anyone on here build computers

[JimClark]

Ok going to get a new computer at home and looking for someone can help me with choosing the components. Anyone on here build computers?

Here is what I know I want 8 to 16 gig of ram Inter Core I5 or I7 processor I have to have at least 3 hard drives in the case and it will not be a gaming machine it will be for working on my images.

Any help or suggestions as to where to buy the parts and rec's on what parts to buy are welcome

Jim

[Chilli]

I used to build computers Jim, but it's hard to beat the prices for mid level performance machines these days.

I've gotten hardware from many sources and Newegg has been a pretty good supplier. http://www.newegg.com/?gclid=CIvOwLr...131127211934:s You can save some money by getting hardware that is new but not in retail packaging. The one thing I don't recommend purchasing like this is hard drives. I did get a bad one and packaging was not done very well so it may have gotten jarred in transit. I had to reload Windows four times before I figured out the drive. What a PITA that was.

If you haven't done so already, do a little searching on the internet for researching what motherboards and processors will best suit your needs. I came across this site that may help you out. http://toptengamer.hubpages.com/hub/...oto-Editing-PC

[JimClark]

Thanks for the link Mike

[NativePaul]

Just make sure you get an IPS monitor rather than a TN monitor as TN panels cant display as many colours (even though it will still say 32bit 16.9 million colours on the blurb) and can result in colour banding.

What editor do you use? I use Faststone for 99% of my editing (colour, lighting and cropping etc) and only use Photoshop when I want to add or remove something from the image. I just upgraded to an i5 4670 which is about twice as powerful as my old Phenom x4 965 and it hasn't made much difference to my speed, OK it edits in half the time, about 3 seconds instead of 6, which would rock if I was blindly batch editing my pictures but I get better results if I edit each picture individually and with a couple of minutes of tweaking the edit that 3 seconds saved becomes pretty much an irrelevance.

If you have enough RAM an SSD wont increase your editing speed once the PC is booted up and the program you use to edit is open, but I wouldn't want to be without one for general computer usage, I use a small SSD boot drive with a few of my most common programs on it and a pair of HDDs in raid1 for safe storage of my photos.

[JimClark]

Paul for now it is going to have to be just the tower my Samsung will have to do for a while longer.
I 99.9% of the time use Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw for processing my images. I shoot everything in Raw format. I may start using Lightroom 5 as I just subscribed to Adobe's photographer special of their cloud software.

[photohoward1]

Take it from a professional. My whole life. And family for over 75 years. ITs the only thing I have done since I was born. I'm 50. GET A MAC! You can't beat it for speed color durability. Get a couple of lightning drives and go have fun. If this is what you do for a living get the best tools possible.

[Heaving Earth]

+1 on the mac.

[Oexak]

Take it from a professional. My whole life. And family for over 75 years. ITs the only thing I have done since I was born. I'm 50. GET A MAC! You can't beat it for speed color durability. Get a couple of lightning drives and go have fun. If this is what you do for a living get the best tools possible.

But are Mac computers upgradable? As i have never used one so i have zero to little knowledge about it.

[photohoward1]

With todays computers what would you upgrade?

[Heaving Earth]

They're upgrade able to a point. You can add more memory for ex. But there's really no need to upgrade a Mac.

I use the mini which I believe is discontinued. They're even more upgrade able. You can swap drives and such on them.

[photohoward1]

Not discontinued.

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-mini

I would recommend an iMac though. Or if you have tons of funds the new Pro!

They're upgrade able to a point. You can add more memory for ex. But there's really no need to upgrade a Mac.

I use the mini which I believe is discontinued. They're even more upgrade able. You can swap drives and such on them.

[Heaving Earth]

Not discontinued.

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-mini

I would recommend an iMac though. Or if you have tons of funds the new Pro!

huh… thats cool! i thought i read somewhere they weren't. glad to see they are…. i really like my mini. i also own an iMac (5years old tho)

the mini is neat because its really portable compared to the iMac
i put a 60gb ssd in the top deck which runs my programs and a 500gb hd in the lower for storage. theres 16gb memory too. its pretty quick. excellent little computer for the money, especially if you have monitor already.
of course after you're finished doing all the upgrades i have, you're in the iMac price range.

[NativePaul]

Since Macs have gone Intel you can make your own "Hackintosh" and run OSX on it instead of windows if you prefer the Mac software and environvent. There are limitations on what hardware you can use to build a hackintosh compared to a PC, but you pay a fair market price for all the bits so they are not a complete rip-off, and may be worth reading up on if you are considering a Mac.

The 27" iMac is not a bad deal for the design, you would save less than £200 bucks building a hackingtosh equivalent which would take up more space and not look as good, however as it is basically a laptop built into the back of the monitor it uses Mobile CPUs and GPUs that have MUCH less power than the desktop equivalents, so if you didn't mind having a big box under the desk you could use lesser speced components and save money keeping the same power, or spend the same on desktop versions of the same chips and get much better performance.

Macs are semi upgradable, as above you can add memory and HDD/SSD drives which makes quite a difference to speed for todays software, monitor too if it is a pro, though Mac monitors are pretty damned good, but you can't upgrade Motherboard, CPU or GPU to let it run tomorrow's software well (unless you turn it into a hackintosh, at which point you may as well have just saved your cash and done that from the outset (and still you may be limited by the space available in the Mac's sexy form factor).

Mac's 27" thunderbolt displays are awesome for sure, I would gladly have one at home one at home if the price was a little lower (I game on a VN and an IPS would have to be a second monitor just for editing as IPS don't game as well), but they are just another 27" 1440p IPS monitor there are many others out there, both better and worse. At work we use the better and much more expensive NEC spectraview 271 reference monitors, which are 27" 1440p AH-IPS and offer 10bit/channel colour (1.07billion), vs 8bit/channel colour (16.7million) for IPS, and 6bit/channel colour (262,144) for VN panels.