CPU for post processing

So, just when we thought our office PC couldn't get any slower, we had a small windfall of $1500 land in our laps.

I have my ideas and almost pressed the "checkout" button on a few systems now, but I thought I would throw the question our there to the group... Spend my money for me?

If you had $1500 to spend on a pc to use solely for the purposes of Post Processing what would you buy?

$1400 worth of RAM and Raptor drives then beg borrow and steal the rest.

In order of importace for me (high volume batch processing, RAW to JPG conversion):
- Quad core CPU
- 2GB RAM min (4GB maybe as it's cheap)
- Three drives (OS, images, and swap).

Raptors are a complete waste of money IMHO, my hard drives tick over and the CPUS are the limiting factor. Upgrading from 7200rpm Seagate drives wouldn't speed me up one bit.

I personally would get a dell XPS 420. if you know where to look, you'll find one that's at 300 bucks off. for 1400 you'll get a 22" monitor, 2.5gh core 2 q9300, 4gb of ddr2 800 ram, vista home premium, ati 2400pro (not very helpful for photos, but if you want to watch bluray movies you can), 2x 500gb raid 0 (or 1), and a few more things including 3 years support and such. with the extra hundred bucks you save you can get another hdd

edit: and assuming your old comp still works, you can easily have those drives serve as an archive, and keep only current stuff on the new one. that cuts down on the need for more than the raid 1

Thanks for all of your input. A few more direct questions:

How much of an impact will the graphics card have on our post processing? Can I justify a 256 or even 512mb card over a 128mb or would the money be better spent elsewhere?

For post processing, is there any reason to spend more on the operating system for something other than Vista Home Basic?

Somewhat slower Quad core chip with a smaller cache or a somewhat faster Dual Core with a larger cache?

Are the Dell XPS systems really worth it, or would we see the same performance from a Vostro tower with the same chip and RAM? I guess the real question is... for our purposes, would it be worth spending more for what Dell and HP call a "workstation" versus a standard tower with similar specs?

Thanks again. Now if I could just find a cheap second copy of CS3...

- Graphics card will have no effect on PP. It's only used for games and the fancy effects in Vista.
- Nope (vista basic should be fine).
- For what I do (batch processing on batches of 200-1000 images) I max out the CPU, so i'd vote for quad core even if it's a slower clock speed. Extra cores means it does more in parallel, and photoshop can take advantage of four cores fine.
- What's Vostro?
- I think you're allowed to install CS3 on two machines, so long as you don't use them at the same time.

no, graphics card is useless for photos, other than better color management than integrated ones (and less strain on the main memory). get the cheapest you can while not being shared memory type (hypermemory, turbocache, etc are bad).

vista, home premium or business, stay away from home basic. don't bother asking why, just know that basic is garbage and there's a reason why no major companies offer it on midlevel and up.

photoshop, lightroom, and anything made by adobe has support for at least 16 processors, so quad core will be much faster than dual core.

yes and no. yes because it has a better motherboard, power supply, secondary screen (bet you didn't notice that) and overall more options. no because for your purposes the difference between 1066 fsb and 1333fsb won't be nearly as great as just getting something better than you have.

Just to add a different opinion, I have to ask, do you intend to work with 300+MB files?
I bought a cheap ($500) Dell last year that would have cost $3,000 5 years ago. 1 GB RAM, & it works just fine with PS7 & a RAW processor, & if I have to wait for 10 seconds for a 200MB file to load, it's no big thing.

I would also stress staying away from Vista Home Basic. Everything I read about it from reliable sources is bad.

Also, I would not buy a cookie cutter computer from some retail store. At least buy from some place like Dell where you can pick and choose some options and get what you want, not what the factory tells you you want. Check your local "mom & pop" computer store too. Sometimes they will build a system for you.

Get 4GB of RAM. It's the cheapest upgrade with the most noticeable performance.

If you don't have Lightroom yet, make sure you save enough cash for that.

You won't get major benefits from a fancy video card at the moment. Some new ones are supporting 10 bit color, and PS CS4 may benefit from them because from what I've read it will use GPU processing but I don't know what for or whether it'll be of any use to me.

Still, I'd recommend at least a nice dual core, although Intel Q6600 quads are pretty damn cheap these days.

I'd also second 4GB RAM, it's cheap and 64 bit OSs are fairly well supported at this point. Vista Ultimate 64 has been a very good experience for several people I know and myself since it was released. I have heard of and seen people have troubles with Vista on OEM computers but they seem to be getting their act together now and its not as much of an issue.

I personally don't bother with high speed drives like raptors, in fact my images are stored and accessed from a 400GB RAID 1 array.

Here is essentially the system that I just built. I chose the newer E8400 over the Q6600. You could go either way really as they cost almost the same. The Q6600 seems to be a little better for batch processing, but the extra clock speed of the E8400 may give it an advantage for certain things. Also, the video card I chose is overkill for post processing, but it wasn't too expensive and it is decent for games. I recently bought a couple of thesefor work, and they seem to be very solid cards. The aftermarket CPU cooler is optional, but it works better and is quieter than the standard cooler. Of course it is a good idea to go with a quality power supply and a reputable motherboard with a decent feature set.

All of this from newegg.com

Case - COOLER MASTER Centurion 534 - $53
Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R - $140
Graphics - MSI NX8600GT-T2D256E OC GeForce 8600 GT 256MB - $89
Power Supply - ENERMAX Liberty ELT500AWT 500W - $120
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz - $190
CPU Cooler - Zalman 9500A 92mm CPU Cooler - $54
Memory - G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 - $85
Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB x2 - $120
Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 750GB SATA - $130
DVD ROM - ASUS SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model DVD-E616A3T - $21
DVD Burner - SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R SATA SH-S203B - $27
OS - Microsoft Windows Vista 64-Bit Home Premium - $95
Monitor - HP LP2065 Silver-Carbonite 20" 8ms LCD - $390
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - $6

Total ~ $1520 + sh (before MIRs)

Putting a computer together is kind of like playing with Legos. It isn't that difficult. The only interesting parts are attaching the case LEDs/Switches to the motherboard and installing the CPU and heatsink.

Vista home basic is the same vista as all other version it's just that a couple accessories are not included nad some stuff is turned off.

Same OS.

Understand what kind of user usually has "Basic". A "basic" user or a "cheap" user. Recommendations from those kinds of people can be ignored.

That being said, go with Ultimate since it has a great backup feature not unlike Apple's Time Machine. You can restore an entire drive from full failure in under 45 minutes.

Over 3 GB of ram is a waste unless you are running 64-bit windows. 64-bit does have it's compatibility issues though, so you might want to confirm if all the existing hardware you will be keeping has drivers for it and any software that is important will work with it. Otherwise, it is a good way to go if you want to make use of 4 GB of ram.

ok here are my 2cents 4 gigs is a waste if the OS doesn't support it, NEVER use RAID 0 for critical data, yes it is blazing fast over anything else but I recover data for a living and in a RAID 0 set up the data is written across multiple drives so if one drives fails kiss everything goodbye, go with a RAID 1 if anything because they are recoverable.

Excellent advice regarding 4GB of Ram and 64bit Vista! Sounds more like 3GB would be the way to go so that I can keep 32bit Vista and ensure compatibility across all software/hardware.

Quad Core, 3GB, Vista Ultimate, now I just have to pick a monitor... Analog or digital LCD, 22" or 24", are the Dell Ultrasharps worth the added cost?