PC rig optimized for Photoshop CS5

marekd

Hey there!

I'm building a rig that will be primarily used with photoshop, Adobe ACR, and working on equilateral images (12000px wide). I will also be using it for making videos in Premiere and After Effects (about once a month).

The rig will be used with CS5

Here are some basic specs:
- 24GB ram
- Solid State boot drive (160GB) - for system boot
- 10K 600GB SATA harddrive
- Nvidia Quadro 2000 1GB
- Intel Core i7 Extereme 980x (six core) 3.33GHz overclocked to 3.9GHz
- Windows 7 Ultimate

The rig will cost more than I want to spend, hence a question: Is any of it an overkill for mostly Photoshop work?

What would you change to bring the cost down. The biggest costs are:
- solid state drive (is it worth it?)
- 10K SATA vs. 7200 SATA
- Nivdia Quadro 2000 1GB vs Nvidia Quadro 600 1GB - is Quadro 2000 really worth extra $350?
- the processor (980x) but I'm pretty set at keeping this guy.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

YourOnlySin · Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 11:16 am Post subject:

Its all overkill in my opinion! Haha!

I'm not sure if you would gain a lot with a video card like that in photoshop. I know CS5 can make use of the GPUs power, but there are plenty of video cards out there that will do the job without spending several hundred dollars.

Truly, 24GB of ram might be a bit much...In theory I suppose one could never have enough ram however, I doubt one would gain much of a performance improvement over say, 16GB of ram.

I would tend to believe your biggest performance gains would come from the solid state drive. Maximizing performance in that arena would be my first expense.

Your rig specs are nice and would certainly do the job but I cant see myself spending that kind of money when I could build something that would do the job as well for much less. UNLESS, the work I was performing would pay for it in short time, then I would consider it!

hawkeye · Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 11:23 am Post subject:

I'd say it's overkill unless milliseconds mean that much to you.

With CS5 Extended I'm using an i5-760 quad core processor with 6 GB of ram and a $50 iNvidia 9500 video card, it handles everything I throw at it. PS opens in about 3-4 seconds with a Seagate SATA 1tb drive ($55).

High end video cards aren't necessary for PS, so unless you play games you're wasting money.

You didn't mention it, but make sure you use a 64bit OS otherwise that RAM will do you no good. My entire rig cost about $750 including Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

marekd · Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 12:20 pm Post subject:

Thanks for your replies guys. First off, to answer your question YourOnlySin. I will be using this machine for work about 10h a day editing images in Bridge, ACR and Photoshop. So if I can save 20 min a day and some frustration with higher res images that will be definitely worth extra cash. Now, if it's just milliseconds I'm gaining, than it's certainly not worth it.

hawkeye, yes the OS will be 64bit.

After reading your opinions I think I will be getting a cheaper graphic card. The ram is really cheap, and the difference between 12 and 24GB is $60, so I'll be sticking with 24.

The second thing I think I will have to change is the SSD. YourOnlySin, how much of the performance increase does SSD contribute to in your experience? I'm feeling like 160GB may not be enough for the C: Drive and more BG=a lot more $$$. I may be getting some fast SATA in RAID 0 instead, which will save some money.

Again, thank you for your time and help!

YourOnlySin · Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 12:32 pm Post subject:

I've not used a solid state drive personally, but I know they are pretty impressive. I have friends with them and I hear they load windows extremely fast and video games will load and be playing in game while my rig still has 2 minutes of load time. I can only imagine that Photoshop performance would be greatly increased as well.

In the end, I would expect a couple of nice sata hard drives to work very well.

thehermit · Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 2:12 pm Post subject:

Netaddict · Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:17 am Post subject:

Wow that is a monster machine you are building.

Why not pick a less demanding OS. I know you have a very high performance machine but the OS you chose will be a burden.

Instead of that pricey SSD, why not get a faster HD and add even more RAM and use part of it as a RAMdrive, where you load PS from the HD to the Ramdrive and work off your RAM, if it'll work on Win 7?

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