Posted by Bill Chambers on October 1, 2012 at 3:30 PM
I just got off the phone with a Puget Systems rep asking questions about a new computer I'm thinking about. As many of you know, I know nothing about computers. The Puget rep was extremely nice & helpful, but I want to run these stats by some of you guys to get an "independant" set of eyes on it to make sure he didn't miss anything. This system will be used 95% for photo imaging processing, 5% for my wife & I to get emails and surf the web. I intend to get an NEC 10 bit monitor, just don't know which one yet. This was a little higher than I wanted to spend at approx. $2800 but I want a system that will be fast and last a long time.
RE: the hard drives. I may decide to go with 240GB SSD for my primary drive, don't know yet. Is it worth the extra $225 bucks?
My image drives will be a 3TB secondary drive, backed up by another 3TB tertiary drive, and also backed up by an external 3 TB drive. Don't know if this overly redundant or no, your thoughts are appreciated.
Thanks in advance for any advice and/or suggestions!!
The system:
System Core
Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V Pro
CPU Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz Quad Core 8MB 77W
Ram Kingston 16GB DDR3-1600 (2x8GB)
Video Card PNY Quadro 600 PCI-E 1GB
Sound Card Onboard Sound
Controllers SYBA Firewire 1394a/1394b PCI-Express Card
Silverstone USB 3.0 PCI-Express card
Storage
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Primary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Secondary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Tertiary drive.
CD / DVD Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black)
Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black)
Removable Drive Silverstone FP37 USB 3.0 Card Reader
Case / Cooling
Case Antec P183 V3 (Gunmetal Finish)
Power Supply Antec TruePower New Series 650W Power Supply
CPU Cooling Gelid Tranquillo Rev2
Case Mods AcoustiPack Acoustic Composite Sheet Package
Software
OS Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM SP1
Peripherals
Keyboard Logitech Cordless Desktop MK320
Ext. Drive Western Digital USB3 3.0TB External Drive
Automatic Backup and Restore Set-up
Accessories
Services Warranty: Lifetime Labor and Tech Support, 1 Year Parts
Software / Preferences
Software: Courtesy Install Microsoft Security Essentials (Antivirus)
Acrobat Reader
Flash
Google Earth
iTunes
Skype
Posted by Paul DeCesare on October 1, 2012 at 7:12 PM
(Sorry for all the emails showing replies, I keep finding bad typing mistakes and fixing the post, lol)
Bill, I am so happy you posted this, there are great choices on the list and a few not-to-good ones. I build all my systems now (even one for an NPN'er) so I'm familiar with every component. Let's have a look and get you dialed in with you being a photographer in mind:
Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V Pro Good choice
CPU Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz Quad Core 8MB 77W Excellent choice, this CPU screams and will easily handle Photoshop CS10
Ram Kingston 16GB DDR3-1600 (2x8GB) Good to use two 8GB sticks so you can expand to 32GB in the future. I'm dismayed by Kingston RAM, I would prefer they use Corsair or Mushkin another top-line brand, but it should be fine
Video Card PNY Quadro 600 PCI-E 1GB I don't understand this choice at all. for $160 this card has only 1GB ram and only 96 CUDA cores. A much better choice is one of the most popular cards out there for the same price, the GTX 550Ti. It has 2GB ram and 192 cores, also called pixel pipelines. That's the MINIMUM you should have. Granted Photoshop may not need all the video pipelines right now, but you're building a future-use machine, you really want the 550Ti. DSLR video needs horsepower if you choose to get into it, but even if you don't, Content on the web is getting better and bigger every month, and 1080HD video will soon be the norm even watching a replay on ESPN. Also, all editions of Photoshop starting with CS6 will edit video now, and you might grab that odd clip of a bear and cub or whatever and want to do something with it. And Adobe is more and more leverage the graphics power to enhance performance on all their programs, so go for the 550. And if the sales pitch of "this is Quadro technology, a much better card for videos either watching on the web or editing", that's not true. It's all about pixel pipelines (CUDA cores), and while the real Quadro cards are amazing and cost $1800 a piece, that's not the one they've chosen. Insist on the GTX 550Ti, they will surely have it in stock and the price is the same.
Sound Card Onboard Sound Fine, most onboard audio sounds better than the quality of speakers we buy, lol.
Controllers SYBA Firewire 1394a/1394b PCI-Express Card Did you request a FireWire add-in card? This is old technology invented by Apple and they don't even use it now. If you have a specific device such as an old DV cam recorder that supports FW then go ahead, but if not, this is not needed. Plus you can buy an add-in card for 20 bucks on Amazon if you ever need it.
Silverstone USB 3.0 PCI-Express card Your motherboard has 4 USB 3.0 ports and 8 USB 2.0 ports built in, not sure why another card is being added, although Silverstone does make a PCI card that includes a USB 3.0 header port so your case ports will be hooked up, so that's why they are probably adding an additional card. Your case does have a USB 3.0 port on top now that I look at it and I don't think the motherboard has one. Mobo makers are slow catching onto this for some weird reason.
Storage
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s Absolutely not. WD makes the excellent Caviar Black series with No-Touch head technology, the Caviar Blue are not robust enough to be counted on for long term storage. The floods in Thailand did damage WD's Factories last year and prices soared, but they have come back down finally, and just recently. I would NEVER make a Blue series my Windows/Apps drive. If anything it should be a WD Caviar Black, however, that's not a great way to go for the speed and power of the CPU you have, it'll be the anchor. All you need for your C drive is a 128GB SSD that is SATA III (most are) to leverage that 6gb/sec speed of your motherboard, and you want one that does at least 70,000 IOPS. Tell Puget this, they should know what it means. Your C drive should only have Windows and Adobe stuff and Office and whatever other programs you run if you want the C drive to perform efficiently. SSDs are crazy fast, but writing a lot of data isn't suggested. There's no advantage to a 240GB SSD for your C drive, 128GB is more than ample and way less expensive, I just paid $79 for a Corsair 128GB SSD. I always have at least 45Gb free on the PCs I work on using a 128GB SSD. The speed is SO worth it. That means that My Documents and My Pictures and all of those pre-baked Windows folders will need to live on another drive, I'll explain that in a minute, Windows 7 provides a great feature to work with that.
Comments: Primary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Secondary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Tertiary drive. WD Greens run cool which is important, although Blacks are the most reliable. The choice of workflow is yours. My suggestion is to have one drive be for all of the family user files, and the second drive be strictly for photos, and back that up to the external. Do you need 3TB for the family user file drive? Probably not. Even a 1TB would be quite ample, then use a 2TB WD Black or the 3TB WD Green for photos. However, two 3TB Greens would provide the most storage, I hope they are more reliable by now. 3TB drives were a bit risky a while back, but like anything else it gets sorted out. That's the deal with SSDs, they used to be more trouble than it was worth, but now they work well as OS/Apps drives. If all of this seems too confusing, do this: Keep the two 3TB Greens, and change that Caviar Blue to this WD 300GB 10K RPM drive, it's in the same price range as a 240GB SSD (or even cheaper) and has much better speed that a standard hard drive, and you can have your family use the My folders on that drive all they want. Then use the Greens for photos and backup. So, there's some choice!
CD / DVD Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black) Good standard DVD burner. Cheaper than an order Chicken Parmiagiana and Spaghetti at Maggiano's, lol.
(I think the BOLD tags have stopped working below this line, showing regular in my browser and I double-checked the syntax. Weird)
Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA A second one? A better option for a second drive would be an LG or Pioneer Blu-Ray burner, it does DVDs and CDs of course but also burns Blu-Ray which gives you 23GB of storage on a disk, and you can get the disks for under a buck a piece now.
Removable Drive Silverstone FP37 USB 3.0 Card Reader Good reader
Case / Cooling
Case Antec P183 V3 (Gunmetal Finish) Nice case
Power Supply Antec TruePower New Series 650W Power Supply Good supply, more than enough power for ample headroom
CPU Cooling Gelid Tranquillo Rev2
Case Mods AcoustiPack Acoustic Composite Sheet Package I like how Puget does sound dampening, nice feature
Software
OS Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM SP1 YES, 7 Pro is best in class.
Peripherals
Keyboard Logitech Cordless Desktop MK320 Great choice
Ext. Drive Western Digital USB3 3.0TB External Drive Great choice
Automatic Backup and Restore Set-up
Accessories
Services Warranty: Lifetime Labor and Tech Support, 1 Year Parts
Software / Preferences
Software: Courtesy Install Microsoft Security Essentials (Antivirus) Absolutely Absolutely Absolutely. I can't stress and suggest Security Essentials enough. You used to have to pay for this from Microsoft, but they made it free for consumers last year. It runs so well you don't even know it's there. I used ZERO antivirus software for 19 years straight, no way did I want the slow-down in performance they cause (and no, I never got a virus), but when I tried MSE I was sold. It's so transparent there's no reason not to use it. Virus installation attempts are getting more sophisticated so in 2012 and onward it's not really wise to run solo like I did for two decades. MSE is excellent. Hope all this helps!
Acrobat Reader
Flash
Google Earth
iTunes
Skype
Posted by Peter Cross on October 1, 2012 at 10:25 PM
Bill: Thanks for bringing this topic up as I expect to upgrade sometime this fall and your unit is in the ballpark of what I'll be looking at.
Paul: Your extensive comments are great. Nice to know some of the pros and cons of various unit components. Things about which I know next to nothing.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on October 1, 2012 at 11:36 PM
Glad it helped Peter, I tend to get WAY too wordy and I'm no professional writer so I had hoped it made sense. Poor Bill, I edited it so many times I probably clogged his Inbox!
I didn't comment on the CPU cooler, but the Gelid Tranquillo Rev2 they chose is quite good for what Bill is getting and it doesn't break the bank.
BTW, I think I sounded a little hard on Puget regarding the video card and drives and didn't mean to, I've been to their site several times and it's obvious they are NOT a hack operation. Their exquisite care in the way they ship a rig when it's done is first rate, and that's a big one. I might not agree with the choice of a couple components but if the PC was built as spec'd by them, it would be an awesome rig. I'm just picky about certain things and can't seem to keep quiet about it.
I'l say this: regardless of the drive configuration, when Bill fires up Photoshop for the first time and he's at an editing window ready to work in under 4 seconds with the windows snapping open at top speed, he'll be one happy camper. Especially when he sees how much faster web pages load, that's always a nice bonus with a real i7 rig.
System Core
Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V Pro Great choice
CPU Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz Quad Core 8MB 77W Great choice
Ram Kingston 16GB DDR3-1600 (2x8GB) Great choice in my opinion. I've never had a problem with Kingston RAM. Corsair is exellent, as well. You'll be set to upgrade to 32GB later
Video Card PNY Quadro 600 PCI-E 1GB I agree with Paul about the GTX550, but make sure you can adequately cool it.
Sound Card Onboard Sound This will work just fine.
Controllers SYBA Firewire 1394a/1394b PCI-Express Card If you have, or plan to have Firewire 400 and/or 800 devices, this is a good controller
Silverstone USB 3.0 PCI-Express card Unsure why you need this, unless there are not enough internal and external ports
Storage
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s An SSD for your OS, most used programs, and working documents will pay big dividends. I have an Intel 520 240GB SSD. It's blazing fast, and I can store my working documents on it, too.
Comments: Primary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s The Caviar Green drives are excellent, but I think 3TB may be overkill
Comments: Secondary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/sThe Caviar Green drives are excellent, but I think 3TB may be overkill.
Comments: Tertiary drive.
CD / DVD Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black) Good Choice
Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black) I agree with Paul, get a BlueRay R/W drive
Removable Drive Silverstone FP37 USB 3.0 Card Reader Good Choice
Case / Cooling
Case Antec P183 V3 (Gunmetal Finish) Good Choice. I have the Antec P180 Mini-It's a nice case--well built.
Power Supply Antec TruePower New Series 650W Power Supply Good Choice
CPU Cooling Gelid Tranquillo Rev2 Good Choice
Case Mods AcoustiPack Acoustic Composite Sheet Package Good Choice
Software
OS Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM SP1 Good Choice
Peripherals
Keyboard Logitech Cordless Desktop MK320 Good Choice
Ext. Drive Western Digital USB3 3.0TB External Drive Good Choice
Automatic Backup and Restore Set-up Puget set mine up for me to my external SATA WD Caviar Black 1TB.drive. When I added the SSD, I simply used the Windows Restore function to put the system image onto the new drive.
Accessories
Services Warranty: Lifetime Labor and Tech Support, 1 Year Parts
Software / Preferences
Software: Courtesy Install Microsoft Security Essentials (Antivirus) Good Choice! Puget installed it for me when I bought my system. It's the best bargain out there. It doesn't bug me pop-up messages unless needed and the preformance hit is negligible.
Acrobat Reader
Flash
Google Earth
iTunes
Skype
Bill, In my humble opinion, you can't go wrong with Puget Systems. I've had my machine for 16 months, use it heavily every day and it has never blinked. Although I have only an i5 quad core and a 1GB video card and 16GB RAM, I can open CS5 in about 2-3 seconds and open a 1.2GB PSD file is about 7 seconds. Photoshop runs at 100% efficiency. The machine runs cool, and I can't even tell it's running--it's that quiet.
If you go to Puget's web site, take a look at their Hardware Articles. There is a good one comparing Intel SSD's, as well as other good stuff.
I hope this helps.
--P
Dang it! Some of my bolded items didn't show as bold, either. I wonder if I overdrew my tag account again?
Just a note about Intel SSD's. If you buy an Intel drive, be sure to download and install Intel's SSD Toolbox. This program will help you fine tune your SSD and it also shows drive health and expected remaining life. It also has the TRIM function which optimizes the SSD. If you go this route, be sure to read the Help file before performing any of the toolboxe's operations on the SSD.
I do not know if other manufacturers have such a 'toolbox', but I sure do find Intel's to be easy to use and very helpful.
I opted for the Intel 520 240GB SATA 6GB/s drive because it had the best read/write specs of the drives in that series. It really is blazing fast.
--P
Posted by Lance Warley on October 2, 2012 at 6:21 AM
C'mon guys. If we're gonna get Bill to FAST, let's get him to Usain Bolt FAST. He may not upgrade again until Y3K.
I'm surprised Paul and Preston didn't mention going with a SSD as your second internal drive for Photoshop's scratch drive.
I have SSD's as both of my internal drives. 160 GB for the primary and 80 GB for the scratch drive. Plenty big for my workflow.
I use either/both of them to store work-in-progress files and for short-term backup. Once I'm done with the processing, I copy the files to external drives for permanent storage. Faster and it keeps the machine cooler, because I don't always plug in the externals. Just when I need them.
Bill, go with two SSD's. And shoot me a note if you ever make it to the southeast part of our state. I'll take you to the good spots.
Having an SSD for a PS scratch disk is great idea, but here's the trick: Let's say you have only one SSD that has your OS and other stuff on it. You can still use that SSD for a scratch disk. The reason for this is that there is no read/write head that has to move. You do have to have plenty of free space on the SSD to do this, though. With your system, having the second SSD as your primary scratch disk is a good idea. If one has a larger primary SSD, as I do, setting it as the primary scratch disk works nicely.
Ideally, though, one should aim for 100% efficiency in PhotoShop. If efficiency falls below 100%, this means that PS is using the scratch disk. Here is an article from Adobe that goes into detail as to how to tune CS5 for the best performance. I found it very useful.
To keep PS from hitting the scratch disk in CS5 is to have plenty of RAM, have enough RAM allocated to PS, and limiting the number of open programs while PS is in use.
If Bill opts for the 240 GB SSD, he can set it as his primary PhotoShop scratch disk and then set one of the other internal HD's as the second scratch disk.
--P
Posted by Bill Chambers on October 2, 2012 at 12:15 PM
Thank you all for your great comments and suggestions! Now, I just have to muddle through them and try to understand them! Thanks again!!
Posted by Paul DeCesare on October 3, 2012 at 2:38 AM
Hey Lance, SSDs still have a shortened life span with excessive writes, they haven't gotten around that issue yet. That's why you don't defrag 'em. If you can format them every so often, then you rebuild the cells which is exactly why we format our cards in camera after we pull images off of them. Not practical for the OS drive but doable for a scratch drive, but does Bill want to be bothered with that? And how much does an SSD gain you for scratch when you have 16GB ram and an i7-3770? I watch the percentage on mine in the bottom little panel and I have yet to see Photoshop use the scratch disk significantly. So, THAT'S why I'm not pushing for that. Maybe in a couple years lifespan won't be an issue, but it is now. You should frmt your scratch SSD from time to time if you have no other files on there. I'm just sayin...
Posted by Lance Warley on October 3, 2012 at 6:59 AM
Did you place your order with Puget Systems? If so, what did you wind up with?
--P
Posted by Bill Chambers on October 5, 2012 at 2:59 PM
Not yet. Still saving up, will take a while longer - just in the planning stage now! Thinking about definitely going with the SSD for the system drive though.
Posted by Buck Ward on November 1, 2012 at 9:39 PM
Hi Bill
Preston has pointed me towards Puget Systems, My budget's a lot tighter than yours. I configured a computer today that fits my budget, but it falls short of what I really want, which is more like what you're planning, but with a RAID system. I received an email from them offering to help, so I hope soon I'll be able to come to terms.
In my current antique computer, I've had three hard drives fail, but because of RAID I didn't lose any data, in fact not even a hiccup except for having to replace the drive. This time when a drive failed, I decided to replace the computer rather than the failed drive. I'm using external RAID now anyhow, because the internal one is no longer big enough.
I'll probably end up with Buck's Compromise - I can't afford what I want and I don't want what I can afford, so I compromise and get something I don't want and can't afford.
So anyhow, I'm wondering if you got it and what do you think?
Discussion
14 repliesRE: the hard drives. I may decide to go with 240GB SSD for my primary drive, don't know yet. Is it worth the extra $225 bucks?
My image drives will be a 3TB secondary drive, backed up by another 3TB tertiary drive, and also backed up by an external 3 TB drive. Don't know if this overly redundant or no, your thoughts are appreciated.
Thanks in advance for any advice and/or suggestions!!
The system:
System Core
Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V Pro
CPU Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz Quad Core 8MB 77W
Ram Kingston 16GB DDR3-1600 (2x8GB)
Video Card PNY Quadro 600 PCI-E 1GB
Sound Card Onboard Sound
Controllers SYBA Firewire 1394a/1394b PCI-Express Card
Silverstone USB 3.0 PCI-Express card
Storage
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Primary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Secondary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Tertiary drive.
CD / DVD Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black)
Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black)
Removable Drive Silverstone FP37 USB 3.0 Card Reader
Case / Cooling
Case Antec P183 V3 (Gunmetal Finish)
Power Supply Antec TruePower New Series 650W Power Supply
CPU Cooling Gelid Tranquillo Rev2
Case Mods AcoustiPack Acoustic Composite Sheet Package
Software
OS Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM SP1
Peripherals
Keyboard Logitech Cordless Desktop MK320
Ext. Drive Western Digital USB3 3.0TB External Drive
Automatic Backup and Restore Set-up
Accessories
Services Warranty: Lifetime Labor and Tech Support, 1 Year Parts
Software / Preferences
Software: Courtesy Install Microsoft Security Essentials (Antivirus)
Acrobat Reader
Flash
Google Earth
iTunes
Skype
Bill, I am so happy you posted this, there are great choices on the list and a few not-to-good ones. I build all my systems now (even one for an NPN'er) so I'm familiar with every component. Let's have a look and get you dialed in with you being a photographer in mind:
Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V Pro Good choice
CPU Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz Quad Core 8MB 77W Excellent choice, this CPU screams and will easily handle Photoshop CS10
Ram Kingston 16GB DDR3-1600 (2x8GB) Good to use two 8GB sticks so you can expand to 32GB in the future. I'm dismayed by Kingston RAM, I would prefer they use Corsair or Mushkin another top-line brand, but it should be fine
Video Card PNY Quadro 600 PCI-E 1GB I don't understand this choice at all. for $160 this card has only 1GB ram and only 96 CUDA cores. A much better choice is one of the most popular cards out there for the same price, the GTX 550Ti. It has 2GB ram and 192 cores, also called pixel pipelines. That's the MINIMUM you should have. Granted Photoshop may not need all the video pipelines right now, but you're building a future-use machine, you really want the 550Ti. DSLR video needs horsepower if you choose to get into it, but even if you don't, Content on the web is getting better and bigger every month, and 1080HD video will soon be the norm even watching a replay on ESPN. Also, all editions of Photoshop starting with CS6 will edit video now, and you might grab that odd clip of a bear and cub or whatever and want to do something with it. And Adobe is more and more leverage the graphics power to enhance performance on all their programs, so go for the 550. And if the sales pitch of "this is Quadro technology, a much better card for videos either watching on the web or editing", that's not true. It's all about pixel pipelines (CUDA cores), and while the real Quadro cards are amazing and cost $1800 a piece, that's not the one they've chosen. Insist on the GTX 550Ti, they will surely have it in stock and the price is the same.
Sound Card Onboard Sound Fine, most onboard audio sounds better than the quality of speakers we buy, lol.
Controllers SYBA Firewire 1394a/1394b PCI-Express Card Did you request a FireWire add-in card? This is old technology invented by Apple and they don't even use it now. If you have a specific device such as an old DV cam recorder that supports FW then go ahead, but if not, this is not needed. Plus you can buy an add-in card for 20 bucks on Amazon if you ever need it.
Silverstone USB 3.0 PCI-Express card Your motherboard has 4 USB 3.0 ports and 8 USB 2.0 ports built in, not sure why another card is being added, although Silverstone does make a PCI card that includes a USB 3.0 header port so your case ports will be hooked up, so that's why they are probably adding an additional card. Your case does have a USB 3.0 port on top now that I look at it and I don't think the motherboard has one. Mobo makers are slow catching onto this for some weird reason.
Storage
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s Absolutely not. WD makes the excellent Caviar Black series with No-Touch head technology, the Caviar Blue are not robust enough to be counted on for long term storage. The floods in Thailand did damage WD's Factories last year and prices soared, but they have come back down finally, and just recently. I would NEVER make a Blue series my Windows/Apps drive. If anything it should be a WD Caviar Black, however, that's not a great way to go for the speed and power of the CPU you have, it'll be the anchor. All you need for your C drive is a 128GB SSD that is SATA III (most are) to leverage that 6gb/sec speed of your motherboard, and you want one that does at least 70,000 IOPS. Tell Puget this, they should know what it means. Your C drive should only have Windows and Adobe stuff and Office and whatever other programs you run if you want the C drive to perform efficiently. SSDs are crazy fast, but writing a lot of data isn't suggested. There's no advantage to a 240GB SSD for your C drive, 128GB is more than ample and way less expensive, I just paid $79 for a Corsair 128GB SSD. I always have at least 45Gb free on the PCs I work on using a 128GB SSD. The speed is SO worth it. That means that My Documents and My Pictures and all of those pre-baked Windows folders will need to live on another drive, I'll explain that in a minute, Windows 7 provides a great feature to work with that.
Comments: Primary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Secondary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s
Comments: Tertiary drive.
WD Greens run cool which is important, although Blacks are the most reliable. The choice of workflow is yours. My suggestion is to have one drive be for all of the family user files, and the second drive be strictly for photos, and back that up to the external. Do you need 3TB for the family user file drive? Probably not. Even a 1TB would be quite ample, then use a 2TB WD Black or the 3TB WD Green for photos. However, two 3TB Greens would provide the most storage, I hope they are more reliable by now. 3TB drives were a bit risky a while back, but like anything else it gets sorted out. That's the deal with SSDs, they used to be more trouble than it was worth, but now they work well as OS/Apps drives. If all of this seems too confusing, do this: Keep the two 3TB Greens, and change that Caviar Blue to this WD 300GB 10K RPM drive, it's in the same price range as a 240GB SSD (or even cheaper) and has much better speed that a standard hard drive, and you can have your family use the My folders on that drive all they want. Then use the Greens for photos and backup. So, there's some choice!
CD / DVD Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black) Good standard DVD burner. Cheaper than an order Chicken Parmiagiana and Spaghetti at Maggiano's, lol.
(I think the BOLD tags have stopped working below this line, showing regular in my browser and I double-checked the syntax. Weird)
Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA A second one? A better option for a second drive would be an LG or Pioneer Blu-Ray burner, it does DVDs and CDs of course but also burns Blu-Ray which gives you 23GB of storage on a disk, and you can get the disks for under a buck a piece now.
Removable Drive Silverstone FP37 USB 3.0 Card Reader Good reader
Case / Cooling
Case Antec P183 V3 (Gunmetal Finish) Nice case
Power Supply Antec TruePower New Series 650W Power Supply Good supply, more than enough power for ample headroom
CPU Cooling Gelid Tranquillo Rev2
Case Mods AcoustiPack Acoustic Composite Sheet Package I like how Puget does sound dampening, nice feature
Software
OS Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM SP1 YES, 7 Pro is best in class.
Peripherals
Keyboard Logitech Cordless Desktop MK320 Great choice
Ext. Drive Western Digital USB3 3.0TB External Drive Great choice
Automatic Backup and Restore Set-up
Accessories
Services Warranty: Lifetime Labor and Tech Support, 1 Year Parts
Software / Preferences
Software: Courtesy Install Microsoft Security Essentials (Antivirus) Absolutely Absolutely Absolutely. I can't stress and suggest Security Essentials enough. You used to have to pay for this from Microsoft, but they made it free for consumers last year. It runs so well you don't even know it's there. I used ZERO antivirus software for 19 years straight, no way did I want the slow-down in performance they cause (and no, I never got a virus), but when I tried MSE I was sold. It's so transparent there's no reason not to use it. Virus installation attempts are getting more sophisticated so in 2012 and onward it's not really wise to run solo like I did for two decades. MSE is excellent. Hope all this helps!
Acrobat Reader
Flash
Google Earth
iTunes
Skype
Paul: Your extensive comments are great. Nice to know some of the pros and cons of various unit components. Things about which I know next to nothing.
I didn't comment on the CPU cooler, but the Gelid Tranquillo Rev2 they chose is quite good for what Bill is getting and it doesn't break the bank.
BTW, I think I sounded a little hard on Puget regarding the video card and drives and didn't mean to, I've been to their site several times and it's obvious they are NOT a hack operation. Their exquisite care in the way they ship a rig when it's done is first rate, and that's a big one. I might not agree with the choice of a couple components but if the PC was built as spec'd by them, it would be an awesome rig. I'm just picky about certain things and can't seem to keep quiet about it.
I'l say this: regardless of the drive configuration, when Bill fires up Photoshop for the first time and he's at an editing window ready to work in under 4 seconds with the windows snapping open at top speed, he'll be one happy camper. Especially when he sees how much faster web pages load, that's always a nice bonus with a real i7 rig.
System Core
Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V Pro Great choice
CPU Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz Quad Core 8MB 77W Great choice
Ram Kingston 16GB DDR3-1600 (2x8GB) Great choice in my opinion. I've never had a problem with Kingston RAM. Corsair is exellent, as well. You'll be set to upgrade to 32GB later
Video Card PNY Quadro 600 PCI-E 1GB I agree with Paul about the GTX550, but make sure you can adequately cool it.
Sound Card Onboard Sound This will work just fine.
Controllers SYBA Firewire 1394a/1394b PCI-Express Card If you have, or plan to have Firewire 400 and/or 800 devices, this is a good controller
Silverstone USB 3.0 PCI-Express card Unsure why you need this, unless there are not enough internal and external ports
Storage
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s An SSD for your OS, most used programs, and working documents will pay big dividends. I have an Intel 520 240GB SSD. It's blazing fast, and I can store my working documents on it, too.
Comments: Primary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s The Caviar Green drives are excellent, but I think 3TB may be overkill
Comments: Secondary drive.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/sThe Caviar Green drives are excellent, but I think 3TB may be overkill.
Comments: Tertiary drive.
CD / DVD Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black) Good Choice
Asus 24x DVD-RW SATA (black) I agree with Paul, get a BlueRay R/W drive
Removable Drive Silverstone FP37 USB 3.0 Card Reader Good Choice
Case / Cooling
Case Antec P183 V3 (Gunmetal Finish) Good Choice. I have the Antec P180 Mini-It's a nice case--well built.
Power Supply Antec TruePower New Series 650W Power Supply Good Choice
CPU Cooling Gelid Tranquillo Rev2 Good Choice
Case Mods AcoustiPack Acoustic Composite Sheet Package Good Choice
Software
OS Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM SP1 Good Choice
Peripherals
Keyboard Logitech Cordless Desktop MK320 Good Choice
Ext. Drive Western Digital USB3 3.0TB External Drive Good Choice
Automatic Backup and Restore Set-up Puget set mine up for me to my external SATA WD Caviar Black 1TB.drive. When I added the SSD, I simply used the Windows Restore function to put the system image onto the new drive.
Accessories
Services Warranty: Lifetime Labor and Tech Support, 1 Year Parts
Software / Preferences
Software: Courtesy Install Microsoft Security Essentials (Antivirus) Good Choice! Puget installed it for me when I bought my system. It's the best bargain out there. It doesn't bug me pop-up messages unless needed and the preformance hit is negligible.
Acrobat Reader
Flash
Google Earth
iTunes
Skype
Bill, In my humble opinion, you can't go wrong with Puget Systems. I've had my machine for 16 months, use it heavily every day and it has never blinked. Although I have only an i5 quad core and a 1GB video card and 16GB RAM, I can open CS5 in about 2-3 seconds and open a 1.2GB PSD file is about 7 seconds. Photoshop runs at 100% efficiency. The machine runs cool, and I can't even tell it's running--it's that quiet.
If you go to Puget's web site, take a look at their Hardware Articles. There is a good one comparing Intel SSD's, as well as other good stuff.
I hope this helps.
--P
Dang it! Some of my bolded items didn't show as bold, either. I wonder if I overdrew my tag account again?
I do not know if other manufacturers have such a 'toolbox', but I sure do find Intel's to be easy to use and very helpful.
I opted for the Intel 520 240GB SATA 6GB/s drive because it had the best read/write specs of the drives in that series. It really is blazing fast.
--P
I'm surprised Paul and Preston didn't mention going with a SSD as your second internal drive for Photoshop's scratch drive.
I have SSD's as both of my internal drives. 160 GB for the primary and 80 GB for the scratch drive. Plenty big for my workflow.
I use either/both of them to store work-in-progress files and for short-term backup. Once I'm done with the processing, I copy the files to external drives for permanent storage. Faster and it keeps the machine cooler, because I don't always plug in the externals. Just when I need them.
Bill, go with two SSD's. And shoot me a note if you ever make it to the southeast part of our state. I'll take you to the good spots.
Having an SSD for a PS scratch disk is great idea, but here's the trick: Let's say you have only one SSD that has your OS and other stuff on it. You can still use that SSD for a scratch disk. The reason for this is that there is no read/write head that has to move. You do have to have plenty of free space on the SSD to do this, though. With your system, having the second SSD as your primary scratch disk is a good idea. If one has a larger primary SSD, as I do, setting it as the primary scratch disk works nicely.
Ideally, though, one should aim for 100% efficiency in PhotoShop. If efficiency falls below 100%, this means that PS is using the scratch disk. Here is an article from Adobe that goes into detail as to how to tune CS5 for the best performance. I found it very useful.
To keep PS from hitting the scratch disk in CS5 is to have plenty of RAM, have enough RAM allocated to PS, and limiting the number of open programs while PS is in use.
If Bill opts for the 240 GB SSD, he can set it as his primary PhotoShop scratch disk and then set one of the other internal HD's as the second scratch disk.
--P
Did you place your order with Puget Systems? If so, what did you wind up with?
--P
Here's another article from Puget Systems about ways to save storage space on an SSD.
--P
Preston has pointed me towards Puget Systems, My budget's a lot tighter than yours. I configured a computer today that fits my budget, but it falls short of what I really want, which is more like what you're planning, but with a RAID system. I received an email from them offering to help, so I hope soon I'll be able to come to terms.
In my current antique computer, I've had three hard drives fail, but because of RAID I didn't lose any data, in fact not even a hiccup except for having to replace the drive. This time when a drive failed, I decided to replace the computer rather than the failed drive. I'm using external RAID now anyhow, because the internal one is no longer big enough.
I'll probably end up with Buck's Compromise - I can't afford what I want and I don't want what I can afford, so I compromise and get something I don't want and can't afford.
So anyhow, I'm wondering if you got it and what do you think?