My pending PC Build. Request Input

Hello everyone. I'm upgrading and would like your thoughts.


Thank you in advance

One thing I see is your use of the Western digital RE 3 TB Enterprise Hard Drive for storage. Will that be your only storage? What is being used for backup?

3TB could be a lot to lose, should that drive crash!

I would consider a M.2 NVMe solid state drive for the OS and programs, or at least a SATA SSD.

SATA SSD is an absolute minimum IMO for speeding up your machine and prices have come down a lot recently (not sure what COVID-19 has done to prices though, haven't checked). Personally, I would go for M.2 though. 500GB may be a good choice, 1TB if you can afford it. The 7200 HD should be ok for data.

Also consider 16x2 (32GB) for memory.

John from PA wrote in post #19047010
One thing I see is your use of the Western digital RE 3 TB Enterprise Hard Drive for storage. Will that be your only storage? What is being used for backup?

3TB could be a lot to lose, should that drive crash!

I have several hard drives I already use for back up

Scrumhalf wrote in post #19047012
I would consider a M.2 NVMe solid state drive for the OS and programs, or at least a SATA SSD.

SATA SSD is an absolute minimum IMO for speeding up your machine and prices have come down a lot recently (not sure what COVID-19 has done to prices though, haven't checked). Personally, I would go for M.2 though. 500GB may be a good choice, 1TB if you can afford it. The 7200 HD should be ok for data.

Also consider 16x2 (32GB) for memory.

Thank you

Heya,

Purpose of the machine?

That nVidia card is pretty costly unless you're into gaming, as it doesn't do tremendous things for photo editing relative to what that CPU will already handle.

Otherwise, I would put a 500Gb to 1TB SSD as the operating drive primarily, and get a 4TB to 8TB enterprise class storage HDD for holding masses of data. But ideally you will want to run your OS and software from a SSD and not your large capacity drive that is already significantly slower at everything.

Very best,

Scrumhalf wrote in post #19047012
I would consider a M.2 NVMe solid state drive for the OS and programs, or at least a SATA SSD.

SATA SSD is an absolute minimum IMO for speeding up your machine and prices have come down a lot recently (not sure what COVID-19 has done to prices though, haven't checked). Personally, I would go for M.2 though. 500GB may be a good choice, 1TB if you can afford it. The 7200 HD should be ok for data.

Also consider 16x2 (32GB) for memory.

Along the lines of what has been suggested, if you can use the form factor, Best Buy has a "geek squad" refurbished 1TB 970 EVO+ for $180. The 500GB version is $90 (https://www.bestbuy.co​m …y/6351465.p?sku​Id=6351465).

For the 1 TB see https://www.bestbuy.co​m …y/6351466.p?sku​Id=6351466

Now, I don't know what "geek squad" refurbished means with respect to these SSD's with the PCI Express M.2 NVMe form factor. It could be that people purchased them and for various reasons could not use them. I have purchased (5) Samsung T5 external drive that were geek squad refurbished. All had about 6 to 8 hours of use and about the same numner of power cycles according to CrystalDisk. Also, all were able to be registered on the Samsung website which reported back a 3-year warranty.

A Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD is about $90. The M.2 970 EVO (non-plus) 500 GB is about the same price. If your motherboard allowed it I would go for the M.2. Switching from standard HD to SSD It's the most bang for your buck in terms of improving system performance and the M.2 bandwidth is quite a bit higher than SATA, so at the same prices, it's a nobrainer.

M.2 drives run hot through, so make sure your have good cable managemnt and good airflow in your case.

I swear I wrote a reply. Well, here we go again in abbreviated form:

• Make sure you get an SSD. nVME is nice but not essential, but m2 SATA is great to avoid having to run cables. Any decent SSD, even SATA, will have the single biggest impact on overall system responsiveness in most cases.
  
• That GPU is probably overkill, or underkill. As someone else asked: what are you doing with this? If you're not gaming you may not need that much, and if you do plan to game that GPU will not be enough for the monitor you selected in any graphics intensive game.
  
• Don't get a micro-ATX motherboard unless you're doing a small build. That case supports ATX so just get an ATX board. There are plenty of reasons: you'll have more expansion options down the road, and in particular you'll be able to upgrade RAM. Maybe 2x8GB RAM is enough for you now but on the micro-ATX board you selected that populates both RAM slots so the only upgrade path is to chuck that RAM and replace it. An ATX board should have 4 RAM slots so you can always add 2x8 or 2x16 to it later.
  

All of you are wonderful. I am upgrading to have a photography computer. No gaming. However, it was my gaming son who put this list together. Some compromises were made for cost but I may be rethinking those based on the comments here.

3Honu wrote in post #19047082
However, it was my gaming son who put this list together.

Ulterior motive...

3Honu wrote in post #19047082
All of you are wonderful. I am upgrading to have a photography computer. No gaming. However, it was my gaming son who put this list together. Some compromises were made for cost but I may be rethinking those based on the comments here.

Lose the 1060 GPU then, it literally serves something very close to approaching zero in a photography workstation build. There are some software packages that use GPU acceleration, but they're few and far between and frankly not worth the cost compared to simply having an SSD and good fast CPU. Most software doesn't even do anything on more than 4 cores even for photo editing sadly. The software currently is limited, rather than the other way around (used to be hardware limited, but these days we are experiencing software limits like this in photography software suites). So, that saves you quite a bit of money. You're far better off putting that money into SSD and RAM.

SSD for example:

https://www.amazon.com …1494&s=electron​ics&sr=1-2

For a display output, if your motherboard has a built in GPU that would be simple. If not, go for something very simple and silent that has 4k support (nVidia or AMD, doesn't matter much, just functional frankly).

Examples:

https://www.amazon.com …mbc?ie=UTF8&con​dition=all
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t2_​B01DOFD0G8
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t4_​B01DOFD0G8
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t3_​B01DOFD0G8
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t5_​B01DOFD0G8

The rest looks good.

I would even consider adding a 2nd monitor (they don't have to match).... nice to have editing software on one and something else on the other (website, streaming, email, tutorial, etc). Way nicer than a gaming GPU that you won't even use.

Very best,

MalVeauX wrote in post #19047089
Lose the 1060 GPU then, it literally serves something very close to approaching zero in a photography workstation build. There are some software packages that use GPU acceleration, but they're few and far between and frankly not worth the cost compared to simply having an SSD and good fast CPU. Most software doesn't even do anything on more than 4 cores even for photo editing sadly. The software currently is limited, rather than the other way around (used to be hardware limited, but these days we are experiencing software limits like this in photography software suites). So, that saves you quite a bit of money. You're far better off putting that money into SSD and RAM.

SSD for example:

https://www.amazon.com …1494&s=electron​ics&sr=1-2

For a display output, if your motherboard has a built in GPU that would be simple. If not, go for something very simple and silent that has 4k support (nVidia or AMD, doesn't matter much, just functional frankly).

Examples:

https://www.amazon.com …mbc?ie=UTF8&con​dition=all
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t2_​B01DOFD0G8
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t4_​B01DOFD0G8
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t3_​B01DOFD0G8
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t5_​B01DOFD0G8

The rest looks good.

Extremely helpful. Thank you.

MalVeauX wrote in post #19047089
I would even consider adding a 2nd monitor (they don't have to match).... nice to have editing software on one and something else on the other (website, streaming, email, tutorial, etc). Way nicer than a gaming GPU that you won't even use.

Very best,

This is definitely a plan. I wasn't asking about the 2nd monitor because I figure I'll just get one 2nd hand or something.

John from PA wrote in post #19047086
Ulterior motive...

Normally, I'd be with you. But he has his own two screen system set up he built himself. He is just very gaming oriented, as I used to be but learned that's a dangerous road for me Now, I'm just looking for a system that will last a bit and a monitor that is god for photography.

MalVeauX wrote in post #19047089
SSD for example:

https://www.amazon.com …1494&s=electron​ics&sr=1-2
4-20L/dp/B01E9Z2D60/ref=​psdc_284822_t4_B01DOFD​0G8
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t3_​B01DOFD0G8
https://www.amazon.com …psdc_284822_t5_​B01DOFD0G8

That drive is available refurbished for $120. See https://www.bestbuy.co​m …e/6252149.p?sku​Id=6252149