by chambo622 on 1/24/18, 4:23 AM with 225 comments
by 07d046 on 1/24/18, 5:55 AM
by virtualritz on 1/24/18, 1:36 PM
While DT has a bit more bumpy UX, it makes up for that by being more flexible than LR and really fast on Linux with a good GPU with OpenCL support. And there is nothing that LR can do that DT can't.
I.e. you don't need to shell out 6k for new box to make LR run fast. Just bite the bullet and learn another RAW editing app.
If you have thousands (or ten thousands, in my case) worth of RAWs processed in LR, just keep editing them in LR if you still have to. I often hear this as a reason why people don't want to switch.
I switched to DT in 2011. Everything before is LR. I use LR when I get images from friends who use LR and want me to do some advanced stuff for them or when I have to touch one of my pre-2011 RAWs. It is always slow on the same machine, compared to DT, but it's quite ok if you use it occasionally. :)
by striking on 1/24/18, 5:31 AM
by buro9 on 1/24/18, 6:42 AM
I did this a number of years ago and never regretted it and dual-Xeon has really helped with DxO PhotoLab and Adobe Lightroom processing time (compared to all the other computers I had access to).
Even years later I still believe that this is performing better than something I could've built myself. I think of computers like cars, in that if you upgrade 1 part significantly for performance (i.e. the engine) that it forces upgrades to everything else (i.e. brakes, chassis, cooling). A pre-built workstation balances all of these things to give one package where all of the potential is achievable.
by cageface on 1/24/18, 7:39 AM
Since I'm wrapping up the last of my iOS client work there's nothing really tying me to macOS any more and a PC seems to provide way more bang for the buck for the things I care about - Android Studio, VS Code, Ableton Live, ZBrush, and a bit of gaming here and there. Apple's hardware playbook for the last few years seems to consist entirely of making things thinner for thinness' sake and making piecewise upgrades harder and harder.
by cheeze on 1/24/18, 6:13 AM
But if ya can afford it, more power to you.
by strictnein on 1/24/18, 5:55 AM
Just the greatest site ever, if you're into building your own PCs. Fun to browse other builds, and then it makes it so simple to put together a system.
by aneutron on 1/24/18, 4:10 PM
That's reminiscent of a 4chan post where the user downloads a program, tries to execute, is then warned by Firefox, but ignores it, warned by the AV Software, but disables it, warned by Defender, and disabled, and finally warned by UAC and disables it, only to get it infected and flame away because Windows sucks.
by tabs_masterrace on 1/24/18, 6:22 AM
Over time, and with every new yearly incremental software refresh, compile times on my MacBook getting slower and slower, it started to hurt productivity. So looking at options for new hardware, I realized I could either spend $3000 on a new Mac, that on paper might not even be that much faster then my current machine, or just throw together a PC from components for a bit over $1000 and get a much faster machine.
There is just no good Mac option if you're looking for a simple i7, 32GB RAM, 256 SSD for a reasonable price.
by ranqet on 1/24/18, 5:42 AM
And Windows is fine after tweaking and adjusting dozens of settings.
I’ll just stick with a Mac.
by ternaryoperator on 1/24/18, 7:58 AM
When scowls complain that the Web is crap, this is where you take them to see what the Web could in fact be.
by bob2001 on 1/24/18, 7:13 AM
At any rate, I'm glad he enjoys what he's doing and shares i with the world, the photography really gives an effect of how he saw it, which is all to rare with people's vacation photos.
by alkonaut on 1/24/18, 8:19 AM
The "simple" solution is to run 4K at 32" or larger where you can run att 100% scaling. Unfortunately, if you want a screen with decent color you are adding serious money to get to 4k@32".
by omgtehlion on 1/24/18, 6:46 AM
Effing miners devoured everything even for twice the price...
by JepZ on 1/24/18, 4:59 PM
A few years back I build my current PC:
- Core i7-4770S (Haswell, so you see its not that new anymore)
- 32GB RAM
- SSD 840 EVO 1TB (not that new either)
- some passive PSU
Last year I added an
- AMD Radeon 460
So the whole thing is completely passively cooled.
So no noise at all and I am pretty happy with the performance. I don't know what 'instant' performance in Lightroom means, but so far my experience with Darktable was just fine (actually, I was wondering why some options have a 'slow' or 'fast' suffix). That said, I am just a casual Darktable user, so I take all my photos in RAW and JPG and view them most of the time in the JPG version, but when I would like to create a photo calendar of some sort I use Darktable to get the most out of the pictures.
The only downside is that hardware doesn't age that good :-/
$ grep -m1 bugs /proc/cpuinfo
bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2by pmlnr on 1/24/18, 1:44 PM
Given that I'm not doing retouching most of the time, dealing with raw files becoming more and more a pain, without an actual gain.
Had anyone else thought about this?
by Arn_Thor on 1/24/18, 5:52 AM
by vondur on 1/24/18, 5:34 AM
by BuckRogers on 1/24/18, 6:44 AM
It's very unfortunate that while Intel was still probably the right call for Adobe software, the I/O impact on from Intel's Meltdown patches are going to be significant on that machine. Once it all settles down and is finalized in a few months that is.
As well, the watercooling thing was pretty neat back in at the turn of the millenium. That's when the Celeron 300A and custom machined watercooling was big. I lost interest once CPUs became mostly no longer thermally limited (exception for Intel's current CPUs with the +~18C IHS issues). In general I prefer air cooling because I tend to always go for simplicity. A fan on a chunk of metal is pretty easy to troubleshoot and repair upon failure and reliable.
I did get my 80's form factor desktop again. I built a Ryzen system[1] back in March 2017, the first new computer I put together since 2008 and I love it. I get by at least.
[0]Back in the day, horizontal desktops were referred to as desktops and towers were towers.
by maxx on 1/24/18, 4:56 PM
> Watercooling
Watercooling addicts will try to argue that you can achieve a better cooling performance than with aircooling. The truth is that watercooling is at best only 1 or 2 degrees cooler than a proper aircooling system, or even worse in some tests. Then they will argue that watercooling provide a better performance/silence ratio, which also falls short when you consider that top aircooling systems are basically dead silent. You really don't want to deal with water in your PC (even with all-in-one systems) for nothing to gain.
> Not using a calibration device
I don't even understand how you can come up with the idea of writing an article about building a PC for photography/video editing while you don't already use and don't even plan to use a calibration device. The point is not even if you plan to publish, print or whatever, what is at stake is the way you view your own images. And there is ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE in buying a top of the line monitor if you don't calibrate it.
> Buying the best performing components
For 60-70% of the price of the top of the line product, you will get 95-99% of the performance of it. The same best performing product will anyway be "obsolete" (compared to the new best performing product) in a couple months and its price will drop 20-30%. This has always been true and will always be true for any PC building. This is even more true for an editing station since the top of the line will not even give you the 1-5% performance benefit you should expect.
> Buying a gaming video card
Particularly the top of the line. Your editing software will never use the processor and the memory that comes with such a gaming video card. And only pro cards will provide you 10-bit workflow, which is what you need if you bought an editing monitor with 10-bit panel and 99-100% Adobe coverage. You can buy an entry-level pro card, it will be more than enough for Lightroom/Capture One/Photoshop/Premiere/etc. IF you don't buy a pro card, then why do you buy such a monitor?
> Bothering with huge overclocking or with RAM latencies (!)
I agree it's quite easy now to do some overclocking, but you should not aim for the extreme. It's your work machine, you want stability.
> Delidding your CPU
What?! Just don't that. Let's be serious a minute.
by PuffinBlue on 1/24/18, 9:26 AM
> I couldn't quickly ascertain how each slot was identified in the UEFI and I didn't want to mistake installing Windows on the wrong drive. To solve this I only installed the SSD under the heatsink first and would install the other one after I had Windows up and running.
I've found this to be the best way to install Windows whatever the circumstance as it will often install the bootloader on whatever the BIOS says is attached to slot 0 and then the rest of the operating system to the disk you specified.
By only having one disk installed you save the hassle of sorting it out later.
by riku_iki on 1/24/18, 6:01 AM
by anfractuosity on 1/24/18, 10:33 AM
(I don't really do that much fiddling with the photos though).
The photos are actually stored on my Linux filesystem and provided to Windows via VirtualBox's file sharing feature.
And then I just rsync the photos to a backup computer.
by petepete on 1/24/18, 7:59 AM
by jccalhoun on 1/24/18, 5:24 PM
by balls187 on 1/24/18, 5:12 PM
I recently upgraded from a 5d2 to a Mark4, and the integration with the iphone made for an interesting workflow. As I shoot, I take mental notes about what type of adjustments I'll make in post processing, and with Lightroom Mobile, I was able to take a handful of shots, and share them via social media.
I'm considering switching a workflow from my heavy duty gaming rig, to using something like a Surface Pro.
by parski on 1/24/18, 9:27 AM
Why did you go with a water cooler?
by msh on 1/24/18, 11:46 AM
I think, personally, I would prefer a 3K machine that I replaced twich as often.
by gharient on 1/24/18, 6:27 AM
by ranqet on 1/24/18, 6:01 AM
by Aloha on 1/24/18, 6:24 AM
"You need to learn to see and compose. The more time you waste worrying about your equipment the less time you'll have to put into creating great images. Worry about your images, not your equipment."
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm
You can guess which category I feel this fellow falls into.
I hope he got a great deal of pleasure building his system - it does look very impressive (if not downright pretty), but it doesn't make me think any more, or less of his photography.
by stef25 on 1/24/18, 9:10 AM
by pcunite on 1/24/18, 2:37 PM
Atom text editor (Give vsCode a try too). Also look at FileSearchEX, the proper way to find files.
by pcunite on 1/24/18, 2:19 PM
Except securing it with Software Restriction Polices.
by duke360 on 1/24/18, 3:05 PM
by th0ma5 on 1/24/18, 5:47 AM
I am always enamored with the simplicity of one's living space being directly proportional to wealth. I try hard to not have much stuff, but my living options are seemingly always going to be working class style places with pretty much the antithesis of what is apparent in this photo.
Of course the camera lies, and I shouldn't compare my insides to some else's outsides. There's probably a new puppy being paper trained just behind the camera, or a bunch of pocket change and random pens in a pile usually on that desk, but I do lament that I may never have such a simple, clean, and uncluttered living space. The spaces I may ever have will have things like unvaulted ceilings, windowsills, trim, standard door size passages between rooms, probably carpet heh...
I do wonder if such things prevent clarity of thought.
by farslan on 1/24/18, 6:32 AM
by patrickg_zill on 1/24/18, 7:09 AM
I have found it does a better job of handling the Sony files than just about anything else. Also is GPU accelerated.
My experience is based on the Sony RX10 files, and a friend of mine who uses it for handling his A7Rii files.
A free version is available for use with Sony RAWs; or you can upgrade to the full version of the software at a low price. Just a happy user, I have no financial interest in the company.
by gt_ on 1/24/18, 5:44 AM
by dingo_bat on 1/24/18, 12:38 PM
Also, OP should take a look at VS code. It integrates very well with GNU/Windows.
by ss248 on 1/24/18, 6:12 AM
Water-cooled machine should be a custom loop. It's a lot more hassle, but that's exactly why it's interesting. All-in-one systems are just like traditional air systems with big radiators, the only big difference is that you can move the radiator around.
