mas24 Loc: Southern CA

A Samsung M.2/256gb SSD half the size of a memory card. Yes, that is tiny for certain.

Deecee

Funny...
I am in the process of picking parts for a new computer myself. I am not a real computer guru, so I have been spending a lot of time reading about the latest and greatest. This computer will be primarily for running Photoshop and so far this is what I am looking at:

Intel Core i7 6700K 4.00 GHz Unlocked Quad Core Skylake Desktop Processor, Socket LGA 1151

ASUS TUF LGA1151 DDR4 DisplayPort HDMI M.2 Motherboard
PNY NVIDIA Quadro M2000 Graphics Card

Samsung 850 EVO - 1TB - 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD

G.SKILL 32GB (4 x 8GB) Ripjaws V Series DDR4

I still have to figure out the power supply, the case, and the cooling system, so the search goes on. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

I liked it better when there was a small computer shop close by that had a showroom with all the different cases, motherboards, CPU's, power supplies, etc. on display. I could ask the person working there for some advise, see what I was getting, and then buy all of it at one time knowing that I was getting compatible components. All the Fry's and other superstores have employees that (most) don't know what the hell they are talking about and are so busy they can't give you the one on one help like the small mom and pop computer stores could. I've built several computers successfully and must say it's kind of fun and less expensive.

The last computer I put together myself was many years ago because the mom and pop store only charged $100 to assemble one to my specs and install the operating system. It was ready to fire up as soon as you plugged it in. I used to build computers for other people to make a few extra bucks but when they only charge $100 to build it for me I stopped and just started to tell clients and friends to go to that store and have one built. It would save them money and that way I was out of the loop.

Jerry, keep tabs on how much you spend and let us know. I'd be interested to know if building one myself only saves $100 like before of if you can really save some money now.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks. I'm still looking for a good location. I have a few in mind, so time will tell.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Serious graphics card. I haven't compared performance to 2 slower cards in SLI, but would love to hear from someone who has. Since you're willing to spend more on it than the processor and MB combined, let me suggest that you consider the 7th generation Intel I7 6800K six core processor (about $100 higher, but 30% performance increase over the 6700K with no overclocking, and some applications can make good use of the extra cores). Personally, I like Asus boards also - you'll need something with an LGA2011-3 socket - maybe one of their X99 boards. You might also consider getting the SSD with an NVMe interface as opposed to SATA, and perhaps the 950 series. Samsung's SSDs are well regarded, but personally, I would also consider Intel. I have 8 Intels in use, most 4 years old, with zero issues so far - paid the extra $ for reliability, and haven't been disappointed yet (I know karma's a bitch, so I'm expecting a failure today 😀). You will also get recommendations to add a large HD for storing photos (I use all SSD storage, but very expensive if you have lots of images) and Hitachi (HGST) is expensive, but has the best reported reliability #s followed closely by WD Red Pro or Black. Remember that you need to back up your data, and very large HDs (as opposed to multiple smaller drives in a RAID group) place more "eggs in one basket" and take longer to rebuild when a drive in a redundancy group fails. You'll also get recommendations to use a seperate and small SSD as a scratch disk for PP (maybe 128 GB), but I'm not clear, given SSD speeds, that it's more efficient than simply carving out a partition for scratch space on your primary SSD - perhaps someone that has tested both configurations can comment.

Personally, I prefer not to use water cooling to reduce complexity, cost and the danger of leaks (although some experienced users do) and minimize overclocking to reduce heat, preferring to buy higher performance CPUs and run them at rated speed or modest overclocking instead. I do absolutely believe in maximum cooling for the processor and graphics card, and multiple (and quiet) case fans are a must - primarily configured to exhaust air from the case (as opposed to pressurization). One CPU fan that has been mentioned by the Intel CPU technical staff is the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO as the best cooler for the price, but I have no direct experience with it. In terms of the power supply rating, you might make up a spread sheet, similar to the one peterff posted last week for jerry's build, and size your PS based on calculated #s + some margin rather than just guessing. I like 32 GB memory, and I use Corsair DDR4, but there are many good choices. For my use, I like to add a BluRay/Mdisk drive which can provide support for up to 100GB disks. Enjoy your build.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Two schools of thought - leaving things running & spinning - not much stress generated, vs the initial shock of turning on and spinning up.... me, I leave my drive powered up, spinning and appreciate the quick response instead of waiting for a drive to spin up.

FWIW - Started noticing that my copy of Lightroom was taking longer than 3 seconds to launch on my new iMac with Fusion Drive sometimes - turns out the problem was alowing my external disk that holds my images to sleep - caused a delay when Lightroom launches and access the external, and that bugged me!!!!! :) Reset the sleep controls to not put the drive to sleep and now launching Lightroom is back to lightning fast as it should be.

romanticf16 Loc: Commerce Twp, MI

Custom building will usually imply better parts than in a production Dell or HP box. That is why the custom machine will run longer and be more upgradable too.

romanticf16 Loc: Commerce Twp, MI

If it's not a high end drive designed for constant running you've just shortened it's life because you can't wait 3 seconds for a drive to spin up!

Deecee

Thanks for the input, I appreciate the info.

As for the video card, I have looked at a lot of cards and they all would work for Photoshop. The only reason i settled on this one was because according to Nvidia's website, it is the best one they make in regards to Photoshop (http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe-photoshop-cc.html). The one I have selected is a 4gb for about $430.00. They make an 8gb, but the price is too high for me and probably overkill for what I do

The 6 core processor on my wish list, having trouble deciding between an ultra-fast 4 ghz quad-core or a 3.6 ghz six core. This article shows the speed of a one core vs a quad core and suggests that I would be better off with the higher mhz vs the more cores (https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-625/)

The motherboard has the option of using a M2 SSD (Samsung makes one for about $50 more) but I will certainly consider the Intels. I definitely want to get away from the sata cables if I can

As far as backup, I agree, back it up, back it up again, and then back it up one more time. I am currently running a 2-bay NAS system by Synology with two 3 TB Western digital reds so all my pictures are backed up on two external hard drives. I also back up my pictures on an external 4 TB Western Digital hard drive that is kept in the safe. Backing up does no good if someone break into your house and steal the external hard drives. I also sit down about once or twice a year and back up everything on blu-ray disc which are also kept in the safe. i will probably add an M-disc to the computer at a later date.

As for cooling fans and power supplies, the research goes on, but I'm getting there. Fortunately I'm not the one putting this all together, an IT friend of mine will (in trade for some work on his house). He is just leaving it up to me to pick all the parts out. I've learned more about computers in the last two weeks than I have ever known :)

nicksr1125 Loc: Mesa, AZ

Your choice of power supply is very good. If you turn your desktop off when you're done for the day, that should be okay. Otherwise, I'd consider getting an external SATA card & cases and hook the drives up outside and turn them on/off as needed.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

If you already have a BluRay drive, you may (probably) find that it will record M-disks - check the M-disk site for a list of compatible drives. I was surprised to see that my LG, which is almost 4 years old, was MDisk compatible (of course if I had looked carefully at the case, I would have noticed the MDisk logo 😀)

Edit: thanks for the interesting article on multi threading in Photoshop. It would be interesting to know how other PP applications make use of multiple cores and parallelizing operations. I believe it's been recently commented that Lightroom makes good use of multiple cores for cataloging operations. In general, the move is to more cores per processor, and as applications evolve, one would expect them to also move to take advantage of the HW trend.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I don't have an exact total, since I changed my mind about certain parts, but it will be $1,400, or so. If I were getting a new Dell, it would cost about $800 delivered, so I'm not saving money. I will have more speed, more memory, and a lot more cooling, though. And it will be RED!

It will also be easy to swap out parts as time goes on.

dead2fred Loc: Da Bronx

Very Sexy Jerry. Would that be Farrari red?

Carl D Loc: Albemarle, NC.

Just trying to keep it photographic. You should have used a fill flash on the left to eliminate shadows, perhaps on the right also.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Yeah, let's call it that.