Bumtree Loc: South Florida

Should I get a all in one.? Or work on building my own. New to computers. Any advice would be appreciated and helpful..thank you.

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

My vote would be for a IMac 27.

WarrenT Loc: Iowa

If you plan to use it as a desktop I think the regular desktop is a better value than an all-in-one. The last one I bought was a Dell and then got a good monitor to go along with it. I've been happy with the computer, the quality of the images on the monitor, and the customer service from Dell.

Bumtree Loc: South Florida

Thank you, I have been looking at the Dell

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

If you do not know what you are doing, don't build your own. It is certainly doable, but there is a lot of knowledge required, and many mistakes to be made.

If by build your own you mean configure and buy from Dell for example, no problem. But if you mean source your own components: case, mobo, CPU, memory, storage, I/O etc. be ready to know what you are doing....

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

What is your budget?

I just built one for a friend

12 tb of storage
1 tb SSD boot drive
workstation graphics card with 2 gb vram.
Thunderbolt/USB 3.0/3.1
overclocked mildly to 4.5 ghz
i7 6700 CPU
32 gb ram, with room for an additional 32 gb.
850 w power supply

$1850.

Add Windows 10 for another $120. Add another $130 if you want Microcenter to build it for you.

There is nothing coming out of Apple that can touch a machine this fast for less than $3000. Apple's are fine, if you don't mind a generic machine being used for a specialty purpose. There will be some compromises. However don't let an Apple user hear this. They will quickly move to totally trash PCs as useless pieces of junk, while extolling the virtues of Mac. A balanced perspective is that they are both capable machines, PCs offer more configurational fine-tuning, and are about 30% - 40% cheaper, even if you have one custom built. Oh, and they really don't support wide gamut graphics. If that doesn't matter to you, then spend the extra $$$ and get white.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Well said. But if a novice in need of support, does that change things at all?

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Good point. It really depends on the individual. I have students that will never be anything but a novice, and struggle with their computers - PCs and Macs alike. I have others that pick it up pretty quickly and move beyond novice in short order. Based on what I see on a day to day basis, I am not sure that the learning curve is any worse or better for either platform. Of course if you started in Mac, Windows is going to feel really uncomfortable. However, those who have started with PCs get the Mac OS pretty quickly. I had one user that has been using a Macbook for at least 5 years, and could not, under any circumstances and no matter how many times she visited the Genius Bar or how many times I tried to get her to understand it - how Dropbox worked. She could not tell the difference between the files on her computer, on the dropbox website, and which files were raw and which were jpeg. This degree of confusion is not that uncommon, and navigating through Finder is a bit like walking into a house of mirrors for some. I think certain tasks are just more straightforward on PC. Once you are in your app, though, it looks and feels pretty much the same.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

No disagreement, I mainly work with PCs and do source and build my own systems from the ground up, but I have some background experience to do that. I was really commenting on the support perspective, which is a little more complex with a home built system... We're not architecting a TOP500 leadership machine here....

In this instance I think Dell would be a good choice. Dell is just a phone call away. And they do have a decent TOP500 machine at TACC: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/stampede/ It is a little noisy though ...

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Nice configuration and very cost effective in terms of performance - the only thing I might add would be a BluRay/MDisk drive. Question: have you ever built a machine for image processing around an AMD 8-core CPU? Not suggesting, just wondering if anyone is using AMD for this type of workflow.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Haven't done AMD recently, but I do agree with the Blu-ray Mdisk reader / writer drive. Works well, especially with the VideoLAN VLC software...

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Yes on the AMD, and they are very fast for Lightroom. Photoshop does a little better with Intel quadcore. However, the 8 core Intel® Core™ i7-5960X is really fast, faster than the AMD.
Didn't mention the BluRay Mdisk, but it was in the config. Nor did I mention the Corsair H60 liquid cooler - keeps the cpu around 32 C most of the time. The hard drives are single volumes each, WD Black. I have found these to be extremely reliable. If the user wanted RAID in the box, then I would have used WD Re or Hitachi Ultrastar drives.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Thanks Gene. I've built a number of AMD machines in the past and they've been very solid, but never used them for this workflow. Yes, the 5960x is fast, but also expensive. In terms of performance per $, I think your choice of the 6700 is spot-on. Thumbs-up on the liquid cooler - especially with overclocking and heavy CPU utilization.

Mark Bski Loc: A sleepy little island not far from Seattle

If you have a monitor already, check out the Mac Mini. Or maybe Mini Mac. Either way, I have one and its great. I use out full size TV for the monitor. It's outstanding for viewing and processing photos.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

This is an absurd recommendation. A maxed out mini uses a dual core cpu, limited to 16 gb ram, 1 tb ssd, shared system memory for graphics, and with a mouse and keyboard. And it would cost $2300. Out of the box it is already underpowered, doesn't have enough storage, and cost more than the powerhouse system you can get buying a Windows machine. It is not even close. Look at the specs - nothing outstanding about it.