Interesting post. I've been noticing lately that Lightroom doesn't run
as quickly as I'd like on my three year old iMac, and that a friend's
new $600 laptop specs out noticeably higher than the iMac (modulo display).
I've also spent the past several years constantly running up against
storage limitations on the iMac and having to shuffle almost all of my
data off onto USB external drives.
I'm curious how the cost of this new system breaks down.
Despite my preference for MacOS, a desktop Mac starts out at $BIGNUM
dollars and goes up from there, so I've considered a PC based box.
One thing that causes me pause, though it would also apply to a desktop
mac, is the displays. A while back, someone observed that up until HDTV
the performance and resolution of displays were constantly improving.
Since HDTV, it's been damn near impossible to find a display with more
than 1920x1080 resolution, at least for an affordable price.
On 1/7/2012 3:28 PM, John Sessoms wrote:
I'm planning a new computer to dedicate for photo & audio editing. I've
got the money saved and am just finalizing the necessary components
before I buy. I already have some of the components on hand; the case &
power supply (650W), and a couple of hard drives I can use at least
temporarily.
My current (planned) configuration is a Gigabyte mainboard with Intel
i7-960 and 32GB ram (maxed out). I'll be using the on-board video to
begin with. I'll also need to get a new DVD burner - I'm looking for
something that will at least play Blue-ray & has Lightscribe.
How does on-board compare with a moderate priced video card? Last time
I checked you could get pretty good video cards for not a hell of a lot
of money.
I'm planning on running Windoze 7 64 bit and I intend to install
LightRoom, PhotoshopCS5 and Corel Painter 11 as my primary photo-editing
tools.
I will also be using my Nikon CoolScan IV ED with it & eventually want
to get a flatbed scanner for larger formats. I'm saving for the Epson
V750 M-Pro. If it all works out, I should have the money by mid-year.
I'm currently considering a configuration with 3 hard-drives. Primary
for the OS & software, secondary for Photoshop's scratch disk &
LightRoom's cache file and will use a 1.5TB SATA drive I already have
for data (I'll probably put Windoze's swap file here as well).
Two things I haven't quite satisfied myself about:
1. Minimum size for the main drive? I'm considering something along the
lines of 250GB, because I have a spare 250GB SATA (2.5 inch) drive I
took out of my laptop when I upgraded it to a 500GB data drive. I
eventually want to change it out for a SSD. But that's down the road
quite a piece, because even small SSDs are still VERY expensive.
2. But I am considering a SSD for the scratch disk. Is 64GB large
enough? That seems to be the current price point I'm comfortable with.
Any brand recommendations?
I have heard good things about computers that boot off of SSD. You lose
a lot of the incentive to just leave the machine running all of the time.
--
Larry Colen [email protected] (from dos4est)
--
PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
[email protected]
http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow
the directions.
