Hi all,
I am helping my neighbour spec out a new PC for primarily Photoshop work. The neighbour is a professional photographer and will be working with very large images, so performance is a consideration, but so is budget.
My primary goals are stability, compatibility, performance and silence. Probably in that order, though given his current PC, the last shouldn't be hard to improve on at all.
The thing I am not sure of is the motherboard. What is required is:
- Onboard RAID (for striping the scratch disk)
- Probably LGA775
- Firewire
What I mainly need to choose is the chipset, as I can then choose the board based on features. I am also happy to have specific recommendations.
We won't need to or want to mess with timings or overclocking or any other enthusiast settings. Stability, quality and compatibility are the keywords here.
The current spec will be:
Case - Probably Antec P182
CPU - Core2Duo 2.66 Ghz
CPU Heatsink ??
PSU - Antec Earthwatts 430?
Memory - 4Gb
Drives all 7200RPM 500Gb SATA (thinking Western Digital as Samsung are hard to find)
- 2* (scratch RAID0)
- 2* (OS RAID1)
- 1 (Data - External backup)
Any thoughts or general recommendations are appreicated.
Thanks
Photoshop PC Spec assistance - motherboard choices?
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
If cost is a concern, what is the budget?
If you are going with a 775 CPU, I'd stick with a P35 motherboard with an ICH9R southbridge. The -R means that you have an on-board RAID controller. You gain nothing from the X38 or X48 for these applications, and I've had much better results from Intel chipsets over the years than nVidia.
There are lots of P35 flavors around; I've used both the Abit IP35 Pro and the Gigabyte -DS3R. I preferred the former for its fan controls, but neither is ideal. Note the DS3R does not have FW; you need to go up a step in their line to get it.
I agree that the Earthwatts supply is loud. I'd use an appropriate Seasonics or Corsair.
There are a couple of other things you might consider. It is almost trivial to overclock something like the Q6600 or the newer 45-nm CPUs, and they can still be nearly silent if you use a good heatsink. I would do so, and have had excellent results with Thermalright's 120UE.
I would also consider a "real" RAID controller if there is the budget for it (and there probably is not). The issue is not so much throughput (though it would be higher) as much as it is reforming the RAID 1 array should a drive fail. There are compatibility issues with some controllers and some P35 motherboards if you want to go this route.
If you are going with a 775 CPU, I'd stick with a P35 motherboard with an ICH9R southbridge. The -R means that you have an on-board RAID controller. You gain nothing from the X38 or X48 for these applications, and I've had much better results from Intel chipsets over the years than nVidia.
There are lots of P35 flavors around; I've used both the Abit IP35 Pro and the Gigabyte -DS3R. I preferred the former for its fan controls, but neither is ideal. Note the DS3R does not have FW; you need to go up a step in their line to get it.
I agree that the Earthwatts supply is loud. I'd use an appropriate Seasonics or Corsair.
There are a couple of other things you might consider. It is almost trivial to overclock something like the Q6600 or the newer 45-nm CPUs, and they can still be nearly silent if you use a good heatsink. I would do so, and have had excellent results with Thermalright's 120UE.
I would also consider a "real" RAID controller if there is the budget for it (and there probably is not). The issue is not so much throughput (though it would be higher) as much as it is reforming the RAID 1 array should a drive fail. There are compatibility issues with some controllers and some P35 motherboards if you want to go this route.
Thanks for the replies -
The budget - somewhat flexible. Enough to accommodate quad core, not enough for 5 velociraptors. I'd think we are looking at up to 1500 for hardware. A little over is possible, but not enough to afford true hardware RAID or bleeding edge anything. I'll definitely recommend shelling out for the newer WD640 disks though.
If we were to shell out for a single Velociraptor as the system disk (with external backup instead of RAID1) would it make a noticeable performance improvement?
I'm not sure I understand the question about the RAID1 rebuilding. I was under the impression that should one drive fail, the other will continue to work as a single drive. If this was the case, I would just as well set that drive as a single, then rebuild the RAID1 using 2 fresh drives. The other option as mentioned is to just use external backup, but I prefer the parity drive to ensure uptime in case of failure.
I was wondering about the noise of the EW PSU, but figured 5 drives would be setting a high noise floor even in the P182, but I suppose another $30-50 for a Seasonic is worth it at this stage.
The budget - somewhat flexible. Enough to accommodate quad core, not enough for 5 velociraptors. I'd think we are looking at up to 1500 for hardware. A little over is possible, but not enough to afford true hardware RAID or bleeding edge anything. I'll definitely recommend shelling out for the newer WD640 disks though.
If we were to shell out for a single Velociraptor as the system disk (with external backup instead of RAID1) would it make a noticeable performance improvement?
I'm not sure I understand the question about the RAID1 rebuilding. I was under the impression that should one drive fail, the other will continue to work as a single drive. If this was the case, I would just as well set that drive as a single, then rebuild the RAID1 using 2 fresh drives. The other option as mentioned is to just use external backup, but I prefer the parity drive to ensure uptime in case of failure.
I was wondering about the noise of the EW PSU, but figured 5 drives would be setting a high noise floor even in the P182, but I suppose another $30-50 for a Seasonic is worth it at this stage.
That is plenty as long as you use existing monitors and are a bit areful with the disk drives. No "real" RAID, though.mrzed wrote:I'd think we are looking at up to 1500 for hardware.
On writes, yes; on reads probably not. To me it would depend more on how religiously the system would be backed up. Most people just don't unless it is automatic.If we were to shell out for a single Velociraptor as the system disk (with external backup instead of RAID1) would it make a noticeable performance improvement?
That's right.I'm not sure I understand the question about the RAID1 rebuilding. I was under the impression that should one drive fail, the other will continue to work as a single drive.
Well, the way you are supposed to do it, for redundant arrays like RAID 1, 5 0+1 or others, is that you remove the bad drive, insert the new one, and the new drive is rebuilt, automatically, on the fly. For a server with hot-swap drives, it really is as easy as pulling one out and sliding a new one in -- you don't even shut it down. The on-board controllers just don't do that. Of course there is a lot of overhead that goes into rebuilding, but the idea is that you don't lose any uptime, and you should not have do it too often.If this was the case, I would just as well set that drive as a single, then rebuild the RAID1 using 2 fresh drives.
I built a computer for my wife that has the 500W EW version in an Antec Solo, with two WD 500GB drives, a 3GHz Q6600 (overclocked) and various other bits and pieces, and the power supply is by far the loudest thing in the computer. By far. I built a very similar system for a colleague with the 520W Corsair, and then the hard drives are louder. Now the 430W unit may be better, but I would be skeptical. You also will have more drives and that does matter. But the EWs in my experience, while not loud, are not nearly silent.I was wondering about the noise of the EW PSU, but figured 5 drives would be setting a high noise floor even in the P182, but I suppose another $30-50 for a Seasonic is worth it at this stage.