Build a PC <=$1000 for hires photos..suggestion please.

[bruzo]

Someone directed me to this informative forum and I definitely need everyone's suggestions on building a PC. This is definitely a new and exciting project for me. Here's my scenario:

I'll definitely need this computer to edit a bunch of hi-res photos/negatives with Photoshop, since my wife is a professional photographer. We already have a negative scanner that communicates via firewire.

Here's a link to the specs

Don't know if this is overkill for what we need. I would like to get everything for <=$1000 and that's including a nice LCD monitor.

Can someone help us?
Thanks.

 

[Gerbil333]

I wouldn't get an LCD monitor for editing photos. The color accuracy, even of the best LCDs, cannot compare to a mediocre CRT. Your money would be better spent on a high-end CRT rather than a $300 LCD.

 

[firebirdude]

Originally posted by: Gerbil333
I wouldn't get an LCD monitor for editing photos. The color accuracy, even of the best LCDs, cannot compare to a mediocre CRT. Your money would be better spent on a high-end CRT rather than a $300 LCD.

Gotta agree there.....

If you're going the CRT route, your $1000 budget is about right. If you are dead set on an LCD, better up that budget a tad.

 

[TRUMPHENT]

Here is a better choice of video card for your intended purpose. It cost less too.
Matrox G550

 

[halfadder]

For photos I highly recommend CRT unless you get a very high end LCD with color calibration features. If you do go the CRT route, get a high quality graphics card (even though you won't be needing most of the features) or a Matrox card. Yes, for Photoshop / Photopaint work all you need is a Radeon 7000, but most low end cards like that put out a horrible analog signal.

Unless you're going to be working with 100 MB files, you don't need a while lot of CPU horsepower. Get whatever A64 you can afford. Focus on the RAM and graphics.

 

[Dubb]

Originally posted by: halfadder
For photos I highly recommend CRT unless you get a very high end LCD with color calibration features. If you do go the CRT route, get a high quality graphics card (even though you won't be needing most of the features) or a Matrox card. Yes, for Photoshop / Photopaint work all you need is a Radeon 7000, but most low end cards like that put out a horrible analog signal.

Unless you're going to be working with 100 MB files, you don't need a while lot of CPU horsepower. Get whatever A64 you can afford. Focus on the RAM and graphics.

a few tips from someone who's done photoshop editing of 1GB+ files.

1) the more ram the better. period. get lots. and get more when it gets cheap.
2) if you can swing multiple hard drives: one for the OS, one for the page file and scratch disk, and one for the PS install.

as others have said, get a CRT. also look into an (even used) wildcat VP serries card. Hands down the best color and image quality you will find.

No wacom?

 

[bruzo]

Thanks everyone. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Quick question to Dubb:
when you say "multiple hard drives" is this physically 3 or more hard drives
or
can it be 1 hard drive partitioned into 4 NTFS/FAT32 different drives.

 

[barnett25]

Just a thought, would the new Mac mini do what you want? Sorry if this is too off topic, but it seems to be a popular subject lately.

 

[Dubb]

Originally posted by: bruzo
Thanks everyone. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Quick question to Dubb:
when you say "multiple hard drives" is this physically 3 or more hard drives
or
can it be 1 hard drive partitioned into 4 NTFS/FAT32 different drives.

As I understand it, you'll get some benefit from using partitions, but it will be more noticable using multiple physical drives. getting the pagefile and PS scratch disk off the drive the OS is on will help the most, so I would try for at least two physical drives. or wait, and keep an eye on hot deals...120GB drives are in the $30-50 range all the time

 

[stevty2889]

I would definatly go bigger than an 80gig hard drive for doing photo editing, and as others already said, a CRT monitor would probably be the better choice. Other than that I think the system looks good.

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: barnett25
Just a thought, would the new Mac mini do what you want? Sorry if this is too off topic, but it seems to be a popular subject lately.

It depends on what he means by hires. I have a PowerBook G4 with roughly the same specs as the Mini (except I have Radeon 9600 rather than 9200) and it's nice and fast for 5 Mpixel images in Photoshop CS and iPhoto. But, at most, those are 20 MB images. If he's talking about 100 MB images, then he'll want something significantly faster than a 1.2 - 1.4 GHz G4. If you're working with HUGE photos, you'll want the fastest machine you can afford. A64 would be the best bang for the buck. And according to the latest round of PSbench numbers, a dual 2.5 GHz G5 is slighty faster than a dual 2.4 GHz Opteron system at a wide suite of Photoshop operations. But you could build the Opteron system for at least $300 less than buying the G5. And have more choices along the way (which specific drives, etc).

 

[Cawchy87]

I wouldn't trust large picture files to a Hitachi. Get a quality hard drive. Spend the extra few bucks on a Seagate (or 2). And mabye run them as mirror drives if the pictures are really important to you.

 

[KillaKilla]

Originally posted by: Cawchy87
I wouldn't trust large picture files to a Hitachi. Get a quality hard drive. Spend the extra few bucks on a Seagate (or 2). And mabye run them as mirror drives if the pictures are really important to you.

That's what web storage is for. Using RAID to store files is not necesary. Web storage, zip disks, etc are the answer (in my opinion). It's cheaper to have 3 copies of something than to have 1 copy on RAID (it's also safer too, there's a higher chance of a freak accident involving your PC than to have all mediums destroyed at once. Thus I suggest to have a non-RAID setup, and to use the excess for more RAM.

 

[halfadder]

I second that, it the photos are important to you, use RAID 1, RAID 3, or RAID 5. And, please, before you start work in photos, try unplugging on of the drives and test out the recovery features of your RAID controller! Make sure it works before you need it!

You have lots of RAID options, from onboard RAID to a nice external RAID to a monster RAID...
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/directron/raidmb.html
http://www.raidweb.com/sata.html
http://www.sgi.com/storage

 

[bruzo]

Thanks again for the wealth of info.
Just 1 more question regarding video cards:
Will the Matrox G550 or the 3dlabs Wildcat VP series, be sufficient if I wanted to do some home video editing?