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How does this build look for a new PC?

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Peter2290

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Well I've finally decided to get a new pc since the laptop I got for college 2.5 years ago isn't really equipped for photo/video editing. I've decided to purchase the parts and build it myself like I did before I got my laptop and this is what I have picked out so far (looking to spend around $1300-1400):

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=13290965

I'm going to scavenge the DVD drives out of an old pc at my house so no need for them here. I'm mostly going to be using this pc (along with a 1680x1050 Dell monitor) for Photoshop/Lightroom (I'm using a Canon 7D) along with video editing using Premiere Pro/After Effects and of course gaming since I'm a college student and all haha.

How does this build look to the PC people here? Its been a while since I built my own and I'm kind of out of the loop with regards to the newest tech.

Thanks,

-Peter
 
Fancy. You need another disk drive or two. LR/PS goes faster with OS/apps on one disk, data on another, cache on another. But if you have lots of RAM you don't need much cache. Not sure that I'd spend $300 on a mobo when you can get a perfectly suitable one for overclocking for a bit more than half that, from ASUS or Gigabyte. But then, I'm not into overclocking.
 
Yeah, I wasn't really sure on the motherboard, but got recommended this one. I'll look around for a cheaper one and use the money saved for another hard drive (maybe even an SSD if I can afford it).
 
Comments on the site suggest that the Intel cooler is not ideal for cooling an overclocked CPU. Some suggest that even if you are not overclocking, you should use a quality third-party cooler.

So you might want to consider whether to add cooling upgrades to your configuration.
 
The memory is way faster than the speed at which your processor will access it. DDR-1333 memory is fast enough unless you're into hardcore overclocking. This will save you some money. In addition, you can probably go for a cheaper motherboard. Motherboards don't have alot of effect on the performance of the machine and the particular one you selected seems horribly expensive.

Put the money you saved towards a SSD as your OS/apps disk. This will provide a more tangible performance increase than any other component. If you need to drop to a cheaper CPU/videocard to fit an SSD in your budget, then that's worth it too.
 
ASUS Sabertooth X58 $100 savings.

If you have Micro Center near you they might have CPU much cheaper. $100 cheaper.

--
Eugene

The only time a smaller sensor with the same pixel count is superior to a larger sensor (aka higher pixel density) is when you are focal-length limited.

Quote by Lee Jay

 
Thanks everyone, I've updated the list with cheaper RAM (DDR3-1333) which saved me $35, the Asus Sabertooth motherboard which saved me $100 and added a 64gb SSD (well 2 actually becuase I'm not sure which one to by, the Samsung is cheaper for the moment while it is on sale and has faster write times, but the Crucial has a much faster read time while in Sata III mode, and idea which one? I'm a complete SSD noob) to server as an OS/Program boot drive, while the 1 tb WD drive is used for all my data. I also realized that I can take the HDD out my old desktop and reformat it for this one as well (I think that ones a 320gb or so).
 
also I would suggest doubling your ram to 8 gb, assuming of course you're using a 64 bit vesrion of windows. Just recently added an SSD HD, 120 gb OCZ Vertex 2. This is w/o a doubt the biggest bang for buck increase in speed you can add to a computer. When rendereing in PS, the progess bar no longer moves slowly, it just jumps to the end.

Would also suggest you get a larger SSD, with just windows 7, Office and aAdobe CS5 loaded, It took up about 44 GB
 
You said you are scavenging DVD/CD drives from an "old" computer. Make sure they are SATA, as the new motherboard won't have an interface for IDE/PATA.

Stan
 
Larry Robinson said:
also I would suggest doubling your ram to 8 gb....
Click to expand...
He's already got 12GB in the wish list he linked to (note the quantity line), using three 4GB DIMMs, leaving 3 slots free for more later, since the X58 chipset (Socket LGA 1366) motherboards have 6 DIMM slots). ;-)

With an X58 chipset, you want to install memory in matched sets of 3 if possible (what he's doing with that config), in order to get tri-channel addressing (which is something you don't get with the socket 1156 motherboards using the Core i7 8xx type CPUs, which only support dual channel addressing).

IOW, his config looks good from a memory perspective, giving him 12GB with tri-channel addressing with 3 DIMM slots free for more memory later.

--
JimC
------
http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
 
SSD wise, I would go for the Crucial Real ssd c300, if you can the 128gb. Second choice being Intel X25M G2.

Having a bigger SSD allows you to use it for OS programs, but also the scratch disk and the data you currently work on, maximizing the benefit for its performance.
 
Stan Prevost said:
You said you are scavenging DVD/CD drives from an "old" computer. Make sure they are SATA, as the new motherboard won't have an interface for IDE/PATA.

Stan
Click to expand...
Thanks Stan. Next time I'm home I'll make sure they are SATA (though I'm pretty sure they are since its not THAT old).
 
They might be SATA but old SATA 150.
--
Eugene

The only time a smaller sensor with the same pixel count is superior to a larger sensor (aka higher pixel density) is when you are focal-length limited.

Quote by Lee Jay

 
+1 on the OCZ Vertex 2... or any other drive for with the Sandforce controller. They seem to offer the best balance of performance out of the current crop.
 
Peter2290 said:
Thanks everyone, I've updated the list with cheaper RAM (DDR3-1333) which saved me $35, the Asus Sabertooth motherboard which saved me $100 and added a 64gb SSD (well 2 actually becuase I'm not sure which one to by, the Samsung is cheaper for the moment while it is on sale and has faster write times, but the Crucial has a much faster read time while in Sata III mode, and idea which one? I'm a complete SSD noob) to server as an OS/Program boot drive, while the 1 tb WD drive is used for all my data. I also realized that I can take the HDD out my old desktop and reformat it for this one as well (I think that ones a 320gb or so).
Click to expand...
the terrible thing is with 7D/5D2 image sizes and even worse video sizes and then add in a little DVR TV stuff and 1TB seems like about 32K worth of storage

sad thing is I have let us just say a number of TBs and stilll feel crowded for space hah

ideally you also want some sort of backup system, maybe 1 backup drive for each usage drive, you can swap one in, backup then swap it out for safe storage elsewhere

i'm also into fancy graphics/games/cuda/etc. and would almost feel like GTX 580 hah (although to be honest it's pobably too early to get that, some places are even charging a premium, later winter it should come down in price along wth maybe a nice 570 or something)
 
although i suppose you could burn stuff like photos/videos to blu-ray discs for one time backup
 
Thanks Bronx, I have a 320gb hdd from my old computer that I'm going to reformat and put in the new one, along with a 640gb external that I'm using now (and I don't have that many pictures/videos, I think my lightroom catalog has about 4k pictures atm) so I think I'll be set with storage space for a while.

I would also love to get the GTX 580, but it (along with a bigger SSD) are just way out of my budget right now. Then again I probably won't be purchasing this pc until January/February so I'll reevaluate prices when the time comes.
 
I've noticed that Nvidia has a new GTX 460 SE card that's less expensive than the orginal GTX 460 that you may want to consider to save a few bucks.

Specs are very similar, except the SE version has fewer CUDA cores.

They appear to benchmark within about 5 percent of each other for fps on popular games. If you look at some of the Cyberpower configurators, you'll see fps benchmarks for various games on the left side of the page when you change the selected video card.

Here's an example config I just saved that is very close to your config (only with Liquid Coolihng, a slightly larger PSU, and a different SSD). I used one of the new A-Data SSDs with a Sandforce 1222 controller (very fast if you dig around for benchmarks of SSDs using it, especially for random reads are writes).

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1CVL8F

I did not include an Operating System (see the Software Section to add one).

Also note that the Corsair Force Series SSDs use the fast Sandforce Controllers. So, you may want to look at those, too.

If you click on the small thumbnails for any component you have selected, it will open a screen with specs (and you'll see a link to more specs on most that take you to a manufacturer's product page).

--
JimC
------
http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
 
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