Just cant make up my mind. Self Build i7 6700K or custom HP Z640 E5 1650 Ver 3 Workstation.

The basic choice is:-
1. DIY Build £2,065 ( never built one before :-/ pretty worried about it, but the price includes Scansure Insurance incase I damage anything. )
Skylake i7 6700K, 4 Cores 8 threads, 4Ghz Turbo 4.2GHz, [Passmark Benchmark 11, 000 @ 4GHz - probably not with this fast ram.] 32MB 3,200 mhz Ram, Nvidia GTX 980 II 4GB, Noctua NH D-15 cooler, Intel 750 PCIe SSD 400 GB, Samsung 850 Evo 500GB SSD. Asus Z170 Deluxe MB. In a Corsair Obsidian 750D and swapped out Noctua 140 mm fans to get PWM. Blu ray RW.and Wifi n and a/c , Usb 3.0 Card reader. Be Quiet 1200 watt powersupply single or multi rail options
Windows 10 Home

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+s
Saves £520
I picked IMO overkill high quality/reliability components, many have 5 and 6 years warranty
Really managed to choose exactly what components I wanted.
Latest technology, say potential to swap out processor in 2 years time for a real boost.
Potentially more powerful graphics card?
Cheaper to upgrade - easier access to info to be able to do it .
Apparently I can overclock it?? Good cooler? Good MB? Good PSU? Formthis.

-s
I wont enjoy this! Risky using IMO very expensive parts on my first pc build.
Might end up with non-working PC
Did I select bits that actually will work together
Did I even buy good stuff ( er before my recent research I had never heard of Corsair, Asus, Noctua, Be Quiet etc! )

Or buy a

2. Custom Build by HP - HP Z640 £2,585 .
Xeon E5 1650 Ver3. 6 cores 12 threads, 3.5Ghz Turbo 3.8 gHz , 32GB ECC 2133 Mhz Ram. [Passmark Benchmark 13,498] Nvidia Quaddro K2200 4GB, Intel 750 PCIe SSD 400 GB, Samsung 850 Evo 500GB SSD.
Windows 7 Pro !! Still ( apparently will move to 10!)
Blu ray RW, Wifi only n, I have a/c at home. Usb 3.0 Card reader . 925 watt HP powersupply.

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Much, much, Less risk, except I will install the Intel 750 ...NVME Uefi bios, worries etc.
Higher benchmark, except some say the higher clock of the Skylake is better for Photoshop?
More stable processor. And GPU.
ECC Ram
6 Cores
Proven and tested
4 years on site HP support and maintenance

-s
£520 more!! A very big premium
Not Windows 10! - will they ever do this? Sony walked away from this on my laptop!
Maybe HP will replace this Xeon range soon with a Skylake ( different socket?? ) Xeon range?
More difficult and expensive to upgrade, getting tech help and expensive bits -
Getting help with say the Intel 750 , will be nasty as HP seem awful. More geared to a business customer.
Wasted £105 on a stupid HP 128GB SSD, no choice.
Expensive adapter plates to convert HD bays, no one at HP even seems to know which ones!
Potentially slower at editing images, ref lower clock speeds ??
Much slower wi-fi - no one at HP seems to know what wifi is available. I guess most servers are locked down on a network eh?

Main applications:- Photo editing, Photoshop, Canon DPP , Portraiture. Note 5DS R raws are 80MB, in Photoshop they hit 160 MB, A bit of 1080p video editing ( Canon / 5DS R amazingly still in the dark ages no 4K :
Run Office mainly email using Outlook, bit of web access/research .. Google etc.
Using one 4K monitor @ 3860 x 2160 60 Hz.

I Would love some advice or your thoughts. Yes I could afford the £520 for the HP, but I really would not like to spend it!

Just as importantly, I am not sure its actually a better option.

My main concerns are, I Will screw up the self buid? Especially mounting the air cooler and that thermal compound.
Balanced by the concern of buying into dying technology on the HP side, with this older generation of Xeon.

Both of those are FAR more expensive than you need for photography. Like CRAZY more. Putting together a PC is reasonably simple if you're technical, have anti-static wrist band (cheap), and can follow instructions / yuutube. I've put together probably my last six PCs, it still takes me many hours, for your first it might take a day. If something isn't right you would need some smarts to diagnose issues - I once had a case with a faulty power button, I diagnosed that by shorting the appropriate pins on the motherboard with a screwdriver. You need to pay a LOT of attention to detail.

Regarding components:
- Why two SSDs? I do this, just curious why you do. I would do 1x120GB for OS/programs, another for cache, catalog, and working set of images. You need a spinning disk too, for bulk storage, and another for offsite backup. Just get Samsung 850 Pro SSDs, PCI-e won't give you much more real world performance.
- Video editing may use that video card, but it's probably super expensive and overkill. If video editing is rare I would downsize that.
- 32GB RAM is overkill for everything except video, but cheap so no problem.
- You probably don't need a "Deluxe" motherboard. Buy the cheapest of a good brand.

A good option would be to take this PC, get a lower spec video card, change to a 240GB Samsung 850 as primary (partition it, 80GB for OS/data and the rest for cache/catalog/etc) and a 2TB WD Black as data. GBP1300 inc VAT, saving you heaps.

I agree with Tim for the most part. Basically both of those builds are throwing money away for what you will use it for. When it comes to the mainstream platform, Skylake in this case, never plan to do a processor upgrade down the road. These platforms will release with a set of processors, get a 6-8% refresh in twelve months and be replaced in twenty-four months, there just isn't an upgrade path worth considering. You would be better off planning a build at substantially less now and replacing it in three years as an upgrade path.

For minimal 1080p video processing you do not need a top tier gaming GPU. For a 4K display @ 60Hz and the usage you have described you could easily spend half the money or less. I'll use Canadian dollars(my location and no idea what Euro based company you will buy from) to give a price comparison. At my preferred store the GTX 980 Ti ranges from $885 - $1140, GTX 970 $440 - $510, GTX 960 $275 - $345 and GTX 950 $220 - $240. The GTX 950 supports 4K @ 60Hz over DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0.

I am currently building a new Skylake based PC, I will be using Samsung 950 Pro M.2 PCIe SSD's, at regular price there is no meaningful price difference between the 850 Pro and 950 Pro, the 950 Pro is a no brainer at the same price.

tim wrote in post #17825969
Both of those are FAR more expensive than you need for photography. Like CRAZY more. Putting together a PC is reasonably simple if you're technical, have anti-static wrist band (cheap), and can follow instructions / yuutube. I've put together probably my last six PCs, it still takes me many hours, for your first it might take a day. If something isn't right you would need some smarts to diagnose issues - I once had a case with a faulty power button, I diagnosed that by shorting the appropriate pins on the motherboard with a screwdriver. You need to pay a LOT of attention to detail.

Regarding components:
- Why two SSDs? I do this, just curious why you do. I would do 1x120GB for OS/programs, another for cache, catalog, and working set of images. You need a spinning disk too, for bulk storage, and another for offsite backup. Just get Samsung 850 Pro SSDs, PCI-e won't give you much more real world performance.
- Video editing may use that video card, but it's probably super expensive and overkill. If video editing is rare I would downsize that.
- 32GB RAM is overkill for everything except video, but cheap so no problem.
- You probably don't need a "Deluxe" motherboard. Buy the cheapest of a good brand.

A good option would be to take this PC, get a lower spec video card, change to a 240GB Samsung 850 as primary (partition it, 80GB for OS/data and the rest for cache/catalog/etc) and a 2TB WD Black as data. GBP1300 inc VAT, saving you heaps.

This. But don't bother explaining that to him... we had a whole thread for this just a few months ago and he wanted to go just as ludicrously extreme for that too... even for a video editing rig these builds are massive overkill.

I don't get why you'd waste your money on an enthusiast grade GPU for a photo editing rig, or crazy fast RAM (the amount is debateable, though I still say it's unnecessary), or a super high end MoBo (it gains you literally nothing beyond what you'll use, just get one with the ports and features you need and leave it at that unless you plan to do a bunch of overclocking and SLI/Crossfire, which you clearly won't be), or a super high end CPU (though I would argue this makes far more sense than anything else in your build), or two SSD's... you should replace your SSD's every 5 years or so anyway by nature of their design... why not just use one and backup your data to external drives via USB 3.1, or a large HDD internally?

buy what you like and build it yourself. If you have got the money then what you want. Sure it may be over kill for photography work but it's your money not mine.

As for building it yourself, youtube. Honestly there are thousands of videos out there that can help you with building a computer. it's not that hard just take your time while doing it.

Hi thanks for taking The time for the detailed response.
Yes I get your point re the overkill. My reasons are partly personal. I like well made stuff. On the ram there was a deal so the extra cost was £38 to go from 2133 to 3200 mhz. The MB overkill was partly to carry the Noctua cooler's weight and mass; it is massive! and weighs 1.3 Kgs! I was hoping the top of the line MB might be stronger, plus it had the latest wifi in built. The other reasons were I have sufferred with slow performance for 4 years, and just thought go overboard and in 4 years it will still do the job. Plus most of the expensive items like psu, cooler, Noctua fans, have 5 or 6 years warranty.
There was a deal on the GTX 980 as its the markII not the latest. The 970 has 1660 cores and the 980 has 2040.
Plus as I noticed a huge difference in handling 5D3 files verses 5DS R files - much slower on my current laptop; so a lot of the over spend was to insure against posssible slow response, when I eventually move into 4 K video.
I did look at downgrading a lot of items but it only saved me £400.

I also thought it might enable me to skip 2 generations and still have a very fast pc.

Why 2 SSDs -
I wanted to try the Intel 750, as my friend uses one, and it is blisteringly quick. So I thought ai would put the OS and editing programs and the current shoot on that. And when finished just drop it onto the other SSD ( I will reclaim that from the old laptop as I upgraded that last month, with a Samsung Evo 850 500GB - as I doubt I would get the money back for that if I left it in the Laptop, when I sell it. ).

Thanks. Hmmm see your point of a lower build and replace in 2 years that makes sense.
Other than its build another one, which is a chore for me. Hence going overboard might mean there is no need.
Re your prices just convert dollars to £s for uk prices so its your equivalent of $2,000.

EverydayGetaway wrote in post #17826109
This. But don't bother explaining that to him... we had a whole thread for this just a few months ago and he wanted to go just as ludicrously extreme for that too... even for a video editing rig these builds are massive overkill.

I don't get why you'd waste your money on an enthusiast grade GPU for a photo editing rig, or crazy fast RAM (the amount is debateable, though I still say it's unnecessary), or a super high end MoBo (it gains you literally nothing beyond what you'll use, just get one with the ports and features you need and leave it at that unless you plan to do a bunch of overclocking and SLI/Crossfire, which you clearly won't be), or a super high end CPU (though I would argue this makes far more sense than anything else in your build), or two SSD's... you should replace your SSD's every 5 years or so anyway by nature of their design... why not just use one and backup your data to external drives via USB 3.1, or a large HDD internally?

I do back up to external WD Passport drives, as I already have 8GB in total over 4 units, so a double copy. Hence no extra internal spinner. I'd rather load my edited jobs to an internal SSD @ £112 for 500gb. And then do the backup at my leisure.

Thanks yep, been looking there.

Submariner wrote in post #17826761
Hi thanks for taking The time for the detailed response.
Yes I get your point re the overkill. My reasons are partly personal. I like well made stuff. On the ram there was a deal so the extra cost was £38 to go from 2133 to 3200 mhz. The MB overkill was partly to carry the Noctua cooler's weight and mass; it is massive! and weighs 1.3 Kgs! I was hoping the top of the line MB might be stronger, plus it had the latest wifi in built. The other reasons were I have sufferred with slow performance for 4 years, and just thought go overboard and in 4 years it will still do the job. Plus most of the expensive items like psu, cooler, Noctua fans, have 5 or 6 years warranty.
There was a deal on the GTX 980 as its the markII not the latest. The 970 has 1660 cores and the 980 has 2040.
Plus as I noticed a huge difference in handling 5D3 files verses 5DS R files - much slower on my current laptop; so a lot of the over spend was to insure against posssible slow response, when I eventually move into 4 K video.
I did look at downgrading a lot of items but it only saved me £400.

I also thought it might enable me to skip 2 generations and still have a very fast pc.

Why 2 SSDs -
I wanted to try the Intel 750, as my friend uses one, and it is blisteringly quick. So I thought ai would put the OS and editing programs and the current shoot on that. And when finished just drop it onto the other SSD ( I will reclaim that from the old laptop as I upgraded that last month, with a Samsung Evo 850 500GB - as I doubt I would get the money back for that if I left it in the Laptop, when I sell it. ).

This is where your reasoning goes out the window, an i7 processor is no more reliable than an i3, a 300(whatever currency) motherboard is no more reliable than a 150 motherboard. More expensive motherboards will have extra features you most likely will never use, such as a more robust power phase implementation for extreme overclocking when using custom water cooling or liquid nitrogen.

Yet again for anything you will do a GTX 980, even on sale, is still a complete waste of money. Unless you are going to do a lot of video editing under critical timeframes it just doesn't make sense.

There are componets in a PC where it makes sense to invest a little more money. A good case, power supply and fans can last through several builds. DDR4 RAM is relatively new so buying 32 GB now could also be reused in a new PC in 2-3 years. SSD's in my opinion are not something to put a bunch of money into, the technology is changing rapidly and they do wear out. For most users you will see very little real world performance difference from just about any SSD comparable to a Samsung 850 Pro to an Intel 750.

The thing about going overboard on a PC is like most everything else, buying the top tier parts doesn't get you equal bang for the buck as buying mid tier. The performance per dollar drops off substantially. You will get no better performance from a $400 motherboard than you will a $200 motherboard.

These are just my opinions based on 15+ years of building PC's, from low dollar budget PC's to high dollar custom water cooled money thrown out the window PC's. My honest opinion for your case would be to invest extra into the Case, Power Supply, Fans and RAM. Stick with just the SSD you already have, invest less in the processor and motherboard with a plan to just update those two componets 2-3 years down the road. Buy a GPU like the GTX 950 for about 30% of a GTX 980, in a few years time if you need more GPU power to handle video editing you can upgrade, by that point you will be able to buy GTX 980 power for half the cost it is now and actually have a use for it.

Again, all just my opinion and having followed the on going saga of your PC upgrade I expect you to just ignore all the advice you have asked for.

-dave-m- wrote in post #17826805
This is where your reasoning goes out the window, an i7 processor is no more reliable than an i3, a 300(whatever currency) motherboard is no more reliable than a 150 motherboard. More expensive motherboards will have extra features you most likely will never use, such as a more robust power phase implementation for extreme overclocking when using custom water cooling or liquid nitrogen.

Yet again for anything you will do a GTX 980, even on sale, is still a complete waste of money. Unless you are going to do a lot of video editing under critical timeframes it just doesn't make sense.

There are componets in a PC where it makes sense to invest a little more money. A good case, power supply and fans can last through several builds. DDR4 RAM is relatively new so buying 32 GB now could also be reused in a new PC in 2-3 years. SSD's in my opinion are not something to put a bunch of money into, the technology is changing rapidly and they do wear out. For most users you will see very little real world performance difference from just about any SSD comparable to a Samsung 850 Pro to an Intel 750.

The thing about going overboard on a PC is like most everything else, buying the top tier parts doesn't get you equal bang for the buck as buying mid tier. The performance per dollar drops off substantially. You will get no better performance from a $400 motherboard than you will a $200 motherboard.

These are just my opinions based on 15+ years of building PC's, from low dollar budget PC's to high dollar custom water cooled money thrown out the window PC's. My honest opinion for your case would be to invest extra into the Case, Power Supply, Fans and RAM. Stick with just the SSD you already have, invest less in the processor and motherboard with a plan to just update those two componets 2-3 years down the road. Buy a GPU like the GTX 950 for about 30% of a GTX 980, in a few years time if you need more GPU power to handle video editing you can upgrade, by that point you will be able to buy GTX 980 power for half the cost it is now and actually have a use for it.

Again, all just my opinion and having followed the on going saga of your PC upgrade I expect you to just ignore all the advice you have asked for.

This.

-dave-m- wrote in post #17826805
This is where your reasoning goes out the window, an i7 processor is no more reliable than an i3, a 300(whatever currency) motherboard is no more reliable than a 150 motherboard. More expensive motherboards will have extra features you most likely will never use, such as a more robust power phase implementation for extreme overclocking when using custom water cooling or liquid nitrogen.

Yet again for anything you will do a GTX 980, even on sale, is still a complete waste of money. Unless you are going to do a lot of video editing under critical timeframes it just doesn't make sense.

There are componets in a PC where it makes sense to invest a little more money. A good case, power supply and fans can last through several builds. DDR4 RAM is relatively new so buying 32 GB now could also be reused in a new PC in 2-3 years. SSD's in my opinion are not something to put a bunch of money into, the technology is changing rapidly and they do wear out. For most users you will see very little real world performance difference from just about any SSD comparable to a Samsung 850 Pro to an Intel 750.

The thing about going overboard on a PC is like most everything else, buying the top tier parts doesn't get you equal bang for the buck as buying mid tier. The performance per dollar drops off substantially. You will get no better performance from a $400 motherboard than you will a $200 motherboard.

These are just my opinions based on 15+ years of building PC's, from low dollar budget PC's to high dollar custom water cooled money thrown out the window PC's. My honest opinion for your case would be to invest extra into the Case, Power Supply, Fans and RAM. Stick with just the SSD you already have, invest less in the processor and motherboard with a plan to just update those two componets 2-3 years down the road. Buy a GPU like the GTX 950 for about 30% of a GTX 980, in a few years time if you need more GPU power to handle video editing you can upgrade, by that point you will be able to buy GTX 980 power for half the cost it is now and actually have a use for it.

Again, all just my opinion and having followed the on going saga of your PC upgrade I expect you to just ignore all the advice you have asked for.

Agree. He's incorrect and unwilling to learn or accept the combined wisdom of many very experienced technical people.

Submariner - That prebuilt system that can be customised is superior to the sytsem you would build. You DON'T need a 1.3kg cooler, and an expensive motherboard is no stronger than a cheap one. The one I linked to has water cooling so it will be quiet and run cool.

If you want to have an expensive toy, that's fine, but your justifications are all pretty much completely wrong.

-dave-m- wrote in post #17826805
This is where your reasoning goes out the window, an i7 processor is no more reliable than an i3, a 300(whatever currency) motherboard is no more reliable than a 150 motherboard. More expensive motherboards will have extra features you most likely will never use, such as a more robust power phase implementation for extreme overclocking when using custom water cooling or liquid nitrogen.

Yet again for anything you will do a GTX 980, even on sale, is still a complete waste of money. Unless you are going to do a lot of video editing under critical timeframes it just doesn't make sense.

There are componets in a PC where it makes sense to invest a little more money. A good case, power supply and fans can last through several builds. DDR4 RAM is relatively new so buying 32 GB now could also be reused in a new PC in 2-3 years. SSD's in my opinion are not something to put a bunch of money into, the technology is changing rapidly and they do wear out. For most users you will see very little real world performance difference from just about any SSD comparable to a Samsung 850 Pro to an Intel 750.

The thing about going overboard on a PC is like most everything else, buying the top tier parts doesn't get you equal bang for the buck as buying mid tier. The performance per dollar drops off substantially. You will get no better performance from a $400 motherboard than you will a $200 motherboard.

These are just my opinions based on 15+ years of building PC's, from low dollar budget PC's to high dollar custom water cooled money thrown out the window PC's. My honest opinion for your case would be to invest extra into the Case, Power Supply, Fans and RAM. Stick with just the SSD you already have, invest less in the processor and motherboard with a plan to just update those two componets 2-3 years down the road. Buy a GPU like the GTX 950 for about 30% of a GTX 980, in a few years time if you need more GPU power to handle video editing you can upgrade, by that point you will be able to buy GTX 980 power for half the cost it is now and actually have a use for it.

Again, all just my opinion and having followed the on going saga of your PC upgrade I expect you to just ignore all the advice you have asked for.

See your point if I dump the intel 750, and the GTX 980
Do you think the Quadro 620? would work OK its a 1/3 the price. ATM.
( really just for the stills editing, if the 1080p video stuff crawls thats oK formthe moment. See your point about buying more power later for less money. And video is not a super priority.

There's some hope for you... not much, but some! Quadro is another great way to waste money. You don't need a video card, use what's built into the processor, absolutely fine for photographers. If you need a video card you can add it later. Lower middle of the latest range of nVidia consumer cards is fine.

tim wrote in post #17827360
There's some hope for you... not much, but some! Quadro is another great way to waste money. You don't need a video card, use what's built into the processor, absolutely fine for photographers. If you need a video card you can add it later. Lower middle of the latest range of nVidia consumer cards is fine.

I am very interested in the video card part, i.e. not needing it.
The skylake i7 6700K processor says it has support for 4K 4600x 2150 @ 60 Hz.
Is that sufficient?, I could get the Quadro K620 for £140 ... So I Thought that was reasonable.
Would I see any / much improvement using the K620 over using the processor graphics?
Maybe worth doing that way - as you say I can see what it looks like. And add later if needed.
When I was thinking going HP ( as I was promised a Dealer discount - never happened ) that Xeon processor had no graphics support at all.

My laptop has "NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M with 4 GB RAM and 1 GB Dediicated Video Ram " . I am not sure if this is part of the processor or an actual mini GPU welded on?

How would the onboard skylake graphis compare with this in a Photo editing scenario?