.

I've got zero interest in overclocking, I'm looking for stability. And
without getting into the AMD/Intel discussion, I'm leaning towards P4.

I'll end up getting a Sonata case, if it makes a difference.

Budget is @$1,500. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.
 
You could make a hell of a machine for 1500. One of the biggest expenses will be 'monitor' related.
I SUGGEST an Intel board with an intel chipset (850p) but I am not sure of the firewire on that.(add on card?) The case well....the
PSU is the big deciding factor....
 
Almost everything will come down to personal preferences...there are a
number of motherboards that will meet your requirements. The suggestions I
would make are:
1) Don't skimp on RAM, in either quality or quantity. At least a Gig of some
good stuff like Cosair, Mushkin, or Crucial. Don't spend time shopping for
the cheapest.

2) Front panel support for your connections. You'll want front firewire, USB
2, Compact Flash and audio (for headset) . I didn't look at the case you are
buying, but there are 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 in. bay boxes that will do some or
all, depending on what you need. I use a front panel box from www.frontx.com
for firewire, audio, and game ports and a breakout box from the Soyo website
for USB 2 and compact flash card readers.

Good Luck,
Fitz
 
Wow. I've never seen a front box ---- very, very nice. Thanks for the
recommendation.
 
yes all good advice.

Get a decent 17" LCD monitor, it will last you a long time for sure.

With some motherboards you can get upto 3GB of ram onboard. So I
suggest you get at least 2GB.

Get a fast upgraded graphic card. ATI is best for high end stuff I
think.
 
Photoshop recommends a scratch disk on separate drive from the OS virtual
memory (scratch, swap file, however you would like to refer to it). So, 2
harddrives, or at least one large enough to partition with alot of room on
each. Personally, I like my Windows swap file on a separate partition from
the OS (XP on the C: and the virtual memory on D: ...it keeps fragmentation
down, keeping your performance up (there are those that will disagree,
flames may follow!). In that case, you might want C:\Windows, D:\ (a smaller
partition on the same harddrive) for the OS virtual memory, and E:\ 2nd
harddrive for storage, photoshop scratch disk, etc.

Fitz

Fitz
 
I would recommend two monitors, as it makes working with Photoshop a lot
easier. Maybe if you already have one, you could get a 19" and still remain
under budget. You will need either two video cards, or one with two outputs
(nvidia supports the later with nview). Also, two 512 mb sticks of RAM
running in dual channel mode would be good. I wouldn't go for the fastest
P4 processor out there, but, rather, one of the "lesser" more cost effective
processors with an 800 MHz FSB. Get the 3.2 when it comes down in price.

Dave
 
YES! as the palettes will take up your workspace room....one LCD and your existing CRT (if applicable) would be nice...LCD because
of the room saved....and easiness to move around and adjust.

while I'm here..pardon the highjack...

very good comment on the HD partitions also in another response....you always want your production work saved off the partition with
the OS installed for restore/backup reasons, plus scratch disk and swap file considerations as mentioned...
 
Freeport said:
I'm about to tackle my first homebuilt and would appreciate some
recommendations. Beyond the usual email, networking, etc., this is a
machine that will get heavy photoshop/image processing use. Typical
files are 100+ megs. Occassionally my kids will use it for games,
but that's rare.

One mobo criteria is firewire support -- I've got a number of items
with firewire connections, including disk drives, card readers, dvd
burners and scanners.

I've got zero interest in overclocking, I'm looking for stability.
And without getting into the AMD/Intel discussion, I'm leaning
towards P4.

I'll end up getting a Sonata case, if it makes a difference.

Budget is @$1,500. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

loads of ram, like a gig of it.
p4 hyperthreaded for best performance, but it'll cost you.
personally i'd go for an amd barton 2500 and overclock if you're on a
budget.
 
Freeport said:
I'm about to tackle my first homebuilt and would appreciate some
recommendations. Beyond the usual email, networking, etc., this is a
machine that will get heavy photoshop/image processing use. Typical files
are 100+ megs. Occassionally my kids will use it for games, but that's
rare.
Click to expand...

Until you said "kids games" I was going to suggest a matrox G550 video card.
You need GOOD 2D video and this card is the best at it.
One mobo criteria is firewire support -- I've got a number of items with
firewire connections, including disk drives, card readers, dvd burners and
scanners.
Click to expand...

Asus P4P800 deluxe
Budget is @$1,500. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...


Yea first get 2 HD's and 2 monitors, use at least a gig of ram and maybe
take some of that money and build another cheaper "game" system for your
kids to keep them off of this one? Game can fill up a HD REAL fast! Maybe
use something like a 2.6 P4 for this system and the $$$ saved will allow
you to build an AMD system for the kids..
 
I'm a commerical still photographer, and since all of my work is now digital
at least half of my workload involves the computer. I just set up a new
system that has proved to be an excellent platform for PhotoShop, Nikon
Capture, and other graphics progs that can take advantage of dual
processors. Some of this info on this new system may not be of use, but I'm
cutting and pasting it. Much of the hardware is a carry-over from my old
PIII system.

Motherboard: Gigabyte 8KNXP CPU: 2.8C P4 (HT, not OC'd) with Zalman
CNPS7000-Cu HSF
2gb RAM (4 x 512mb Kingston CAS3 in dual-channel mode @ SPD, matched pairs)
OS: WinXP Pro SP1
Keyboard: Northgate 102 Ultra (via PS2 adapter)
IDE1 - Maxtor 160gb (8mb buffer) [C:]
IDE2 - WD 100gb (8mb buffer) [D:]
IDE3 - Empty, disabled
IDE4 - Empty, disabled
SATA, all: Empty, disabled
AGP - Matrox G450 DH at 4x
Monitors: -Sony E540 (21") primary -Sony A240 (17") secondary
NIC (on board) - Connected to Linksys 4-port router
Networked computers: 3
Sound (on board) - enabled
Firewire (on board) - disabled
PCI1 - Empty
PCI2 - StarTech firewire adapter
- Lexar Compactflash reader/writer [F:]
- WD800BB 80gb on firewire adapter (normally not running) [J:]
- WD1200BB 120gb on firewire adapter (normally not running) [K:]
PCI2 - AHA-2930B SCSI adapter:
- Plextor 12/10/32TS CD-RW [H:]
- Plextor 32Plex [I:]
- HP 6250 Scanner
- Iomega Zip
PCI3 - Extra parallel adapter (LPT2)
PCI5 - Empty
LPT1 - Brother HL-645 laser printer
LPT2 - Epson LQ-850 dot-matrix printer
USB:
- Epson Photo Stylus ink-jet printer
- Wacom pen tablet
- Digital Wallet (usually not connected)
COM1 - USR Courier V-Everything external modem (for fax)
COM2 - Empty

You should consider 2gb or more of RAM since you'll be working with very
large files. I originally had 1gb of RAM, and having a habit of loading 20
or more large (30mb) TIF's in PhotoShop would quickly tap what remained of
the first gb of memory. Adding a second gb made considerable difference,
allowing me to load many large files at once without delving heavily into
the swap file. I have the swap file split with C: and D:, and the PhotoShop
scratch disk on D:. If you'll only be working with one 100mb file at a time
you might be able to make do with 1gb of RAM, but with RAM prices rather low
I wouldn't skimp.

The P4 2.8c processor is a hyperthreading model that allows XP Pro, PS, etc.
operate with two logical processors, and performance is impressive. You
could improve performance over the above setup by using one (or two in RAID0
array) WD Raptor (10k rpm) SATA drives, but they are small (37.5gb) and
pricey. I like to keep C: lean, so this would work for me, while using D:,
J:, and K: as my backup and archival-storage drives.

This setup has been in service for three months and it has yet to crash or
produce a BSOD (knock on wood). I was unable to install ITE drivers for
PATA RAID0 when first installing WinXP Pro and quickly abandoned the idea.
After reading about the mediocre performance of this controller, I'm glad it
turned out this way. Any mainstream mobo (Abit, Asus, MSI, etc.) with an
875p chipset and an Intel HT processor should be as stable.

The Matrox G450 DH is excellent for 2D, but I can't vouch for 3D since I
don't do games here.
 
Back
Top