Sites for Computer component reviews for a photographer

Does anyone out there know of any good sites that do computer reviews that have a slant towards the needs of a photographer? For instance, I really like Tom's Hardware, and I think they do some very good reviews on the newest graphics cards, motherboards, etc. But in the end, I'm not necessarily concerned with building a machine to play Crysis or World of Warcraft (though I realize there's a much greater audience for people who are concerned with just that). In general, I think a good computer for photo editing has a lot of the same characteristics as a gaming computer (good video card, fast processor, a good amount of RAM. . .), but obviously the requirements aren't exactly identical. I think I'm for the most part tech savvy enough to make fairly informed decisions, and it's not exactly rocket science, but I'm just curious.

I think these forums are about as close as anything gets.

If you think about it, it's quite a small market to appeal to. Not many photographers self build, let alone understand how important a computer is in a complete digital work flow.

Here would be the best place to ask. From CNET to toms hardware to techworld, a lot of reviews have a certain set of test they run through and give results on. They test benchmarks, battery life, application load times and boot times, and so on with hardware. None really focus on media editing except Photoshop application load times is what I usually see.

Plus a lot of members here are helpful on what to get for your budget.

newegg tv on youtube is always good.

IslandCrow wrote in post #15136699
Does anyone out there know of any good sites that do computer reviews that have a slant towards the needs of a photographer? For instance, I really like Tom's Hardware, and I think they do some very good reviews on the newest graphics cards, motherboards, etc. But in the end, I'm not necessarily concerned with building a machine to play Crysis or World of Warcraft (though I realize there's a much greater audience for people who are concerned with just that). In general, I think a good computer for photo editing has a lot of the same characteristics as a gaming computer (good video card, fast processor, a good amount of RAM. . .), but obviously the requirements aren't exactly identical. I think I'm for the most part tech savvy enough to make fairly informed decisions, and it's not exactly rocket science, but I'm just curious.

Pffft, you don't think that gaming builds are top notch computers? Sheesh, they are more graphic intensive than editing one photo at a time. If in any doubt, try play Crysis or World of Warcraft, lol

anandtech gives a photoshop benchmark for their processor reviews which helps see what different chips give you.

http://www.anandtech.c​om …0k-core-i3-2100-tested/15

Really for photo editing you really just need a CPU with a lot of horsepower. Most photo editing programs will barely touch your GPU. I think Photoshop will utilize a graphics card for some really advanced functions but still you only need a 2nd or 3rd gen back version as the gains seem to small with the powerful cards of today.

I run two computers for photo editing. One is my laptop with a dual core cpu and the other is my desktop with a quad core overclocked CPU. The desktop smokes the laptop in every program I use. I have also had a GTX 460, GT 430 and a 5450 in the desktop and I don't think I could tell you which one is in when I am running Photoshop or light room, really no difference in performance but there is a large difference in hardware power and price.
Video editing is a whole different ballgame though, someone else would have answer if you want to get into that.

All you really need to worry about is getting an Intel CPU with onboard graphics (i5 or i7) and a SSD for programs and files your currently working on.

That alone will pretty handle anything you could do in PS that's photography related.

RichSoansPhotos wrote in post #15137605
Pffft, you don't think that gaming builds are top notch computers? Sheesh, they are more graphic intensive than editing one photo at a time. If in any doubt, try play Crysis or World of Warcraft, lol

I don't think he was saying that.

Tom's Hardware reviews/benchmarks are almost always geared towards gaming, and therefore concentrate, mostly, on the graphics sub-system. Having said that, you can see how a component performs in Photoshop in most of the charts they have.

I use TH to gauge photo editing systems builds all the time. I just largely ignore the graphics card charts as any low-mid range card with 1Gb vram will do just fine.

RichSoansPhotos wrote in post #15137605
Pffft, you don't think that gaming builds are top notch computers? Sheesh, they are more graphic intensive than editing one photo at a time. If in any doubt, try play Crysis or World of Warcraft, lol

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm well aware that a top-notch gaming system is going to have no problem running Photoshop. But as others have stated, if my primary concern is photo editing, there's no need for me to spend $500 on a top of the line graphics card when that money would better be served getting a larger/faster hard drive.

Anyway, good advice, and honestly the answers I figured I'd get. If I were bench testing computers, I know I'd focus on my largest audience as well (i.e. the gamers who are often trying to get as much performance out of a system as they can possibly afford). I'm just getting to the point where I haven't done a major upgrade to my system in a few years, and I'm getting that itch. I'll just post my ideas here and let others chime in. In the end, I'll probably end up overbuilding it for what I need anyway. . .you know, the Tim Taylor approach {insert manly grunt here}.

Thanks everyone.

Ah it's not that hard. Obsessing about components won't make much difference in the long term.

16GB of RAM (32GB for video), a 3xxx processor preferably i7 but i5 are almost as good, a quality brand of motherboard that has the ports and features you need, ssd to boot and for cache, hard drive for images plus, entry level to lower midrange nVidia video card (midrange to high end if you do video) backup disk, calibrator, IPS LCD monitor. Get a decent cooler, noctuna or cooler master. Get a bigger case than you think you'll need, and quiet fans.

^^^^^
Pretty much.

tim wrote in post #15145912
Ah it's not that hard. Obsessing about components won't make much difference in the long term.

16GB of RAM (32GB for video), a 3xxx processor preferably i7 but i5 are almost as good, a quality brand of motherboard that has the ports and features you need, ssd to boot and for cache, hard drive for images plus, entry level to lower midrange nVidia video card (midrange to high end if you do video) backup disk, calibrator, IPS LCD monitor. Get a decent cooler, noctuna or cooler master. Get a bigger case than you think you'll need, and quiet fans.

Yeah, it sounds like you pretty much summed it up for me, and that's right along the lines of what I was thinking (though I think I'll end up going with a Radeon). My current MB is maxed out at 8GB of RAM, and that's probably the biggest reason I'm looking to upgrade. I recently built my own liquid CPU cooler (it's a little ghetto until I get around to fabricating an acrylic reservoir), so I'm able to OC my i5 CPU well enough that I truly doubt it's really a bottleneck. And I finally got an IPS monitor. Not top of the line, but definitely an improvement.

Thanks again for all of the help.

8GB RAM isn't really a big bottleneck. Most of the time you don't use more than 4GB, the rest is used for disk cache, which is a decent gain sometimes.

Adobe products work best with nVidia cards I think. Best read the compatibility charts.

tim wrote in post #15163924
8GB RAM isn't really a big bottleneck. Most of the time you don't use more than 4GB, the rest is used for disk cache, which is a decent gain sometimes.

Adobe products work best with nVidia cards I think. Best read the compatibility charts.

Oh, now that's interesting on the nVidia cards. I hadn't heard that before. I just had a bad experience with the last nVidia card I bought, but to be fair, it was really more an issue with EVGA and their quality control. And yeah, I'm sure you're right on the memory. Most of the time, it's no more than 30-40% utilized during some of the most demanding tasks, but I've been doing a lot more panoramas, and Photoshop starts to choke a bit on the bigger ones. Nothing horrible, though.

If you do a lot of panos then yes more ram may be useful, so long as you set up PS to use it.