Computer confusion

John from PA wrote in post #19039494
IMO, 256GB is too small. Studies have shown that using up to about 75% maximum of a drive capacity provides a good balance between performance and capacity. If your current boot drive has 200GB, then you should consider going to 512GB. Large SSD’s also have an advantage over smaller SSDs in speed becasue they can better use NAND architecture by simultaneously writing to multiple chips.

I agree - plus the savings are minimal. Get the fastest 515GB you can afford or even get a slower but larger 1TB for added convenience. Prices are not that extraorbitant anymore. Also: LR will thank you.

Archibald wrote in post #19039071
It is getting time to buy a new computer. The old Windows box is 4.5 years old. Current technology will probably give double the speed of my old machine. So I set out to shop for a new computer. All I really need is a box with an up-to-date CPU and chipset. Or so I thought. But going to the different merchant websites, I'm running into one surprise after another. The computer scene has changed a lot just in the last couple of years.

I've just recently gone through that. I also follow the practice of upgrading my own system, and have since getting my first IBM PC in 1988 (having used Ataris before that since 1983).

Cases can be a challenge for the non-gamer. Frankly, my case is the oldest component of my system. I do still want to retain a couple of 5.25 bays, one for a CD-Rom drive (which can still become necessary from time to time) and another for a new dual 2.5-inch hot-swap drive bay. Sure, I can work around that with pluggable USB devices...but why would I want to?

It's possible to find cases with front drive bays, but you do have to seek them out, and they likely won't be on the shelves anymore, except as maybe the sole, dust-laden full-sizes tower model that the dealer has over in the corner.

I find the new motherboards have plenty of USB ports in the rear. My older board required me to install some USB cards to get all the ports I needed. My latest Gigabyte board (as of 3 months ago) has 11 ports. It also includes the newer USB-C gen 2 port, which is fast enough to be really interesting for a remote drive that also has USB-C gen 2 capabilities.

In SATA you do want SATA II. SATA II is backward compatible. But I've been happy to stick to solid state drives in the tower. For one thing, I no longer have to worry about damaging the drives when I shove the box around. At this point, I'm using a 500 gig M.2 NVMe drive mounted directly to the motherboard for my C: and programs (few writes are done to that drive). Once a month, I clone the C: drive to another M.2 NVMe drive mounted in a small portable USB case. If my system ever crashes, my first action is merely to replace the crashed drive with its clone.

I've got another 500 gig M.2 NVMe drive on a PCIe card that holds my D: (currently working files) and Z: (scratch files, swapfile) drives. That gets backed up to my Synology servers.

My longer-term storage is a dual-drive USB C box with two 3.5-inch 5 terabyte drives in RAID 0 mode (seen by the computer as a single 10 terabyte drive). That gets backed up to my Synology servers.

I have two 4-drive Synology servers in a proprietary Synology RAID type that is RAID 5 with smarter handling of different sized drives. Everything gets backed up twice a week alternately to these servers. These servers are themselves backed up on alternate nights to separate "buckets" in a Backblaze B2 cloud account. Differential backups are used in all cases.

Adobe products are still light users of graphics card capabilities. I only upgraded from an old 4-gig Nvidia 960 because it finally conked out. It was fine for multi-camera video work with Premier Pro (I did discover that at least 4 gigs of video ram were absolutely necessary for multi-camera video work with Premier Pro, however). I'm using an Nvidia 1650 with six gigs of video ram now, and I've seen no evidence (such as on the Adobe or Puget Sound sites) indicating that I'd get any appreciable performance improvement with anything more powerful. The Nvidia 1650 seems to be the current "respectable" bottom level card right now.

With regard to processors, again Adobe products themselves become the bottleneck. Puget Sound reports that returns diminish quickly beyond 8 cores/threads. But Adobe products do love more Hertz. At this moment, AMD's Ryzen processors seem to be giving more bang for the buck in that respect.

However, I'm running an Intel i7-9700K 8-core processor (designed for overclocking) on a Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO motherboard that's designed to overclock, and it's running with perfect stability at a modest 4.2 GHz boost.

I'm pretty sure I'd normally be happy with 16 gigs of ram, but I have a tendency to have a zillion YouTube tabs open in Firefox (I'm kinda transitioning to the new Chromium Microsoft Edge, though) and then I try to run Canon DPP and Photoshop with big files at the same time. So I've finally gone to a full 64 gigs of system memory.

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #19039386
Have you seen the Dell XPS Special Edition? Available in 10 versions and can be customized.

https://www.dell.com …n/spd/xps-8930-se-desktop

I'm curious what kind of performance are you looking for in a pc? Do you plan on running more than LR?

Thanks for the tip about Dell XPS Special Edition. I have spent hours on the Dell site and not run into those. I was also in a 1+ hour chat with Dell and the XPS SE never came up. I had a quick look and they are definitely worth exploring.

My main requirements are Win 10, i7 9th generation, 16 GB, some kind of graphics card, enough USB front and back, preferably upgradeable, NVMe M.2 connection(s), and a quiet power supply. I would consider AMD instead of Intel. As for the NVMe, I didn't know I needed that until yesterday! As I mentioned, things are different this time around for me.

Choderboy wrote in post #19039407
I'll just answer what I know:

Archibald wrote in post #19039071
It is getting time to buy a new computer. The old Windows box is 4.5 years old. Current technology will probably give double the speed of my old machine. So I set out to shop for a new computer. All I really need is a box with an up-to-date CPU and chipset. Or so I thought. But going to the different merchant websites, I'm running into one surprise after another. The computer scene has changed a lot just in the last couple of years.

The standard tower seems to be no more. It's either LED-adorned gaming boxes or "Small Form Factor" computers. These are very tight inside making it difficult or impossible to upgrade components later.
There are definitely Towers still available in various sizes and without LEDs. LEDs don't have to be connected either.

Optical drives won't fit in the new cases and seem to be becoming obsolete.
I have an older Dell Optiplex 9020. Case is described as "Ultra Compact". It has an optical Drive as standard.
There are definite limitations on adding components in this small case.

Computers don't have enough USB ports. I need at least 8 to accommodate all my gadgets. And they still sell USB 2?? Maybe I could use a USB hub if they work properly.
USB3 is standard now, much faster than USB2. I don't know if you could buy a new PC that does not also have USB-C (or USB 3.1)
My old Dell Optiplex has 8 x USB ports. 2 x USB3 and 2 x USB2 on the front. Same for the rear.
USB3 uses the same connector as USB2. USB 3.1 uses the new Type-C connector

While computers with HDD are still being sold, most now have SSD, which is fine, but it seems we are migrating away from SATA connectivity to S.2. That might be great, but I need to learn about compatibilities! ... because I might want to upgrade later.
I believe by S2 you mean M2, but M2 is just a form factor. Looks more like memory. M2 are available with either SATA or NVMe interfaces.
My old Dell would have had a SATA HDD. Now has a SATA SSD (form factor is 2.5inch, looks like a laptop HDD)

Thanks, Dave. Yes, I meant M.2. It is new to me. I'm still not sure what the difference is between M.2, NVMe and PCIe! But I think I need them. No worries, I will figure it out.

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #19039426
These Dells, as well as some other pcs, use M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD for the boot drive. This drive holds the OS and programs.
They come in 4 different sizes - 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB. Of course, the larger the more expensive.

What I want to know: does anyone really need a 1 or 2TB boot drive? Isn't 256 or 512GB enough?

Hi, Frank. These SSDs are very new to me, but look very exciting, being fast and cheap.

I would definitely want the 2TB. All programs and current data would go on the 2TB boot drive. That's my plan. It would be speedy, and no more waiting for a sleeping HD to spin up. I also have a lot of data that is older and less used (but still important), and that would sit on an external HDD.

Considering the low cost of a 2TB SSD, I would probably get a second one and keep it around as a backup. Any problems (corruption, virus, Win10 bug) I would just swap the SSD.

3Rotor wrote in post #19039478
Yes, Micro Center's PC Builder I mentioned allows you to pick and choose the components for your custom build, including different cases.

John from PA wrote in post #19039497
As I was reading your comment an email from MicroCenter popped up about build you own

See https://microcenterins​ider.com …me64vten77mr4vf​jsv4lqecfg

FarmerTed1971 wrote in post #19039501
Call these guys and tell them your needs and budget and they will build you the perfect system...
https://www.pugetsyste​ms.com/

https://www.pugetsyste​ms.com …/Hardware-Recommendations

Thanks for the links, guys. Interesting reading, and I will spend some time reviewing them. I would prefer to buy locally (no import issues and makes servicing easier), but those sites look good to get info.

Canada is a nice country but shopping is harder here.

I did manage to find a couple of computers locally that look like they will be satisfactory. But both are out of stock.

https://www.memoryexpr​ess.com/Products/MX783​07
https://www.memoryexpr​ess.com/Products/MX760​87

John from PA wrote in post #19039497
As I was reading your comment an email from MicroCenter popped up about build you own

See https://microcenterins​ider.com …me64vten77mr4vf​jsv4lqecfg

Now that's interesting. Looks like it prevents incompatible components from being considered.

I wonder if Archibald is considering building his own?

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #19039580
Now that's interesting. Looks like it prevents incompatible components from being considered.

I wonder if Archibald is considering building his own?

I don't have the know-how, but don't mind rooting around inside computers. So with proper guidance that would be possible. Maybe I could get a list of components from microcenterinsider and then build it here. Would that even be ethical?

I hope Archibald doesn't mind me hijacking his thread a little bit, but I have a related question...

Both of these are 1T SSD memory. The first is the type we have been discussing. It plugs into the MB, I believe.

The second has a different form factor. But I don't understand how they differ. The first is faster, correct?

https://www.microcente​r.com …nternal-solid-state-drive

https://www.microcente​r.com …nternal-solid-state-drive

Frank, yes the first one is faster as it is using PCIe compared to the second link that uses SATA. It's about 5 times faster, theoretically.

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #19039590
I hope Archibald doesn't mind me hijacking his thread a little bit, but I have a related question...

Both of these are 1T SSD memory. The first is the type we have been discussing. It plugs into the MB, I believe.

The second has a different form factor. But I don't understand how they differ. The first is faster, correct?

https://www.microcente​r.com …nternal-solid-state-drive

https://www.microcente​r.com …nternal-solid-state-drive

LOL, limit 4 per household.

RDKirk wrote in post #19039518
I've just recently gone through that. I also follow the practice of upgrading my own system, and have since getting my first IBM PC in 1988 (having used Ataris before that since 1983).

Cases can be a challenge for the non-gamer. Frankly, my case is the oldest component of my system. I do still want to retain a couple of 5.25 bays, one for a CD-Rom drive (which can still become necessary from time to time) and another for a new dual 2.5-inch hot-swap drive bay. Sure, I can work around that with pluggable USB devices...but why would I want to?

It's possible to find cases with front drive bays, but you do have to seek them out, and they likely won't be on the shelves anymore, except as maybe the sole, dust-laden full-sizes tower model that the dealer has over in the corner.

I find the new motherboards have plenty of USB ports in the rear. My older board required me to install some USB cards to get all the ports I needed. My latest Gigabyte board (as of 3 months ago) has 11 ports. It also includes the newer USB-C gen 2 port, which is fast enough to be really interesting for a remote drive that also has USB-C gen 2 capabilities.

In SATA you do want SATA II. SATA II is backward compatible. But I've been happy to stick to solid state drives in the tower. For one thing, I no longer have to worry about damaging the drives when I shove the box around. At this point, I'm using a 500 gig M.2 NVMe drive mounted directly to the motherboard for my C: and programs (few writes are done to that drive). Once a month, I clone the C: drive to another M.2 NVMe drive mounted in a small portable USB case. If my system ever crashes, my first action is merely to replace the crashed drive with its clone.

I've got another 500 gig M.2 NVMe drive on a PCIe card that holds my D: (currently working files) and Z: (scratch files, swapfile) drives. That gets backed up to my Synology servers.

My longer-term storage is a dual-drive USB C box with two 3.5-inch 5 terabyte drives in RAID 0 mode (seen by the computer as a single 10 terabyte drive). That gets backed up to my Synology servers.

I have two 4-drive Synology servers in a proprietary Synology RAID type that is RAID 5 with smarter handling of different sized drives. Everything gets backed up twice a week alternately to these servers. These servers are themselves backed up on alternate nights to separate "buckets" in a Backblaze B2 cloud account. Differential backups are used in all cases.

Adobe products are still light users of graphics card capabilities. I only upgraded from an old 4-gig Nvidia 960 because it finally conked out. It was fine for multi-camera video work with Premier Pro (I did discover that at least 4 gigs of video ram were absolutely necessary for multi-camera video work with Premier Pro, however). I'm using an Nvidia 1650 with six gigs of video ram now, and I've seen no evidence (such as on the Adobe or Puget Sound sites) indicating that I'd get any appreciable performance improvement with anything more powerful. Nvidia seems to be the current "respectable" bottom level card right now.

With regard to processors, again Adobe products themselves become the bottleneck. Puget Sound reports that returns diminish quickly beyond 8 cores/threads. But Adobe products do love more Hertz. At this moment, AMD's Ryzen processors seem to be giving more bang for the buck in that respect.

However, I'm running an Intel i7-9700K 8-core processor (designed for overclocking) on a Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO motherboard that's designed to overclock, and it's running with perfect stability at a modest 4.2 GHz boost.

I'm pretty sure I'd normally be happy with 16 gigs of ram, but I have a tendency to have a zillion YouTube tabs open in Firefox (I'm kinda transitioning to the new Chromium Microsoft Edge, though) and then I try to run Canon DPP and Photoshop with big files at the same time. So I've finally gone to a full 64 gigs of system memory.

Thanks for your comments. You know what you are doing and that is very cool.

You might be right about USB ports on mother boards, but most computers off the shelf have only one or two USB 3 ports on the back (usually with 2 or 3 USB2). My current box (4.5 years old) had around 4. I installed a USB 3 card into it to get me the connections I need. I wonder if that card would be compatible with most computers sold today.

Expansion of memory is another issue. I want the right amount in the computer when I buy it. Of course more can be added later, but I believe there can be hassles with compatibility.

Archibald wrote in post #19039607
Expansion of memory is another issue. I want the right amount in the computer when I buy it. Of course more can be added later, but I believe there can be hassles with compatibility.

I think the hassles are largely over. All the big memory companies can search your computer and tell you exactly what memory is needed.

For example, I went to Crucial's site and had it scan my pc. It came back with memory suggestions exactly right for my pc.

https://www.crucial.co​m/

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #19039628
I think the hassles are largely over. All the big memory companies can search your computer and tell you exactly what memory is needed.

For example, I went to Crucial's site and had it scan my pc. It came back with memory suggestions exactly right for my pc.

https://www.crucial.co​m/

I see. That is interesting and useful to know.

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #19039628
I think the hassles are largely over. All the big memory companies can search your computer and tell you exactly what memory is needed.

For example, I went to Crucial's site and had it scan my pc. It came back with memory suggestions exactly right for my pc.

https://www.crucial.co​m/

I have a computer that I would not think would cause issues with the Crucial program, but my HP Pavilion 590 could not be found with the interrogator!
So I had to pick 'HP', then pick '590 series', then pick specific model '590 p0050', for it to suggest possible upgrades compatible with my PC