Custom System - Please evaluate

[Steltek]

HA!

Well...I do have velcro in the studio. I'm not sure folks would be comfortable if it was attached to the computer though.

Agents and models (not to mention the husbands of gals in for boudoir sessions), tend to judge competency by equipment. It shows in the pre-session interview:

"Are you using L glass?" No, I soot Nikon

"How many shots are you bracketing?" None. We will shoot RAW and white balance with a tethered computer.
​

"Have you upgraded your camera in the last few years?" Ummm...funny you should ask 🙂


Quite annoying. Anyway, I think hearing, "hey is that your hard drive sticking out of your computer?"

Would lead to the repeated answer, "no, I'm just glad to see your wife"

That could be trouble. Thanks for thinking of it though.

Well, I actually meant to tape/velcro them INSIDE the case. But, to each his own. 😉

You'll have to watch the length of your video card. Your EVGA GTX 680 is 254mm long, while the longest card that you can fit in that Bitfenix case with the drive cage installed is 180mm. You'll therefore have to remove the upper section of the drive cage to install the EVGA card which will cost you three of your internal drive bays. Again, though, SSDs don't take up that much space or weigh that much, so it ought to be a simple thing to rig something up to hold them securely if you really want them.

EDIT: Well, I missed the fact that you changed to another case. The Silverstone case you changed to should work nicely with your component list.

 

[Sleepingforest]

I'm using a case roughly the size of the Prodigy, and I just used some electrical tape (the thick, black type) to tape the thing down on top of the drive cage. Well, on top of the small identation built in the bottom of the case, anyway. It's perfectly secure and viable.

 

[HowlCat]

Ah. INSIDE the case. Funny, that didn't occur to me.

About that case, I changed the config and instead of the prodigy, I think it's best I go a little bigger and was thinking the Silverstone FT03 would do nicely.

It all should fit, right? I've got a new interest free credit card burning a hole in my pocket, and these images from the Nikon are killing me! beautiful, but OMG sooooooo much processing time. I am about to pull my hair out...or sell the D800E on eBay and buy a 5DIII.

I've got a tools list (and tools), and Velcro, and electrical tape, (and a rotary tool and a drill for surprises), but no one has mentioned cables and such. Given the configuration above, what will I need?

EDIT: I just saw your note about the case. Cool. I think it's time to whip out that credit card.

 

[Steltek]

I'm using a case roughly the size of the Prodigy, and I just used some electrical tape (the thick, black type) to tape the thing down on top of the drive cage. Well, on top of the small identation built in the bottom of the case, anyway. It's perfectly secure and viable.

Yeah, the nice thing about SSDs is you can stick them just about anywhere and not have to worry about them.

 

[Steltek]

Ah. INSIDE the case. Funny, that didn't occur to me.

About that case, I changed the config and instead of the prodigy, I think it's best I go a little bigger and was thinking the Silverstone FT03 would do nicely.

It all should fit, right? I've got a new interest free credit card burning a hole in my pocket, and these images from the Nikon are killing me! beautiful, but OMG sooooooo much processing time. I am about to pull my hair out...or sell the D800E on eBay and buy a 5DIII.

The Silverstone advertises that it will take cards up to 10" in length, which is exactly what you need for your video card, along with one 3.5" hard drive and two 2.5" SSDs.

EDIT: The DVD drive you linked won't fit as as it is not slot load.

 

[HowlCat]

Actually a burner is pretty important. That's how I often give folks their photo albums. Wouldn't an external drive, even a USB 3.0, be slower burning than internal? The DVD drive using USB 2.0 on my present laptop is deadly slow.

About that slot - the only internal slot drives I've found are 2.5" and originally were intended for laptops.

It might be time to invest in a few hundred USB thumb drives. I suppose I would just build it into the cost of a shoot.

 

[Zap]

Out of curiosity how come no one is recommending Vishera? Wouldn't PS love those 8 cores?

Don't know if things have changed with CS6, but the Intel CPUs with fewer cores are still faster. The 8 core chips beat out the Intel dual core (i3 3220) and the ancient Intel quad core (920) that came out over four years ago. The quad core 2500K which came out two years ago and without the benefit of Hyperthreading handily beats the AMD eight core models.

1. GIGABYTE GA-H77N-WIFI LGA 1155 Intel mITX--$119.99--Motherboard
2. Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz---------$239.99--CPU
3. EVGA GeForce GTX 680 2GB----------------------- $469.99--GPU
4. Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB)-------------$87.99--RAM
5. Plextor M5P Series PX-128M5P 2.5----------------$124.99--OS HDD
6. WD VelociRaptor WD1000DHTZ 1TB---------------$219.99--Source HDD
   
7. Plextor M5P Series PX-512M5P 2.5----------------$439.99--Render HDD
8. SilverStone Fortress Series FT03B Black---------$169.99--Case
9. Rosewill Tachyon-650 @ 50 Degrees 80 PLAT.----$144.99--PSU
10. Panasonic UJ240 6xBlu-ray8xDVD/RW---------$69.00--Bluray
    

TOTAL - $2,086.91 (10 Items)

What's with all the font stuff? 😵

BTW you can't link to your Newegg cart. If you want us to see your choices, you need to create a wish list and link to that. While most modern web site shopping carts don't do this anymore, in the past people have had personal information (email addresses, sometimes entire login or even credit card info) revealed by linking to their online shopping carts.

Regarding what Steltek said regarding drive bays, one alternative is to go with one of the Lian Li cases. You lose the ability to use huge heatsinks, but gain drive bays. PC-Q11 has two 2.5" and two 3.5" plus can take 9.5" graphics cards so probably won't work. PC-Q08 can take it all!

Build-Your-Own "Ultimate" Adobe Photoshop CS6 PC

I'm not 100% convinced, since the guy states flat out that "I'm not much of a Photoshop user." The benchmarks he linked to are really old and he seems completely unaware of alternate graphics cards, saying "you will need a system kitted out with a graphics card from the NVIDIA Quadro lineup." Really? Uh, no. 🙄

For your specific parts list I have several thoughts.

First, I'm not sure you will benefit from such an expensive graphics card. Besides the Puget page, I haven't been able to find much other than on older versions, and most people are saying that you don't need anything more than mid-range. Mid-range a few years back is pretty low end these days. Thus, I'm 99% sure that a GTX 680 is severe overkill. If you want to hedge your bet on GPUs, go for a GTX 660 Ti. The reason is that the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670 and GTX 680 all actually use the same GPU, mostly differing in memory bandwidth, clock speeds and a couple CUDA cores. There's a bigger cut going down to the GTX 660 (non-Ti) and GTX 650 Ti, and another big cut down at the GTX 650 (non-Ti). So, if I can't talk you down to a $150 GTX 650 Ti, how about a $250 (cheapest after rebate) GTX 660 Ti?

Second is the power supply. Even a GTX 680 only needs a 450W PSU, and at this time you pay a huge premium for 80Plus Platinum.

Third is your optical drive. It is a normal tray load and your case choice can only use slot load models. Heroic effort on choosing a slim drive as that is required too. 😀

Last (for now, which might lead to more discussion) is the case choice itself. You choose a micro ATX case, but a mini ITX motherboard. You can either save some money by going with a micro ATX motherboard and getting a separate WiFi card (if needed) or you can keep your motherboard and the case (BTW it is over 19" tall!!! pretty big). Or, you can go with the cheaper mini ITX version. That one, BTW, uses SFX PSUs. Silverstone makes one that is 450W and is 80Plus Gold. Then again, it is basically the same case as an SG05 but standing upright and with a prettier skin, and that case is even cheaper and already comes with a 450W PSU (though 80Plus Bronze). But... you'll have to get creative on drives with those.

 

[Steltek]

Actually a burner is pretty important. That's how I often give folks their photo albums. Wouldn't an external drive, even a USB 3.0, be slower burning than internal? The DVD drive using USB 2.0 on my present laptop is deadly slow.

About that slot - the only internal slot drives I've found are 2.5" and originally were intended for laptops.

It might be time to invest in a few hundred USB thumb drives. I suppose I would just build it into the cost of a shoot.

Slim slot load optical drives are a standard format. They can also very hard to find. The one Silverstone had is linked below:

http://www.silverstonetek.com/product_legacy.php?area=en&model=SOD01

Here are a few sample links I turned up:

http://www.panasonic.com/industrial/optical-drives/blu-ray-disc-drives/uj-235a.aspx

From the above Panasonic page, I got the following link (you want the 12.7mm thick drives) so you'll have some model numbers:

http://www.digistor.com/Internal-Drives/Slot-Load-Drives?menu=products

 

[mfenn]

Thank you all for your thoughtful answers!​

About the GPU - I think what was being referenced was this article:

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CS6-GPU-Acceleration-161

The test conclusions are:

From our testing, we can now confidently state that even though the NVIDIA 600-series and Intel HD 4000 graphics are not on Adobe's compatibility list, GPU acceleration in Photoshop CS6 works great on those cards. So, contrary to the compatibility list, there is no reason to use an older generation NVIDIA GTX 580 since the current generation NVIDIA cards performs as well or better.

Also, this article also explains how to "mock" certification by unlocking and modifying the Adobe approved list in any given computer:

http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm

Like I said above, "Sure, pretty much anything will more or less work". It all comes down to how comfortable you are being outside of Adobe's officially-sanctioned parameters.

Some people don't care at all if they can't get support. For others that is a deal breaker. Only you can decide how important it is to you.

 

[mfenn]

Actually a burner is pretty important. That's how I often give folks their photo albums. Wouldn't an external drive, even a USB 3.0, be slower burning than internal? The DVD drive using USB 2.0 on my present laptop is deadly slow.

USB 3.0 is far faster than the drive itself, so an external drive won't be any different from an internal one in that aspect. Of course, an external drive is yet another piece of kit to carry around.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Ah. INSIDE the case. Funny, that didn't occur to me.

About that case, I changed the config and instead of the prodigy, I think it's best I go a little bigger and was thinking the Silverstone FT03 would do nicely.

It all should fit, right? I've got a new interest free credit card burning a hole in my pocket, and these images from the Nikon are killing me! beautiful, but OMG sooooooo much processing time. I am about to pull my hair out...or sell the D800E on eBay and buy a 5DIII.

I've got a tools list (and tools), and Velcro, and electrical tape, (and a rotary tool and a drill for surprises), but no one has mentioned cables and such. Given the configuration above, what will I need?

EDIT: I just saw your note about the case. Cool. I think it's time to whip out that credit card.

Uh... the FT03 is actually around the same size as the Prodigy simply because the Prodigy is unusually large for mITX. Just an FYI.

 

[HowlCat]

Really rushing so I'll be pithy:

• Thanks for the info on the BluRay drive! I goggled "slot+slim+internal+bluray and what I posted was what amazon listed as having those characteristics. I should have looked closer.

• GTX 680 - What I have been keen on is the anti-aliasing improvements on the 680. Maybe that's endemic of all Kepler chips, but artifacts are more important than speed (to some degree), or price (well, price comes into it, but from the 690-Quadro 5000/6000 level on). I have seen speculation that the lower bit rate/bandwidth of the 660Ti hurts performance with anti-aliasing. For example, the 660 TI has a narrower memory bus, and that would be a problem when anti-aliasing is used. I'm a photo/video guy so I'll be fretting over aliasing on every shoot. But I think the 192-bit memory interface will limit anti-aliasing and anistroscopic filtering performance, and will become even more constricting when/if using a multi-monitor set-up. Of course, I'm open to correction about this.

• Big question - is there a 1-fan GTX680 that will fit into the mF03?

• Sorry about the fonts 🙂 I like to write with Trebuchet - I'll let that go from now on.

• Sold on a non-platinum power supply! I thought I needed a min of 550W? Smaller is lighter, so that's good. If I could get away with a 450W (gold) PSU that would be great.

About the build, I just found this build tutorial on the miniFT03 case, really helpful! Check it out Wondering if the motherboard this fellow uses would be a good choice. Happy to pay a little extra for the best components.

I'm off to get my flu-shot. Hoping to send in an order today. If you guys see anything that I've missed, please give me a shout.

 

[Zap]

AnandTech reviewed the FT03 ITX.
SilverStone FT03 Mini Review: We'll Make You Fun Size

It might be time to invest in a few hundred USB thumb drives. I suppose I would just build it into the cost of a shoot.

8GB USB flash drive $6 shipped regular price

Imagine what you can get on sale. :thumbsup: Best thing is that IMO it becomes more universal than optical discs. For instance your clients can bring the USB drive into their local stores to do digital prints. Also, many of the popular notebooks these days (Ultrabooks, netbooks, any Mac) no longer have optical drives so some of your clients may not even be able to use shiny discs.

• GTX 680 - What I have been keen on is the anti-aliasing improvements on the 680. Maybe that's endemic of all Kepler chips, but artifacts are more important than speed (to some degree), or price (well, price comes into it, but from the 690-Quadro 5000/6000 level on). I have seen speculation that the lower bit rate/bandwidth of the 660Ti hurts performance with anti-aliasing. For example, the 660 TI has a narrower memory bus, and that would be a problem when anti-aliasing is used. I'm a photo/video guy so I'll be fretting over aliasing on every shoot. But I think the 192-bit memory interface will limit anti-aliasing and anistroscopic filtering performance, and will become even more constricting when/if using a multi-monitor set-up. Of course, I'm open to correction about this.

AFAIK all that anti-aliasing has to do with 3D gaming, and nothing to do with OpenCL. Thus it will have zero impact on Photoshop. Memory bandwidth has to do with driving super high resolution displays and textures, again in games. Nothing to do with resolution outside of games.

Someone can of course correct me if I'm wrong.

• Sold on a non-platinum power supply! I thought I needed a min of 550W? Smaller is lighter, so that's good. If I could get away with a 450W (gold) PSU that would be great.

Finish deciding on a graphics card and we can choose the PSU then, though even the GTX 680 can work on a good 450W PSU like a Rosewill Capstone. Just check on how many PCIe power plugs are needed. The Capstone has two and can power any card that requires two. If you go with a lower end card that only needs one, Seasonic makes a 360W that can power those.

 

[mfenn]

AFAIK all that anti-aliasing has to do with 3D gaming, and nothing to do with OpenCL. Thus it will have zero impact on Photoshop. Memory bandwidth has to do with driving super high resolution displays and textures, again in games. Nothing to do with resolution outside of games.

Someone can of course correct me if I'm wrong.

You're 100% correct. Performance in DirectX or OpenGL anti-aliasing modes have next to nothing to do with Photoshop filters that are written in OpenCL.

Obviously a GTX 680 is faster than a GTX 650, but the current OpenCL code isn't really efficient enough to make use of the GTX 680. It's just too dependent on the CPU at this time.

 

[HowlCat]

Hey Guys -

Thank you for taking the time to read through and recommend hardware. Sorry for the slow response. It was a busy weekend in LA (Golden Globes).

I ended the night talking to a guy that's been a guild editor for 35-years. He actually started his career 'cutting' and 'splicing' celluloid. Editing with scissors and tape, that's crazy! Anyway, he's a big name, so I feel compelled to listen. He was convinced only Tesla/Quadro setup was worth spending money on. He even emailed me an But the article is 3years old! Testing seems to confirm that there is more hype than performance separating the the GPU's

I've lost count of the articles I've read since I started this thread. My head is spinning. I was going to try to explain what I meant about aliasing (and moire), I think it's best to link you to a video (from nVidia) and say, the ability to do that stuff, that's really what I need.

Video

I'll NEVER have 9 camera feeds to work with simultaneously (at least not in my personal business). But, I will have four or five regularly. Being able to work/render without any perceptible lag, that's gold.

Is there a way to simulate what's being done with a Certified NVIDIA Maximus Configuration? I am hoping the Tesla/Quadro performance can be approached using two GTX cards. Right now, the Quadro 2000 + Tesla C2075 will set me back $2500! That's my entire budget.

These days, is the Quadro/Tesla advantage just marketing? I haven't seen any testing that suggests that the big money studios are spending is spent well...though the film quality these days is stunning...Les Mis, Life of Pi (wow). Obviously, that's well beyond anything I'll ever do on my own. The music video is right up my alley. Anyway - Zapp, Mfenn, everybody else, you guys have been great!

But I still don't know what to buy...totally my fault. I am a data junkie. And when I get too much of it, I freeze. I'm frozen now. I started off wanting a SFF unit that could serve a dual purpose; tethered to a still camera for studio and boudoir work, also powerful enough to do serious video editing at my desk. Maybe that's wanting too much, but that's still what I want.

Portable/fast/able to render video from multiple cameras without freezing

MicroATX case?
Two video cards? (one for GUI, one for CUDA acceleration
Two CPU's?
I need a Valium!

I am bleeping lost.

...and oh, that fellow from the the show last night, he insisted I would curse myself if I didn't get a M/B with a thunderbolt output. He's probably right about that. There is a Thunderbolt output on my blackmagic camera and I've never even used it.

 

[Zap]

STOP.

You are suffering from scope creep.

Please review your requirements and resources, and finalize them. Based on what you've previously written, you have a $2500-2800 budget and you are currently using a notebook computer. Your new system will have to perform better than your notebook while being within budget. Thus, Tesla and high end Quadros should not even be a glimmer in your eye.

Here's how to spec out your system within your budget. Start with what can't be changed, and end with what can be changed. For instance a "can't" would be Windows and the monitor. A "can" will in this case be the graphics card. As you go down your list, your budget gets used up until you are left with whatever budget is available for the last part on the list, the graphics card. For instance...

$2800
-$140 Windows 7/8 Pro
$2660
-$280 24" IPS monitor (guessing at price, have no idea)
$2380
-$150 motherboard
$2230
...
...
...
...
...
$480
-$200 256GB SSD
$280
-$280 GTX 660 Ti graphics card
$0

 

[mfenn]

Excellent post Zap!

OP, please come back from the ledge. 🙂 You have to understand what is possible within your budget and prioritize. You are not going to get a system that can handle 9 simultaneous video feeds AND fit in a mini-ITX case AND be less that $2800.

 

[HowlCat]

Well. Yeah. I'm sure that's right. I've rethought the project a bit. If I had to sacrifice something, it would be SFF. If I'm thoughtful about the case, it can still be portable as well as powerful. Maybe a rolling rack-case, and a rack-mount CPU, would be a better choice than trying to go super small. That would be just as easy to travel with - it would even give me a platform to stack-carry-and-roll the rest of my gear on.

-$160 3U Compact Rackmount Chassis(or something similarly rack-mountable. Open to ideas that will fit into the rack-case below)

-$170 4U SKB Roll-X Rack Case

-$140 Windows 7/8 Pro

-$350 Xeon E3 1270 V2

-$140 mATX motherboard

-$125 16GB EEC RAM

-$560 660Ti (dual GPU's - I'd love to hear this isn't really needed)

-$200 256GB SSD

-$800 512GB SSD

-$25 DVD R/W-$100 PSU
___________________________________________
$2770

Wondering if either of you two that have been following this would like to earn a build/consultancy fee and take this offline? It's taken me far too long and after I had the blue crash, I gave up on the D800 and swapped into Canon. Ya'll have no idea how tough that was. But, the truth is, the Nikon is not nimble enough to work anywhere except a studio. and those file sizes, WOW! Crazy. Besides, Canon has far better video support. After April, clean HD signal too.

Now...I am busy selling my lenses on eBay. I just boxed up and shipped back the D800, and will be learning the 5DIII for weeks - but still want a new computer. The blue screen scared me into that. The computers I am working with at home are way outdated. Time to update regardless of which camera body. The 5DIII produces a 23mp file. That's still HUGE. My D700 was only 16mp.

So...if you want to message me and talk/email privately, maybe we can strike up a deal.

Thanks again for all your help!

MjS

 

[mfenn]

Huh, that Roll-X Rack case is a pretty interesting idea. You'd obviously have to open up both ends while the computer was in use in order to ensure proper airflow, but it looks like everything would fit given the published dimensions. The only real question is whether or not the front of the case would protrude too much and prevent the lid from closing.

As for the rest, you definitely want to get Windows 7. 8 is not nearly baked enough for professional use. Dual-GPUs are not necessary for what you're doing.

EDIT: Also, YGPM.

 

[Zap]

I've rethought the project a bit.

For the Nth time? 😀

-$560 660Ti (dual GPU's - I'd love to hear this isn't really needed)

It isn't really needed. I would rather you invest most of that money into socket 2011 and a cheap $100 graphics card. That much GPU will make your system unbalanced for what you are using it for. It will, however, make for a smashing gaming rig. 😀

-$800 512GB SSD

???

I see leftover Samsung 830 512GB for $550 and a 512GB Plextor M5P for $420.

Wondering if either of you two that have been following this would like to earn a build/consultancy fee and take this offline?
...
So...if you want to message me and talk/email privately, maybe we can strike up a deal.

I'll send you a PM.

 

[HowlCat]

Hi guys - I can't reply to your messages. The forum has a rule that requires me to post 25 times before I can respond to PM's. I've still got a few to go. And, I'd rather not post my email address in the thread so:

- Michael, I've got your email address. I'll message you later today.

- Zapp, if you could send me an address, I'll do the same around 5PM.

 

[Zap]

Only 7 more posts to go!

 

[mfenn]

Only 7 more posts to go!

Darn those pesky forum rules! 😀