Photographer's PC Build - Seeking Opinions/Input

[fiish]

What I want to hear is advice to help me to make informed decisions, if your opinion is 'stick with your current machine' it is useful too. After all there's no harm in waiting and the computers will only get better

I already use some form of offline backup in the form of an external hard drive. Though arguably that's not 100% reliable for fire or theft.

[asposium]

if you can, perhaps wait for the new i-core cpus to come down in price

or

buy the "old tech" cheap when the new i-core hits the market.

nothing wrong with an external hard drive.

most data loss is due to:
human error
mechanical failure
electrical damage
theft
fire / flood

so duplicating ones photos to an external hard drive and unplugging when not in use safe guards against the top three. "hiding" the drive somewhere in the house safe guards against #4. putting the drive "off-site", or even in the shed!!! safe guards against #5

in years gone by photos were "physical", and it took a lot to damage beyond salvage. digital photos are far more fragile in comparison. the number of people who only have one copy is amazing.

i gave up using CDs/DVDs years ago when i had several fail. hard drives are so cheap now there is little need to use DVDs for archive storage.

next big problem is the digital timebomb, but that's another story

i can be a photo/storage/archive bore. some learnt from bitter experience

[fiish]

Indeed, you are right that digital photos are quite fragile. That being said, I am committing the cardinal sin of having only one copy of certain old photos... perhaps a second external is in order at some point.

Also having my photo processing requirements put in perspective has helped me turn towards perhaps a lower cost approach. (Could spend less on the computer and more on lenses, but let's not go there ) Thinking about keeping the whole thing under £500 and I believe I could do it with a Phenom II X3 720BE.

Or, as you say, asposium, go for a Core i5 since I am waiting for my Windows 7 preorder to come anyway.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I usually have at least two copies of my pictures on multiple hard disks and multiple DVD and CD copies on archival media or media which uses decent dyes. I always check the media I use stringently and do not use any old crap. I also make sure I store the copies at more than one location too.

Of course printing out your best and more important pictures is another way of preserving them especially if they are kept in an album away from direct sunshine.

Regarding the computer an X2 720,AM3 motherboard with integrated graphics and 4gb of DDR3 will be just over £200. With a 1tb hard disk the whole build should cost around the £400 mark or even slightly less.

TBH,I would spend the extra money on lenses as this is a better investment.

[fiish]

Integrated graphics is not an option for me, because I do indulge in games from time to time and I'd rather have still frames in my camera, thanks And it would not cost much more, I believe a Radeon 4770 goes for less than £100.

By October I'm expecting DX11 GPUs to be available though, possibly Radeon 5xxx or whatever AMD marketing decides to call it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Integrated graphics is not an option for me, because I do indulge in games from time to time and I'd rather have still frames in my camera, thanks And it would not cost much more, I believe a Radeon 4770 goes for less than £100.

By October I'm expecting DX11 GPUs to be available though, possibly Radeon 5xxx or whatever AMD marketing decides to call it.

What about in between upgrades then if you do get rid of the card then?? You do realise a modern IGP like an HD4200 is equivalent to a graphics card like HD3450 and many have dedicated GDDR3 RAM too?

Also you can get a GTS250 Green Edition for under £70 too with slightly faster than a 9800GTX and slightly slower than a 9800GTX+/GTS250. Also how many DX11 games are there going to be at launch though?? If DX9 and DX10 are any indication it will take MONTHS before any games are fully supporting DX11!

If you are buying a graphics card for gaming buy it when you need to actually play a game as there is no point in getting one and not using it fully for months as TBH something much faster and better will be available at that time.

Buying a graphics card for "future" use is NOT a good idea!! Many people ended up buying an 8800GTS 320mb and 8800GTS 640mb(these were first generation DX10 cards) to play Crysis months ahead of its release and then Nvidia released the second generation 8800GT and 8800GT 512mb at a similar price point which destroyed the previous cards for performance in Crysis. The same goes for the 2900GT,2900Pro and 2900XT which were replaced by the HD3850 and HD3870 at a similar time. The HD3870 had similar performance to the first generation 2900XT and was half the price,had DX10.1 and UVD too which the 2900XT lacked.

In fact the only first generation DX10 part which was worth buying was the 8800GTX but that was over £400 at launch and was a massive power hog.

[fiish]

All right I get your point My knowledge and experience with IGPs is quite out of date (haven't used one I enjoyed, except for one build I did which I *knew* wasn't going near any games).

[fiish]

This is the revised build which I am planning to do some time this month (or next month, depending on wheter I decide to run Linux while waiting on Windows 7), put together with the benefit of the advice received and some discussions with other PC-building mates

AMD Phenom II 720 BE - £90 (Scan)
ASUS M4A78T-E 790GX - £59 (EBuyer)
Sapphire Vapor-X 1GB 4870 - £130 (Scan) - this is optional, I might use the IGP and wait for the Radeon 5000 series
4GB DDR3-1600 CL9/8 RAM - budgeted £70
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB - £60
Pioneer DVD Multi Writer - £20
Antec Sonata III Case (w/ 500W PSU) - £95 (EBuyer)

Total should be ~£530 - 540 (£400 - £410 if I forgo the graphics card for now)

Another £100 has been budgeted for another external HDD for my photo backups.

[Pob255]

The only thing I'd sugest from that is that the Pioneer DVDr/w drives are not the quietest. (I have one)
Personally I prefer the LG drives.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/LG-GH...SATA-Black-OEM

Also the only Pioneer Scan have is the Pioneer BDC-202BK BluRay Reader & DVDr/w
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Pione...rnal-black-oem
Which is out of stock and unpriced but would probably be aroung £50+ as it's BluRay

[fiish]

Thanks Pob255 for your input. I am planning to leave Blu-Ray for later - I don't currently have the need or budget for an HD monitor (I don't like TN panels so I'll be saving up for a while), so I'll stick with conventional DVD burners for now.

Parts ordered, final build is as listed below.

Intel Core i5 750 - £150 (ebuyer)
MSI P55-GD65 - £63 (ebuyer)
Corsair DDR3-1333 4GB kit - £65 (scan)
XFX 4850 XXX 512MB - £80 (ebuyer)
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB - £56 (ebuyer)
LiteOn IHAS324 - £20 (scan)
Antec Sonata III - £96 (ebuyer)

Total comes to ~£530.

Thanks for everyone's advice so far, wish me luck! Gonna be a fun weekend...