Photo Editing and Music Arrangement PC

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balarila

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My 6 year old (Q6600, Asus P5K-e) PC's power supply broke and, after replacing the PS, the hard drive crashed. Finally found an excuse to upgrade! ;)

Aside from the usual email, worksheet, audio/video downloads, I mainly use this PC to process photos (photoshop) and arrange music.

I do bird photography so, on each trip, I end up with hundreds of photos that I need to flip through quickly and select a handful to keep. This means I like 2D display of large RAW and TIFF images to be quick.

I also do MIDI orchestral arrangements layered with audio recordings on several tracks. I use an internal MIDI soundcard for this function and have USB and firewire soundboxes I plug in.

I am considering the config below:

Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz
ASUS Savertooth Z87 LGA 1150 mobo
2 pairs of Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) SDRAM DDR3 1600 total 32gb

I have a lot of 2TB WD Green drives so I plan to rack up two pairs in RAID to improve performance.

I will probably use my old monitor or get a 23-inch IPS (Asus or Dell). Can't afford a real pro one.

I'm sure this setup will be a lot better than what I was used to.

But would anyone have a suggestion on the mobo-CPU combo? Is it way overkill? Will I need a graphics card or will the onboard one do? I had an ancient graphics card in my old PC and that was sufficient then.
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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4770K is fine, might consider pairing it with the Asus Hero, which should handle anything you want (it does for me) - on the DRAM if going 32GB strongly suggest a single set of 32GB - it will cost a little more but that way all the sticks are tested to play together and the XMP is programmed for the set - with two sets of 16 each is programmed for 16GB not 32 so may well have to set up DRAM manually - (not fun in the advanced timings)...Think I'd suggest a graphics card doesn't have to outlandish something from a 7850 on up would suffice and maybe a 500 watt PSU
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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Jun 5, 2013
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________________________

Have a few clients that do professional imaging work - ALL go i7, have numerous small office and home user clients that like to work with photos - they also like the i7s
 
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Vacka

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Hey man :) ! I see that you will be doing photo editing and I am obviously sure you would like to save as much money with the performance you want so here we go. For the processor the amd fx-8350 should if you overclock to about 4.5-5.0 ghz that will runyou about 200$. For the motherboard you should go with the ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0, this will cost about 150$. Get the ram that you stated but if you can get g.skill x ripjaws, they are slightly better, well known and look pretty cool too:). And if you are going to get a high end mobo like this one, you will want to get liquid cooling to overclock, so get the h100i liquid cooling, that will run you about 120$ and will be able to achieve high overclocks while still staying cool.

EXPLANATIONS:
CPU: The reason that I went with this over the 4770k: It is 100$ cheaper. It has a higher core clock and can achieve over 0.2 ghz higher clocks than the 4770k when overclocked with liquid cooling. Lastly, higher l2 chache per core and in total, also it has 8 cores vs the 4 cores on the 4770k even though the 4770k is hyper threaded.
MOTHERBOARD: This motherboard is an absolute beast, it is from asus so you know you are getting great quality and performance. It is also future proof for much upgrade ability and can achieve high overclocks.
CPU COOLER: The h100i is just a boss.

Optional Graphics Card: Most of the time amd favors editing for a great price. So for the gpu I would go with the r9 270x for 200$ (get one from asus or msi), the r9 280x for 300$ (msi or asus, but is overkill when just editing) and for the 100$ option get the 7770 ghz edition from sapphire. Any one of these cards paired with the 8350 will tear through modern day video games at max settings maybe if you choose to go with the 7770 ghz edition you will turn down settings in games, but with the other two you will always beast it out. So with this option you save quite a lot of money from the cpu and mobo leaving you room for the gpu. You won't see massive differences from the graphics cards when only editing. P.S. THE LIQUID COOLING IS SORT OF NECESSARY WITH A CPU AND MOTHERBOARD THAT ARE THAT HIGH END, SO THAT YOU CAN OVERCLOCK AND REACH HIGH CLOCKS LIKE 5.0 GHZ WHICH WILL MAKE YOU EDIT LIGHTNING FAST(expression). Hope this helped! Have fun building!
 
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balarila

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Thanks, everyone, for your responses.

Some of you remarked that i7 may be overkill. Perhaps I should explain my workflow on photo-editing.

After coming back from a “birding” trip, I would have hundreds of photos. A bird would typically be shot multiple times (sometimes more than a hundred) in the hopes of getting a few keepers.

I therefore need to preview each photo full-screen and mark those that are trash. I do many passes, rating each photo with stars. Those that end with highest ratings (possibly still in the hundreds) are then individually edited in RAW format. I then run a Photoshop “action” to generate many layers of sharpening, noise-reduction, color correction, and other layers for editing (color balance, curves, etc); they are saved in TIFF. By this time, each photo is a few hundred megs. Then, I go through the arduous process of manual editing. Afterwards, I run an action to save them in JPEG. I actually save each keeper in RAW (DNG), TIFF, and JPEG for various uses.

I need performance during edits as well as when running the Photoshop actions.

In music production, several tracks of audio are combined with several midi tracks. I do choir and orchestral production so I could have 16 audio tracks combined with 30+ layers of midi tracks. The software I use becomes sluggish in my old system that, sometimes, I “bounce” or consolidate some audio tracks for manageability.

So, bottom line, I need processing power. I noticed that both CPU and memory use are heavy so I’m going for some really “heavy” hardware.

@Vacka
Thank you very much for your recommendations.

I am intrigued as I know nothing about AMD (been in Intel man always) and have not done any water/liquid cooling.

But I’m not against changing my ways.

I went to NewEgg.com and tried the config you recommended. I noticed that, while I save a lot on the AMD CPU and the Asus M5A99FX-pro mobo, the savings are wiped out by the liquid cooling and the graphics card.

Do I really need an R9 card? I never play games. My Canon 7D has video so I may dabble in video editing.
Would there be an Asus Mobo for AMD CPUs that have built in video? Or would there be cheaper video cards?

Is that 7770Hz card you mentioned the HD 7770? I noticed that the Asus and Sapphire cards run on PCIe 3.0x16. The M5A99FX-pro mobo only has PCIe 2.0 x16. Would that be a problem?

If so, would the Asus Sabertooth 990FX/GEN3 R2.0 be a better choice since it has PCIe 3.0? I noticed this mobo also touts “TUF Cooling Technology” in the form of
- “TUF CeraM!X Heatsink Coating Tech. - 50% Larger Area for Heat Dissipation with the Revolutionary Ceramics-coating Technology”
- "TUF Thermal Radar - Real Time Temp. Detection and Heat Removal"

Can those “cooling technologies” take the place of a liquid cooling system?

Sorry for bombarding you with these questions. I find your suggestions very interesting and would like to explore more.

Thanks, again!
 
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Vacka

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Yes it is the hd 7770 and no the pcie slot wont be a problem
 
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Vacka

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Yes, the sabertooth would be nice, but the technology would still require you to get a cooling component so you wouldn't be saving money, it simply just disperses the airflow better, but with liquid it isn't necessary.
 
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balarila

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After several months of procrastination, plopped down some cash and started my build.

I’m across the Pacific from the US so deliveries are coming in three cargo-forwarded boxes. Takes about 1.5 to 2 months to get here but I do save a bundle buying from the US even with shipping added in. Ironic since most of the parts are made here in Asia.

Only local parts I buy are the chassis, PSU, monitor, and mouse. So far, the first box arrived so I'm in build-heaven.

My config:

NZXT Tempest 410 Elite case
ASUS Z97-PRO mobo
Intel 4790k CPU
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU fan
Seasonic M12II-750 EVO 750W PSU
32GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-17000 2133MHz Sniper Series
ASUS Graphics Cards GT630-SL-2GD3-L
Plextor M6e Series 256GB M.2 PCIe Internal Solid State Drive (PX-G256M6e) as boot and program drive
Pair of 1TB WD black (RAID0) as scratch pad and other programs
Pair of 3TB WD green (RAID0) for data storage
ASUS BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS 12X Blu-ray Internal Burner Drive
Thermaltake Extreme Speed 3.0 Plus USB3.0 Multi-Card Reader
Thermaltake Max 5 Duo Storage Bay Adapter - Internal
4 Corsair Air Series AF120 LED Fans
Ducky Zero 2018S with brown cherry switches
Logitech M325 mouse
27-inch LG IPS monitor

Made a mistake on that multicard reader. Ordered it not realizing it fits in a 3.5inch external bay. My case only has 5.25 externals bays. Will probably be doing some creative cutting
 
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Vacka

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Seems like a great solid build although the gpu seems a little out of place here, You have a very strong cpu, but the gpu isnt really too good when it comes to playing hard to run games i believe. :p But overall pretty nice build man! :D Have fun building! :) Ohh srry just realized it isnt intended for gaming :p Great build for what its for! :D Have fun building! :)
 
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balarila

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Been a looong time and finally building my PC. (delay's another story)

Now a (probably stupid) question.

I noticed that my case fans have a three pin connector and 4 pin molex. There is actually just a pair of cable from each fan with the 3 pin connector on one end then, from that, the cable turns into a Y for a male and female molex.

If I connect my fan using the 3 pin connector, do I still have to connect the molex into the PSU?
 
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balarila

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Also posted this question on the Asus z97 support forum but had no response yet.

So far installed only the memory and the Plextor 256gb m.2 drive and loaded Windows. Using the plextor as my boot drive.

Now, I plug in a pair of WD 1TB and a pair of WD 3TB. I plan to configure each pair into RAID 0.

My problem is that the BIOS can't seem to detect any drive plugged into SATA6G_5 and SATA6G_6.

Am I missing something here?

On the other SATA connectors, I have the ff:


SATA6G_1 Internal SATA (3TB)
SATA6G_2 Internal SATA (3TB)
SATA6G_3 Docking Bay
SATA6G_4 Chassis SATA port
SATA6G_5 Internal SATA (1TB)
SATA6G_6 Internal SATA (1TB)
SATA6G_E1 BluRay Drive
SATA6G_E2 Docking Bay SATA port

Anything wrong I am doing here?

Also, anyone know what's the difference between the SATA6G_x and SATA6G_Ex?
 
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