**First time building my own...need help!**

thebeginning

thebeginning

New Member
So I'm about to order some stuff from newegg to make my own desktop. It'll be used for heavy photo manipulation and processing (I'm a professional photographer, and this will be my workstation).

I've never built my own machine before, so I need to know exactly what is necessary. Below are what I have so far:

CASE:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119137

DISK DRIVES (2):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151173

HARD DRIVES:

HDD for OS and programs:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296

^ what does 'bare drive' mean?

HDD for general files:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136283

GRAPHICS CARD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143141

POWER SUPPLY:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006

MEMORY:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145233

MOTHERBOARD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128375

PROCESSOR:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

OS:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116478



anything else I need? cables, extra fans, etc.? The only other thing I'll add is a simple 12-in-1 card reader.

The total right now is $1750 or so, including shipping and mail-in rebates. I'd like to keep it below 1800, or even lower if possible (duh).


Thanks!!
 
Mr soft

Mr soft

New Member
A very good/quiet cooler for that cpu.

It´s going to be one hell of a rig by the sounds of it.
heavy photo manipulation will be like soft butter to that beast. :D
 
mx344

mx344

New Member
Looks good, great build!
I don't think that you will use all the power of a 280, so i would go something a little lower, heres a great card for about half the price, and they are also powerful.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130379
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127359

The ram, w/ that mobo, you can only put 4 sticks in max, so just triple these rams up only 120$ for 6gigs. !2 seems like over kill, even though your a pro. photographer.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134812

Everything else looks good.You could always switch up the mobo, before you buy, so you can have more ram sticks put in...
-thx garethman


EDIT: You could get this mobo, and you can have support for 6 ram sticks. its a little more, about 30 bucks...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131359
 
Last edited:
Gareth

Gareth

Active Member
mx344, on your second link, the product has just been deactivated.

Looks like a killer build.
 
F

fmw

New Member
I'm a former professional commercial photographer and a computer systems integrator. Well, I'm still a systems integrator and I make commercial images for my web sites every day. I didn't have time to click on all your links but here's what I use to do still photo work.

Pentium 4 3 ghz.
2 GB RAM
500 GB hard drive with NAS backup on the network
DVD-RW optical drive
good quality hi rez video card with 256 MB ram
19" 4:3 LCD monitor calibrated with Pantone Huey
multi function memory card reader
MS mouse and keyboard.

Photoshop CS2
Win XP 32

Anything more than that is overkill for still photo work. In fact, what I use is overkill. Most any modern business computer will do fine. If you want to do video or gaming or digital audio workstation or something that requires more computer then, by all means, have more computer. But your photo work won't require it.
 
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thebeginning

thebeginning

New Member
fmw said:
I'm a former professional commercial photographer and a computer systems integrator. Well, I'm still a systems integrator and I make commercial images for my web sites every day. I didn't have time to click on all your links but here's what I use to do still photo work.

Pentium 4 3 ghz.
2 GB RAM
500 GB hard drive with NAS backup on the network
DVD-RW optical drive
good quality hi rez video card with 256 MB ram
19" 4:3 LCD monitor calibrated with Pantone Huey
multi function memory card reader
MS mouse and keyboard.

Photoshop CS2
Win XP 32

Anything more than that is overkill for still photo work. In fact, what I use is overkill. Most any modern business computer will do fine. If you want to do video or gaming or digital audio workstation or something that requires more computer then, by all means, have more computer. But your photo work won't require it.
Click to expand...


I completely disagree.


When working heavily on 20Gb chunks of images (made up of images around 20mb each), I find that I need a good bit more than that. I work on a very similar system (with an Opteron instead of your Pentium), and it just can't handle what I'm wanting it to do. I consistently have to just sit and wait while it tries to think through different tasks, sometimes even menial ones. I find this is particularly hard for my current rig when designing magazine spreads, album spreads, and promotional designs. I have to switch back and forth between a handful of programs and it's just too taxing for my current machine.

Thanks though, for trying to save me money :)

and thanks everyone else for the suggestions! I will probably go with a slightly weaker GPU and a MOBO that supports 6 sticks.

Mr. Soft, what kind of cooler would be good and fit the above setup? I only know details on the core components, so some cooling stuff is relatively new to me.
 
pies

pies

New Member
I would take a look at that motherboard thats about 30$ more some better options for a not much higher price.
 
thebeginning

thebeginning

New Member
ok so i'm going to switch out the mobo for this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131359


and switch the GPU out for one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102802

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102810


not sure which one yet.


any other changes? Does anyone think the 150 Gb 10k rpm drive is unnecessary? I've heard it can be beneficial for the OS speed with small tasks and booting and such. and what does 'bare drive' mean?

I don't want to do raid at this point, so that's out of the question.
 
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lovely?

lovely?

Active Member
bare drive means your getting the hard drive only, no screws, no manual, just an anti static bag and the hard drive. but its fine, OEM (or bare drive) products are cheaper.

i would suggest the 4870 in the links you posted, but if it were mine i would really go for the 1gb version.

EDIT: and i would keep the 10k drive, it will help the boot time and program loading time.
 
thebeginning

thebeginning

New Member
lovely? said:
bare drive means your getting the hard drive only, no screws, no manual, just an anti static bag and the hard drive. but its fine, OEM (or bare drive) products are cheaper.

i would suggest the 4870 in the links you posted, but if it were mine i would really go for the 1gb version.
Click to expand...



wait, so will I need to buy screws or any other supplies? Again, this will be my first time putting one together so I'm a bit of a noob.


I'll probably just stick with the 1gb 4850...now that I think about it I really don't need that much power on the graphics end. If I get something too nice I'll be tempted to game even more on my work machine :)
 
lovely?

lovely?

Active Member
the 4850 1gb is very good as well, its a great choice.

no, you won't have to buy screws, because as long as your case is a retail, it will come with hard drive screws. and if you buy your motherboard retail, it will come with the sata cables you will need.
 
thebeginning

thebeginning

New Member
THERMAL-REACTOR said:
Look great and good choice on vid card and motherboard.
This would given you a noticable performance increase compared to the raptor hd : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227361
# Sequential Access - Read: Up to 170 MB/s
# Sequential Access - Write: Up to 98 MB/s
Click to expand...


but is that both read and write speeds? based on what I've read those are pretty erratic and inconsistent.







and someone mentioned getting a different CPU fan (I think)...any suggestions?
 
lovely?

lovely?

Active Member
do you plan on overclocking your processor?

and yes, that SSD is very fast, but for your money, you will not notice the difference.
 
thebeginning

thebeginning

New Member
lovely? said:
do you plan on overclocking your processor?

and yes, that SSD is very fast, but for your money, you will not notice the difference.
Click to expand...


k thanks, good to hear.

and no, probably not. I've OC'd my current system and noticed a fair jump in performance, but nothing really huge (OC'd my Dual-Core Opteron 170 from 2.0 to 2.62 and upped my GPU a tad). I'd like to keep everything straight because this is a business machine, not one for just gaming and such.
 
D

Draz

New Member
thebeginning - that looks like a sweet build, and to answer your question about the screw and stuff, most of all the hardware usually comes with the case. well at least with the few builds that i have done that was the case.
 
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