Scan 3XS system for photo editing - Advice please ?

[LesC]

Hi,

I want to replace an ageing PC and I'm looking along the lines of a 3XS system from Scan. Apart from the usual web surfing & office applications, my main interest is photography so I want it to run Photoshop & lightroom with ease. I'm going to be using two Dell 24" U2414H monitors. I'm looking at something along the lines of the following (just listed the main components):

Motherboard: X99-A ASUS
Processor: Intel Core i7 5820K Unlocked, S 2011-3, Haswell-E, 6 Core, 3.3GHz, 3.6GHz Turbo, 28 PCI-E Lanes, 15MB Cache
Cooler: Corsair H80 with Corsair SP120 Quiet Fan
RAM: 32GB (4x8GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black PC4-19200 (2400)
Graphics card: EVGA 2GB GTX 960
Power Supply: RM750W Modular Gold Silent PSU
Drives: 250GB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, 2 x 2TB WD Red storage drives
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Z Performance Gaming/Audio PCI-E 5.1 Channel
OS: Microsoft Windows 8.1 64Bit
Optical drive: Pioneer BDC-207DBK 8x Blu-ray Reader, 16x DVD±R, 8x DVD-R DL, 8x +RW, 6x -RW

So, a few questions:

1. Have I pitched this about right or is it overkill?
   
   
2. Do I actually need watercooling?
   
   
3. Graphics card - this is one area I'm a little uncertain about - Is the 2GB card sufficient? And the question I'm really unsure of - If I want to calibrate BOTH monitors with an X-Rite i1 Display pro - do I need 2 graphics cards or just one? (I believe it's something to do with LUTs - Lookup tables - but as I say, I don't really understand this bit!)
   
   
4. Sound card - Do I actually need one?
   
   
5. Windows 8 - I currently use Windows 7 and I'm comfortable with it - any need to go with Windows 8 bearing in mind a free upgrade to Windows 10 later this year is supposedly coming?

Thanks Folks!

[kalniel]

1) Computers 5 years old can run photoshop and lightroom with ease, so it is overkill really (but we love a bit of overkill at Hexus).

2) You don't need watercooling, no.

3) 2GB is more than sufficient for 2D work. I can't answer confidently about the two graphics cards question - I've never heard of needing two before but I only run one calibrated monitor.

4) No

5) No - if you have a retail copy of windows 7 that you can transfer then that'll save you a touch of money.

[LesC]

Thanks for that, appreciated

Thought it might be overkill but hey, I don't need a Ferrari, but I'd buy one if I could afford it

Unfortunately my copy of Windows 7 is a 32 bit Home Premium version so not suitable but I think as I know Windows 7 already & would go to 10 when it comes out, no reason really to go for Win 8.

Found this on X-Rite's website, but even this is far from definitive:

+Dual Monitors on Windows Platforms

Some Windows operating system are not able to set an individual ICC monitor profile for each of your dual monitors. This is something that is handled by the operating system and can be true for Windows XP, Vista, Win 7, and Win 8. There were very few graphics cards capable of applying individual profiles to dual monitors in Windows XP. Support for dual display profiling became more common in Windows Vista and it has become much more common in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

To calibrate and profile dual monitors on Windows based system, your video card (driver) should provide the following features:

- Support for individual Video LUTs (lookup tables) for both monitors (support of two graphic chips)
- Support for handling individual ICC profiles for both monitors
- Dual monitors will need to be physically connected to individual ports on a single graphics card setup...no splitters or switches!

If your video card does not support the handling of two ICC profiles, Microsoft provides a utility called Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet that allows to define individual ICC profiles for all of your connected hardware devices (monitor, printer, scanner, etc). This utility will run on Windows XP only. At the present time there is no work around for the Vista/Win7 platforms of this nature. If you are interested in further research on this applet you may locate the download and further documentation here.

X-Rite's Technical Support and Software Development teams have done extensive research using dual displays and the use of ICC profiles in these environments. We would like you to keep in mind that the most ideal way to run a dual display setup from one operating system is to have the ICC profiles applied from 2 separate video cards. This truly is the best way to ensure that the profiles are both generated and being applied correctly as so many cards do not allow the option to utilize separate LUTs from one card. If you are creating and using 2 profiles on one card and are having issues with color, contrast, brightness or others, you may want to disconnect the secondary monitor and then try reprofiling the primary display to verify the accuracy. Researching the video card through the manufacturer is also a great place to start to verify what the specifications of your particular card can handle.

It sounds like even they're not sure so I doubt I'd get a definitive answer from Scan or the card manufacturers either. I guess as long as one is calibrated I can always match the other by eye...

[LesC]

A further update; I also wrote to EVGA as it was one of their Nvidia-based graphics cards I was looking at and was pleasantly surprised to get a prompt & fairly positive response as follows:

"Hi Les,

According to Nvidia, all cards with multiple outputs will support different colour calibrations on different monitors.

As always, making sure that you're running identical monitors from the same batch, or as close to each other in production as possible is also recommended.

Please contact us with any further questions.

Regards,
EVGA Support"

They gave me a link to Nvidia's site which states:


Does NVIDIA support (LUT) Look Up Tables for display calibration purposes?
Answer ID 77 | Published 10/12/2004 08:44 AM | Updated 07/10/2009 03:36 PM

Does NVIDIA support (LUT) Look Up Tables for display calibration using ICC profiles?

Yes, you can load an ICC profile for the primary or secondary monitors, and use a professional publishing application to perform color matching based on information in the ICC profiles. To use two ICC profiles for separate monitors, you will need attach and calibrate one monitor at a time with a Colorimeter. You can then load the profile in the Windows Color Control Panel.

Windows 7 / Vista

Click Start
Collapse this imageExpand this image

the Start button, and then type Color Management in the Start Search box.
Click Color Management under Programs.
In the Color Management dialog box, click the Devices tab, and then click the display that is experiencing the problem. For example, click Display: Generic PnP Monitor.
Make sure that the Use my settings for this device check box is selected.
In the Profiles Associated with this Device list, addl the profile. To remove a profile, select the profile, and then click Remove.
Click Close.

My current somewhat ancient card, a GeForce 7900 GS appears to support this even - I'd never even tried before so I guess I'll go with the one card and see how it goes...