Another PC upgrade request for help

[Cogito]

Well done, Dave. Send us an image when you've got it installed! I think I would have gone for a bigger power supply but we beggars can't always be choosers.

[billtils]

Bill and Manfred,

So you are saying that the read/write performance of SSD is generally better than HDD. Do you guys also store your huge files there

Leo, yes, and yes! And you can get a 2TB SSD from Crucial for around £500; unit cost of SSDs is dropping all the time, and performance increasing, so size is not really an issue any more.

[Sam W]

Dave - not sure if you have purchased your PC components but if not I have a suggestion on the case. In addition to processing speed an important factor to me was noise. I wanted a very quiet PC. Therefore I purchased a case from the brand BeQuiet!. I am very happy with it. https://www.amazon.com/quiet-Silent-.../dp/B00PK3TW3I. In the scheme of things it is not all that expensive ($140) and when I upgrade components in the future this one of them that I will not need to upgrade. I bought the tall tower since it allows my big hands room to maneuver. There are several You Tube videos on this case which ultimately convinced me to select this it over others. Good luck.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for the thought, yes, although I may not have specifically mentioned it, noise is a potential issue for me since the tower will sit on the desk behind the main monitor for ease of access to pluggery. My days of grovelling under a bench (in all the inevitable dust) are over!

Therefore I have been paying attention to this aspect in Case and CPU cooler choices, but given that I'm on a budget, I'll being likely going with cheapest items that specifically 'say'* they are quieter.

I'm not building the system myself (and I haven't ordered it yet), so final decisions may be guided by the sales people** of the supplier, now more likely to be PC Specialist (thanks JamesG), than Novatech.

* and ** when written out like that, these statements appear very naive, but what's a guy to do!

Current case choice is "CoolerMaster Silencio 452 Quiet Mid Tower" (with just the standard 2 fans) and for CPU; the "Super Quiet Titan Dragonfly Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler; i5 6600K at 3.5 MHz, but not over-clocked.

I'd probably have to order the whole PC from BeQuiet to get that case (given I don't want to build it myself), so I'll probably stick with what's above unless someone (here or at PC Specialists) advises I'll regret it big time. I recall I did initially consider BeQuiet as the system supplier, but ruled them out for some reason I have now forgotten

With my constant Tinnitus, I may be worrying too much anyway

Thanks again, Dave

[Dave Humphries]

UPDATE:

This afternoon I finally ordered the following from "PCSpecialist":

Case COOLERMASTER SILENCIO 452 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel Core i5 Quad Core Processor i5-6600K (3.5GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS Z170-E: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM) 16GB HyperX SAVAGE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 8GB Kit)
Graphics Card 3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP
1st Hard Disk 500GB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 2TB WD BLACK 3.5" WD2003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
Optical Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER
Power Supply CORSAIR 550W VS SERIES VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
Processor Cooling Super Quiet Titan DragonFly Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler
Operating System Genuine Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence

Build time is stated as "3-5 working days", plus 'next day' delivery, so with a bit of luck I should receive it early next week.

The PSU is oversized (by 150W) for what I have specified (they recommended 450W as sufficient), but since I will be running USB powered drive(s), plus there's space for more RAM and if I ever upgrade monitors, I may need a bigger/better GPU, I stuck to what I'd picked.

Hope it is good and will stand the test of time; I told my wife it would last me as long as the previous one, which has done 6.5 years.

My thanks for everyone's input above, Dave

[billtils]

If its performance matches the expectation from the above spec (which I think it will) you are going to be one happy chappy! Enjoy another 6.5 years ...

[Black Pearl]

Thats a nice sounds, solid looking and great mix of cost over grunt list of components. I reckon you will get your required years from it no problem.

[ST1]

That looks to be a good specification Dave which makes me think that I should be considering a refresh of my PC.

[Ken MT]

And what is the expected price of your dream machine?

[Dave Humphries]

Update - it's here and now in use!

Hi all, well it's taken me the best part of a week to get (just about) everything set up and files transferred across.
As of last night, or I should say, early this morning; the new PC sits atop a recently cleaned desk, now connected to all the accessories - which all seem to work.

I have not processed any pictures with it yet, but have opened the odd file in PS, to see how quick it is to do that; previously it took significantly longer than a minute to load PS and open a raw file, now? 10 seconds! - but that's off a USB2 connected external HDD (for direct comparison). In future, I intend to have the 'working folder' of RAW images on the SSD, which should improve things again - I'll let you know.


I intend to start using LR, but that installed with the catalogue on the 'documents' HDD (not SSD), so I just have to figure out how to move it - I suspect it may be a case of do it in Windows, then fire up LR and when it can't find a catalog, show it where it is - since I couldn't see an option with LR to move a cataog (and associated previews folder, etc.).


Another query I have is that I installed the Nik collection (not had that before) and now there's an annoying "Selective Tool" dialog that's always there when I open PS, sitting on top of everything - any idea how to hide that (until I need it)?


Thanks in advance for any answers.

And what is the expected price of your dream machine?

Hi Ken,

Sorry, didn't spot your question until I came back to update the thread

It came out to £1325 (GBP) for the machine with OS - although the 'dream machine' would have been twice that I'm not complaining


One pleasant surprise was that I ordered an i5 6600K the day before 7th Gen i3, i5, i7 CPUs hit the shelves, but they fitted an i5 7600K for me (and seem to have given it an overclock), so the CPU is running at 4 GHz, a bit up from the 3.8 'standard' and a lot up from the 3.4 GHz I was expecting of the i5 6600K.


The RAM seems to run at 2133 MHz (according to Task Manager), despite being rated 2666 MHz, but I'm told it should speed up if/when it needs to, does that sound right? I haven't done enough intensive work to check this out yet.


Having chosen a motherboard with plenty of USB3 sockets (4, with another two spare inside I could bring out to a new back plate), I find most of my current peripherals are only USB2 anyway*, but I guess over time, that'll change and it was intended to be as future proof as my budget allowed.

* or probably wouldn't benefit from the speed increase; e.g. keyboard, mouse, tablet, printer, scanner - I guess the latter might, when it is eventually replaced (it is USB2, dating from 2011).

One good thing; Canon seem to have listened to complaints about a lack of Win 10 driver support - I really struggled to get my iP4300 printer to work on the old PC after upgrade to Win 10, but it all happened automatically when I connected it last night on the new PC - how much of that previous struggle was related to old h/w or the u/g to Win 10 from Win 7, I don't know (or care now), I suspect the driver hasn't changed (from the Win 8.1 version), just they made it registered for Win 10.

Thanks for everyone's help, Dave

[pnodrog]

Dave, put the LR catalog wherever you want it then double click on it and LR should open it up. The problem will be correcting the path to your photographs but LR will help you locate them.

[Ken MT]

It came in below the price on #1, but a bit more than the initial budget. Well done.

[Ken MT]

"Having chosen a motherboard with plenty of USB3 sockets (4, with another two spare inside I could bring out to a new back plate), I find most of my current peripherals are only USB2 anyway*, but I guess over time, that'll change and it was intended to be as future proof as my budget allowed."

I suggest that if you use a card reader to download images, then a USB3 reader is well worth the cost. It really slices the download time by about 5 times.

[Dave Humphries]

Dave, put the LR catalog wherever you want it then double click on it and LR should open it up. The problem will be correcting the path to your photographs but LR will help you locate them.

The LR is still a clean install at the moment, just the default empty catalog, I've not told it where to look for my pictures, so that initial import is still all ahead of me.

I suggest that if you use a card reader to download images, then a USB3 reader is well worth the cost. It really slices the download time by about 5 times.

As it happens, the case has an SD card reader which the words suggest is USB3, but I'll believe that when I've tried it and I see whether it is noticeably faster than my old one, I ought to notice that much difference

However, there's already a USB3 card reader in one of my Amazon Wish lists, because I did that research when the initial case I was considering didn't have a reader built in.

It came in below the price on #1, but a bit more than the initial budget. Well done.

Thanks Ken.

Cheers, Dave