Please Help - First Photography Editing PC Build - Lightroom (& Photoshop)

[johvan]

Hi All

I'm a keen amateur photographer hoping to make additional income from it in the not too distant future. I mainly edit in Adobe Lighroom and need a new PC that will last me some time...

I'm not too in touch with the tech side of PC's, but have been reading up a bit and put the below together for my budget of ~£2,000. I've save up for a number of months/years, so want to make the most of it...

Any help would be appreciated - I'm not too sure about certain things, and fundamentally, don't know if I should get a 3930k or 2700k CPU to start off with! (Ideally I'd like some degree of future-proofing, as I ca't afford to buy a new PC every two years, so this will hopefully last me up to 5 years - my current Dell has been going for almost 6 now, but it's starting to show).

Some other things I'm left to ponder!
I'm assuming I'll see a benefit of using an SSD, but is this something I can live without?
RAM - I've read (somewhere) the 3930k uses 1600MHz RAM, will there be any benefit over the slower 1333Mhz?
I think the GTX 560 Ti is a mid-range card (not sure), but is there anything cheaper I can settle on that will do the same job?
...and back to my first problem - do I downscale to a £1700 2600k system (with the other components the same) and have £300 spare for a new lens!? I'm guessing the different chipset? will make it harder to upgrade compared the the LG2011?

Thanks for any help you can give... I'll be ordering this week if all goes well!

CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 650D GAMING CASE
Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-3930K (3.2GHz) 12MB Cache
ASUS® P9X79: INTEL® SOCKET LG2011
16GB KINGSTON HYPERX GENESIS QUAD-DDR3 1600MHz X.M.P(4 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card 1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti 448 CORE (BETTER THAN 2GB VERSION!)
1st Hard Disk 120GB KINGSTON HYPERX SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
3rd Hard Disk 2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
RAID 1 (MIRRORED VOLUME - 2 x same size & model HDD / SSD) (£9)
10x LG BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£59)
600W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£59)
TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)
Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Xtreme Audio (£32)
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Genuine Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£146)
6 Socket Compact 2M UFO Surge Protector + Auto Power Off Function (£19)
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

Price: £1,984.00 including VAT and delivery.

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/comput...-2011-extreme/

[AndyL]

Hi Johvan,

Firstly if you are not going to be gaming then a 560Ti is complete overkill and you could downgrade to a 550 or even a 520 to save some money without affecting the performance. Also, if you arent planning to overclock then you probably dont need the Titan Fenir cooler, just select the triple copper cooler as it will do the job perfectly fine. If you plan on keeping this computer for 5+ years then I would recommend upgrading the PSU to a corsair as these are more reliable. In terms of the CPU, I wouldnt think that changing between i7-2600, i7-2700 or the 3930k would make too much difference to photo editing.

[mantadog]

The benefits of a SSD are very simple, it's much faster than a traditional HDD. It is worth it for your OS, main software and i would say anything your currently working on aswell. They do cost a fair bit but if your looking for a PC that will be a pleasure to use having a SSD helps make the experiance that much better.

The 1600Mhz ram isn't that much more than the 1333Mhz stuff anyway, and with the 3930k you would in theory get a benefit from having the 1600Mhz stuff. In reality you wouldn't notice.

As andy pointed out the 448core 560ti is probably overkill, yes some applications can make use of the CUDA cores to make some tasks quicker. You would need to look into this to see if anything you plan to do would be able to make use of CUDA tech. If you wont then drop it to a 550ti, which is going to be able to handle anything you throw at it short of high level gaming.

Now the processor, a 3930k is slightly more future proof because it has more cores. For something like photo editing where that counts, even more so in the future, i would tend to advise you towards this if you don't mind spending the money. An i7 2600 is a perfectly viable option if you would rather have that money to spend on other equipment. You could upgrade the CPU to an ivy bridge model as i believe the will use the same socket, but any performance gain from that would probably top out at 20% vs the 3930k which is about 50% faster than an i7 2600. The 2700k is just a slightly higher clocked i7 2600 with an unlocked multipler for overclockers, so unless you plan to overclock just get the standard i7 2600.

A couple of other points, a tripple copper heatpipe will be ample as the fenrir is for overclocking. If i were you i would spend the extra £10 and get a corsair PSU for much better reliability.

[johvan]

Thanks AndyL & mantadog!

I was not sure about the CPU fan, so just went for the best, but I'll swop this out for the copper heatpipe. To your point on the CPU - I think I'll stick with the 3930k then - I think the 50% gained over the 2600 will probably mean it will last me agood few years to come. (oh, and I'll upgrade to a Corsair 750W PSU)

Regarding the GTX560Ti, I'm struggling to find information to sway me either way! Photoshop is meant to be able to use the GPU, but no idea about Lightroom (where I spend most of my time - and a newer version of this just around the corner, which may well be different). It is quite a bit of a saving though, so I think I might side with the GTX550Ti and rather get another 500G scratch drive, which may be of more benefit. The forums I've come across seem to be siding more with Quadro and FireGL cards, neither of which are available through PCS, so not really an option to me...

Thanks again for your help. I'll let you know the final setup through here if you're interested... before Friday!

[mantadog]

They do sell the pro cards like the Quadro and the Firepro, i didn't think of that. With your budget you could be getting a xeon quadro setup, have a look here http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/comput...5-workstation/

You would need to go with a xeon processor, which according to the site i use to get a rough idea of general performance says even the top end card is significantly slower than the intel you have picked. However i am not really sure how the two would look if you looked more specifically at the type of work you plan. Xeon processors and quadro/firepro cards are designed for your type of work so it could well be an advantage. However i am not well versed in xeon vs an i7.

Have a look at that link and see what you come up with, but really you don't need to be worried that your above setup will be rubbish for your needs. It will do perfectly well, just another thing to take into consideration.

[johvan]

Thanks mantadog. I've had a look at the xeon setups, nut I'm afraid it's a whole new ball-game. To be honest, I don't think I could really justify getting a xeon workstation. Been talking to a few friends who suggest I also consider getting a mac, so I've been comparing. I know Mac's OS is more optimised for the hardware it runs on, but it's way more expensive to get a similar setup in terms of hardware than I can get here for a PC. I wish this was an easy decision!

[mantadog]

I wouldn't go down the mac route myself. Very very expensive for what your getting, a mac at 2 times the price of a PC wont give you any more perfromance than a similar spec PC.

[jerwhi]

Lightroom does not make much use (if any) of a graphics card. I have just ordered a new PC for photo processing and after much reseach have settled on the Nvidia 550ti. I was told that any card with 1gb memory would do. What LR loves is loads of RAM and plenty of CPU cores/threads so you may well be better off with the 6 cores on the i7- 3930K. On the other hand Photoshop can make use of the CUDA technology of Nvidia cards and may do more so in future (if you can afford CS6 when it comes out: soon after LR4 I suspect). The 550ti has CUDA but only 192 cores compared to 336 on the 560. But I think that will be quite adequate for PS CS 5 or 6.