Building a computer to handle photoshop

J
Posted By
jmarsh
Feb 10, 2004
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317
Replies
6
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Closed
I have functioned off a laptop for the last two years. I now want a desktop to handle all my digital inputs, photoshop manipulations…..i do a lot of rotating, resizing, etc through CompuPic Pro and then tune up the images in Photoshop.
I’ve been told to avoid a Celeron Processor, to get a pentium 4, 2 hard drives and a gig of ram…..
any recommendations….not unlimited funds here…
thanks,
Jeff
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Christine_Krof_Shock
Feb 10, 2004
I’m running a ABit motherboard with P4 2.00 GHz with 1GB of RAM. 2-120 gig Maxtor Drives, a Matrox 550 video card, CD-R Burner, 6 slot Card reader with USB and firewire ports up front (we got rid of the floppy drive). Haven’t managed yet to throw something at it it couldn’t handle. The only thing I would add at this point is more RAM considering that it is so cheap and a DVD burner. You may want to look at a Sony Artisan Monitor if you are doing print work…once my NEC goes that’s what I’m stepping up to.

Try www.newegg for your parts…consistantly low prices and great service. Last time we ordered parts for the computer we placed the order on line on Monday evening and had parts in hand by Wed. afternoon with regular shipping.
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Feb 10, 2004
I love that monitor!

Big Bux, however.

There has been a spate of problems with 2G of ram on current boards. Several have had to throttle down to 45% or so with that much ram, where at 1G, PS ran at 80%

You might want to look into Mobos running Athlon XP. Use the boards that run a VIA north/south bridge. A relly good performer comes from Albatron, a very small firm. I have a friend running some high end video, and it just wails. No problems.

Others are fom Asus, which I run, or Gigabyte.
LL
Larry_Ligon
Feb 10, 2004
A fast CPU and memory are not enough. Photoshop insists on using the scratch disk! Get a fast hard drive. I recommend at least an ATA-100 7200 rpm drive. You might look into the Serial ATA drives, also. They’re
new technology! Check here: http://www.serialata.org/

Larry
J
jmarsh
Feb 11, 2004
Wow, thanks! Truly appreciate the insights……I had heard that Photoshop really demands two drives to work effectively….and you are right Christine re: Sony Artisan Monitor….someday
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Feb 11, 2004
Something to recommend a bit of slowness: A chance to examine the image with a fresh eye. Major discoveries have been made because the damn computer was so slow.

Universality in Chaos theory was discovered just that way.

Yeah, right! Gimme speed! 😉
H
harrillj
Feb 16, 2004
You could find some insight at www.sharkeyextreme.com Look for their monthly reviews for High-end PC Gaming Guides and the Extreme PC Gaming guide. They do this review every few months for the different price points. They choose each component, the motherboard, the memory, the processor, etc. Even though you do not need to get all the components, you can still choose the key ones like the motherboard, the processor, the memory. You will see that there are always 2 or 3 motherboards that rise to the top and they are usually under $200. In almost all cases they choose Corsair DD400 memory.

Just a few pointers, in my opinion of course, as I just researched and built one. If you can swing it, go with Serial ATA drives. Western Digital now sells them at 10K speed. They have a 36 GB 10,000rpm Raptor drive and have also just released a 73 GB 10,000rpm drive. Aside from SCSI drives, these are awesome and fast.

In my opinion, you do not need to go to the new 3.2 or 3.4 Prescott processors. A 3.0 GHz processor with Hyperthreading turned on will fly.

I went with the Gigabyte GA-8KNXP motherboard because the Sharkey site picked it as the best several months ago. Since that time Gigabyte has realsed newer versions of this board, but it is expensive. Asus and Abit both have top notch boards and in fact quite often at the top of the reviews. MAKE SURE you get the 800 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB). Lastly is the ram. I went with 2 GB of Corsair PC3200 DDR400 TwinX. I had enormous problems for more than a month never suspecting it was the ram. Turns out, I had two bad sticks. 2 of the 4 had problems and I was getting the strangest problems. In the end, Corsair (great customer service) sent me new sticks and from that time on, I have had zero issue runnung 2GB of ram.

I got great prices at www.mwave.com

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