New general use/photo editing computer

[Alex]

Hi all,

Not posted on this forum for ages! Coming back now as my now ageing computer is really beginning to slow down, despite a reinstall of OS. At the moment I have a Core2Duo E8400 with 4GB RAM, and photos are just taking a long time to process from RAW and it's taking a fair while to load things. I was a bit surprised to find it still wasn't great even with a new OS install - even though it is Vista. Do components 'age' with time? I'm sure it wasn't this slow when I first built it!

Anyway, I'm now thinking of building a new one from the remnants of the other. My main use is internet and photo editing (RAW processing and editing with GIMP), with a fair bit of sketchup for various things. I don't do much gaming on the PC - most of it I do one the XBox. The only things I really played over the last few years were Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 - both of which play well on a slower computer anyway. 'm probably looking to rip around 150 DVDs and blu-rays as well to then have on a server.

I really want a computer that will last for around 5 years if I can.

I already have a decent PSU from around 5 years ago - has anything changed with these? Am I likely to need a new one? I have a 1TB HDD and another 1TB HDD in a NAS, so I figured a 240GB SSD is likely to be enough to run all the software a lot faster. I've added a second cheap GPU as I run 3 screens - am I better off getting a slightly less powered CPU and a better GPU? Is 16GB far more than I need?

Thoughts?

[MrJim]

What's the make & model of your existing PSU? Do you have a total budget? I'm curious as to why you've gone for an Ivybridge CPU and last generation motherboard, rather than a Haswell CPU & Z87 motherboard? I assume that you're planning to overclock your system?

GIMP has supported GPU acceleration since last year, so a GPU should speed up certain features, although I couldn't tell you specifically.

[Alex]

What's the make & model of your existing PSU? Do you have a total budget? I'm curious as to why you've gone for an Ivybridge CPU and last generation motherboard, rather than a Haswell CPU & Z87 motherboard? I assume that you're planning to overclock your system?.

I have no particular reason for choosing those other than they were the most 'popular' product on Scan, I'm afraid I'm a bit behind the times on these things. Would you recommend a different CPU/motherboard combination for this sort of cash?

I was aiming to spend around £500 in total, if it's going to get

I'll look at the older PSU shortly and get back to you.

I'm afraid most of those choices were relatively uneducated ones, I kind of thought if I made a stab at a system people might feel more inclined to help than if I just asked someone to do it all for me!

I'm not too worried about GIMP processing, that's already fairly instant already, it's more the RAW processing that seems to be processor and memory intensive.

[MrJim]

If it were my money, I'd probably wait until the 10th May, which is when the Haswell refresh CPUs are released, which should give a small bump in performance, & will probably be priced about the same as the current Haswell CPUs. Although there's not a huge difference in processing power between Ivybridge & Haswell, if you're buying a new system, it's better to go for the most recent range. Ivybridge also uses socket 1155, which is basically end of line; you have more upgrade options in the future with Haswell & socket 1150. Are you set on overclocking? You could use a Xenon E3 1230 V3 which is a Haswell class CPU, and has 4 cores with Hyperthreading like a 4770, but costs less at about £186, but can't be overclocked.

I must admit I've not much personal experience with photo editing, but it's usual to recommend a fast multi-core processor, as most editing software can make use of as many cores / threads as you can throw at it. With GPU acceleration, that may be less of a consideration, I guess. Other Hexus users may know more about this?

I know PSU performance can degrade with age, so depending on the make & model of your PSU, it might be worth replacing your old one if its been heavily used. One thing you can never really skimp on is the PSU - I've damaged components in the past by using a cheap 'no name' PSU, it's a mistake best avoided!

[kalniel]

Photo editing packages don't use the GPU a great deal. As far as GIMP is concerned, they accelerate some of the spiffy effects, but other than shortening the waiting bar for said spiffy transformation they don't do a lot - CPU is far more important, followed by enough RAM. Likewise loads of cores doesn't do a huge amount - they're not massively multithreaded apart from some big operations. Fast single core performance is more important for snappiness. Having an SSD for caching is quite useful.

[Alex]

So wait for the new CPUs to come out then, then get a new Haswell one with a Socket 1150 motherboard.

The PSU is a CoolerMaster GX 450W, FWIW (http://www.coolermaster.com/powersup...eries/gx-450w/) Is this likely to be OK, or should I be buying a new PSU?

[MrJim]

Your PSU gets a pretty good review over at Hardware Secrets, & apparently it has a 5 year warranty:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/artic...-Review/1234/1

I would've thought it would be fine for the moment, unless you're planning on getting a particularly powerful graphics card. At least your PSU isn't one of those Chinese 'no name' units, and it uses Japanese caps in its primary stage.

Edit!
----

Apparently your PSU does support the low-power sleep requirements for Haswell processors, which is handy

[Alex]

Thanks, that's good to know. I'm sure I felt like I knew what I was doing when I last built a computer!

So new basic spec (though CPU choice may change in a few weeks, if there's a new set coming out soon) is:



Does this look OK?

[Goobley]

IIRC the GT630 and Intel HD4600 have similar performance. If you don't need that big framebuffer is the 630 worth the money? Is it for CUDA? What's your current GPU, it might be reusable, all the lower end video cards are just constantly recycled for generation to generation and aren't particularly good value. It might be just what you need though, probably need someone who understands photo editing software better than I to comment.

[MrJim]

I think GIMP uses OpenCL rather than CUDA, in which case the integrated Intel graphics might be similar in performance to the NVidia GT630 - worth checking though. If so, you could save yourself the £50 for the EVGA card. I expect the Haswell refresh will bump the speed of the Haswell GPU too.

[Alex]

I have to admit, I hadn't realised the CPUs now had a GPU on board. Is that why all motherboards now seem to have some form of video out?

I was used to on board graphics being enough to run windows and that was about it. Are things better now with GPU on board the CPU? As I say, I'm not into gaming much on the PC but it would be nice to know if I wanted to run, say, the Total War series it would run fine.

I do have an older NVidia PCI-E graphics card, which would be plenty to use to run the 2nd and 3rd screens, with the main screen being run off on board graphics.

The only other real question is about RAM, is 16GB far more than I need? Am I wasting my money buying more than 8GB, or might this provide a noticeable change in performance?

Thanks again.

[Goobley]

What resolution pictures do you shoot? If we're talking 40MP+ then I reckon you'd want 16GB, I reckon 8GB would be fine if you're shooting below ~20MP. With an SSD you'll have a lot more leniency for these things anyway that could compensate for less RAM.
From your Flickr I think you're using an EOS 40D which appears to be 10MP in which case, unless you need to edit a lot of photos at once 8GB would be fine.
WRT the GPU, which Total War games do you want to play? The HD4600 isn't really going to cut it for Shogun II or Rome II (neither is the GT630 for that matter at 1080p), I think you'd want to make a noticeable step up toe a GTX 750 for those titles. If it's for the older entries to the franchise then the intel will handle them without a hitch.

[Pob255]

One thing I'd say is watch your anti-virus, I've noticed that some are getting overly aggressive and causing some major latency issues when trying to handle large data blocks.
At work if I need to delete out local profiles I have to turn the AV off first (sophos) because it'll turn a 5 min job into a 20min job even though all I'm doing is deleting files.

[MrJim]

I have to admit, I hadn't realised the CPUs now had a GPU on board. Is that why all motherboards now seem to have some form of video out?

I was used to on board graphics being enough to run windows and that was about it. Are things better now with GPU on board the CPU? As I say, I'm not into gaming much on the PC but it would be nice to know if I wanted to run, say, the Total War series it would run fine.

I do have an older NVidia PCI-E graphics card, which would be plenty to use to run the 2nd and 3rd screens, with the main screen being run off on board graphics.

The only other real question is about RAM, is 16GB far more than I need? Am I wasting my money buying more than 8GB, or might this provide a noticeable change in performance?

Thanks again.

Yep, the monitor outputs on current motherboards are for the integrated GPUs. Haswell allows you to run up to 3 monitors from the integrated GPU, assuming you have the right types on connection. Unfortunately adding another graphics card automatically shuts-off the integrated GPU, so it's a case of using one or the other.

If you're working with RAW files which can be extremely large, 16Gb might well be a sensible option.

Which monitor(s) do you have at the moment? Are they calibrated?

[Alex]

Yep, the monitor outputs on current motherboards are for the integrated GPUs. Haswell allows you to run up to 3 monitors from the integrated GPU, assuming you have the right types on connection. Unfortunately adding another graphics card automatically shuts-off the integrated GPU, so it's a case of using one or the other.

If you're working with RAW files which can be extremely large, 16Gb might well be a sensible option.

Which monitor(s) do you have at the moment? Are they calibrated?

Ah, OK, so if I want 3 screens I need a motherboard with 3 monitor outputs?

At the moment my main screen is a Daewoo 22" 1680x1050 (which I believe is a rebranded Samsung panel) and two cheapy AOC 18" monitors either side. The Daewoo is not calibrated - I'm way off being a serious enough photographer for it to be worth it - but my experience with printing things out says the image on the monitor is fairly true to what gets printed. The other 2 screens are cheapy (D-sub, not DVI-D) and are really there to free up space on the main monitor - holding brush pallets, web pages etc visible while the main screen stays free for whatever.

My camera is a 40d, so ageing now at 10MPix, but actually those images print out very well up to A2 on Canvas at least - I really don't see the point in more resolution than that for my needs. Means the RAW files are actually quite small too - around 10-15MB each on average.