Approximate:
The stuff I already have -
Case $60
650W Power supply $100
1.5TB SATA HDD $80 (storage drive)
250GB SATA HDD ??? (boot drive) It's from my laptop. I replaced it with
a 500GB drive that I think cost me around $100 at the time.
Stuff I still have to buy -
Mainboard, CPU & Memory (32GB) - $830.00 ($130 + $300 + $100x4)
Windoze 7 Pro 64 bit (OEM) $140
Blue-ray player/DVD writer w/Lightscribe $100
64GB SSD $110
I can hold off on the SSD initially; let Photoshop use the storage drive
for the scratch disk at first, and add the dedicated SSD later.
Eventually, I want to replace the 250GB boot drive with a PCIe SSD, but
that's just not in the budget right now. At some point, I expect to add
a decent video card to it, which is a whole new can of worms to open up.
I figure the whole thing will come in less than $2,000, spread out over
a year or so.
The main advantage this has over the Mac is I can build my own PC. I
semi-know what I'm doing.
From: Larry Colen
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.
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.
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