Building for Photoshop

Noticing some slowing caused by increases in file size and processing complexity, I just came to the realization that my PC is 5 years old (that's "dead" in human years) and in need of an upgrade. A brief trip to the internet to look at the current state of hardware prompted another realization...I will be building a new PC, not upgrading mine. (I have not bought a ready-made PC since 1992.)

Now starts the painful process of choosing and buying parts for a new build. Not having unlimited funds is leading me to do extensive research on "bang-for-the-buck". Since I am focusing on performance and working storage for Photoshop and Lightroom rather than gaming, it is looking like the spend/performance curve has a rapid rise to about 90% of maximum performance after which doubling or even tripling the spend realizes minimal gains. My goal is to build another 5-year future-proof PC without spending more than I need to. With about a billion options available, I have my work cut out for me.

Since many of us here on the forum fiddle with their pictures as much or more than I do, I'll chronicle the process in general and post my findings and how I made my decisions. I realize that most people won't build their own PC but the findings should also have value it one is looking to order a new machine or upgrade and wants to know what customizations are worth the extra money.

Is this a good idea or a waste of time?

Dave

It sounds like you have a challenge ahead of you, Dave. I have a 4 year old MacBook Pro and other than unknowingly downloading adware, which was a pain to remove, I haven't had any issues. Good luck to you! I will follow your progress because I think that is probably beyond my skill set, but who knows. [emoji4]

I think this could be helpful. Not planning on building one, but knowing what to look for will be beneficial. Thanks!

Thanks!

One thing about building PCs these days over 20 or even 10 years ago is that much of the truly complicated things are handled by the hardware and software. Almost like a DSLR, you can either plug and play (point and shoot) or tweak settings to your heart's desire ("M" mode).

I won't bore anybody with the "M" mode stuff (except on request) but will focus on hardware choices for a new build or upgrade that will run PS and LR better without breaking the bank.

I will also compare the cost of my final build to an equivalent Mac or pre-configured PC for reference in case someone wants to give a home-grown machine a try.

Dave

I changed from PC to Mac and glad I did. Easier to use and they do not keep adding new software to run their computers. I used windows Xp for years and had a hard time changing to the newer software, so I decided to go for the Mac. Have the Mac Pro laptop and Mac mini with a large monitor. I do miss Word and Excel but find easier to use the Mac, guess I am getting OLD lol.

You will enjoy making a new computer to fit your needs, just have time to take more of your GREAT pictures. Also thanks for steering me to the Sony Nex-7 and A6000 and all the good info that you have contributed to this forum. They do such a great job, most of the time only need Picasa 3 to crop and adjust my pictures and store, wife likes to view them on her iPad and easy to share with her friends.

Thanks Dave

Tom :cool:

Building a new PC is easy. Only decisions are how much processor and RAM can I afford.

Anymore you usually come out better buying a laptop than you do building your own, but it does make for an interesting couple of hours in an afternoon putting it together.

See how easy it is to use a Mac Pro laptop!!!

I changed from PC to Mac and glad I did. Easier to use and they do not keep adding new software to run their computers. I used windows Xp for years and had a hard time changing to the newer software, so I decided to go for the Mac. Have the Mac Pro laptop and Mac mini with a large monitor. I do miss Word and Excel but find easier to use the Mac, guess I am getting OLD lol.

You will enjoy making a new computer to fit your needs, just have time to take more of your GREAT pictures. Also thanks for steering me to the Sony Nex-7 and A6000 and all the good info that you have contributed to this forum. They do such a great job, most of the time only need Picasa 3 to crop and adjust my pictures and store, wife likes to view them on her iPad and easy to share with her friends.

 

Thanks Dave

Tom :cool:

You do realize that Microsoft Office for Mac is Amazon's #3 largest selling software package for the OSX platform? (Right behind the Kindle desktop app and Norton Anti-virus... :))

It's a shame you didn't stick it out in Windows 8. I have been using it since it was in Beta and find it to be, by far, the most stable iteration yet (though some struggle with the interface at first). MS is skipping to release 10 this fall and the previews so far are pretty impressive. With a best-of-7 & 8 interface re-do, apps that will run on all iterations from phone to server and high-powered phones that can be docked and have the interface morph to the desktop interface, it promises to be a potential game changer. I'm personally looking forward to the new app development kit that will allow developers nearly one button conversion of an IOS or Android app to a Windows 10 app.

I keep saying it's a great time to be a photographer but it is also a great time to own a computer or other information creation/consumption device. Never has the industry been able to provide the power per dollar spent and versatility that it does now.

Dave

Your right Dave, forgot I do run Windows Xp on my Mac, for those programs I love to use and can't let go. Kind of cool to run both systems on one computer. I have used Quicken for so long with Xp and find the Mac version is not as good.

Tom :cool:

Building a new PC is easy. Only decisions are how much processor and RAM can I afford.

 

Anymore you usually come out better buying a laptop than you do building your own, but it does make for an interesting couple of hours in an afternoon putting it together.

Laptops are great for convenience and can be docked if you prefer working with a real monitor and keyboard. Still, once you pass the threshold of a basic machine that can be slapped together in a couple of hours (or purchased outright at a big box), a laptop is feature for feature more expensive than a PC. This is generally true for no other reason than making stuff small is very expensive and in some cases not yet available in laptop form factors.

Believe me, If I could just walk into Costco and buy a machine suitable for fairly robust photo editing with high volume secure storage at a reasonable price, I'd do it. :)

Dave

PC Build for Robust Photo Editing

General Requirements

The system should be fast enough to process large files in both Lightroom and Photoshop. This will include consideration of both the CPU and the GPU (video card) The GPU needs consideration because 64-bit Lightroom 6 and Photoshop can make use of the graphics processor for accelerating the rendering of applied adjustments and filter effects.

If performance of the new PC does not project to provide useful improvements in workflow speed, the project will be scrapped and I will settle for replacing my aging storage drives. Five years is about the limit before bad things can start to happen. The one million hour MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) rating is calculated and not measured by testing a drive for a million hours. The reality is that failures are much more likely within the first 30 days and after 5 years.

Since reliability is a factor, no unheard-of brands will be considered for cost alone.

Sexy/shiny, glowing decorations and accessories will not be part of the decision process.

Storage

Onboard storage should be large enough to store all current images and a reasonable projection of growth with a minimum of RAID 1 mirroring for data security.

Boot drive should be an SSD. Will look into SATA as well as M.2.

Motherboard

External connectivity should support USB 3.0 (3.1 too?) for high speed transfer to external backup storage. Backwards compatibility to USB 2.0 is a given.

Built-in gigabyte Ethernet. Onboard WiFi is a nice-to-have but must be 802.11ac/n compatible.

SATA 6GB/s and PCIe drive support is a given.

CPU and socket type TBD based on research into price/performance.

Onboard audio is a given. Advanced onboard audio is acceptable if included but not as a premium.

An onboard graphics system is unnecessary since a more advanced card is part of the main specification.

UEFI boot support is a given as it is needed for some drive configurations.

Overclocking capability (running the processor/memory at higher than rated speeds) will be considered. Overclocking will not be used since this rig isn’t going to be for gaming but a highly overclockable board tends to be very stable with high tolerance components.

Graphics

Graphics system needs to support at least two 2560x1440 monitors or a single 4K unit. Single card is preferable but SLI or Cross-Fire will be considered if needed. Amount of video RAM TBD based on price/performance research.

Memory

Quantity and type of memory is a strong factor in 64-bit graphics programs. How much is needed will be determined by researching at what point does increasing RAM no longer produce a significant increase in performance. Is adding additional RAM for a Ramdisk cost-effective?

Case and Cooling

Case choice may not come into consideration unless new features or chosen cooling method conflict with already owned cases.

CPU and case cooling will be researched carefully due to the nature of high-performance processors, potential high workload and environment. Both air and liquid cooling options will be considered for the CPU. Many higher-end CPUs no longer come with a standard cooler.

Power

Power supply should be large enough for full load plus a safety margin and have at least 80 Plus efficiency. Voltage stability is a factor because of dodgy local/household power during heavy demand summer months.

I already have a power conditioner and UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) between the wall and the PC/monitors and would highly recommend them as a guard against nasty utility company surprises. You don’t need a UPS with more than enough power to keep you going long enough to shut down safely in the event of a total failure and most of them now support software to do it automatically if you aren’t there.

OS

64-bit Windows 8.1 is a given. Windows 10 upgrade is going to be free, so no need to wait. Linux is available but doesn’t support my personal needs.

Other

Mouse, keyboard, speakers/headphones will not be part of the process since they are heavily influenced by personal preference.

Optical drive is up in the air for me. I have two on the current machine and may move one over. I don’t use them for backup and I have not bought software on physical media for years. With USB 3.0, afairly speedy desktop BluRay burner can always be added later.

I have an external USB 1.44 floppy drive in a drawer somewhere. I won’t install one since most motherboards don’t even have the connection header anymore.

Monitors will not be included other than to note why I chose my current setup which was geared towards photo editing.

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That's the first step. Now for the hard part...actually choosing! :O

Dave

Building a PC is pretty easy.

But the new MAC are pretty smick too and can run windows pretty well.

Your specs look pretty good to me.

To me an optical drive is an absolute must. But I have a lot of software on DVD ans burn photos to DVD to post OS.

Research and Choices - Part 1

Storage: Boot Drive

My current PC has a 256 GB SSD (Solid State Drive) as the boot/application drive and two RAID 1 mirrored 2TB 7200 RPM conventional drives as the storage/data drive. The SSD was added a couple of years ago when one of the original pair of 1TB 7200 RPM conventional drives failed leaving the RAID 1 boot/application volume with only one functioning drive. At the time, a 256 GB SSD was about the same price as two new 1TB conventional drives, so I moved some stuff off of the fairly empty boot volume and cloned it over to the new SSD. I highly recommend an SSD drive for booting the system. After the system POST (Power On Self-Test - 20 sec. normally) Windows 7 took about 50 sec. to load all the drivers, fonts and other junk before asking me to sign in. Windows 8 dropped that to about 30 sec. which was impressive at the time. After cloning the boot drive to the SSD, the end of POST to sign in was 8-10 sec. on average. Since applications were installed on the boot drive, loading them was affected similarly. Word and Excel load in 2 sec. or less and even Photoshop CC loads in about 5 sec.. Lightroom 5 and then 6 were faster but not as dramatically so since the catalog has to load from the conventional storage drives. I use an older 128GB SSD from a laptop upgrade as a temp drive and experiments with it show that putting scratch drives on it sped work up but putting the catalog on the SSD didn’t have much impact on load time.

When I originally built the current machine, SSDs were expensive, exotic and had significant longevity issues. By the time I replaced the boot volume, they had become relatively affordable (small to medium ones, at least) and longevity was on par with a conventional drive using the 5-year rule of thumb. My, how things have changed!

The Samsung 840 EVO 256GB SATA SSD that turbocharged my boot drive could read and write at about 500 MB/s which was around 5x as fast as the drives it replaced. The newer 850 PRO SATA is about 50% cheaper, 10% faster and performs about 10% more IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second – a measure of the number of actual read or write operations the drive can perform per second) making is solid choice for the new build. At least until I found you can now dump the old SATA interface and use the newer M.2 PCIe drives.

Winner: Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD

Even though it limits my choice of motherboards to the mid-range and up, the bang for the buck is there with bells on. It requires the motherboard to have an M.2 PCIe 3.0 slot that is tied to the PCIe channel instead of the more common type that uses the SATA channel. Translation: SATA is a standard that has been dominant since 2008 and virtually all conventional hard drives us some version of the standard to communicate with the CPU. SATA uses a 7-conductor cable to connect it to the motherboard (which was a huge improvement over the old 40-pin IDE ribbon cable) and a separate cable for power. M.2 is a standard developed for tablet/laptop applications and allows for extremely small devices that require little power and are connected and powered by the contacts in a single connector. A typical M.2 drive is 22mm wide and about 80mm long (picture a stick of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum) and plugs directly into the motherboard with no cable. Early M.2 drives used a version of SATA to talk to the CPU but the need for speed pushed manufacturers to introduce technology used by commercial-level servers for their high-performance SSDs and allow for a much faster way to transfer data to and from the drive using the efficient PCIe channels usually used by bandwidth-hungry graphics cards. How fast? The SM951 can read at 2150 MB/s and write at 1200 MB/s. The aforementioned IOPS show similarly stellar improvements. The drives cost about 2x as much as SATA M.2 SSDs of the same capacity (and about the same as I paid for my conventional same capacity SSD two years ago) and the M.2 3.0 slot adds $30-ish dollars to the motherboard. For now they are only found on mid- to upper-level offerings which adds a bit more to the price but still rings the bang-for-the-buck bell. The difference is dropping and the newer, faster tech will eventually push the older tech to the bargain basement.

Next: Choosing main storage

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Dave

Dave found this article on building a PC for Photoshop, might fine so info that might help in.

http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/141/Build+a+powerful+PC+for+Photoshop+and+other+imaging+applications

Tom :cool:

You are forgetting about a good monitor for photo editing. A lot of people shooting RAW because that like edit photo but forget that most monitors and not good for perfect color rendering and therefore what is the use of shooting in RAW?

See

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402032,00.asp

So, if you consider yourself even a semi professional photographer get a good monitor.

You are forgetting about a good monitor for photo editing. A lot of people shooting RAW because that like edit photo but forget that most monitors and not good for perfect color rendering and therefore what is the use of shooting in RAW?

 

See

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402032,00.asp

 

 

So, if you consider yourself even a semi professional photographer get a good monitor.

I noted in the opening specs that monitors would not be included except to note the ones I already have and why I chose them. Since monitors aren't really system dependent, the selection can be made whether you need/want to upgrade the PC or not.

Good displays are an important part of photo processing but I already have a strong setup and didn't need to upgrade.

Dave

Dave found this article on building a PC for Photoshop, might fine so info that might help in.

http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/141/Build+a+powerful+PC+for+Photoshop+and+other+imaging+applications

 

Tom :cool:

Thanks Tom!

I actually read this article when I was starting my browsing for ideas. The hardware mentioned is a little dated and for some reason, they never mentioned having drives configured in a mirrored RAID 1 set for data security. That sort of put me off. I've only been building PCs for about half as long as I've been a photographer but I've learned the hard way that overkill isn't enough kill when it comes to redundancy in data storage! ;)

Dave

Research and Choices – Part 2

Storage: Data Drive(s)

Again, for comparison, I’ll reference my current PC which has a pair of vintage 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA drives configured as a single 2TB RAID 1 mirrored drive. The drive volume is split into three volumes: User, Images and Temp. The temp volume was abandoned when I installed the additional 128 GB SSD as a temp drive and has since been re-purposed as a repository for finished, converted files to be uploaded. The storage volume on the new drive will be configured with the User and Images volumes only with the uploads folded into the Images drive somewhere.

Winner: Seagate 4TB SSHD SATA Drive

These drives were actually rejected in my early research as too expensive but a significant price drop and a Deal of the Day sale on Amazon pushed them ahead of the Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB SATA drive which was my original choice.

The SSHD designation is a Seagate term for their line of drives that use a small SSD integrated with the conventional spinning-platter hard drive to work as a buffer to improve response time and data throughput. All conventional drives use a small amount of onboard memory to cache data and queue up requests and responses but this is usually only about 8MB – 64MB. The SSHD “hybrid” drive also has a 64MB cache but adds an 8GB SSD to stage data that may be read and written repeatedly such as image files being edited or application files that are loaded often. This makes SSHDs very useful if you only have one drive in the system since the operating system would be held in the SSD portion and provide similar accelerated boot times as a system with a pure SSD as the boot drive. The hybrid concept isn’t new but has taken a while to migrate from laptop drives where it first appeared to larger main storage.

The new drives will not only double my data storage capacity but the overall throughput (data transfer speed) has been increased about 300% by a combination of the hybrid drive technology and five years of general hardware improvements.

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Next up: Motherboard and CPU

Dave

Very interesting thread. Thanks for taking the time to document your project.

Looking at your specs it looks like you may have written a few RFP's. :)

Research and Choices – Part 3

Motherboard – Part 1: CPU Choice

The current system has an ASUS P6X58D Premium board with a 3 GHz i7-950 chip that was a great mid-range performer back in its day. I have had good luck with ASUS products and put them high on my list of candidates along with MSI. Before choosing any type of board, I needed to decide what type of CPU would provide the best bang-for-the-buck which is the theme of this exercise.

The rule-of-thumb for processors is that you can get 90%+ of the maximum single processor performance for about a third of the price of the top performer. It all boils down to whether you need that 10% and are willing to pay for it. I don’t and am not.

Some basics:

• AMD or Intel. After a brief fling with AMD chips about 10 years ago, I am firmly in the Intel camp. I won’t be including them in my research.

• Clock speed. This refers to the number of times per second that the processor’s internal clock “ticks”. During each tick the processor executes instructions, so for processors of the same type with the same number of cores a faster clock rate means it will process data faster than a chip with a slower clock rate. A 3.0 GHz processor has a block that ticks three billion times per second.

• Cores. Here it gets a bit twisty. In the old days, processors has a single “core” of computational circuits. If you wanted more power than the top processor could provide, you had to design a system board that could support more than one processor with all of the logic circuits to make them divide up the processing requests and re-combine them when they were finished. They did. It was expensive. Why more than one processor? Picture processors as people rowing with the coxswain calling out the cadence. Two people rowing will produce twice as much thrust with each beat. One person could produce the same amount of thrust, but would have to dip the oars twice as often in the same amount of time. More processors = more instructions processed for every “tick” of the clock. Eventually the size of the processor or “core” circuitry shrank and more than one core could be put in a single processor package. On top of this, Intel came up with a way to make each core process two instructions at a time and called it “hyperthreading”. This allowed a dual-core processor to process four instructions at once. Almost all current Intel CPUs support this.

• Memory support. A processor is only part of the computer. It needs circuitry on the motherboard to connect it to the rest of the system and you, the user. A big part of this is how it addresses memory and what type of memory it can use. The system memory is made up of SDRAM. Modern systems use flavors of DDR memory with each generation doubling the amount of data passed with each clock cycle through DDR3 (currently the most common) DDR4 passes the same amount of data but operates at lower voltage, uses less power and supports higher clock rates. Multiple channels are used in memory too. Dual-channel can send data to two banks of memory at a time, effective doubling the transfer speed. Some boards and processors can support triple- and quad-channel memory as well.

• Socket. The socket type refers to the physical configuration of the socket that connects the CPU to the motherboard. The socket number in the Intel world almost always refers to the number of actual connection pins it contains. Different socket types are necessary to match different CPU designs and support the various memory, graphics and storage support options out there.

• Xeon. This is Intel’s workstation/server processor and comes in many flavors from a $200 quad-core version to a 15-core behemoth that costs upwards of $6000. The main difference between Xeon and i-series processors is that you can use more than one Xeon processor on a system. Normal commercial configurations support two (Mac Pro) to eight but custom supercomputers can use thousands.

• i-Series. i3, i5 and i7 processors differ in the number of cores, clock speed and the number of communication channels they use to support system hardware. If you have a pre-assembled all-in-one with a single drive and integrated graphics, the number of channels is irrelevant since the lowest chip on the totem pole has more than enough. If you have a gaming or video editing monster with three or four graphics cards and a flaming fast PCIe hard drive, you want all the channels you can get.

Winner: Intel Core i7-5820K 6-Core 3.3GHz LGA 2011-v3 Desktop Processor

This processor is in the more expensive of the two current performance families but after weighing features its two extra cores, better thermal protection and a little future-proof support for quad-channel DDR4 memory won me over.

I should note here that multiple core processors allow for simultaneous processing but to take advantage of that, the operating system and the program both have to be able to address multiple threads/cores. Both Lightroom and Photoshop can utilize multithreading and this led me to choose the 6-core i7-5820K on the X99 platform over the over the 4-core i7-4790K/Z97even though the latter has a higher 4.0GHz clock and very similar base performance. It also supports almost double the number of PCIe lanes in case Adobe adds support for multiple GPUs and I want to add a second graphics card.

Motherboard - Part 2: Motherboard

Winner: ASUS X99-A

Since I chose the i7-5820K, it narrowed my choices to boards with the LGA 2011 v3 socket and the X99 chipset. The X99 platform (and the X99-A board) supports the newer low-power DDR4 memory in a quad-channel configuration and it also natively supports the M.2 3.0 x4 boot drive I chose. It has a solid set of external USB ports, strong onboard networking support and the sophisticated on-board audio is standard. The BIOS supports UEFI booting and has a very user-friendly interface for managing settings and applying firmware updates. Though both the X99 and Z97 platforms are suitable for building robust machines, I went with the middle level of the latest tech with an eye towards the future as with my last build five years ago. That choice sure worked out. Five useable years on a PC is an eternity with Moore’s Law and gear envy constantly beating at the door. Hope it works out as well this time

Motherboard - Part 3: Memory

Winner: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB DDR4 2400

The X99 needs DDR4 and since it is new tech, it commands a premium over the established DDR3. I chose Crucial almost with a dart throw since all of the major manufacturers make excellent memory and the warranties are pretty much the same. I went with 2400mhz memory because the X99-A’s base clock speed is 2133 MHz and by bumping up a step, better stability is likely. DDR4 is supposed to eventually support clock speeds up to 4000+ MHz so there’s room to grow.

How much? After tracking down several articles and benchmark tests that actually used Photoshop CC, I found that if you have 4 GB of RAM, you will nearly double your average performance by going to 8 GB. If you have 8 GB, moving up to 16GB will bump average performance about 20%-25%. Going to 32GB affords only an incremental increase.

I went with four of the Crucial 4GB modules for a total of 16GB. As much as I need for Photoshop and with the price of DDR4 dropping, I will probably add four more (X99-A motherboard supports eight modules) to do some testing with RAM disk software for temp files.

Keep in mind that these numbers only work for 64-bit operating systems. 32-bit systems can only address a maximum of 4GB of RAM no matter how much is installed. Additionally, a 32-bit application may run in compatibility mode on a 64-bit system but is also limited to addressing 4GB of RAM. Newer Macs (OS X 10.7 and later) are by default 64-bit but while 64-bit desktop versions of Windows were available, they didn't become common until 2009 with the release of Windows 7. 32-bit versions of desktop Windows are still available right up through 8.1 for some business software compatibility but if you have a machine built since about 2011, it is probably 64-bit. If you install the CC version of PhotoShop or Lightroom on a 64-bit system, the 64-bit version will installed by default.

Just a personal note on RAM. If you are running 64-bit Windows or OS X on a laptop or desktop and have 4GB or less of RAM installed, increase it to 8GB if your system supports it. Even if you have a laptop with only one memory slot, tossing out the 4GB stick and plugging in a $50 8GB module is the best and cheapest performance upgrade you can do, hands down.

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Next up: Graphics card

Dave

Research and Choices – Part 4

Graphics: GPU Choice

My graphics choice for the new build was sort of a pre-emptive strike in that I had already made my choice. In January of 2015 my system suddenly started crashing. Win 8.1 did its job and the crashes were intercepted. The screen would go dark for a few seconds and come back with a message telling me an exception had occurred with some other cryptic references. A bit of research pointed to a failure in the graphics card so I went searching for a replacement. I am not a serious gamer and I wasn’t looking for the be-all, end-all of graphics performance. All I needed was a decent card with enough memory to support my monitor and would be available for Photoshop to use to speed up its processes. That said, I didn’t want the few games I play to stutter like a silent movie either. AMD and Nvidia are the two real players and I didn’t have any real preference going in. I read a lot of reviews and some ridiculously detailed tests of current cards. As luck would have it, Nvidia has just released a new series of chips that boasted reduced power consumption. The new low-end of the line was about twice as fast as my old card, used about 60% of the power and cost about $100 less. At that time, they were only available with 2GB of memory but that was enough to support 2560x1440 monitors, so I pulled the trigger.

Winner: ASUS STRIX-GTX960-DC2OC-2GD5

Even though this would be considered a “budget” card, the technology has progressed far enough that the increase in performance was noticeable over my older, higher-end card. It supports the faster PCIe 3.0 standard and since my old board is 2.0, I expect to see a slight bump when I switch it over to the new one.

This card fully supports SLI which allows you to add more than one card to the system. SLI isn’t for multiple monitor support but rather combines the power of both cards into one output. If the card supports multiple monitors, you can still do that but the second card simply acts as a plug-in upgrade to the primary card. Since this functionality benefits video processing and games more than Lightroom and Photoshop (which only address the primary GPU) I would likely go with a faster single card with more memory rather than adding another card if I felt I needed to upgrade. If you are a video person and use Premier Pro to process and export your projects, it can use multiple GPUs to render for export so adding a second card would be a benefit.

Addendum: Monitors

The biggest, baddest, fastest graphics card in the world will deliver crap if you are passing the output to a 12-year-old monitor with screen that is starting to show pink overtones on one side.

When I stopped traveling for work and started using my PC primarily for photo processing again, I got rid of the old 20” Viewsonic that has been showing signs of age and replaced it with a Dell UltraSharp U2412M. It was a serious upgrade with a 24”, 1920x1200 screen, good color and full controls for adjustment. It also responded well to adjustment to calibration with the Spyder Pro calibration package. I moved the Viewsonic to a second monitor position in portrait mode and since both Lightroom and Photoshop make use of multiple monitors, it was a great setup. Shortly afterwards, things changed and I began using my PC pretty much full-time making the multiple monitor setup a great tool rather than a convenience. Last year I used that fact to rationalize a need to replace the fading second monitor with something better. I ended up moving the U2412M to the second portrait position and replaced it with a Dell UltraSharp U2713HM with a 27” 2560x1440 screen. It has excellent color and the resolution gives me a lot of space to work in whether it is with photos or actual work.

If you do your photo editing squinting at a laptop, a fuzzy old 20” panel or (God help you) a tablet, do yourself a favor and spend a few bucks upgrading to a decent monitor (and a dock for the laptop). If you are serious about your photography (even if it’s just a love of your hobby), spend a little more and get a calibration tool like the Spyder Pro. Your printed photos will have all the right colors and your eyes will thank you. You might even be able to put off that camera or lens upgrade when you find out your photos were way sharper with better color than you thought!

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Dave

I knew I shouldn't of clicked on this thread...

I knew I shouldn't of clicked on this thread...

Yeah...

Sorry.

Dave

Research and Choices – Part 5

The Other Bits – Part 1: Cooling

Cooling the CPU has evolved into a whole science of its own. Once you step off the pavement and go beyond a basic off-the-shelf or big box bundle, you will need to provide some sort of advanced cooling for your CPU. When a system is cranking away and crunching all the little numbers that make up your image editing or gigantic RAW file import, it produces heat. The harder and longer the crunching, the greater the heat. The measures taken to keep the CPU from frying may seem excessive but in the world of CPU cooling, you always plan for the worst case scenario.

The i7-5820k CPU I chose (and one of the reasons I chose it) has a more efficient structure to transfer the heat from inside the CPU to the surface than the ones below it in the pecking order. Even so, it would trigger the motherboard’s thermal safety switch and shut down the system in less than a minute if it didn’t have something to absorb that heat and carry it away. I am planning on placing the PC in a closet behind the wall where my desk sits and feeding the connections through a 2” pipe to eliminate the usual spaghetti-tangle of wires and giant dust-bunny factory sitting on the floor. Because of that, I expect the ambient temperature will be a bit higher than it otherwise would, prompting me to choose a cooler closer to the top end of the offerings.

After reading reviews on about 30 of the top CPU coolers from Zalman, Thermaltake, Cooler Master and others, I narrowed it down to two finalists:

• The Thermalright Macho Rev.B CPU Cooler – While by no means the largest on the list, it always placed high in the tests for cooling and low noise. Still, at 4” x 5.5” x “6.25” and weighing in at a pound and a half, it is a bit of a beast.

• H100i GTX High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler – Liquid cooling used to be the domain of true propeller heads that needed over-the-top cooling systems to keep their souped-up gaming systems from burning a hole in the floor. In the last few years, several companies have come out with pre-configured, consumer oriented kits that come with coolant installed and no ongoing maintenance needed. The advantages of liquid cooling are pretty compelling. They are usually very quiet and the small copper block that mounts on the CPU places far less stress on the motherboard than a massive air-cooled heat sink. The only drawback is finding a discreet place to mount the radiator. Newer cases often come with removable panels that conform to the fairly standard radiator configurations but you may need to put on your thinking cap if you have an older enclosure.

Winner: H100i GTX High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

Almost twice as much as the heat-sink but in the middle of the liquid-cooling pack price-wise. It always placed near the top in testing and reviews were favorable for ease of installation. It also has the option of doubling the fan population on the radiator if you need more cooling. Probably more than I need but in the world of CPUs, cooler is always better.

The Other Bits – Part 2: Power

All the pieces chosen so far take power, so now it’s time to figure out how much and pick a power supply. There’s a very thorough online power requirement calculator here:

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

After plugging in my power-sucking components, it showed I needed A PSU that could provide 471 watts at 90% load. I did some wet-finger-in-the-wind calculating…

Room to grow + occasional 100% load + shouldn’t run PSU at 100% capacity all of the time = 750W.

Winner: EVGA SuperNOVA 750G2 80PLUS Gold Certified 750W Power Supply

A comparison test was found with the 850W version and is came in right at the top for silence and voltage stability on all output types. It is also completely modular so you only use the cables you need and don’t have to find nooks and crannies inside the case to stuff unused wires and connectors.

The Other Bits – Part 3: Case

After deciding on the liquid cooling for the CPU, I gave my current case and a “spare” (left over from a rebuild done for a friend) a thorough once-over with a ruler and couldn’t find a reasonable way to mount the radiator internally. I guess at this point, another $100 isn’t going to press the go/no go button so I started shopping.

So, 14,000-ish results popped up in response to an Amazon search for “Computer Case”. I checked off “Mid-tower”, “USB 3.0” (front panel connectors), “Prime eligible” and added “240 radiator” to the text search, bringing it down to 68! I skimmed past the ones that looked like Decepticons in disguise and found a half dozen that seemed to have promise. Rosewill, CoolerMaster, NZXT and three Corsair models were exhaustively poked and prodded virtually on their respective web sites and after about an hour, I settled on one from Corsair.

Winner: Corsair Carbide Series 500R Mid Tower

The fact that I chose a Corsair cooler had something to do with the choice as the case fully supports mounting their products. The final choice involved the ease of access to the drive bays, the option to remove the unused drive bays to allow better air flow and good internal layout for cable management. It also looks like a computer case, not modern art.

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Dave