A good recommendation for a new PC

[HappyLefty]

I´m plannig to upgrade my PC for a new one. I´m not sure which is the best configuration (memory, CPU, harddisk, screen, etc) to work with.
I´m not a pro, just an enthusiastic photographer.
I work my photos in RAW format and use Digital Photo Professional from Canon as my editor.
Any recommendation is welcome!

[bohdank]

How much are you willing to spend ? That is always the limiting factor.

[tim]

Quad core processor, 4GB RAM, 2-3 hard disks, read posts by Bobster to work out the whole TN whatever business.

[HappyLefty]

How much are you willing to spend ? That is always the limiting factor.
$1,300.00

[HappyLefty]

Quad core processor, 4GB RAM, 2-3 hard disks, read posts by Bobster to work out the whole TN whatever business.
It´s a huge configuration!

[Right Cranium Imaging]

Just something to consider, not to turn into a debate, but Have you considered a Mac? You can get a 20" 2.66 Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB Memory (upgradable to 4GB) a 320GB HD and an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro Graphics card with 256MG for $1,499.00.

Again just an option to check out, no tower, nice clean look. One downside to consider on it though, is the glossy only screen, but if you are in an area with not a lot of windows for glare, it is fine.

If you have not used OSX before, check out an Apple store and have them give you a rundown of the key features, for some people the OS itself is worth it, for others, they are happy with their PC and the ability to built it themselves.

Either way, good luck and happy shopping!

[jonnythan]

$1300 will get you a lot of computer.

You could do a fast Core 2 Quad, 4 GB of RAM, 2 500GB hard drives, a quality case, a good graphics card, and 22" widescreen monitor for that price.

The current line of Macs needs a serious refresh before it can compete with, say, Dell in the desktop PC market. Especially in that price range.

[bohdank]

This is what $800 + taxes CDN bought 3 months ago..... cheaper today

E8400 3.0 Dual Core (running it at 3.6)
MSI P35E FR mother board
2 gigs of 800mhz memory
2 x 250 gig hard drives (RAID1)
2 x 500 gig hard drives (RAID1)
wireless modem
toolless case
Thermaltake 500W Purerpower PS
Nvidia 8500GT with 512 meg (cheap card but more than adequate for photo editing)
DVD player from another machine

Add $400 for a 20" HP LP2065 IPS panel + $xxx for a version of Windows.

[PixelMagic]

Perhaps you can build your own.

Earlier this summer I embarked on a fun project to build a quad-core solely out of parts I got on CraigsList. The first thing I did was pick up a brand-new Thermaltake Armor (http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Chassis/fulltower/armor/armor_index.asp) full tower case for much less than half the retail price. I subsequently picked up an Asus motherboard and several other components like hard drives. The only thing I haven't gotten yet is the actual processor...I may end up buying it from a vendor like Newegg because I'm getting impatient knowing that CS4 will be announced later this month but I'm sure if I'm patient I can get a processor on CraigsList too. I've seen several advertised there but I wasn't sure if I wanted a Q6600 or q6700.

And to top it off I live in a small town far from a metropolitan area; if you live near a big city with an active Craigslist board it would be much easier to do.

[tim]

It´s a huge configuration!

That's not that huge - early next year I have my eye on an 8 core machine with 8-16GB of RAM. I'll get one once Intel releases an 8 core CPU, and they're a reasonable price. It doesn't seem worth the bother of jumping from my current dual to just quad.

[bohdank]

What do you do that could benefit from an 8 core processor and 16 gigs of RAM ? Just curious. (I'm a software developer).

I like to say, they all idle at the same speed.

[tim]

Bridge and Photoshop take advantage of multiple cores quite well, I max out two cores all the time. I sometimes process 3000 images per week, more cores (along with plenty of RAM and fast disks) means faster preview rendering, faster batch conversion, and that I can run a lot of software at the same time (album design program, photoshop, online ordering thumbnail generator, etc). Plus while software might not fully take advantage of eight cores now things are gradually improving.

[holrd]

I have a quad core and 8 gigs of ram and love it.

need More hd space, the 3 terrabytes i have are filling up way too fast.

[tim]

You gota learn to use the delete button if you're filling 3TB quickly :p

[shimmishim]

That's not that huge - early next year I have my eye on an 8 core machine with 8-16GB of RAM. I'll get one once Intel releases an 8 core CPU, and they're a reasonable price. It doesn't seem worth the bother of jumping from my current dual to just quad.

Well you're going to be waiting a while.

If you want 8-core goodness, then you should get a workstation motherboard that supports 2 quadcore xeon processors.

8-core is going to be expensive when it's released and it's going to be a while. Nehalem will be native quadcore (not 2 dualcore processors put together). It might be possible they put two of these together on one chip like the current yorkfield.

Either way, I don't think you will see an affordable 8-core chip in 2009. It might be possible in 2010.

If you're talking about AMD then I have no clue as I haven't been following them since conroe was released. :)

[tim]

Not sure the exact details of the Intel roadmap, but my impression is they may arrive late 2008. It could be the eight core machines don't arrive until later in 2009.


From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)).

Nehalem is the codename for a future processor microarchitecture being developed by Intel.[1], which will be marketed under the Core i7 brand-name.[2] Nehalem will be released in late 2008 for high-end desktop and dual-processor platforms[3] and in Q4 2009 to Q1 2010 for mainstream desktop and mobile platforms. The microarchitecture is the planned successor to the Core microarchitecture.

Nehalem uses the 45 nm manufacturing methods from Penryn and applies it to the new Nehalem microarchitecture. A working system with two Nehalem processors was shown at Intel Developer Forum Fall 2007[4], and a large number of Nehalem systems were shown at Computex in June 2008.

The processor is named after the Nehalem River in Northwest Oregon, which is in turn named after the Nehalem Native American tribe in Oregon. The code name itself had been seen on the end of several roadmaps starting in 2000. At that stage it was supposed to be the latest evolution of the NetBurst architecture. Since the abandonment of NetBurst, the codename has been recycled and refers to a completely different project.

Either way I have a bunch of weddings in summer 2008 and not a lot of time to do it, so i'll probably upgrade to whatever's current from Intel. If that's quad core then hopefully they'll be pin compatible with eight core chips when they're released.

[DigitalSpecialist]

Build your own!!! You would be suprised at how easy it is to put a PC together. Try it you might find you like it.

[tim]

I built my last PC, it's a bit weird - for example if I turn it off before it'll restart I have to unplug it, leave it 5 seconds, then plug it in. Also it's quite loud, and I have no idea if the fan speed control works. I'm probably going to buy a premade PC next time.

[griptape]

Build your own!!! You would be suprised at how easy it is to put a PC together. Try it you might find you like it.
Couldn't agree more. If you can get a plug into a wall socket, you can build a PC. It's just a matter of plugging in about 8 plugs into matching sockets. I've built every PC I've owned for the last 12 years, and I'm 25.

[tim]

I dunno, there's lots of little sockets to plug things into, like usb and firewire ports. My degree's in engineering and I was surprised when I put everything together and turned it on. Firewire never worked though, but I didn't care since I have no FW ports.

The people who call the case a "hard drive", don't know about static electricity, and don't know the difference between RAM and hard disk probably should just buy an HP.

[kemo3ce]

no matter what try NOT to get vista if you do go with a PC and not a Mac.

[griptape]

no matter what try NOT to get vista if you do go with a PC and not a Mac.
That seems to be an overly dramatic statement. Vista has its issues, but they aren't so broad that they would affect someone "no matter what".

[tim]

I think Vista is a good move if you have buckets of RAM, it's memory management is meant to be a lot better than XP. I plan to use Vista64 when I get a new PC, with a possible downgrade to XP64 if things go badly, which I don't expect.

[griptape]

I think Vista is a good move if you have buckets of RAM
Considering 4GB is around $75, if you're building a PC, that's not a big expense.

[tim]

I think over 3GB a 64-bit OS becomes useful, as XP32 and probably Vista32 reserves some of the memory between 3GB and 4GB for memory mapped IO. 64bit OS's come into their own above 4GB.

[bohdank]

Bridge and Photoshop take advantage of multiple cores quite well, I max out two cores all the time. I sometimes process 3000 images per week, more cores (along with plenty of RAM and fast disks) means faster preview rendering, faster batch conversion, and that I can run a lot of software at the same time (album design program, photoshop, online ordering thumbnail generator, etc). Plus while software might not fully take advantage of eight cores now things are gradually improving.

You can have all the programs you want opened, but you can't use them all the same time, so it doesn't matter how many programs you have opened if they are not all doiing something at the same time. I doubt you're using a brush on an image and designing albums at the very same instant.

If you are batch processing thousands of RAW images, then I can understand. If using PS, even using multiple layers, I doubt you'd see any appreciable difference between a dual core with 2 gigs and 8 cores with 16 gig. I have been editing 16 bit scans of 35mm negatives on the current machine (file size over 120 meg) and if it was any faster, it would be waiting for me rather than the other way around ;-)

No worry..... if it's slowing me down, I upgrade.... if not..... I don't.

I am rather surprised that PS works well with just 2 gigs of memory. I was planning on adding 2 more but I am never waiting for the swap disk so I've put off adding more.

[bohdank]

Considering 4GB is around $75, if you're building a PC, that's not a big expense.

Where can you buy 4 gigs of fast memory for $75.

[tim]

You can have all the programs you want opened, but you can't use them all the same time, so it doesn't matter how many programs you have opened if they are not all doiing something at the same time. I doubt you're using a brush on an image and designing albums at the very same instant.

If you are batch processing thousands of RAW images, then I can understand. If using PS, even using multiple layers, I doubt you'd see any appreciable difference between a dual core with 2 gigs and 8 cores with 16 gig. I have been editing 16 bit scans of 35mm negatives on the current machine (file size over 120 meg) and if it was any faster, it would be waiting for me rather than the other way around ;-)

No worry..... if it's slowing me down, I upgrade.... if not..... I don't.

I am rather surprised that PS works well with just 2 gigs of memory. I was planning on adding 2 more but I am never waiting for the swap disk so I've put off adding more.

I only do a few edits in Photoshop, almost all of my work is done on batches of images. I can be batching some RAW files to JPG at the same time as I make thumbnails and generate online proof galleries, and batching an album out at the same time too. Multiple cores really speeds that up. I rarely get near 2GB of RAM used, only when I do lots of edits with multiple layers. My degree is in computer software/hardware engineering, and I have ten years experience working as a software developer, I have a fairly good handle on these things :)

[shimmishim]

Where can you buy 4 gigs of fast memory for $75.

DDR, DDR2, or DDR3?

Usually places like newegg (sorry Canadian folk) have really sweet deals on computer parts.

DDR2 is dirt cheap right now and DDR3 is starting to come down in price.

I currently own 16GB of DDR2 but run 6GB in my current machine on Vista 64bit.

[Bobster]

If you are batch processing thousands of RAW images, then I can understand. If using PS, even using multiple layers, I doubt you'd see any appreciable difference between a dual core with 2 gigs and 8 cores with 16 gig. I have been editing 16 bit scans of 35mm negatives on the current machine (file size over 120 meg) and if it was any faster, it would be waiting for me rather than the other way around ;-)
working on 1.5GB Files, having a Dual Core/CPU is a very good idea, also since i've upgraded to 8GB RAM, its much faster at editing these size files, filters run faster etc.. hell my dual core system is faster than most peoples quad core systems with lesser RAM..

120MB files are nothing, 8 mega pixel 16bit files are 48MB before you even start doing anything to them, add a few layers and bam ur above your 120MB ;)

swapping between applications is quicker with more RAM and CPU's, i can be processing 1200 RAW files while Photoshop is resizing and watermarking another batch and still be working real time on my albums :)

[bohdank]

As I've stated, if you are constantly doing extensive batch processing and truly multitasking... the more the better, up to a point.

I don't edit anything that I am not going to show or print, I see it as a pointless timewaster, so my batch editing is nil. For the few times per year I am going to create or update my website (actually haven't done it in years), I see no need to get "more" than I have.

I see no reason to throw money at something I am not going to use. Although I have been a software developer since 1978 ;- I can proudly say I am not a geek.

[HappyLefty]

Just something to consider, not to turn into a debate, but Have you considered a Mac? !
That´s a very good recommendation, but my personal preference is for Windows XP.