24" Imac or DIY PC.

[Marloon]

Hey guys...

can someone help me decide if i want to buy a 24" imac with 256mb of graphics memory or... just buy myself a DIY PC...

my budget for both will be 2000.

I need it for the following:
- 95% Lightroom, 5% Adobe Premier Pro
- Watching movies, reviewing photos
- Storing photos from a 40D and 5DMKII

If i was going to buy a 5DII, what storage options are available for me? I dont want to end up buying TONS of externals. (which might be the way...)

i basically want to have 4 1.0 or 1.5 TB of HD space because of pictures. I have TONS of photos that i want to now backup. i do not want to lose them....

[lens pirate]

for 2000 you can buy a LOT more PC than you can a MAC. If your building yourself. More so.

[Moppie]

I need it for the following:
- 95% Lightroom, 5% Adobe Premier Pro
- Watching movies, reviewing photos
- Storing photos from a 40D and 5DMKII

If i was going to buy a 5DII, what storage options are available for me? I dont want to end up buying TONS of externals. (which might be the way...)

i basically want to have 4 1.0 or 1.5 TB of HD space because of pictures. I have TONS of photos that i want to now backup. i do not want to lose them....



Well the iMac is an old dual core with a single internal HDD limited to 1TB in size.

What you need is a quad core to handle the 5D MKII files, and lots of internal and external storage to keep them, and back them up.

If your not doing a lot of heavy processing then look at an older generation Q series quad core, either a Q8200 or if you can find one a Q6600.
4GB of ram, and an Intel or Asus P5Q mother board.
If your playing with the photos a lot, editing them, and batch converting them then get an i7 920 with 6GB of ram.

Then load it up with hard discs.
1 for the OS, programs etc (say 120-250GB)
1 for storing other stuff, games, movies etc (say 320-500GB)
2 1TB discs for your photos (one for back up)
And, 1 or 2 1TB externals for external back ups.

[dsd17]

Hey guys...

i basically want to have 4 1.0 or 1.5 TB of HD space because of pictures. I have TONS of photos that i want to now backup. i do not want to lose them....

If you're looking at doing that as an external source, I'd look into http://www.drobo.com/. Fantastic product and it automagically raids it for you. One hard drive dies, pull it out and put another one in. done.

[basroil]

If you're looking at doing that as an external source, I'd look into http://www.drobo.com/. Fantastic product and it automagically raids it for you. One hard drive dies, pull it out and put another one in. done.

Software based, not hardware. Works well, except the 30mb/s limit on USB drives. For that price you can just buy a second computer case, FIS switch, and a power supply, so then you have hardware raid, support for 5 drives, and 3gbps for the drives (hardware raided at the switch, that ends up being over 100mb/s).

Well the iMac is an old dual core with a single internal HDD limited to 1TB in size.

What you need is a quad core to handle the 5D MKII files, and lots of internal and external storage to keep them, and back them up.

If your not doing a lot of heavy processing then look at an older generation Q series quad core, either a Q8200 or if you can find one a Q6600.
4GB of ram, and an Intel or Asus P5Q mother board.
If your playing with the photos a lot, editing them, and batch converting them then get an i7 920 with 6GB of ram.

Then load it up with hard discs.
1 for the OS, programs etc (say 120-250GB)
1 for storing other stuff, games, movies etc (say 320-500GB)
2 1TB discs for your photos (one for back up)
And, 1 or 2 1TB externals for external back ups.

Forgot that macs use laptop components. Big hit in drive speed and graphics (for video)

If you want small footprint, you can get a microatx board (between 60 and 150 depending on specs, ones with hardware raid and 6 sata slots are available in the 150 range), q6600 (usually under 200), 8gb ram, hdds you need, etc.

If you want power to spare, i7 920 (processor + board is usually 500), midrange graphics card, and all the other goodies you want. Building it is like an erector set, just screw it together in the right order and it works.

Or, you can just get a dell studio xps (or studio xps 435), which is a i7 rig, generally for about 1500. Including 24" monitor, 6gb trichannel ram (trust me, 6gb trichannel is much, much, much, much better than 8gb dual channel, and kills anything short of the old mac pro's FBDIMM, which new macpro doesn't have), 1gb raid 0 (good balance of speed and space). You also have an esata port and one left over sata port if you get only one dvd drive. Then with the remaining 500, get a 1tb esata drive (mybook is at 139 at b&h), 1tb caviar black (or equivalent, at about 109), and a 1500VA APC backup power supply (about 200, simply amazing, and lets you run the beast for half an hour on backup alone, or about a week on standby. With that combo you'll end up with a decent gaming system (means great multimedia system), top of the line photo editing/video encoding system (i7 means 4 cores+4 more threads, so acts like two quad core chips, and LR and photoshop can handle all those cores, as can x264). All up to you though... though i suggest that system, and if you can shell out another 500 the dell 2408WFP is definately a great buy to go along with it, nothing like editing on a 24" sceen except to edit on two 24" screens :D

[Marloon]

I guess the thing I am scared the most about is the fact that pcs crash and get viruses. LOL.

[Moppie]

I guess the thing I am scared the most about is the fact that pcs crash and get viruses. LOL.


A decade ago, you might have had a valid point.

Computers are like anything, if you buy the cheapest, lowest quality product, you will get a pile of unreliable crap.

Spend a bit of money on a quality system and you won't have any problems. :cool:

[lens pirate]

I guess the thing I am scared the most about is the fact that pcs crash and get viruses. LOL.

So do MACS. Thing is if 10 percent of PC's get viruses, millions of machines and people are impacted.

If 10 percent of MACS get infected it only impacts about 3 people and they are abducted by Applecare Techs.

bw!

[Yogesh Sarkar]

lol that was a good one

[Marloon]

LOL. True enough... (i am a pc & a mac user - LOL)

So here are the specs.... what do you think?
-i7 920
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1500GB 1.5TB x 4 (or 6 Maxing out my sata slots - LOL)
-Radeon HD 4870
-G.SKILL F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ 6GB DDR3 3X2GB DDR3-1600 CL 9-9-9-24 Triple Channel Memory Kit
-MSI X58 Pro X58 ATX LGA1366 DDR3 3PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 2PCI CrossFire SATA2 GBLAN Motherboard
-Seasonic SS-650HT 650W EPS12V 20/24PIN ATX Power Supply Active PFC 80PLUS 6PIN PCI-E 120MM Fan
-Ill need a dri

I was thinking of having 2 Graphics cards...

do you guys recommend any graphics cards that are good for handling games & photoshop?

[lens pirate]

LOL. True enough... (i am a pc & a mac user - LOL)

So here are the specs.... what do you think?
-i7 920
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1500GB 1.5TB x 4 (or 6 Maxing out my sata slots - LOL)
-Radeon HD 4870
-G.SKILL F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ 6GB DDR3 3X2GB DDR3-1600 CL 9-9-9-24 Triple Channel Memory Kit
-MSI X58 Pro X58 ATX LGA1366 DDR3 3PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 2PCI CrossFire SATA2 GBLAN Motherboard
-Seasonic SS-650HT 650W EPS12V 20/24PIN ATX Power Supply Active PFC 80PLUS 6PIN PCI-E 120MM Fan
-Ill need a dri

I was thinking of having 2 Graphics cards...

do you guys recommend any graphics cards that are good for handling games & photoshop?

Solid system,

If you go with two cards consider a bigger PSU. The rated timeings on that RAM are kind of slow.... I imagine you picked that over say a Corsair dominator part due to price?


For me all those drives in a case make little sense ( For ME) I would use two drives in the case and put the rest in a NAS device ( RAID 5) for back up and storage. But that is how I like to do it.

Does not talk a lot of video card to handle Photoshop, just look for 512 or better video RAM. Gaming is a entirely different topic.

I run dual GEforce 280s in SLI and have been vey happy.

Good luck with that new system.

[Colorblinded]

I guess the thing I am scared the most about is the fact that pcs crash and get viruses. LOL.
While viruses do exist I can't recall the last time I've had any and can count on one hand (with missing fingers even) the number of times I've had a virus on any of many PCs I've owned in the past decade.

Crash wise, unless a third party vendor has crappy drivers (glances at nVidia) or you have a hardware problem I never see OSX or Windows crash.

I agree that you'd be much better served with a homebuilt desktop for those purposes, in fact in going that route you'll have better monitor options not to mention the fact you can have vastly faster hardware without coming near $2000. You could easily build a very potent quad core system with 8GB RAM (if you don't go i7) at around the $1000 price point.

I think your configuration sounds like a good looking setup. For a video card if you're not gaming you have a huge number of very inexpensive options. If you game but aren't concerned about the latest and greatest and top performance then you have many good options in the $100-200 range these days. The price/performance ratio in the $150 area seems to be the best I can ever think of it being these days. I have an eVGA GTX 260 Core 216 55nm superclocked and it's fantastic for the bit of gaming I do.

[OdiN1701]

PC all the way. You will get a much better/faster system for $2K DIY PC than an Apple. And it will be upgradeable down the road for a lot less than buying a whole new Apple.

I see no reason to waste money on an iMac. If you want a Mac, you should get a MacPro, but then that starts way out of budget. So there you go.

[kini]

PC all the way.
I see no reason to waste money on an iMac. So there you go.

Actually they are all "PCs". One runs OS X and is built by Apple and the software is written by Apple.

The other "uses" Windows which is written by 1,000,000 monkeys hammering away on keyboards 24/7 (in shifts of course- gotta respect worker rights) and the hardware is assembled by "you", someone else, a company such as Dell or HP (which BTW employ some of the same "design" philosophies as M$ does in "writing" their software.

Actually there is no reason to waste money on anything that "requires" the use of Windows in order to be functional and functional here being used very, very loosely.

So, there you go.

Actually in berating Windows I'm pretty much talking about anything post XP.

Gene

[nphsbuckeye]

Actually they are all "PCs". One runs OS X and is built by Apple and the software is written by Apple.

The other "uses" Windows which is written by 1,000,000 monkeys hammering away on keyboards 24/7 (in shifts of course- gotta respect worker rights) and the hardware is assembled by "you", someone else, a company such as Dell or HP (which BTW employ some of the same "design" philosophies as M$ does in "writing" their software.

Actually there is no reason to waste money on anything that "requires" the use of Windows in order to be functional and functional here being used very, very loosely.

So, there you go.

Actually in berating Windows I'm pretty much talking about anything post XP.

Gene
Any other ad hominens with lack of substance?