PC Reconmendation ?

SoftD100 · Jul 21, 2003

William Wilgus said:
A new machine isn't necessarily cheaper than an upgrade, but may be
the wiser choice if the upgrade canidate machine is fairly old.

A notebook only makes sense if you have a need for its portability.
They're expensive to buy and expensive to repair.

maybe to repair but they are only expensive if you want the top end speed models,the same as desktops.otherwise they are cheap

William Wilgus said:
William

Mike Waddington said:

Lee Chisholm Sr. said:

In market for a new pc for photography more or less, An opinion of
what you would purchasen, Brand, Ram, HD, Memory etc. ( Off the
shelf XP ) Thanks for your input. Lee

Click to expand...

A nice hornets nest of computer advice - which even features the
dreaded "A" word in there.
Practically speaking, I am guessing you are a photographer first
and a computer user second?

Brand is only important if the thing breaks - then its the guy with
the best support that wins! I can't speak for the US support desks

in UK theres not a lot of difference - but there again in 10

years computing I've had nothing break that wasn't obvious and
replaceable.
Monitor - get a large CRT - how large depends on the size of your
desk real estate and the depth of your budget. CRT's are still
easier and better to set up for image viewing.
Memory - no amount is too much. 512MB is bearable, 1GB is better.
HD - Hard drives are cheap - 120GB will keep you going for a few
weeks - it will never be enough.
DVD/CD-RW - as a minimum a CD burner is essential to store your
images. Leaving them on the hard drive is not an option which is
one reason why mega-huge HDD's may be false economy. DVD burner
cuts down the number of coasters you have to store.
USB2/Firewire - if you are buying a new PC you NEED these! It will
make life easier if you are not sitting round waiting for images to
load to PC. Take up on USB2 devices is still slow - card readers
are just coming available - but in the end its the way to go.
Apple - too much heat would be generated in going down this
discussion thread. If you were born an Apple user, then nothing
will change you - if you're not, XP will work fine.
Upgrades? Bear in mind that even the best the machine you can buy
will be outdated by tomorrow. But yours will still do what it did
today. In todays economic climate, it really IS cheaper to use your
machine for a year or two, then junk it and by a new one - complete
with the latest OS/hardware, and a new warranty. Upgrade is life's
way of telling you that its time you bought a new machine!
Finally - someone mentioned getting a notebook. Pretty good advice,
I take one everywhere these days. Its not the fastest machine in
the world - its not upgradeable - it doesn't have unlimited storage

but its convenient and its always there (something my wife finds

annoying!)

Click to expand...

Mike Waddington · Jul 21, 2003

William Wilgus said:
A new machine isn't necessarily cheaper than an upgrade, but may be
the wiser choice if the upgrade canidate machine is fairly old.

A notebook only makes sense if you have a need for its portability.
They're expensive to buy and expensive to repair.

I take your point that SOME upgrades are worth doing - but at some stage you get caught in the Catch 22 situation of technology having moved on with new motherboards/memory standards/hard drive capacities/operating systems - and in those cases you end up feeling that maybe just one more $150 investment might keep the old girl running for another few months.

At this point its better to junk the old gear and start afresh, putting your $150 into the new PC - even here in UK where PC equipment is comparatively expensive, a basic operational PC starts at around £400GBP and will lick most 2-3 year old machines.

As for notebooks being expensive, given equivalent specs, the notebook only carries a premium of perhaps £100 GBP - or $100 compared with the desktop - a tiny price to pay for the portability in my view - let alone the saving of domestic real estate in being able to pack it away when my wife needs the desk space. I recently bought a new notebook with AMD 2000+ processor, 256MB RAM, ATI Radeon graphics, 30GB HDD, CDRW and 14.1" screen , complete with Win XP for less than £600GBP - that means about $600USD, given current electronics exchange rates. It would have cost me the same to get a branded desktop PC with a similar spec. OK repairs may be more expensive - but there is really only the screen and battery that are vulnerable - the other components are widely available and its only the labour charges that push the repair price as you can't do it yourself easily.

The situation with notebooks vs desktops has changed considerably over the past year - and they are now far from the luxury purchase they were. Check out the prices and then think again about paying $250 - $400 for that Image Bank portable drive.

Ian Y&#1072;tes · Jul 21, 2003

In 30-60 days Intel will announce new chips so prices will be dropping on the ciurrent technology.

http://www.jefflevy.com/

William Wilgus · Jul 21, 2003

are still more expensive here, and they're more expensive to repair.)

William

Micki169058 · Jul 21, 2003

Personally, I would have a computer build to the specifications you want. Do a little research (obviously you've already started). Cnet recommends Alienware and ABS along with others for Top Performance machines.
http://www.abspc.com/index.asp
http://www.alienware.com/system_pages/area-51.aspx

I have had bad experiences with Dell, Compaq, E-machine, (i did not buy-it was a gift)...so I wouldn't recommend those; although I'm sure those machines are good for some users.

I started building my own with the help of a local computer shop. I buy all my parts retail (except the Operating System). The warranty on boxed retail are better. I've only build three, but I have been extremely pleased!

AMD's site has a list of recommended motherboards, Power supplies, Cases...ect.

I would build a mid-range system:

CPU: AMD XP 2600 333fsb
Memory: PC2700 DDR 512mb-1gig
(Micron, Crucial, Kingston, eg.)
Board: AbitAT7-MAX2, AsusA7V8X-X, MSI KT4VL (just three of my favorites)

Power Supply: (Enermax, Antec, or any recommended by AMD for your specific processor)

Case: ATX with adequate cooling and preferrable toolless. You also want easy access on the front for USB and stuff
Firewire card
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 9500 Pro or Radeon 9500 All In Wonder
Hard Drive: 120gig Western Digital 7200rpm (minimum)
CD/RW: Yamaha, Lite-on...
DVD-Rom: Plextor makes a combo drive that is a DVD and CD/RW

Good luck. Hope some of this helps you. I'm new to forums.

dboyles · Jul 21, 2003

Lee Chisholm Sr. said:
In market for a new pc for photography more or less, An opinion of
what you would purchasen, Brand, Ram, HD, Memory etc. ( Off the
shelf XP ) Thanks for your input. Lee

Well, since I know a lot more about computers than I do about photography, I might as well toss a couple of pennies into the discussion. I spec new workstations fairly regularly, so I'm at least somewhat up-to-date on technology.

Firstly, if you're going to spend more than $1500 or so, I'd go with something custom rather than a Dell. For $600 you really can't beat the deals Dell has these days (especially considering warranty), but I definitely wouldn't shell out a couple of grand for a Dell.

I like Antec cases. Simple enough, good power supplies, easy to work on. They've got a pretty nice-looking case called the Sonata, which seems to be well-built. Not the case I'd want if I were overclocking, but should be a great desktop case.

As far as motherboards go, I like Asus, although you probably won't go wrong with something like Abit or Tyan. There are lots of other good ones, but those are a couple.

For the processor, I'd go with a P4 with an 800 MHz FSB. If the price is too steep, The AMD Athlon XPs with the 333 MHz FSB are solid performers.

For RAM, grab a stick or two of 512MB Crucial. Kingston, Corsair, and Mushkin are other good brands. If you're running an 800 MHz FSB, I'd go with PC3200, but if you're running a 333 MHz FSB, PC2700 will do nicely.

One of the most exciting products to come out recently is Western Digital's 10k RPM serial ATA Raptor hard drive. They run about $170 for a 36.something GB model, but it greatly speeds up one of the major bottlenecks in today's computers. Make sure your choice of motherboard has a SATA controller. If you really want fast disk access, get two and configure them as a RAID-0 array. Either way, you'll probably want more disk space, so grab one or two Western Digital 7200 RPM drives with the 8MB cache. You choose the size, but less than 80GB isn't really cost-effective.

A quick aside related to hard disks: many people only use one large partition these days, as all recent operating systems can recognize such large partitions. However, doing this does have one advantage that you may or may not care about. With partitions of 16-32GB, the cluster size is 16KB, which means that no matter how small a file is, it will use 16KB of disk space. If you go above a 32GB partition, up to 2TB, the cluster size jumps to 32KB. Since disk space is cheap these days, most people don't worry about this cluster waste, but it's worth thinking about if you're going to have a partition close to the 32GB limit anyway (if my math is correct, 32GB = 34,359,738,368 bytes, or 33,554,432 kilobytes).

As far as monitors go, a 21" CRT will probably look better than a 19" LCD, and will be a little cheaper too. Personal preference here.

Matrox video cards are considered excellent for 2D, but if you want 3D I'd probably go with an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro. Really, either one should perform great.

The other components won't factor into the performance as much, so I won't bother mentioning anything specific. Don't forget that decent sound and network support will likely come on the motherboard.

Good luck.

bigjake · Jul 21, 2003

You are not remembering incorrectly. You have to be certain that you purchase a dell that does not have a lot of things built into the board. Dell's lower priced pc's often have video and sound built into the board, and reconfiguring it can be difficult, and sometimes impossible. Also, dell pc's are rarely top of the line pc's. That is not to say they sell only junk or anything. They are usually solid pieces with dependable parts. If you look at descriptions of cdrw's they use on comparison sites, you will see comments like dependable, but slooooowwww. If you pick components carefully, you can often build a good machine from their site. Dell has a good track record.

bigjake · Jul 21, 2003

I skipped a lot of replies, and came to the end to see what the last post had developed into, and just have to laugh. One of the lines in the original post that happens to be defined in parentheses is that it should be an off the shelf xp. I doubt this person is interested in developing the amount of knowledge that would enable them to configure a raid controller. Unless I missed what they are asking for, I believe it should be a basic prebuilt computer that they can take out of the boxes, connect, and start using.

db420d said:
Lee Chisholm Sr. said:

In market for a new pc for photography more or less, An opinion of
what you would purchasen, Brand, Ram, HD, Memory etc. ( Off the
shelf XP ) Thanks for your input. Lee

Click to expand...

Well, since I know a lot more about computers than I do about
photography, I might as well toss a couple of pennies into the
discussion. I spec new workstations fairly regularly, so I'm at
least somewhat up-to-date on technology.

Firstly, if you're going to spend more than $1500 or so, I'd go
with something custom rather than a Dell. For $600 you really
can't beat the deals Dell has these days (especially considering
warranty), but I definitely wouldn't shell out a couple of grand
for a Dell.

I like Antec cases. Simple enough, good power supplies, easy to
work on. They've got a pretty nice-looking case called the Sonata,
which seems to be well-built. Not the case I'd want if I were
overclocking, but should be a great desktop case.

As far as motherboards go, I like Asus, although you probably won't
go wrong with something like Abit or Tyan. There are lots of other
good ones, but those are a couple.

For the processor, I'd go with a P4 with an 800 MHz FSB. If the
price is too steep, The AMD Athlon XPs with the 333 MHz FSB are
solid performers.

For RAM, grab a stick or two of 512MB Crucial. Kingston, Corsair,
and Mushkin are other good brands. If you're running an 800 MHz
FSB, I'd go with PC3200, but if you're running a 333 MHz FSB,
PC2700 will do nicely.

One of the most exciting products to come out recently is Western
Digital's 10k RPM serial ATA Raptor hard drive. They run about
$170 for a 36.something GB model, but it greatly speeds up one of
the major bottlenecks in today's computers. Make sure your choice
of motherboard has a SATA controller. If you really want fast disk
access, get two and configure them as a RAID-0 array. Either way,
you'll probably want more disk space, so grab one or two Western
Digital 7200 RPM drives with the 8MB cache. You choose the size,
but less than 80GB isn't really cost-effective.

A quick aside related to hard disks: many people only use one large
partition these days, as all recent operating systems can recognize
such large partitions. However, doing this does have one advantage
that you may or may not care about. With partitions of 16-32GB,
the cluster size is 16KB, which means that no matter how small a
file is, it will use 16KB of disk space. If you go above a 32GB
partition, up to 2TB, the cluster size jumps to 32KB. Since disk
space is cheap these days, most people don't worry about this
cluster waste, but it's worth thinking about if you're going to
have a partition close to the 32GB limit anyway (if my math is
correct, 32GB = 34,359,738,368 bytes, or 33,554,432 kilobytes).

As far as monitors go, a 21" CRT will probably look better than a
19" LCD, and will be a little cheaper too. Personal preference
here.

Matrox video cards are considered excellent for 2D, but if you want
3D I'd probably go with an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro. Really, either one
should perform great.

The other components won't factor into the performance as much, so
I won't bother mentioning anything specific. Don't forget that
decent sound and network support will likely come on the
motherboard.

Good luck.

bigjake · Jul 21, 2003

Any of the major brands have long warranties with technical support available, and they build solid computers. They will not be the greatest computer money can buy, but they should be more than adequate, and have the support systems to help you out if you run into troubles.

If you are buying this computer to support your photography hobby, your most important things will be good quality video card, lots of good quality ram, and lots of storage. A dvd rw would be a very smart choice because you can store large amounts of pics on a dvd. About 6 times what you can on a cd.

Personal choices would be a pentium 4 3.06 with 800 mhz front side bus.
1 gig of pc3200 ram
2 western digitial raptor hard drives.
ATI radeon pro 9800
dvd rw, and cdrw
sony 21" trinitron

sound card, take your pick of current ones. I rarely turn my sound on, so I have very little input.

dboyles · Jul 21, 2003

bigjake said:
I skipped a lot of replies, and came to the end to see what the
last post had developed into, and just have to laugh. One of the
lines in the original post that happens to be defined in
parentheses is that it should be an off the shelf xp. I doubt
this person is interested in developing the amount of knowledge
that would enable them to configure a raid controller. Unless I
missed what they are asking for, I believe it should be a basic
prebuilt computer that they can take out of the boxes, connect,
and start using.

I'm not even sure what "off the shelf XP" means. Was he talking about the OS, CPU, or something else?

Perhaps the RAID controller and partitioning of the hard drive is above the level that the original poster wants to get into, but it would be quite easy to have a computer like this built. I live in a small town and there's a shop right up the road that could do it for not much more than you'd pay to order the parts and do it yourself, and it would be a much better value than a prebuilt Dell (assuming he's not going low-end).

I think anybody who is inclined to learn about inherently technical subjects such as digital photography should have no problem specing out a nice computer. Looking back at the original post, you're probably right, but perhaps he'll consider some of my points and decide to investigate other solutions.

William Wilgus · Jul 21, 2003

bigjake said:
You are not remembering incorrectly. You have to be certain that
you purchase a dell that does not have a lot of things built into
the board. Dell's lower priced pc's often have video and sound
built into the board, and reconfiguring it can be difficult, and
sometimes impossible. Also, dell pc's are rarely top of the line
pc's. That is not to say they sell only junk or anything. They
are usually solid pieces with dependable parts. If you look at
descriptions of cdrw's they use on comparison sites, you will see
comments like dependable, but slooooowwww. If you pick components
carefully, you can often build a good machine from their site.
Dell has a good track record.

William Wilgus · Jul 21, 2003

. . . at least they were when I checked just a couple of months ago. I have disk drive storage trays in both my computers for all the hard drives, and they're great for both backup and transferring data from one machine to the other. The drawers and trays cost me about US$35.00 each, and I bought an extra drawer for each tray (6 of them.)

William

bigjake said:
Any of the major brands have long warranties with technical support
available, and they build solid computers. They will not be the
greatest computer money can buy, but they should be more than
adequate, and have the support systems to help you out if you run
into troubles.

If you are buying this computer to support your photography hobby,
your most important things will be good quality video card, lots of
good quality ram, and lots of storage. A dvd rw would be a very
smart choice because you can store large amounts of pics on a
dvd. About 6 times what you can on a cd.

Personal choices would be a pentium 4 3.06 with 800 mhz front side
bus.
1 gig of pc3200 ram
2 western digitial raptor hard drives.
ATI radeon pro 9800
dvd rw, and cdrw
sony 21" trinitron
sound card, take your pick of current ones. I rarely turn my sound
on, so I have very little input.

William Wilgus · Jul 21, 2003

. . . , or at least they were when I checked a couple of months ago. Hard drive tray / drawer hardware make them easy to swap---but NOT HOT SWAP in my case. Each drawer / tray pair cost me about US$ 35.00 and I bought an extra drawer for each of the 6 that I have. All hard drives on both my computers have them, and it makes it really easy and fast to either back up data or transfer it from one machine to the other.

William

bigjake said:
Any of the major brands have long warranties with technical support
available, and they build solid computers. They will not be the
greatest computer money can buy, but they should be more than
adequate, and have the support systems to help you out if you run
into troubles.

If you are buying this computer to support your photography hobby,
your most important things will be good quality video card, lots of
good quality ram, and lots of storage. A dvd rw would be a very
smart choice because you can store large amounts of pics on a
dvd. About 6 times what you can on a cd.

Personal choices would be a pentium 4 3.06 with 800 mhz front side
bus.
1 gig of pc3200 ram
2 western digitial raptor hard drives.
ATI radeon pro 9800
dvd rw, and cdrw
sony 21" trinitron
sound card, take your pick of current ones. I rarely turn my sound
on, so I have very little input.

j-a-s-o-n · Jul 21, 2003

bigjake,

You have posted most closely to what I use when I make a PC, with a few variances.

Motherboards - Asustek, Tyan, Gigabyte, & Abit

For cases and power supplies, I like PC Power and Cooling.

bigjake said:
Personal choices would be a pentium 4 3.06 with 800 mhz front side
bus.

I like dual or more CPUs.

bigjake said:
1 gig of pc3200 ram

Corsair, Micron/Crucial, Samsung

bigjake said:
2 western digitial raptor hard drives.

WD drives are great. I used to by IBM IDE, Laptop, & SCSI but they sold out to Hitachi I think.

bigjake said:
ATI radeon pro 9800

I like the All-In-Wonder video card because I like to capture/edit mini-DV, record cable TV, and play PS2 on my computer.

bigjake said:
dvd rw, and cdrw

Sony and Plextor make DVD+ - RW drives.

bigjake said:
sony 21" trinitron

Sony CRT monitors are top of the line. I still use an old Multiscan400PS - great monitors.

bigjake said:
sound card, take your pick of current ones. I rarely turn my sound
on, so I have very little input.

Sound - Creative labs top end.

I have put a personal system together in a while, but when I do I usually end up spending $7K plus and my computers never die.

For most users, especially my business customers, I point to Dell. High-end Dells are really solid.

There are new Macs out now. I've unloaded my dual g4, I'll be ordering a Dual G5 one soon. Final Cut Pro rocks!

--
Jason

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PC Reconmendation ?

SoftD100

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Mike Waddington

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Ian Yаtes

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William Wilgus

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dboyles

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bigjake

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