Kevin’s Photo Studio

In 2005 I built a shiny and fast Photoshop Workstation. I’ve since done some significant upgrades, and a few (what might be considered) downgrades, to the machine.

In this post I discuss what I did and why so you can see what I’ve been using for the last year or so, and will probably be using for the next year or so. Before covering the component changes I made I want to mention a few changes in approach that I’ve made.

No More RAID
My original build had two pairs of Raid-0 WD Raptor drives, one for the OS/Programs, and one for the PS scratch drive. While I’m sure that this setup was faster than a non-raid setup, I really didn’t notice it much in real world usage. I also setup a 4×320GB Raid-5 array for storage of RAW files and processed image files.

I experienced a few minor problems and one major, catastrophic failure with this setup. On the minor side, the raid controller (on the motherboard) occasionally lost it’s configuration data in the raid bios. This required that I manually re-configure the array to get it running again. While this only happened a couple of times, usually with the raid-0 array that held my OS/Programs, I never lost any data and was able to recover quickly. After the second time this happened, I decommissioned the OS/Programs raid array and continue running the OS/Programs off a single drive. Fortunately this did not require rebuilding the OS drive. I was simply able to dissolve the raid and use one of the drives as is. The scratch disk raid-0 array lasted until this major upgrade, but did not survive the upgrade.

Now, the catastrophic failure, the failure that immediately resulted in this major upgrade to the machine. I don’t remember exactly what happened, or if there was a single event that led to the failure, but whatever happened, it resulted in the raid controller on the motherboard dying permanently. I had already decommissioned the OS/Programs raid, so I did not lose the OS and Programs drive, but I did lose the entire Raid-5 array, including many of my processed images. All my RAW files were backed-up on external drives…fortunately.

By this point in time socket 939 was really becoming rare, and socket-939 with built-in raid (using the same controller chip), was non-existent. My only option, if I absolutely needed to recover some of my processed images, or if there had been RAW files that I could not afford to lose, would have been to find an raid controller card that used the same or a derivative controller chip. I found one for several hundred dollars with a newer generation chip. It might have worked, but I would have had to spend several hundred dollars just to find out. In the end I decided that I could sustain the losses since I had all my RAW files backed up.

Since the raid controller was on the motherboard, I decided that it was no longer trustworthy. It had to be replaced…now! So the upgrade commenced.

CPU & Motherboard
I needed a new motherboard…obviously. After much thinking, surfing, and thrashing about I decided that this time around I would defect from the AMD camp to the Intel camp. For the motherboard I selected a GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 LGA 775 Intel P965. I put in a Core2Duo E6600 2.4GHz dual core processor.

My reasons for selecting this motherboard: This is GigaByte “mil-spec” type board. It cost a bit extra, but they used better components in it’s construction. After my last failure, I thought this might be a good idea. I have no idea if it really mattered, but so far it’s holding up just fine. It also has a ton of USB ports, 4 rear panel, and 6 internal. It also has 6 SATA ports, for all of my HDD’s.

I paid $309 for the E660 at the time (April ‘07). You can’t even get it any more. You can get a 2.4GHz Quad Core equivalent today for $180. That would be cheap in-place upgrade for right now. Hmmm…something to think about.

Disk Drive Configuration
I’m still using all the same HHD’s, just no in any raid configurations. The OS/Programs are running of one of the WD Raptor drives. The other three Raptors are being used for page files, scratch disks, and misc storage. The 320GB drives are all configured as individual drives. One is my primary photo storage drive, where I offload new photos from my memory cards. Two more of the 320GB drives are backups of this primary photo drive. The fourth is now a general use drive.

Other Changes
The only other change of note for this upgrade was a new video card. This time around I opted for a NVidia 7950GT 512MB card, not because it was going to speed up Photoshop in any way, but to support my pathetic gaming pursuits. And by pathetic, I refer only to my ability to master any of these games.

Now that I have Photoshop CS4, having this card was nice because it supports the new GPU features in CS4. If I had not upgraded the video card, I’d be in the market right now for something to support my already expensive CS4 upgrade. Dodged that one…for now.

The Future
This section contains forward looking statements, non of which I will guarantee.

I built this upgrade in April ‘07, so it really is almost time for an upgrade as I write this (November ‘08). Right now I’m thinking that I’ll wait just a bit, then upgrade to the following:

• New Motherboard to support a Quad Core i7 Processor
• 8 GB Ram (or more, it’s so cheap right now)
• Windows 7 64bit (Vista Ultimate SP2,or SP3, 64bit if I can’t wait for Windows 7)

So, if you were going to upgrade a Photoshop workstation in the near future, what would you do?

No related posts.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...