[PDL]

16GB of memory is a starting point. I have 24GB on my desktop and I have had it puke when swapping an image between Capture One (v10) and Affinity Photo. Also since you have some sort of tower, get internal drives which are much faster than USB because Capture One can be drive intensive. Keeping my image store and catalogue on USB drives would drive me up the wall.

You want to keep as much as you can local to your system's data bus. I have my program/data drives mirrored (RAID 1) running on 5GBs controllers and it still takes a long time to get my images to come up in Capture One. If you can afford it, get SSD's for the catalogue and image storage drives or put the data store on a SSD based NAS using a 1GB (minimum) wired connection.

As for wireless, my desktop is plugged into a gig switch that has my NAS connected to it and the switch is connected to my wireless router. So I have wireless capabilities without having a physical wireless card in the box, it is a desktop for heavens sake - I don't carry the beast around.

General rule: Keep as much as you can off of the C: drive. Unless that means that you want to set up a desktop as a glorified laptop. (One drive to rule them all) I stopped using a single drive back in the 286 days.

-edit-
I forgot one thing: Never use Windows Home - use Windows Pro as a minimum since it is much easier to shut down some if not most of the Microsoft add/tracking issues with Windows 10. It costs more, but it is well worth it to gain the flexibility in how your system is viewed from afar. Another thing, never have your "normal" day-to-day account in the Administrator group. All that does is turn your device into a Virus/Trojan attractor.

---

Last edited by PDL; 01-26-2018 at 07:06 PM. Reason: added snark - and a warning

[6BQ5]

If this is not for gaming, why a $350 CPU and a $200 video card? These days a nice motherboard w/ integrated graphics is good enough (HDMI). The cooler is irrelevant.

More internal HDD and back it up on the external and then back it up again. Storage is cheap enough, doesn't make sense not to, you will need it. I believe Newegg has a 4TB right now for $109

---------- Post added 01-26-18 at 20:03 ----------



To connect your PC to a WiFi signal

I was attracted to the gaming hardware because it seems very powerful for fast image processing. The keyword here is "seems" because I really don't know if the $200 would be 2x better ("faster"?) than a $100 card. That's why I started this thread ... to gather opinions and insights. I'm OK with the overkill because I tend to keep my hardware and other things in general for long periods of time. My iMac is coming up to the 6 year mark and I intend to keep this new photo build for at least that long.

I have been thinking about adding some internal magnetic drives in addition to the SSD but wasn't sure. Maybe your encouragement will push me over.

Cooler : I'm starting to get the idea that a standard fan or cooling system comes with every CPU. If that's true then I'll happily remove the fan from the list.

16GB of memory is a starting point. I have 24GB on my desktop and I have had it puke when swapping an image between Capture One (v10) and Affinity Photo. Also since you have some sort of tower, get internal drives which are much faster than USB because Capture One can be drive intensive. Keeping my image store and catalogue on USB drives would drive me up the wall.

You want to keep as much as you can local to your system's data bus. I have my program/data drives mirrored (RAID 1) running on 5GBs controllers and it still takes a long time to get my images to come up in Capture One. If you can afford it, get SSD's for the catalogue and image storage drives or put the data store on a SSD based NAS using a 1GB (minimum) wired connection.

As for wireless, my desktop is plugged into a gig switch that has my NAS connected to it and the switch is connected to my wireless router. So I have wireless capabilities without having a physical wireless card in the box, it is a desktop for heavens sake - I don't carry the beast around.

General rule: Keep as much as you can off of the C: drive. Unless that means that you want to set up a desktop as a glorified laptop. (One drive to rule them all) I stopped using a single drive back in the 286 days.

-edit-
I forgot one thing: Never use Windows Home - use Windows Pro as a minimum since it is much easier to shut down some if not most of the Microsoft add/tracking issues with Windows 10. It costs more, but it is well worth it to gain the flexibility in how your system is viewed from afar. Another thing, never have your "normal" day-to-day account in the Administrator group. All that does is turn your device into a Virus/Trojan attractor.

Thanks for the note on the Windows Home vs Windows Pro. I didn't even consider that there could be a worthwhile difference for me. Something to look into!

(Side note : This whole thread highlights the stark difference between a Mac and PC build. Most of these questions would ever come when buying a Mac. You pick your screen size and some basic options. Then, you're done. You get what you get and you just start using it.)

[Stavri]

I just built a Ryzen 12-core/NVidia 1060 6 GB system. 480 gig SSD. I am EXTREMELY happy with it.This is a tad hotter than yours but not that much more expensive. I think the slight extra money those three places might be something to consider. It makes photo processing pretty much instantaneous.

I'm also using the stock cooler which is fine even when 10% overclocked (which really isn't necessary if the software is using all cores so I usually don't bother unless gaming). I'd suggest putting the cooler money into upgrading the the three areas I mentioned.

I should add I do Monte Carlo modeling a lot where I might resample a model 10^7 times and the 12 cores make a HUGE difference over my previous AMD Phenom and Intel i-7 machines regardless of overclocking or not using the multicore capabilities in R.

The only Ryzen 12 core available is the Threadripper 1920x, (they don't come with stock coolers)...

I also went for a threadripper built, Cyber monday purchase and been happy with it. As previous members have mentioned, the 1700 is the real gem in the Ryzen lineup, best performance for the money. I'd also run an nVme SSD for the operating system with large capacity HDD for storage.

[Ex Finn.]

Considered a new build here but with all the mining going on, raising the cost of memory and the graphics cards... might just have to hang tight.
Me, the next go-around... Intel-k with liquid and EVO SSD for boot.

[Ex Finn.]

Cooler : I'm starting to get the idea that a standard fan or cooling system comes with every CPU. If that's true then I'll happily remove the fan from the list.

None of the Intel K series "un-locked" processors come with a cooler.

[automorphism]

I just read about the Spectre and Meltdown bugs in almost every CPU on the market. Yikes! It doesn’t seem like a good time to buy a new computer.

Actually, so far it seems that the Meltdown attack has only been successfully carried out on Intel processors (see Tom's Guide) for an explanation of this. Spectre is supposed to work on all processors but much more difficult to carry out.

For practical purposes it looks like Intel is worse off. So, if you have to get one, get AMD or wait for Intel to come out with a new processor that is immune. Don't be fooled by careless bloggers that don't make this distinction.

[LFLee]

built a Ryzen last year when it first come out. Total about $1600. It's a new built including power supply, case, fan.

-Ryzen 1800x
-EVGA GTX 1070
-EVGA liquid cooling
-ASRock Taichi x370 motherboard
-GSKill 32GB (16GB x2)
-Samsung EVO 960 m.2 ssd 256GB
-two 500GB EVO 850 SSD as scratch disk for photo editing
-EVGA 850W G3 PSU

It's great so far. I didn't overclock my CPU.

If I build one today, I would get a higher end SSD and 500GB for where you install your OS.

[jgnfld]

The only Ryzen 12 core available is the Threadripper 1920x, (they don't come with stock coolers)...

I also went for a threadripper built, Cyber monday purchase and been happy with it. As previous members have mentioned, the 1700 is the real gem in the Ryzen lineup, best performance for the money. I'd also run an nVme SSD for the operating system with large capacity HDD for storage.

I was speaking too loosely. I meant the 6 core (giving 12 threads with AMDs version of hypertheading) Ryzen 1600. Compared to earlier machines I've used, it simply tears through the work I've asked of it including as I said Monte Carlo resampling with up to a million resamples before a completely smooth distribution emerges. The 1700 price diff was too great when I was doing my build.

If you really need multicores for your workflow, AMD has some wonderful value out there at the moment.

[Mikesul]

Fascinating thread. I have been away from computer building for a long time so please pardon my perhaps silly question but what is the "mining" which keeps being mentioned? Thanks.

[jgnfld]

Fascinating thread. I have been away from computer building for a long time so please pardon my perhaps silly question but what is the "mining" which keeps being mentioned? Thanks.

A Beginner's Guide to Cryptocoin Mining

[Mikesul]

A Beginner's Guide to Cryptocoin Mining

Thanks, depressing as that is.

[GUB]

The keyword here is "seems" because I really don't know if the $200 would be 2x better ("faster"?) than a $100 card.

I am curious to know what others think here - I used a 1050ti card with 4gb of memory with the intention of getting opencl up and running. it is going to be a mission with Ubuntu- the info is surprisingly confusing . People seem to be getting major gains for certain editing processes.

[CarlJF]

I am curious to know what others think here - I used a 1050ti card with 4gb of memory with the intention of getting opencl up and running. it is going to be a mission with Ubuntu- the info is surprisingly confusing . People seem to be getting major gains for certain editing processes.

Hardware acceleration can provide real benefits for some applications, but not all. To make matter more confusing, it also depends on the software used. So, it's not because it works great with software A for a specific function that it will be the same with software B. So, it's often difficult to predict what will be the gain for a specific process on a specific system. You have to try it to know...

[Winder]

My 21.5" iMac is coming up to 6 years of use and it due for retirement based on my past experience. I'm toying with the idea of building a PC specifically for Capture One. Here are two builds I came up with on PC Part Picker.

The first is built around an AMD Ryzen 7.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6GHz 8-Core Processor ($345.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC - Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 45.0 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler ($18.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI - X370 SLI PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard ($91.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($219.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial - MX300 275GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Video Card ($259.89 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: Corsair - CSM 750W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($89.89 @ OutletPC)
Wireless Network Adapter: Asus - PCE-AC55BT B1 PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter ($33.19 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1219.80
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-01-25 23:13 EST-0500

I ended up with a Ryzen 1800X build.
Hold off on buying the CPU. Zen+ is expected to launch in April. I only paid $300 for my 1800X on sale. Once the Zen+ CPUs launch the 1800X should drop below $300.
Mine is OCed to 4.0ghz. I'm running an Corsair AIO cooler.
Asrock Taichi X370
16GB G-skill Flare X 3200
Crucial MX300 1.1TB
Radeon Vega 64 liquid cooled (got it used a few months ago) - Prices are simply crazy right now.
LG 38UC99
Corsair 850 watt Gold PS
Fractal Design Meshify C case

If you are running Capture One, it seems to like more cores over clock speed. LR and PS seem to prefer clock speed and I don't notice a huge improvement over my older 4 core CPU. Capture One however is noticeably faster with the 8 cores. I did switch to version 11 at the same time that I switched over this system, so some of the speed improvement might be due to the newer version being faster.

[GUB]

Hardware acceleration can provide real benefits for some applications, but not all. To make matter more confusing, it also depends on the software used. So, it's not because it works great with software A for a specific function that it will be the same with software B. So, it's often difficult to predict what will be the gain for a specific process on a specific system. You have to try it to know...

So I am upgraded from a pentiumE6600 to the i7 7700 (8gb ram to 16gb).No opencl in either. I notice a massive improvement in Hugin stitching. A modest improvement in Darktable export - perhaps 50% faster. Exporting with denoise is still quite slow. I can't really compare Gimp because I have gone from 8bit 2.8 to floating bit 2.9. (the reason for upgrading). I notice though that certain processes like "Decompose to HSV" seem unnaturally slow. Is it likely that it will be these "slow" processes that opencl will boost?