Kilamon
Rated XXX
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 Posted: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 15:07:08 Post Subject: |
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| Drewdupont wrote: | | I could realy use alot of help with desiging the specs for this GOD box because I need to have it built and up and running in about 14 days! |
Challenging!
| Drewdupont wrote: | | I am a professional photographer for 7 years now. I know nearly everything there is to know about digital cameras and related accessories yet I admit I know little about computers. Infact I know just enough to be dangerious. I am building a system that is intended to run all my editing software aka, Photoshop CS 2 Paint Shop Pro 9.0, extensis portfolio 7, Capture one and various Raw batch converters. |
Hmm so lots of I/O and large files. k.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | If money were no object wich it isn't in my perticular situation because I made a deal with the local PC store that I will make $200 payments every month until the system is paid off. then what sort of machine is nessasary to make photoshop CS 2 screem who's your daddy!! |
Wish I could make that deal for my motorcycle restoration.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | Keep in mind I will be working with very large files. 22 mega pixel images from a Hasselblad digital back and 16.7 megapixel images from a Canon EOS 1DS Mark II and I will be batch processing heavy filters in long sets of 3,000 or more images at a time. |
Noted.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | SENDING FILES TO CLIENTS KEEPING SAFE |
Eh? You want to use PGP for your email? Weird heading...
| Drewdupont wrote: | | A few things are given, I will need Firewire 800 Firewire 400 (standard) "for compatibility" USB 2.0 ports I will need a Gigabit Ethernet connection. And I already have Broadband internet in a Black Box configgeration so that the new GOD BOX will be protected from viruses Physicaly because it will never see the internet. |
What do you mean by a "Black Box configuration?" Did someone feed you that term? It's not a networking term that I've heard and I've been doing networks for 15 years.
| Drewdupont wrote: | GETTING RID OF THE BOTTLE NECK
Faster Hard Drives ..
I am told that I should for best performance use a seperate Hard Drive for my opperating system a seperate drive for my PhotoShop scratch Disk and a seperate drives(s) for storage I am thinking along the lines of 2 320 Gig raid drives in a mirror configeration serial ATA i think thats the fastest anyway?? |
Yes, but wait til you see what I have in mind. You'll think it's better because of the magic of striping!
| Drewdupont wrote: | | 1 question would it improve or reduce my system performance to have programs on yet another HD from my OS Drive ?? ? |
The performance increase for program loading would be negligable, but you are going to be working with very large files and most of the apps you stated previously are able to have a seperately defined swap area and swap is going to be important for these files, just like your storage of the same files.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | I know that I need a dule processor system with dule core 64bit processors. Given the amount of heat that produces I will likely want to invest in the best Cooling system money can buy |
Who the hell told you that *s#!7? You don't -need- a dual core system unless you're doing a LOT of multitasking and even then, most business applications aren't designed to use both cores. I speak from experience (read my sig). Sure, the dual core is the P0w/-\ and omg I love it, but it's also problematic because of microsoft's implementation for core management and there's a tradeoff for overclocking and reliability. In any case, getting a dual core chip is up to you, but I advise caution. Read some reviews, check your product literature and then make an informed decision. If your software is indeed made to take advantage of multiple cores/cpus, then go for it but otherwise, you'll only ever be using one core for any given app. I usually do quite a bit of core management and set specific applications to run on a specific core simply because of that very fact.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | Are there quad processor computers for PC like there are for apple aka the Mac G5 Quad ?? if so can they run windows and does photoshop support the use of the other processors? |
There are, yes, but like I said, your software may not support this. You'll need to readyour product literature (RTFM).
| Drewdupont wrote: | | whats the best processors / motherboard for PC ,? ! want to fit it all into a gigantic server tower case so size is no issue! |
Ok, best is a subjective term. I'm going to use DFI because they have a board that has 8 SATA connections, half of which are RAID5 compatible, plus 2 EIDE ports, plus the floppy, 2 firewire, 8 USB2 and lots of other goodness. You'll like it. It's the same as mine.  It pwns. However, you might not like the flashy colors and others in the forum may tell you to get MSI cause they think it's the best, but whatever. The best is subjective. Leave it at that.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | The Hard drives for the scratch disks should be verry fast like a Raptor drive and the ones for my storage may be slower because they are just for storage not for working files |
Ah, but young padawan, you can use the scratch and storage in one area/disk. I'll give my final evaluation below. 
| Drewdupont wrote: | | Can anyone tell me when MAXELL will be coming out with their Holographic Optical Storage Media in Caddys because that is the way to go I am told, something like 120 MBP/s Transfer rates and 1.6 terrabytes storage capacity with a 50+ year Archive life! |
With uncompressed storage capacities achieving 1.6 TeraBytes per disk and data rates as high as 120 MBPs, holographic technology is a true breakthrough in optical media. These features, along with a long archival life, make holographic media a compelling choice for storage and archival requirements. The first generation of holographic media with 300 GB of storage capacity and a 20 MBPs Transfer Rate is scheduled for release in late 2006. For more information on Maxell products, please visit Maxell's Web site, www.maxell-data.com.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | Also I am verry concerned about cooling my system and quiet opperation, of course performance is most important for me and I am willing to sacrifice noise for performance but I am told that liquid cooling is the way to go. any advice for whats the best? |
There you go again with that word, best.  On my system, I have a ThermalTake Sonic Tower. It achieves a normal operating temperature average of about 36 degrees Celsius. I'm running a 120mm fan through it and there are 4 other 80mm fans in my system. There is some noise but others seem to like the XP90 so, whatever.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | Someone said that they took their liquid cooling system and mod it to run right through a mini refrigerator like the one's everyone brings with them to collage and they get a 80% boost in performance but they had to scale back the cooling because the first time they did it, it produced too much condensation and nearly caused a short, anyone have plans for this kind of mod ?? |
Eh, not me. I don't do water cooling. There's too much maintainence.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | whats the best cooling system? |
Whichever one works for you.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | Sound is of no importance I dont listen to sound on my computer Tube amps are the way to go , but vinel is still even better yet. |
omg. If you were able to put all your music on to your computer, then you'd know the magic of digital music. See, once it's all in an MP3, WMA or other format, you can transmit it to any other device either via network, wireless speaker set, portable device or whatever you care to use. You can't use vinyl in the car, but you can use mp3 player! Get with the times!
| Drewdupont wrote: | | I dont have a clue about what to get for a video card, i dont know how demanding photoshop CS 2 is on the video cards i know it needs atleast 32 mb and recomends 64 mb so i dont even know if it would even utilize a 256 mb video card or would it be a waste of my money. Keep in mind I am not going to be doing any gaming on this machine it is strictly photoshop and storage. |
No worries. Most of the good video cards now are pretty inexpensive and even a low end card is likely more than you'll need.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | I am at a loss of how much ram I should get well i know that photoshop can only handle 4 gigs of RAM I am leaning twards more because I expect that soon photoshop will have a new release in a few years that will fully utilize all 8 gigs ?? |
RAM is good for you because it'll avoid some disk swapping. Now, the files you'll be working with are 22megs PLUS so you're not going to be able to get away from it entirely unless you create a ram drive as your swap space. But no worries, I've considered this already.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | What is the Fastest RAM for big projects.. Someone explained to me that some ram is like sports cars they have a higher top speed but can only handel two passangers and other cars are like bullet trains they are not as fast but when loaded down with alot of "passangers" it is alot faster than having the "sports car" doing all the work going back and forth 8 times more than the "train" could do. |
 Tell that person to put down the crack pipe. Go read this article. It's a good basic introduction and it's explained pretty well with lots of pictures. Big props to Cheese for writing with lots of pictures.
| Drewdupont wrote: | | I think the ram I was looking at was Dule Channel DDR PC8000 in GIG or 2 gig sticks?? |
heh. Don't ever say that again. Who ever gave you that line of crap needs to have it fed back to them.
| Drewdupont wrote: | Comments anyone?
How would you improve it..
Please email me if you have any ideas to improve the performance of my system. |
Right then...
Start with a case. Pick one you like. I can recommend the Lian-Li cases as they are easy to work with, made from aluminum to disspate heat better and pretty light. They're also very basic, though, due to market saturation, there are a lot of products for them like case skins, window panels and a lot more. I use an MGE Quantum case and it's a monster of a case with all steel construction, enough size to fit Grimace's lard a$$ in (maybe not large enough for Hack's butt though) and has an LCD display to display cooling. It also has enough real estate that you can paint it up and mod it if you want. A lot of people like the ThermalTake Armor case and it seems to be pretty prevalant. If you look around a little, you'll find a case that fits your personality and then you can read up on the reviews for the case to make sure it doesn't suck. There are some cases out there that are complete trash so be sure to read a review about anything you're interested in before you buy it.
Once you have a case, move on to a motherboard. Naturally, you'll need to consider your case to make sure your board will fit, but most cases will fit most all motherboards with a few exceptions like mATX (Mini ATX like this one). Check your case and motherboard specification to ensure they match. Look for ATX, form factor size and the like. However, now for the real meat: The motherboard. Get the DFI LanParty UT SLi-DR. I say this because it's a board with 2 controller chips for SATA drives, as I mentioned before. This board can handle 8 sata connections and half of those can be configured to do raid0, raid0+1, or raid5. Now, keep this in mind as I progress here...
Case, motherboard, and now RAM. I doubt you'll be overclocking, but you'll still want fast ram. Corsair and OCZ all make great ram but if you check out DFI-street.com, you can see that not only does the motherboard have a community to support it, there's a recommended list and a whole explaination of how ram works so just scroll down to find the "best" ram for you. You can make an educated buy using all the information that I've provided. You'll notice that the list has "2x512mb" listed and that refers to the number of modules and their size so a 2x512 is 2 modules at 512 megabytes each (for a total of 1 gigabyte). With the amount of data that you'll be processing, I advise you to hit the maximum amount of ram that you can afford and that XP will support. As of November 2004, Windows XP will only support 4 gigs of ram. You'll need 4x1gb worth of ram. The motherboard can only have 4 sticks/modules of ram so each module must be 1 gig in size. I've provided enough information here for you so that you can make our own informed decision about the speed of the ram that you buy; cross reference it to the DFI-street board to ensure that the ram you pick is compatible with the board (and your wallet will have to be interrogated as well).
As far as video goes, I would suggest an nVidia 6600 class card. They're a good quality, even for gaming, and will display all the colors that you need in any video resolution that you require for 2D editing. Prices on them are really quite good, in fact, and Pricewatch has them listed at $89 -- be sure you get the PCI Express version!!
For hard drives, and this is where your true power will lie, you'll need 5 of them and split them like this: 2 drives (small, 60gb is fine) running in a raid0+1 configuration. This will be your logical C: drive, where your boot partition, windows, programs and apps all live. The files and storage and majority of your data goes on to the second sata controller, the one with raid5, in a raid5 configuration. You'll need 3 drives for that and, as the article says, you'll lose one drive to the array so get at least 3 250gb jobbies so you can have 500gb of storage (half a terabyte!  ). In fact, you can go larger if you want and even expand this out later by adding a fourth drive. Really, once it is in a raid5 config, you can swap out all the drives one at a time later and expand the array so, for instance, you have 3x250gb seagate drive (always use the same model of drives for maximum reliability and performance) and then you're getting close to capacity so you buy another drive, plug it in and tell the array to expand. Once it's completed, you tell windows to expand that drive and *bang* 250gb more storage. I've done this all over the place and never had much of a problem. Now, the beauty of the raid5 is that it's striped, just like the article says, so you can read those files faster and get more done. Until you realize the beauty of striping, you'll never understand why this raid array will be the heart of your system. Naturally, both of these types of raid are fault tolerant, reducing the need to perform ritualized backups.
Then, you'll want to pick a CPU. As discussed, you'll need to read the manual on your products to determine your capabilities for multi-tasking, load sharing and etc. Once you've figured that out, you'll be ready to pick a CPU. The DFI SLi-DR is capable of handling any 939 chip (AMD only) so you can buy an inexpensive single core and upgrade later just by swapping the CPU. This is great when your programs have finally moved in to the multithreaded state and you want to see the performance boost.
As for cooling, you can use most any solution you like from water cooling to a passive air system. Pick the one you like best (oho, that word again) and run with it. I like the air cooled engine for my motorcycle because it's lower maintainance and I chose air cooling for my PC for the same reason. Yes, it's louder, but if you look, there's a fan listed in the reviews section here that has golf ball dimples so it's supposed to be quieter. Using 120mm fans will also make your system quieter because the blades can move slower to achieve the same amount of air flow. If you read up on positive pressure and negative pressure case and air flow design, you can learn a lot about cooling.
Finally, you'll need to power all of this. Again, check out the recommendations on DFI-Street. Get a power supply of at least 600 watts with a native 24 pin connector and SLi capability. DO NOT SKIMP ON THE POWER SUPPLY. It will be the one thing in your computer that is more important than your motherboard. It supplies juice to all your components and you need to have solid, clean power. In fact, you should also get a UPS (Battery backup) for your computer. A good UPS will clean the power that is fed to your computer, normalizing it and reducing voltage 'noise' as well as making sure you don't lose any data if you're working when the power goes out.
| Drewdupont wrote: | Also I am accepting names for the god box .. it has to be a powerfull name , or a historic name ,. or some kind of mithilogical God or Goddess .
Have fun
Thanks |
I vote "Pallas Athena" for Athena is the goddess of knowledge and a patron of arts and crafts which would include painting or, in your case, photography. You could expand on that by doing some nice case art. |
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