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Help an Admin with a PC spec, and win... errrr...

Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:40 am
by PeteTheHair
Probably not very much. But it got you looking, eh? :)

Here's the deal then... I need to put together a dead quick PC, for the primary purpose of Pro-level photo editing and retouching. It's not for me, but I've been asked to take a look. Price isn't too much of an issue, but lets not get silly...

We're looking at throwing around several hundred megs of image data per file, so it needs a pretty powerful IO chain... I guess we're looking at:
* A Metric Shedload of quick RAM
* RAID SATA Setup - More interested in mirroring than striping, but if there are any decent controllers out there these days that'll do mirror + stripe (or other suitable RAID thingy - It's been a while since I looked), that'd be lovely
* A decent graphics subsystem - It's never going to be used for 3D (probably), but a decent graphics card would be best. If anyone knows of recommendations for photography work on either graphics card or display, that's be useful. I guess matrox is the way to go here.
* Reasonably quick processor, though that's probably less important than the IO stuff. Willing to take suggestions on multiple CPUs/cores/whatever. Don't care about 32 vs 64 bit, unless it's really important.
* As many USB ports as you can shake a stick at
* Needs to have firewire, though I guess that's pretty standard these days
* All the other normal "That'd be nice" bits... DVD writer, Gig ethernet, Drive bay card readers, USB missile batteries, blah blah blah.

Guess that's about it... I'm happy to build it meself from bits, or if anyone has OEM system recommendations, that'd be lovely too. Links to dabs/scan/whoever would be good, so I can be sure of getting the right bits.

I realise that I should probably be able to do all this myself, but it's been so long since I bought PC bits that I have no idea what's what these days. My pre-LAN hard drive upgrade is about as much as I can manage ;)

And seeing as I offered prizes, the most useful participants get beer at the LAN. Assuming you're 18+ and so forth. If not, you can have Dr Pepper. In case of dispute, the monkets descision is final. Blah Blah Blah.

Try a mac

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 2:04 pm
by Wire
What about one of these:

http://www.apple.com/macpro/

Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 1:49 pm
by dogmeat
Ok if all you play's WOW...

Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 2:14 pm
by Dragon
Err. macs can run windows just fine too, now. so not true :P

infact, I'll be turning up with my mac, and playing on windows on it :P

Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 2:27 pm
by [-S.E-] Ego
I used to do a fair bit of photo processing on my old PC,
what you need is raw computational power, and a lot of RAM
This was on a dual MP2800 - boards are pretty expensive now (sadly mine is bust) - although I can provide you with the chips (also rare)
these are very similar to modern x2s

2Gb ram, and a raptor should see you fit (or any other 10k rpm disk).

you mention Firewire, tbh USB2 is just as good, and unless you are talking tens of GB in transfer, you wont see much performance improvement.

Matox all the way for grafixs.

Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 11:28 am
by dogmeat
Dragon wrote:Err. macs can run windows just fine too, now. so not true :P

infact, I'll be turning up with my mac, and playing on windows on it :P
Yeah, but you've always been weird tbh. :)