|
Articles and Reviews
|
Home >> Photography >> Digital Rolling
Your Own - Building Your Own Custom PC A digital darkroom is something that can be accessible to most photographers because the heart of the digital darkroom is a computer rather than an enlarger that must be located in a dedicated room set aside for a chemical darkroom with all of its attendant rank chemicals, safe lights and drying lines. Not to mention the flowing water and sink/tub required to rinse and wash the film and prints in various trays and tubs. If you already have a home computer bought for surfing the Internet, the kids’ homework, or taking care of personal business and finances, you can easily install some basic image editing software, such as from Adobe, ArcSoft, or ULead and begin editing digital captures of scanned images immediately. For most consumers, this is all that they will ever need and they would never think about upgrading the computer into a powerhouse, workstation-like machine. However, since CameraHobby looks at photography from a serious amateur or enthusiast’s perspective, merely good enough for a consumer is not good enough for us. First and foremost, enthusiasts would be using more powerful image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop CS or Picture Window Pro. These applications can do edits on 16 bit image files, which allow a greater ability to retain detail and tonality than 8 bit image files. The difference in performance required to work with 16 bit files (TIFFs or Adobe PSD files) can be dramatic compared to just working with 8 bit files, such as plain Jane JPEGs. Platform The original draft of this article had a lengthly Mac versus PC piece here, but I decided that life's too short to get into another endless and useless debate about the merits of one system versus another (Nikon versus Canon anyone?) The choice of the platform is personal, so go out to a well stocked computer shop and check out both systems and see which works FOR YOU. Don’t go on the advice of some Mac-head claiming to have used them for two-decades, or me as a PC-user for 15 years. BOTH systems can do the job effectively TODAY. You’re going to be spending a large sum of money, so make sure you do what’s best for you and not get swayed by someone else who has already made a committed decision for one camp or the other. For me, I'm in the PC camp and quite happy with it. System Components
There are several mainstream brands offering a huge assortment of systems catering to all price ranges. Dell is the king of the PC makers at this point with others such as Gateway and Hewlett Packard/Compaq competing against the Texas-based giant. Then there is IBM, the company that created the PC, still in the market, but very much a diminished player for both market share and the supreme quality it once offered, although they are the chip suppliers for Mac systems. Added to these huge multinationals are the thousands if not millions of mom and pop shops around the world that build store brand computers, using off the shelf parts. Any of these computers is fine for everyday use for Internet surfing or hacking out irrelevant Internet reviews, but not all will be equal or up to the task of editing large image files effectively. Buying a student special P4 2.4 GHz computer from Dell for $1000 or less is not likely to light a Mercurial blaze under the digital darkroom enthusiast’s feet (but it will probably still match a grossly expensive dual-processor Mac G4 J). Whereas a carefully configured box from a mom and pop shop, which will cost more, might just float your boat and give Photoshop the performance it craves. It all just depends. The PC market also allows those so inclined to roll their own, i.e., build their own custom computer and create a hotrod machine that will slay those digital files. It requires a lot more research and a bit of handiness and elbow grease, but the rewards can be quite high and significantly cheaper than what Dell would ask for a similarly configured machine. I’ve been wanting and needing (really, honest) a computer upgrade for a little while now and the moon and the stars have finally aligned correctly to allow chance to favour me in building a custom box for my digital darkroom. Okay, I have to disclose that I did not actually build the box myself, I specified the parts and my brother-in-law built the box for me, just he has done for the last three or four computers I’ve been using, except that for those previous computers I accepted whatever he put inside for me. The last box I’ve been using for almost two-years now (seen below) has been a:
The box I had custom built features:
Let’s look briefly at each component and why it was chosen.
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Motherboard – this motherboard has received excellent reviews on various Internet review web sites with performance specs that are tops. Price is reasonable for a high performance board and it’s loaded with some great features for expanding the system. This particular board is also friendly for those wanting to over clock their CPUs, providing greater performance than comparable boards from competitor Gigabyte. Plenty of USB 2 capacity and Firewire available with built-in RAID capability for those so inclined, or paranoid about their data integrity.
PC3200 400 MHz DDR RAM is currently the cost-effective performance choice for hotrod computers. You can "almost" never have too much RAM for Photoshop, but there can be practical limitations to how much RAM you can force down Windows XP’s throat. Although most motherboards can handle 4 GB or more RAM, 2 GB is the practical limit for Windows XP at this time (as well as for Photoshop apparently), but the next generation Windows (Longhorn) should do away with such limits and is likely 64 bit processor friendly too. You also want to have matched sets of RAM, i.e., two 512 MB modules for a 1 GB machine, or four 512 MB modules or two 1 GB modules for a 2 GB machine. What you do not want to do is run a machine with an odd number of RAM modules (single RAM module PCs excepted). I'll soon be running four 512 MB modules from Kingston that hurt the wallet, but not as much as two 1 GB modules would have.
I thought about buying two smaller 36 GB SATA drives also running at 10k RPM (the original 10k SATA drives), since all things being equal, having a couple of smaller hard drives provides more security in case one fails, so that you’ve not lost a whole lot of your data. However, the 36 GB drives, while providing increased performance were known to be a bit noisy and did not provide the promised very high performance due to Western Digital running into cost constraints and needing to back down the ultimate performance of the 36 GB drives. The 74 GB drive reduces the noise and increases the performance and made for an obvious choice to use as the primary OS and applications drive. The original plan was to have one 74 GB drive and a 250 GB Western Digital drive running at 7200 RPM for storage, but my supplier ordered two 74 GB drives instead and I figured what the hell, might as well go for speed all the way, so I kept the second 74 GB drive and will add a 250 GB drive later on when I really need the storage. By that time, I'm likely to go with that 250 drive as an external Firewire or USB 2 unit for added security. And, I still have the 120 GB hard drive from the old system if I require additional storage down the road (but I may keep the old 1.7 GHz system largely intact and around for kicks). This would be as an addition to burning CD-Rs or DVD-Rs, not as a replacement for archival purposes - most of my important files are backed up 3-4 times on CD-R and DVD-R and the files for this web site alone are probably on 7-8 CD-R and DVD-Rs (although now useless since doing another redesign change), as I was backing up in anticipation towards upgrading to the new PC.
The 9800 XT is a middle of the pack video card, but it still costs dearly, nearly two times the cost of the 3.06 GHz CPU chip alone. For gamers, such extravagance is warranted and a must, cost being no issue. This group seems to dictate or else greatly influence the edge of the art in computing performance and compels companies such as ATI, nVidia, and Matrox into spending millions in R&D to produce the best video cards on the market. You’ll find that these three companies leap frog each other for top dog status with ATI currently holding this position now, but who knows later on in 2004, because it was only a year or so ago that people were writing off ATI as a has-been despite its rather long history of being a major video card producer. Add to that insider reporting charges against the CEO of the company and it was looking like ATI was going to be gone, but how quickly times change and the 9800XT is helping to lead ATI out of the woods. Unfortunately for me, the 9800XT card was nowhere to be found by my supplier and my new computer was sitting nearly complete, needing only the video card to make it whole. It had already been delayed waiting for the hard drives to arrive and it was decided that waiting for the $600 video card to come in wasn't worth it due to the loss of productivity on my part - no photo files worked on since before Christmas due to the old desktop gasping and wheezing whenever I went near it with a full flash card of RAW files. Thus I went with the card below the XT version and saved myself almost 50% in cost. Since I'm not a gamer, it really was not a loss in performance and speed. For the truly spendthrift, video cards can bust the bank at over $1000, which is why I called the $600 Radeon 9800XT middle of the pack.
Antec case – this was a freebie from my brother-in-law, so who am I to argue. The old days of having a computer with but one fan unit for the power supply are long gone and now we have CPU chips and expansion cards coming with their own dedicated fan units and heat sinks. We also have multiple fans inside the box to create continuous air circulation so that hot air is never in one place. Typically, a fan unit in the lower front of the case draws in cool air with other fan units placed strategically near the rear of the case to move that cool air into their various zones. While Mac users coo about the elegance of their boxes PC users can choose from literally hundreds of cases to house their motherboards and drives. The in-thing now are cases with transparent covers and glowing neon lights. Maybe for the hardcore gamers, but I’ll take the standard beige or black box, so long as it is designed well and has the ability to fit everything that I want for my custom hotrod.
I took one of the plastic strips out and then looked at the 5 inch bays, back and forth I looked until the lightbulb went "DING"! Ah, I first attach a plastic strip on either side of the optical drive and then slide in the unit until the plastic strip hits a bumper inside the bay to stop it from falling inside the case. Okay, I'm cruising, only two-hours of wasted time taking apart the old case and prepping for the new one. But it would have helped if I hadn't screwed on the plastic guide strips incorrectly, D'oh! Once installed properly, the optical drives slid in and snapped-locked in place thanks to two metal tension levers at the front of the drives (attached to the plastic guides). Unlocking a drive from its bay just requires the two tension levers to be pushed in and then the optical bay pulls out. It is much better than having to screw a drive right into the interal bay casing itself, a la the old fashioned method. Once done, a swing out door covers the expansion bays and the whole case looks something like the monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey. The new cases available come with quick on/off retaining screws for the side cover. No more screwdriver required to access the innards of the case, meaning no more plugging and unplugging cables to get at the rear to access those screws. The new case being heavier and thicker than the old aluminum case is actually quieter despite having more fans internally. CD-RW and DVD-RW - optical drives are holdovers from the old 1.7 GHz box and there is no reason to not to continue using them in a new performance machine. Eventually though, I will probably replace the CD-RW drive for the 8x DVD-RW drives once they reach critical mass and become as cheap as the 4x DVD drive I have now. Given the high capacity of DVDs, this is the choice for archiving files although at this point we have no data to determine just how long the effective life of a DVD-R will be. Even burning regular CD-Rs is now done on the DVD-RW drive due its 24x recording speed compared to my HP CD-RW at 12x recording speed (yes, it's an older unit, but still good and worth less than $50 these days, a significant drop from the $300 plus I paid for it almost two-years ago).
From all this, you might have noticed that I did not mention a thing about sound. Well, most motherboards come with integrated sound capabilities and some are so damn good, they give the third party companies, such as SoundBlaster, a run for the money. The Asus board I bought has 6.1 channel surround sound, so I'm not likely to add to the cost of the total system with an expensive Soundblaster Audigy card. Better to put the money towards something more useful, such as another hard drive or more RAM. Once the hardware was installed, it was time to install the OS, which is pretty easy to do with Windows XP being self-loading during the boot process. Except the chimp in me didn't pay attention when I created partitions for the hard drives and failed to notice that I did not select the C drive for installing the OS. A half-hour later I realized that I had Win XP loaded on the second hard drive and although it really would not have made any practical difference, I really didn't want my system folders to be on D drive. Second time around, I got Win XP on C drive and D drive is wiped out. I've connected to the Internet and I've spent over an hour getting all the Windows updates for XP and XP Office. I'm humming along when I decide that now's the time to load Norton Internet Security. I inadvertantly bypass the registration process, but no big deal I thought except that the Norton install somehow got corrupted and messed up the whole system. I cannot even un-install the damn application and now I understand why Norton has such a bad reputation for taking over a system like a cancer and without Norton working properly it's cut off access to the Internet. I mess around with the Registry to try and get rid of Norton and thought that I got it right, but subsequent installs of Norton never worked correctly and considering my mucking around with Windows' Registry, the Whitesnake lyric, "Here I go again..." pops in mind and I want to format and start again. Problem is, you cannot format the System drive while you've booted up Windows, hell, you can't do a damn thing with the System drive. Loading the Win XP CD and then restarting does nothing, and mucking around with it just got me an install of XP on another partition, double-D'oh! At least I got Internet access again. A bit of research on the net got me into the BIOS and I've set-up the CD-RW drive as my first boot drive and now I'm finally back in business with all drives wiped out and a fresh install again, many curses at Mr. Norton along the way. I also discover that re-installing the OS is the way to wipe out any partitions you may have created but wish to uncreate. By this point, it's late and I'm grumpy and I go to bed to finish the software install another day. Custom System Cost versus Mac versus Dell (prices referenced in January, so they are likely lower by this point and are in Canadian $) Apple Mac – Single processor G5 (1.6 GHz)
Dell Precision 360 – Single Processor P4 (3.06 HT)
Custom System – Single Processor P4 (3.06 HT)
The cost of the custom system for me is actually cheaper since I already have the two optical units from before, but I wanted to be conservative and not forget all the other incidentals that need to be included such as cables, extra fan units, OS, etc. However, $3000 for a custom built machine is definitely well within the ballpark. Individual components are easily obtained from local stores catering to the DIY (do it yourself) market. None of the systems above include the cost of a monitor or any software except for the basic OS (OS X or Win XP). There is also a difference in terms of the hard drive configurations for the Mac versus my own machine, but the cost factor actually favours the Mac, as the 74 GB Raptor is slightly more expensive than the 250 GB SATA hard drive. You will also note that the Mac uses slightly slower (and cheaper) RAM modules than the Dell or my own machine. The Mac system was put together at the Apple Canada web site while the Dell system was put together at the Dell Canada web site. The custom system costs were based upon prices available at a local store, CompuTrak System. Also note that both the Dell and Mac come with manufacturer warranties whereas a DIY system means you’re on your own and having to troubleshoot potential problems by attempting to isolate individual components for the source. A custom built machine is not for the faint of heart and those unaccustomed to popping the hood to see what goes on under the cover. For that reason, many users will gladly pay the premium for a computer built and serviced by a name brand such as Dell or Apple, or from reputable outlets locally. However, I have been using, for all intents and purposes, DIY computers for the past five years (nary a name brand computer in my life actually until I bought the Toshiba notebook) with minimal hardware problems except for one bad hard drive, which can afflict Macs or PCs at anytime. Software problems have also been minimal and there have been few issues with Win 2000 or Win XP except for my own boneheaded mistakes in installs. Past conflicts have arisen by me trying to shoehorn new technology into ancient devices, e.g. a USB card into an original Pentium or trying to load more RAM than the motherboard could support, which failed and led me onto the path of no return of upgrading computers far more quickly than the average consumer (starting back in 1999). So, we have the parts, we have the technology, we can build it up and it won’t cost six-million dollars, so what is the result of my custom Steve Austin machine? Performance No benchmark applications or other technical means of testing performance, just the everyday applications I use, such as Photoshop CS and Dreamweaver MX. Before taking apart the old 1.7 GHz machine, I ran a serious of operations that have frustrated me at times and timed them to compare with the new hotrod. For comparison purposes I also did some tests with my Toshiba Satellite P20 notebook computer that runs a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz Hyper Threaded CPU, but at this time, only has 512 MB of RAM onboard (soon to be upgraded to 1 GB). Dreamweaver MX – the largest page I have at the CameraHobby web site is not a review page, but the 2003 Readers’ Comments and Questions page. This page is almost all text that has been formatted into a table and tips the scales at 334 kb. It used to take about 6 minutes and 20 seconds on the old 1.7 GHz machine with no other applications open to bring up this file and edit it - actually, back then I split the page into two smaller pages and it still took over six minutes. It was a painful process waiting for this file to open up, but I never looked into why this page would be such a pig until it also took my new 3.2 GHz notebook exactly 6 minutes to open up the file too, then I knew something was wrong. As it turned out, my editing process of taking e-mails, converting to text then HTML via MS Word, and then editing in Dreamweaver created hundreds of lines of useless code that bogged the computers down.
Capture One RAW batch conversion – 51 RAW files converted to 16 bit TIFFs at once. Why 51, because that is how many Nikon D100 RAW files fit onto one of my 512 MB compact flash cards. I used default settings in Capture One, since this was just a test.
Photoshop CS – since the most recent upgrade with its ability to do 16 bit editing, this flagship application has become sluggish on the old computer. I did some pretty basic tests, such as using the browser to open up a folder filled with the fifty-one 16 bit files converted by Capture One and seeing how long it took for the thumbnails to be generated. Browser View for Thumbnails of 16 bit files (51 files)
After the browser test, I used Bicubic Interpolation to scale one of the D100 TIFFs to 20x30 inches at 300 dpi.
Unsharp Masking the 20x30 inch 16 bit file
Except for the RAW conversion, the desktop 3.06 GHz machine turned in some incredibly fast times and it indicates that RAW conversion is very much processor dependent whereas all the other applications involve the factors of processor, RAM and hard drive performance - damn those 10k RPM drives are awesome, SCSI users must be in hog heaven with their 15k RPM drives. Lesson here is don't ignore any aspect of a building a new computer with quality parts because the end result can be greater than the sum of its parts. Performance can entail other factors and one thing I was surprised about when I bought the Toshiba notebook and compared it subjectively to the old desktop, was how little different the faster processor seemed in doing the day to day things computers do. Nothing so obvious as converting RAW files or doing Photoshop work, but just booting up, or opening applications such as Word. Even doing one off jobs seemed to be only slightly faster on the notebook whereas doing a bunch in a batch process seemed to get a more expected performance level. Looking over the specs of the notebook, I noticed that despite the fast 3.2 GHz CPU, it had a very prosaic 5400 RPM hard drive (some configurations only come with a 4200 RPM drive). Knowing just how brutal a slow drive can be in a desktop environment, I figured the CPU is likely compensating for the merely average hard drive. Oh, for the day that notebook computers will offer 7200 RPM performance for the same cost as desktops hard drives. For these day to day activities, I do not notice a significant jump in performance. To be sure there is a more sure-handed feel to the new desktop, but I guess I was hoping for the similar kind of jump in overall performance that I received when I upgraded from a Pentium 3 (900 or 933 MHz, can't remember at this point) to the P4 1.7 GHz. A reasonable expectation given the near doubling in processor speed to 3.06 in the new desktop and 3.2 in the notebook. Conclusion As seen in the price examples above, building your own computer can provide significant cost savings from buying a name brand system. The primary caveat is that you do not have the same kind of warranty or servicing available for the system as a whole, but only for the individual components inside. You also need to be knowledgeable enough to build it yourself or else pay someone else to do it for you. However, consider what you could do with the extra money saved by not having to buy a Dell. You could put the cost savings towards an awesome 21-inch Sony Artisan monitor instead of making Michael Dell or Steve Jobs even more billions. For me, I’ve cheated because I know a person who can build me a system to my specifications and I can also obtain the parts for a better price than retail. This person can also service the system for me should I run into problems more technical than what I can deal with, and I’ve been popping open computers since I was a teenager and loading my own software for just as long. I’m no expert, far from it, as I've admitted to above, but I can handle installing my own hard drive and optical drive and reformatting a hard drive and building up the software again from scratch without breaking into too much of a sweat (okay, maybe a few beads of perspiration). And the money I’ve saved can be put towards something more useful, like a Toshiba Satellite P20 notebook J |
|
Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
|
 |
|
Now
that the platform has been decided on (for me), the PC user has
an embarrassment of choices available that the Mac user does not.
For Mac, there is one primary source because of the proprietary
nature of Apple licensing; however, this in itself is not such a
bad thing because quality is controlled very well and remains very
high whereas the PC market is all over the map and a bit of research
is required for the uninitiated to find out what to look for in
a new system.
Pentium
4 3.06 GHz Hyper Threaded (HT) CPU – this is not the fastest
single processor CPU from Intel, as there is the 3.2 GHz chip at
the top of the heap (as of writing this article); however, the 3.2
chip is nearly double the price of the 3.06, so this choice was
a compromise in consideration of the wallet. However, in the PC
world, an HT chip is a must for high performance conversion of RAW
files from a digital SLR. In fact, before Apple introduced the Mac
G5, the single processor Pentium 4 3.06 turned in significantly
faster processing times than the dual processor Mac G4 systems,
as tested by Rob Galbraith (a Mac user).
Western
Digital 74 GB Raptor hard drive – Western Digital has been
making a name for itself in producing high performance hard drives
with great quality and stability. I believe they were the first
to introduce a 7200 RPM hard drive with an 8 MB cache to speed up
overall system speed. They were also the first to produce a 10,000
RPM hard drive that can rival SCSI speeds without the SCSI cost.
Serial ATA (SATA) is the current hard drive standard and promises
SCSI performance for an IDE price (although real SCSI drives can
run at up to 15k RPM, another 50% increase in performance for a
lot more increase in price). 
ATI 
400
watt Antec power supply
These
are the most obvious and primary components of a custom, high performance
PC built to cut through 16 bit files with many layers and masks
in Photoshop. I’m sure there are many more things that I’ve left
out, but since I’m not that well informed about every aspect of
a PC’s configuration, I decided not to comment on things I do not
know.