I've stretched my desktop out to three years this time...mainly because it's been pretty good. But I'm thinking, if speeds have improved, it's time for a new one.
Cost isn't as important as configuration and expandability (since I work on the computer), though I've done pretty well in the $1200-1900 range lately (I used to always spend >3000!.
I've had HP's for the last few computers, which were bargains, and have been pretty happy with them except the last one only had two HD drive bays. I see they have three now, but I was thinking it might be nice to have four or more.
I also want 32GB memory, though I can live with 24 (I have 16 now) and I'm always running out of it with LR, PS and other things I run.
I run a lot of concurrent data conversion software (XML), so my current PC has a 6 core Intel Extreme processor. Not sure if I'm determined to get another 6 (adds a lot to the price) or just a quad. Lightroom seems sluggish to me though, particularly when switching to an image, and waiting for it to "load the high res version" rather than the preview.
I don't boot from the SSD (I hardly ever reboot), but I map disk intensive data to it using NTFS junctions.
What else should I look for as improvements to my existing configuration below (or specific component recommendations, including motherboard)? Is there a significant real-world impact of faster RAM? Does anyone have a configuration recommendation or vendor recommendation. (And, no, I don't want a Mac...I had a Mac Pro a few computers ago and didn't like it.)
Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller 1 : HP LPC Interface Controller
LPC Legacy Controller 1 : Fintek F71858DG
Audio Device : HP HD Audio Controller
Audio Codec : Realtek Semi 888 High Definition Audio
Audio Device : Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1290 (Model 85xxx, Combo ATSC/QAM, 888 DIF, SW Encode)
Disk Controller : HP ICH8R (ICH8) SATA RAID Controller
Disk Controller : HP JMB36X PCIE-to-SATAII/IDE RAID Controller
USB Controller 1 : HP USB UHCI Controller #4
USB Controller 2 : HP USB UHCI Controller #5
USB Controller 3 : HP USB UHCI Controller #6
USB Controller 4 : HP USB EHCI Controller #2
USB Controller 5 : HP USB UHCI Controller #1
USB Controller 6 : HP USB UHCI Controller #2
USB Controller 7 : HP USB UHCI Controller #3
USB Controller 8 : HP USB EHCI Controller #1
FireWire/1394 Controller 1 : HP VT6315 Series Firewire Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller 1 : Intel ICH SMBus
Neil, the latest i7 chips will give you some marginal advantage, and are more power-efficient, but don't expect a big performance leap. My current system is just a bit more recent, being based on the i7 2600K processor. I have no plans to upgrade the system, at least not for another 2 years or so. Now, upgrading components, that's another matter. I am replacing the RAID array I am booting from with a SSD (doing that this coming week). I am also looking at updating my aging nVidia Quadro 370 graphics cared with a Quadro 600. Perhaps a couple other things, but otherwise, IMO, the bang for the buck just isn't there.
I don't know that you can expect more than marginal improvement with a new box. What you already have is not that far from current state of the art. I built my own desktop from $1200 in parts last summer, and its specs are only marginally better than what you have already. It runs LR+PS+Nik great, and boots in 6 seconds (SSD FTW!). Have you done any sort of analysis of what the bottleneck is when it's bogging down?
Besides figuring out where the bottleneck is (in the case of my old machine, it was perpetually waiting for the disk to do things), I found it really helpful to go through and google things like "optimize lightroom", "optimize photoshop", etc. I found with Lightroom especially, having it set up correctly got rid of most of those long waits when I opened an image.
Thanks, yes, I was afraid I wasn't going to see much of an improvement, despite three years of progress!
Memory seems to be my biggest problem (both on my machine and in my head).
Not for general use, but definitely for LR. Maybe it's the size of my database...I like having only one, especially since they don't really support easily having two open at once to move stuff around.
I could just replace all the memory - I think 32GB is only about $320 now.
My fans did incidentally just start getting noisy...it's irritating, but up until now, I've never even had the side panel back on it...so I could put that on (though it wasn't noisy before, so something could be failing.)
I haven't built one since 2006, but would you consider an AMD processor over Intel? I know technology changes a lot and I haven't kept up with it, but at least back then, the AMD chips were faster per dollar spent. I haven't had any problems with the AMD chips. Not like in the ole days.
I haven't built one since 2006, but would you consider an AMD processor over Intel? I know technology changes a lot and I haven't kept up with it, but at least back then, the AMD chips were faster per dollar spent. I haven't had any problems with the AMD chips. Not like in the ole days.
In the high-performance desktop world, almost nobody is choosing AMD today over Intel. Just not competitive, IMO. Much different than, say, five years ago when AMD had an edge in price per performance, even if their chips were a bit more power-hungry.
Thanks. Good to know. Though, by the time I'm ready to rebuild everything will have changed again. :)
Originally posted by kirbic:
Originally posted by PGerst:
I haven't built one since 2006, but would you consider an AMD processor over Intel? I know technology changes a lot and I haven't kept up with it, but at least back then, the AMD chips were faster per dollar spent. I haven't had any problems with the AMD chips. Not like in the ole days.
In the high-performance desktop world, almost nobody is choosing AMD today over Intel. Just not competitive, IMO. Much different than, say, five years ago when AMD had an edge in price per performance, even if their chips were a bit more power-hungry.
If the fans got noisy recently, you can try spraying them out with a can of air. If they're still noisy, you've probably got one going bad. The fan itself is cheap to replace, although I don't know anything about whether or not HP cases take standard size fans. You'll have to open the case and take a look at what's in there.
Hmmm...I can't figure out what is making the noise. It comes and goes. Definitely a vibration...I'd say maybe the whole friggin mother board is vibrating at this point.
But I am also realizing that I gave away my backup PC (my last one) so that if this one goes down, I'm out of work for a bit (I can't work on my laptop really...nor my Mac Pro.)
So I'm looking around ...found this deal, which seems pretty sweet, though it's another "case" and motherboard compromise for me.
HP ENVY Phoenix 810-170st Desktop PC
E3W49AV#ABA
Windows 8.1 64
3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4930K processor hexa-core [3.4GHz, 12MB Shared Cache]
4GB Nvidia GeForce GT640 [DX11,DVI,DP,HDMI & VGA via adapter]
32GB DDR3-1600MHz [4 DIMMs]
256GB Solid state drive
No Secondary HDD
Microsoft Office Trial
Security software trial
Blu-ray Reader & SuperMulti DVD burner
15-in-1 Multi-slot Media Card Reader, 4 USB Ports (Front/Top), Audio [Front 2USB2.0, Top 2USB3.0]
No TV Tuner Card
Integrated Sound, Envy Audio; Beats Audio
HP USB Keyboard and USB Optical Mouse
HP WLAN 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth®(1x1)
HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope
Estimated ship date: January 7, 2014
This ships free Free standard shipping on this item
The HP Home & Home Office Store will accept returns or exchanges for this product up to 21 days after delivery
Update
Remove
$2,264.99
Coupon:–$453.00
Price after savings:$1,811.99
They charge too much for hard drives, so I thought I'd add my own. Could take them out of this computer (I have a 3GB and 4GB WD Black in them, as well as the SSD), or just add new ones...WD Black 4gb now going for $250 each.
I did a custom configure over at Origin PC which is pretty sweet, but twice the price though it has more precisely what I'd like in it:
GENESIS Pro
Details
Case: Enermax Fulmo GT
Current Special Offers: Holiday Special Offer (Games and Beanie Included)
The ORIGIN Difference: Truly Custom PC's. Want a component that is not on our site? Call or email us and we will include it in your system.
Case Fans: ORIGIN High-Performance Ultra Silent Fans - Black
Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 WS
System Cooling: ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling Systems
Processors: Overclocked Intel Core i7 4930K Hex-Core (4.1GHz-4.3GHz) - FREE OVERCLOCK
Power Supply: 850 Watt Corsair RM850
Graphic Cards: Single 1GB NVIDIA Quadro 600
Memory: 32GB Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz (4x8GB)
Operating System: Genuine MS Windows 8.1 Professional 64-Bit Edition
Hard Drive Cage: 5 Bay Hot-Swap Cage
Hard Drive One: 240GB Intel DC S3500
Hard Drive Two: 4TB Western Digital Black SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache
Optical Drive One: 12X Blu-ray Burner
Media Card Reader: 40-in-1 Media Card Reader
Audio: On Board Audio
Networking: Onboard Network Port
ORIGIN Maximum Protection Shipping Process: ORIGIN Wooden Crate Armor
Warranty: 1 Year Part Replacement and 45 Day Free Shipping Warranty with Lifetime Labor/24-7 Support
ORIGIN Recovery: ORIGIN Recovery USB3.0 Flash Drive
Total: $3,638.19
Well not quite twice the price since I did put one WD drive in there and the Blu-ray burner (though I don't think shipping is free like HP). Also the quadro, but unless it affects Photoshop or Lightroom, I don't really do or care about graphics.
Ran across something new & interesting recently. AVG has a purchase version that shuts down all the background apps until they are accessed - then transparently starts the one(s) needed, and shuts it/them back down when done. Something like that should give a very nice performance boost to an existing pc. (The one I saw was running on a Windows Vista laptop. Yikes!)
My computer blue screened again today...that's twice in a week or so. And this computer has only done that twice before in it's 3-year lifespan (which was due to the video card dying).
Without another decent backup computer, I couldn't wait...ordered this one:
HP ENVY Phoenix 810-170st Desktop PC
E3W49AV#ABA
Windows 8.1 64
3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4930K processor hexa-core [3.4GHz, 12MB Shared Cache]
4GB Nvidia GeForce GT640 [DX11,DVI,DP,HDMI & VGA via adapter]
32GB DDR3-1600MHz [4 DIMMs]
256GB Solid state drive
No Secondary HDD
Microsoft Office Trial
Security software trial
Blu-ray Reader & SuperMulti DVD burner
15-in-1 Multi-slot Media Card Reader, 4 USB Ports (Front/Top), Audio [Front 2USB2.0, Top 2USB3.0]
No TV Tuner Card
Integrated Sound, Envy Audio; Beats Audio
HP USB Keyboard and USB Optical Mouse
HP WLAN 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth®(1x1)
HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope
Estimated ship date: January 7, 2014
This ships free Free standard shipping on this item
The HP Home & Home Office Store will accept returns or exchanges for this product up to 21 days after delivery
Update
Remove
$2,264.99
Coupon:–$453.00
Price after savings:$1,811.99
I would have liked to go for a Haswell computer but after reading some benchmarks, the 6 core will trump any 4 cores for my applications.
New computer is coming tomorrow! I'm looking forward to it. I am finding I can't run Lightroom and PS together perhaps due to both being memory hogs...They eat up whatever memory is left then everything slows down. 32 GB in the new computer will hopefully help!
Meanwhile, I figured out the fan noise...it's the video card (it was the video card from my older computer so it's pretty old...this computer's video card went belly up 8 months ago.
I still am doing my work on the other computer, I need to install my work environment here. But I am a bit concerned about a smell it's emitting...sort of a low key version of "something electronic is burning". I've opened the window in my office to make sure I don't inhale any fumes. But it's working ok...maybe just a new computer, epoxy burning smell? Of course, I don't recall ever having that before.
Anyway, got it running (Windows 8.1) and installed BitDefender and SISandra lite. Right now it only has one drive...when I'm sure it's not burning up, I'll add my data drives (I have 2x4TB WD black drives going inside to compliment the SSD).
There's no more Windows User Experience index in Windows 8.1 But here's how it did on the SISandra light benchmark.
SiSoftware Official Live Ranker
Details for Result ID HP 810-170st 103C_53316J G-D (Pegatron 2ACE) (Intel Core i7-4930K CPU @ 3.40GHz; Intel Core DMI2; 4x 8GB Kingston HP698651-154-KEB DIMM DDR3 PC; Micron MTFDDAK256MAM-1K1; NVIDIA GeForce GT 640)
Local Rank #802
Position Higher than 87.72% ranked results
Points 88
Score 8.8kPT
Qualification Good Performance :)
Created 20:22:30
But that report seems to also have the individual breakdown of tests.
ETA: I think the difference is that this link shows my "global" rank and the other my "local" rank...whatever that means!
Here's a comparison using GeekBench32 (tryout mode) on both my old and new computer:
Old:
Geekbench 3.1.4 Tryout for Windows x86 (32-bit)
Single-Core Score: 2340
Multi-Core Score: 10819 System Information
Hewlett-Packard HPE-490t
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Model Hewlett-Packard HPE-490t
Processor Intel Core i7-980X @ 3.33 GHz
1 processor, 6 cores, 12 threads
Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 44 Stepping 2
Processor Codename Gulftown
Processor Package Socket 1366 LGA
Motherboard PEGATRON CORPORATION 2A86
Northbridge Intel X58 13
Southbridge Intel 82801JR (ICH10R) 00
BIOS American Megatrends Inc. 6.10
Memory 16384 MB DDR3 SDRAM 532MHz
New:
Hewlett-Packard 810-170st
Geekbench 3.1.4 Tryout for Windows x86 (32-bit)
Single-Core Score: 3233
Multi-Core Score: 19082 Result Information
Upload Date 2014-01-14
Views 1
System Information
Hewlett-Packard 810-170st
Operating System Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
Model Hewlett-Packard 810-170st
Processor Intel Core i7-4930K @ 3.40 GHz
1 processor, 6 cores, 12 threads
Processor ID GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 62 Stepping 4
Processor Codename
Processor Package
Motherboard PEGATRON CORPORATION 2ACE
Northbridge Intel ID0E00 04
Southbridge Intel X79 06
BIOS AMI 8.18
Memory 32704 MB -1MHz
