Photoshop CS4 computer build.

I am going to buy a new PC. I don't want to build so I'm having AVADirect do it for me.

What do you think of this config?
CUSTOM DESKTOP COMPUTER, Core™ i7 2-way SLI® DDR3 24GB Performance Series System $2068.39

* ANTEC, Performance One P183 Black Mid-Tower Computer Case, ATX, No PSU
* CORSAIR, CMPSU-650TX TX Series Power Supply, 650W, 80 PLUS®, 24-pin ATX12V EPS12V, SLI Ready
* ASUS, P6TD Deluxe, LGA1366, Intel® X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-2000 (O.C.) 24GB /6, PCIe x16 SLI CF /3, SATA 3 Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2, ATX, Retail
* INTEL, Core™ i7-920 Quad-Core 2.66GHz, LGA1366, 4.8 GT/s QPI, 8MB L3 Cache, 45nm, 130W, EM64T EIST VT XD, Retail
* COOLER MASTER, V8 CPU Cooler, Socket 1366/775/940/AM2, Aluminum
* KINGSTON, 12GB (6 x 2GB) ValueRAM PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz CL9 (9-9-9) 1.5V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC
* GIGABYTE, GV-N96TSL-1GI, GeForce® 9600 GT 650MHz, 1GB GDDR3 1800MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, VGA+DVI, HDMI, Retail
* INTEL, 80GB X25-M Mainstream SSD, MLC, 250/70 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, SATA 3 Gb/s, Retail
* WESTERN DIGITAL, 750GB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD7501AALS), SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache
* WESTERN DIGITAL, 750GB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD7501AALS), SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache
* RAID, No RAID, Independent HDD Drives
* LITE-ON, iHDS118 Black 18x48x DVD-ROM Drive, SATA, OEM
* LITE-ON, iHAS324 Black 24x DVD±RW Dual-Layer Burner w/ Smart Erase, SATA, Retail
* MICROSOFT, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Edition, OEM
* WARRANTY, Silver Warranty Package (3 Year Limited Parts, 3 Year Labor Warranty)

Are you kidding me? All that just to run PCS4?

That's so much to spend on a computer dedicated for Adobe Photoshop...But hey, if you have that kind of money, go for it.

I have 3gbs of RAM and I barely use 1gb when working with Photoshop! And my computer handles everything I throw at it at super-speed. I spent about $700 for it.

Check out HP.com and find something you like for 1/3 of the cost .

this is about what i have it works great.
i have a different video card but real close to it.

mine is lighting fast and does everything i want it to do.

Tom K. wrote in post #8949917
I am going to buy a new PC. I don't want to build so I'm having AVADirect do it for me.

What do you think of this config?
CUSTOM DESKTOP COMPUTER, Core™ i7 2-way SLI® DDR3 24GB Performance Series System $2068.39

* ANTEC, Performance One P183 Black Mid-Tower Computer Case, ATX, No PSU
* CORSAIR, CMPSU-650TX TX Series Power Supply, 650W, 80 PLUS®, 24-pin ATX12V EPS12V, SLI Ready
* ASUS, P6TD Deluxe, LGA1366, Intel® X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-2000 (O.C.) 24GB /6, PCIe x16 SLI CF /3, SATA 3 Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2, ATX, Retail
* INTEL, Core™ i7-920 Quad-Core 2.66GHz, LGA1366, 4.8 GT/s QPI, 8MB L3 Cache, 45nm, 130W, EM64T EIST VT XD, Retail
* COOLER MASTER, V8 CPU Cooler, Socket 1366/775/940/AM2, Aluminum
* KINGSTON, 12GB (6 x 2GB) ValueRAM PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz CL9 (9-9-9) 1.5V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC
* GIGABYTE, GV-N96TSL-1GI, GeForce® 9600 GT 650MHz, 1GB GDDR3 1800MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, VGA+DVI, HDMI, Retail
* INTEL, 80GB X25-M Mainstream SSD, MLC, 250/70 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, SATA 3 Gb/s, Retail
* WESTERN DIGITAL, 750GB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD7501AALS), SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache
* WESTERN DIGITAL, 750GB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD7501AALS), SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache
* RAID, No RAID, Independent HDD Drives
* LITE-ON, iHDS118 Black 18x48x DVD-ROM Drive, SATA, OEM
* LITE-ON, iHAS324 Black 24x DVD±RW Dual-Layer Burner w/ Smart Erase, SATA, Retail
* MICROSOFT, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Edition, OEM
* WARRANTY, Silver Warranty Package (3 Year Limited Parts, 3 Year Labor Warranty)

You'll be able to get into HD video editing with that!!

P6TD Deluxe supports RAID 1 and 0

if you get the drives set up as raid 0 (stripe), you will see a performance increase, but will have a higher chance of loosing your data if one drive goes everything goes.
if you do raid 1 (mirror) you will have slower performance, but very low chance of loosing your data because same information is written to both drives. if you do two independent drives you should move your windows swap file to the second drive.

I have Windows 7 on a system with 2 drives. When i had them set up individually Windows was giving it 5.1 score. Right after i switched to raid 0 it went up to 5.9. Not sure what it would score if i do raid 1.
Keep in mind, raid configuration needs to be done before OS is installed.

ops, i missed the solid state drive. i guess it's gonna be used for the OS and other 2 drives are gonna be for your data

I just bought the P6TD deluxe, a core i7 950, and 6GB of RAM. I put it all together last week. So something close to your system but the rest of it I scavenged from my old system. You should be able to run CS6 just fine with that build...

net_tech wrote in post #8950060
ops, i missed the solid state drive. i guess it's gonna be used for the OS and other 2 drives are gonna be for your data

Yep.

Interesting read - helpful, and giving me ideas for my next PC. The current machine is now 5 years old, running CS3 ok, but..... What I wonder: I see people stuffing their machines RAM, and I will be part of that crowd too. But just how much RAM can/will CS4 use? Does most of it just sit there on these high RAM machines? - Stu

CS3 by itself will use 80-90mb of your RAM. Once you start opening images especially 10 - 20mb RAW files, this is where fun begins. I just tested mine with 4 x12mb RAW images and saw the memory usage by photoshop jump from 86 to 290MB. So the correct answer to your question “how much RAM can/will CS4 use?” is it depends. But seriously, open your task manager (crtl+shift+esc) and look for photoshop.exe (won’t see it, unless it’s running) and see how much memory your photoshop is using. Open a few images and see what memory usage goes up to. Also switch to performance tab in task manager and look under Physical memory see what you have available. Once available physical memory gets low (250 -500mb), your OS will start caching to HDD which is hundreds times slower than your physical ram. Using memory usage column in task manager will give you a general idea, but if you want more accurate (overall) information you would want to enable VM Size column in your task manager (Virtual Memory SIze).

Ideally you would want to set up a counter in perfmon and use photoshop for a week or so memory usage information can be collected, then analyze the graph generated by perfmon to see how much memory your photoshop used overall.
If you want to use perfmon, you would have to add a new counter where Performance Object is Process and private bytes is your Counter. Photoshop would have to be selected as an instance. Once you add the counter. You are ready to rock & roll with photoshop.
Let me know if you need to see a step by step guide how to set this up?

Serious overkill just for CS4, but if you got the cash, why not?

C'mon guys, there's no such thing as too much power! I mean, I could edit epic war movies if I wanted to.

However, I have recently been running PS, LR, DW, Firefox, iTunes, etc, simultaneously without it missing a beat.

And in case anyone was wondering, that was about ~5.7 GB of RAM usage.

nphsbuckeye wrote in post #8950969
C'mon guys, there's no such thing as too much power! I mean, I could edit epic war movies if I wanted to.

However, I have recently been running PS, LR, DW, Firefox, iTunes, etc, simultaneously without it missing a beat.

And in case anyone was wondering, that was about ~5.7 GB of RAM usage.

No such thing as too much RAM. Buy it now....or buy more later. I choose now.

I'd add a WD Velociraptor for your OS, use the SSD for cache.
Use the 2 Caviars on a Raid 0.
Upgrade your RAM with something faster like OCX.

Tom K. wrote in post #8951023
No such thing as too much RAM. Buy it now....or buy more later. I choose now.

Same here. I'm capped out now as my mobo "only" goes up to 12; it will be a while until I'd need more anyhow.