How To
How to build a PC for work purposes #2
So, as in #1, the plan is to get a dedicated processing/editing machine.
What you get it entirely up to you, what your budget and OS preference is.
If you have technical person who looks after your machine(s) then it’s worth asking them how much it costs for a home-built machine Vs a pre-built one.Any IT person worth a salt will be able to put together a high-spec machine for a lot less than a shop bought one (including labour time)
For example, my current editing machine cost me £1000 to put together.It’s based on the latest Pentium processor (i7) which has 8 virtual CPU’s. It also has 12gb super fast RAM (1866), a 1Gb ATI graphics card (single) and SATA Hard drives (faster read/write to the memory). I run Windows XP64 on it, but that’s through personal preference and because Adobe’s 64 bit version of Photoshop isn’t available for Mac‘s.
To buy a PC of the same spec would have cost me easily £2000+ (and even more for a MAC PC)
Plus, because I installed the operating system myself, I left out all the programs that are unnecessary which makes the system faster, more robust and virtually impossible to be ‘hacked’.It’s important to use a 64bit Operating System if you have more than 3Gb of memory (including graphics cards) as 32 bit operating systems can only see 3Gb of memory. It also means that applications that are 64bit ‘ready’ can access all the memory available.
For example, my XP64 only takes 600Mb of the system memory, so I allow Photoshop 10Gb of the remaining memory to use as scratch space (working space for processing)
Which is plenty 🙂
With a 32 bit operating system (or program) it won’t see more than 3GbI trialled the 64 bit version of Windows 7 a few weeks ago and it was pretty quick and a huge improvement over Vista. Everything worked well including communication to my cameras (kinda important) and the connection to my Epson 9880. My performance score was 5.6 – the weakest link being my hard drive speed, so I put in an SSD (solid state disk) which brought my score up to 7.3 (7.8 being the max)
But in the end I decided to stick with XP over Windows 7 mainly because W7 requires a few more button clicks to perform regular tasks which is a step backwards in my eyes. Looks pretty and for a normal PC use it’d be fine, but for my work/editing machine I chose efficiency and function over looks.In the end the machine has to fit your needs for the work you do. the Operating system and specification of it are normally defined by use and budget, but it’s best not to skimp as if you get a machine that saves you 30 minutes a day waiting for it to process by doing it faster, then youve saved 2-3 hours a week and what’s that worth?
How to build a PC for work purposes #1
One of the key components to being a digital image maker is a PC or Server.
This is often something that is overlooked when we’re bombarded with newer, bigger resolution and faster FPS cameras every few months.
Although it’s great having top-end pro-cameras, you also need the [digital] darkroom to process the images efficiently tooWe can create files 11-60MP, 11FPS, 25-100Mb in size, yet it takes ages just to do the simplest processing, then it’s time to face the fact….. it is the weakest link…. reboot
So what can you do about it?
As with most things, the answer is fairly simple.
Below is the first step that should make an immediate change to your digital life.Sounds like a cop-out right? Well not quite. The secret to it is to also keep the one you already have 😉
So why buy another computer?
In an ideal world we would have a computer that’s as fast as lightning, never slows down over time and we’d never be distracted when using itThe new machine should be a high spec and built just for editing/processing – don’t put other programs on it if you can.
You keep your current machine/laptop as your ‘working’ device (accounting, email, paperwork,whatever…) and keep it as a backup for the main editing machine.I know it sounds like, “build a high power machine then leave it off most of the day”.
If that’s the case then great. It and you have become more efficient and so it means that you’re off working somewhere else.Another bonus is that it stops the new PC from being used unnecessarily which will over time wearing out the hard-drives and slow it down (yes, this happens)
2 key things will happen when you’re in front of the new machine which will speed you up1) You don’t have emails or IM messages or any distractions taking valuable resourses and popping up on the screen and interrupting your immersion in what you’re doing.
What you may find that what used to take you 2 hours now takes you just 1.
What could you do with an extra couple of hours in the day? 🙂2) No matter where you keep and use the new machine, psychologically you will know that this is your workplace.
It’s a lean mean editing machine.Free IT advise
I come from a technical IT background and so I thought that I may have something of value to share on both my current set-up and best practise methods which may be of some value to someone (anyone?
) out there on the interwebOver a few blog entries I’ll hopefully share with you some IT best practises that will make your computer happy which in turn will make it perform quicker and in turn improve your workflow so you can be less interrupted through your day and log-off quicker to go do something more interesting.
This isn’t necessarily just photographers – this covers anyone that uses a PC/MAC for work purposes, but I’ll lean towards the visual industry as they have higher performance requirements than the average computer user.
More to come ….