New PC Built for Photo Processing

[Tucson T4R]

My home PC bit the dust a couple weeks ago and was too down level to waste $$ on repairing it so I started researching what my replacement system would be with primary goal to have the power and drive flexibility to support lots of photo processing and storage.

I got lucky and stumbled across a thread discussing this on a photography forum and used one of their recommended configurations with a few up tweaks to come up with my new system.

They also recommended Cyberrpowerpc.com which I had never heard of but I knew I wasn't going to go back to Dell ever again and I couldn't beat the prices at Cyberpowerpc even building it from scratch with locally obtained parts.

Here's the final configuration I came up with:

CyberPower Black Pearl

CAS: * Azza Hurrican 2000 Full Tower Gaming Case with 4 Hot Swappable HDD Cage & (4) 230MM Fans
CD: 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
CPU: Intel(R) Core™ i7-960 3.20 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366
CS_FAN: Default case fans
FAN: Asetek 510LC Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan (Enhanced Cooling Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA) (Single Standard 120MM Fan)
FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
HDD: 128 GB A-Data S501 V2 SATA III 6.0G/s Gaming MLC Solid State Disk [+221] (Single Hard Drive)
HDD2: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD [+68] (Single Hard Drive)
KEYBOARD: Xtreme Gear (Black Color) Multimedia/Internet USB Keyboard
MEMORY: 24GB (4GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module [+225] (Corsair or Major Brand)
MOTHERBOARD: * (2-Way SLI Support) Asus Rampage III Gene Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX LGA1366 mATX Mainboard - Overclockable w/ 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, IEEE1394a, USB3.0, SATA-III, RAID, 2 Gen2 PCIe, 1 PCIe X1, & 1 PCI [+57]
MOUSE: Logitech B100 3 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical 800 dpi Mouse (Black Color) [+4]
NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
OS: Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)
POWERSUPPLY: 800 Watts - CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 80 Plus Power Supply (80+ Gold) [+85]
RUSH: RUSH!!! READY TO SHIP IN NEXT BUSINESS DAY [+109]
SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
USB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
USBX: NZXT Internal USB 6-PORT Expansion Module [+19]
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB 16X PCIe Video Card [+79] (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
VIDEOCAMERA1: Logitech HD Webcam C510 [+58]

_PRICE: $2224

That AZZA Hurricane Tower case is awesome with 4 external swappable drive bays and excellent air flow.

I received my new PC from CyberpowerPC last week and got it set up this weekend.

I'm very happy with the results so far. The one caveat that they should have caught when reviewing my order was I ordered Window 7 Home Premium and 24GB of memory. Win 7 Hm Premium only supports up to 16GB of memory so I had to upgrade to the Win 7 Pro version to be able run with my installed 24GB RAM memory.

No biggy, just something good to understand.

That being said, this config runs great. Only my OS and Lightroom and Photoshop are in the 128GB SSD. All other apps and personal docs are on separate spinning HDDs.

Once the MB initializes and you see the Windows Starting message it only take about 15 seconds to be fully loaded and ready to go. Amazing improvement over my last system. Lightroom cruises right along with none of the delays I was used to. This will be a pleasure to use.

It's nice to have 4 front panel externally accessible swappable HDD slots too. Makes swapping hard drives a cinch.

I also upgraded my dying old LCD display with a NEC EA231WMi-BK 23-Inch MultiSync Widescreen eIPS LCD Monitor. A very nice improvement in display quality.

I would definitely use them again for my next purchase. If anyone is in the market for a new PC built to support photography I can't think of anything I would configured differently.

Time go back out and do some more shooting. :wings:

 

[nwoods]

Nice chip! is your 12-in-1 card reader up to the task of reading the new UDMA 6 or whatever the current standard is?

 

[tdesanto]

Brad,

I built a similar PC a few months ago. Ditto on Win 7 Pro and 24GBs of RAM. Ditto on the solid state drive for the OS, PS, and LR3.

Storage drive was a [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD2002FAEX/dp/B004CSIG1G/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1305670329&sr=8-4"]Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB drive[/ame].

The only thing I think I noticed was a backup strategy. I don't know if you're doing that via USB/ Firewire drives or just internally.

This is what I came up with:
3 [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Intellipower-Desktop-WD20EARS/dp/B002ZCXK0I/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1305670329&sr=8-2"]Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA[/ame] drives. Just the bare drives.

I configured one of the hot-swappable SATA connectors on the motherboard to be used with a hot-swap drive bay--you just slide the bare drive in the bay and Windows recognizes it. To eject, just click on the icon on the tray to disconnect the drive and simply remove.

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/5-25in-Trayless-Mobile-Rack-3-5in/dp/B000KS8S9W/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1305670537&sr=1-2"]This [/ame]is an example.

I keep the drives in a [ame="http://www.amazon.com/IO-Crest-3-5-Inch-Storage-SY-ACC35011/dp/B003OBZQVU/ref=sr_1_92?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1305670727&sr=1-92"]static-free case [/ame]for transport. One drive is always on and performs incremental backups on a regular basis. I swap the drives every week in a three week rotation. The previous two weeks are always kept off-site. The only time I vary this is directly after a shoot, then I backup and send off-site the next day.

The next change I plan to implement is adding another 2 TB drive internally and using Microsofts SyncToy v2.1 to setup an automatic sync between the primary storage drive and it's "mirror". This would allow me to have an almost real-time backup of files locally, and then I would continue to manage weekly off-site backups.

Hard drives fail; it's not a matter of if...it's when. But, they're reliable enough that if you plan in enough duplication, I think the risk is all but eliminated. Replicating off-site, whether using a hosted solution such as Carbonite or Iron Mountain, or controlling it yourself the way I'm doing it is an alternative that we just didn't have when using film...at least not easily (in camera duplicates or copies had to be made).

 

[Tucson T4R]

Nice chip! is your 12-in-1 card reader up to the task of reading the new UDMA 6 or whatever the current standard is?

Oh sure just go ahead and burst my bubble by finding a problem. :elkgrin:

I had used the reader with my older Sandisk extreme UDMA CF cards with no problem but after your question I tried my latest Sandisk Extreme Pro which is UDMA 6 and it does not recognize the file format.

Bummer. Oh well the built in reader handles everything else and my external Sandisk reader handles the UDMA 6 format. I'll research a bit to see if maybe an updated driver may help but I doubt it.

Edit: I sent the question off to Cyberpowerpc support to see if a new driver can fix or if they need to give me a more up to date reader.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Brad,

I built a similar PC a few months ago. Ditto on Win 7 Pro and 24GBs of RAM. Ditto on the solid state drive for the OS, PS, and LR3.

Storage drive was a Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB drive.

The only thing I think I noticed was a backup strategy. I don't know if you're doing that via USB/ Firewire drives or just internally.

This is what I came up with:
3 Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA drives. Just the bare drives.

I configured one of the hot-swappable SATA connectors on the motherboard to be used with a hot-swap drive bay--you just slide the bare drive in the bay and Windows recognizes it. To eject, just click on the icon on the tray to disconnect the drive and simply remove.

This is an example.

I keep the drives in a static-free case for transport. One drive is always on and performs incremental backups on a regular basis. I swap the drives every week in a three week rotation. The previous two weeks are always kept off-site. The only time I vary this is directly after a shoot, then I backup and send off-site the next day.

The next change I plan to implement is adding another 2 TB drive internally and using Microsofts SyncToy v2.1 to setup an automatic sync between the primary storage drive and it's "mirror". This would allow me to have an almost real-time backup of files locally, and then I would continue to manage weekly off-site backups.

Hard drives fail; it's not a matter of if...it's when. But, they're reliable enough that if you plan in enough duplication, I think the risk is all but eliminated. Replicating off-site, whether using a hosted solution such as Carbonite or Iron Mountain, or controlling it yourself the way I'm doing it is an alternative that we just didn't have when using film...at least not easily (in camera duplicates or copies had to be made).

Yep still loading all my software but I plan to use the externally swappable hard drives to run regular rotating back ups with one set offsite just in case. :sombrero: