It's been many moons since I built a PC (at least 3 years). Coincidently my HP machine of three years may have breathed its last breath. I have some questions I'm hoping my fellow techies can answer for me. This PC will mainly be used for heavy photo editing (PSCS3, Bridge CS3, and a little Lightroom), listening to music, a little movie viewing (but not much), and your regular MS Office 2007 usage.

Power Supplies - What is the minimum wattage I should consider for the following configuration:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
• Not sure on a mobo yet
• 1 Maxtor 80GB SATA 3.0 (OS and proggies ONLY)
• 1 maxtor 80GB SATA 3.0 ( Photoshop Scratch Disk)
• 1 Maxtor 500GB (docs, music, vids, and etc...)
• Nvidia 7600 GS-256MB DDR2 Dual DVI PCI-E
• Geforce FX5200-128MB DDR PCI Dual VGA
• Sound Blaster Audigy Sound Card
• 4GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel
• DVD Burner
• PS/2 Keyboard, USB 2.0 Mouse, 4GB Cruzer (for ReadyBoost)

Sata DVD Burner - I have a HP DVD Writer dvd530i. It does what I need, but would I benefit from getting a Samsung SH-S203B?

Vista 64bit - I'm running Vista Ultimate 32bit and love it!!! And no I am not going back to Win XP Pro. Again I ask, how much of a performance boost would I gain by using Vista 64bit and stocking up on the memory? 6GB or 8GB?

Dual vs Quad - Would I even be able to use all the processing power of a Quad Core? Let's say I'm batching over 500 RAW files in Bridge and converting them into jpgs. Is the Quad Core 'overkill' for my situation?



In a nutshell, I'm looking for the best preforming PC for my dollar. Definitely not the most expensive. I look forward to reading your responses and advice,
-Sonny

Okay, first, you don't need 3 hard drives. Get a 750 Gig and partition it into 3 different drives. Second, 4 Gigs of RAM does absolutely nothing. Get 2. Last, if your not gaming, why do you need 2 graphic cards?

Now, to answer your question. I have 1000 Watt PSU, but I think you can get away with 750. The PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (Crossfire Edition) EPS12V 750W Power Supply works great. I have used it in the past and really enjoy it. It will set you back about $170, but if you take my advice and don't buy extra hard drives or RAM, you should come out even.

600 Watt is pretty standard for custom machines but you could probably get by with much less given your specs.

As far as migrating to 64bit goes, you probably won't be using the 4 gigs you gave in the specs, let alone 6 or 8. Moving to 64bit is great if you need the memory, but may cause compatibility problems. I tried out xp 64bit on a lowend system of mine and it actually caused significant slowdowns, I'm guessing either because of driver issues, or processing time with the 64bit memory addresses.

Quad core is great so long as you can use 4 threads. I'm not sure how bridge is on multithreading, but if it only uses a single thread your quad core isn't going to perform even as well as a single core so long as only one application is running.

To give you an example of what you need, I can run photoshop, dreamweaver (CS3), opera, smartftp, and winamp without breaking a sweat on my system:

AMD Athlon x2 6000+
320 GB SATA HD w/16 MB cache
ATI Radeon HD3870 supporting 1 monitor
ATI Radeon HD2400 supporting 2 monitors
2 GB 800Mhz Ram (800 mhz is standard, but not top of the line)
650 Watt power supply
Windows XP pro


Hope that helps
(By the way this thread might belong in the computer forum as opposed to general)

Originally Posted by choskins102

Okay, first, you don't need 3 hard drives. Get a 750 Gig and partition it into 3 different drives. Second, 4 Gigs of RAM does absolutely nothing. Get 2. Last, if your not gaming, why do you need 2 graphic cards?

With one drive you can only access 1 partition at a time with maximum access time. Three would perform better and would be more secure. 4 Gigs of memory is worth it if you can use it, even on a 32-bit system it can be addressed so I wouldn't say it does nothing. I don't play games other than occasionally and I have two cards because I can only support 2 monitors with one and that just isn't enough

Originally Posted by NullPointer

4 Gigs of memory is worth it if you can use it, even on a 32-bit system it can be addressed so I wouldn't say it does nothing. I don't play games other than occasionally and I have two cards because I can only support 2 monitors with one and that just isn't enough

True, but Windows XP doesn't support 4 Gigs of memory without some MAJOR tweaking of the registery (something I always try and avoid.) I'm not even sure if Vista supports 4 Gigs, but it should.

The selection of a cpu is the first step. Then you must pick a board that has the chipset the cpu requires. Eveything else comes after that.

The board maker will provide some indication of the PS requirements. I haven't looked at the quad specs. Most duals will do fine with 450-700 watts of power unless you are filling the case with power hungry devices.

Keep in mind that all SATA drives are not created equal. Be sure to look at the transfer rates. Personally, I would limit the system to no more than 2 of them for heat reasons.

I am pretty sure vista can use all the memory, XP can use 3 gigs. Memory is fairly cheap. Go for the four.

Thanks guys for the help! After a little research the Cosair 620 or higher sounds like the way to go. I like it's modular design.

Most of the parts listed above are coming out of another PC. Right now I'm only shopping for proc, mobo, psu, hsf, and a case.

choskins102 - having three hard drives DOES make a performance difference. As NullPointer says 'With one drive you can only access 1 partition at a time with maximum access time." Photoshop recommends using 1 unpartioned hard drive as a scratch drive for maximum performance. Again, the memory I already had. Bought (2) 2GB dual channel kits for 2 seperate PCs. Few months later I sold my other PC and decided to keep the memory and shove it my current PC. Right now Vista Ultimate can see 3.107GBs of the 4GB available.


I do not game at all. And Photoshop is just a 2D program so getting a high end graphics card is a waste in my situation. I bought the 7600GS barely used from a member on another forum for a really great price. It's been running strong for 8 months.

I'm using the 7600GS on two color calibrated Dell's UltraSharp 2005FPW and the FX5200 on a HP 1825 and HP 1755. The two 20" monitor is where I do all my photo editing. It allows me a ton of monitor real estate and to layout my palettes in photoshop so that they are not squished up in one monitor. The other monitors I use for surfing, open folders, email, music...small stuff like that.


NullPointer - Driver stability is my major concern with moving to Vista 64 bit. Right now I'm using Vista Ultimate and have not encountered any problems. Maybe it's best I stick with what's working and skip any future headaches by loading Vista 64 bit. I've used Win XP Pro for 7 and it served me well. Actually 8 years if you count the year we beta tested it at HP. If the older folks remember, the same issue were happening when XP was first released. Give it some time and Vista will be fine. That and MS will begin phasing out support for XP..


Thanks again!

Originally Posted by sonny_c

having three hard drives DOES make a performance difference. As NullPointer says 'With one drive you can only access 1 partition at a time with maximum access time." Photoshop recommends using 1 unpartioned hard drive as a scratch drive for maximum performance.

Adobe isn't making that up. There are more details, but Photoshop is a bear, it'll use more and more ram as you let it, and wind up I/O bound. More than one physical drive lets you distribute the disc access so the operating system and Photoshop and anything else running on your system can do their work concurrently. If you can devote a few gigs on a flash card, this can make for a good scratch area, depending on the system.

The good news is CS 3 is noticeably faster than CS 2.

Originally Posted by sonny_c

I do not game at all. And Photoshop is just a 2D program so getting a high end graphics card is a waste in my situation.

As long as it's a dedicated card with its own memory you're in good shape.

Since you're doing just photos, you can get by with much less, thus saving $$$. 2 gig of ram is more than you will likely use, unless you are a serious gamer... which judging by the 3 y.o. H.P, I doubt it.

Maximize your drive space for secure storage. Take 3 HDDs and create a Raid 5 array. If a single drive goes, your stuff is still safe and useable on the other two drives. Also, a duo core will also suffice. Use a single 40-80 gig HDD for your system, saving everything on the Raid.

I would stick to one large hard drive instead of many, especially if you plan to play games, media and such all at once.

One drive by itself is worthless if it dies. all that stuff you have been saving just went poof. Not to mention, you get better speed out of a raid array.

Thank you guys for all the feedback. This was an unforeseen expense so I can't go crazy with the dinero.

I thought about my choices very carefully and decided to put the money towards the PSU and mobo. The Abit is a stable and reliable mobo for the price, the Seasonic is a solid preformer and it's modular!

• Cooler Master Computer Case, Centurion 5
• Abit IP35
• Seasonic M12
• Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

As Capt Quirk mentioned, having one drive for everything (even it's partitioned) is asking for major trouble. I use a Drobo to store all my photos.

great information folks!