PC & Monitor recommendations...

[alfie Wright]

Hi All,

Just looking for a little advice on PC's & Monitors for Photo processing etc.

My old desktop PC has finally given up the ghost & seems to of taken my monitor with it!! Not good!

TBH it might just be a coincidence that they've both died together! The PC is so old now it's not worth throwing any money at, so I will need to build another. What I need to know is where to spend the money i.e. CPU, RAM, GPU etc? I think (Hope) my hard drives are OK as they're not too old & will hopefully be used in the new build. I will though add a new SSD for the OS (Win 7) & Apps & perhaps as scratch disc. I suspect that for processing, the GPU is perhaps not as important as a fast processor & lots of RAM? Any adviceor suggetions would be more than welcome!

As for software I'll look to upgrade to LR4 & probably buy PS elements 10 too. As full PS is to expensive for my needs. At a later date I would like to add SilverFX also. So this is what it needs to run. As for budget I've probably got about £800 but could stretch to £1000 for the PC. The software will be bought later.

My monitor may be able to be repaired, it seems there is an issue with caps going off. It's not great being a TN panel so I may look for a cheaper entry level IPS panel, perhaps a Dell ultrasharp or a ASUS pa246q or any suggestions around £300-400 mark? Dreamcolors & Coloredge are well out of my price range though!

Looks like this might cost me one of my valve amps!!!

Any advice or suggestions would be great folks...

 

[Hamish Gill]

An entry level Eizo is the way to go in my experience
The coloredge are mental money, but the flexscan are sensible, I have one ... its brilliant!
Eizo S2243W - 22" Widescreen

im rubbish with comp specs, but yeah, gpu is less important that cpu and ram!

who needs valves ... I just sold mine for a garden wall

 

[alfie Wright]

Thanks Hamish!

I'll add the Eizo to my short list, one problem seems to be finding shops that stock the monitors on my shortlist so I could have a look & try before I buy. So solid recommendations like yours is great! Looks good too that it's got the resolution of a 24" monitor in a 22".

One valve power amp will stay, always! In fact they all will if I can afford the PC build without selling! Not sure I could swap one for a garden wall, but may-be a new PC!

 

[Hamish Gill]

Technically some steps ...
come along a bit since here http://www.realphotographersforum.c...graphy-related/6789-day-digging-breaking.html

I bought my eizo blind on recomendation from colorconfidence ...
the high end ones are better ... But it's like hifi, the laws of diminishing returns apply!
I would guess you would be very happy indeed with the one I linked to... It appears to be the newer version of mine which is pushing 4 years old and is still bang on!

Might be worth concidering a screen calibrator too though

 

[Larry Bolch]

I have a variety of machines built to spec for their main purpose, including a year-old graphics machine. It is enormously powerful, since its primary purpose is 3D rendering. However, it is also my Photoshop machine and lovely it is. It has a six core, hyperthreading CPU, that shows up as 12 processors on TaskManager. I can have an image rendering with each of the 12 showing 100%, and still run Photoshop as if it was the only application open.

This and running Photoshop on lesser machines tells me that it is not all that CPU intensive. RAM was incredibly cheap, and 24GB ran just over $200 Cdn—far from the $500 I paid for two megabytes for the Amiga in the late 1980s! Even with that huge amount, I have actually maxed it out a few times in the past year!

SSDs have dropped greatly in price since the machine was built. I chose a 120GB for system drive, based upon its projected longevity. Even though it was not the fastest drive in the universe, the machine boots in a remarkably short time—very nice. Were I to choose today, I would go for a larger drive. The second is an extremely fast 64GB SSD I use as a project drive. If I am adding a gallery to my web-site, I go through the images in ACDSee Pro, and tag the ones I want, then copy the RAW images to a new folder on the project drive. Even the 25MB images from the new X-Pro1 open almost instantly. JPEGs saved so quickly that there was no indication that they had saved at all. Initially, I would check and they were there. I now trust it. Once the gallery is uploaded, the JPEGs are archived on standard hard-drives, the RAW copies deleted and the .xml files copied to the original folders. Efficient in the extreme.

No monitor recommendations. The graphics machine has a pair of 19" Samsung CRTs with one calibrated and the other used for palettes, support programs and so on. Works fine. My general purpose, plus A/V acquisition and editing machine, has a 30" 2560×1600 panel that is also my HDTV. It was once repaired and I bought a 25.5" Samsung while it was in the shop. Both have a host of inputs making them highly versatile. The machine that the graphics machine replaced last year, has just been built as a render-server adding eight more processors for network 3D rendering, to be also used as a music production machine for multimedia and a central storage machine. It has an eight terabyte Level 5 array of hard-drives which is fault tolerant, plus a half-terabyte system drive. The Samsung panel is now attached to this one, along with an old Viewsonic 19" CRT. All do their assigned jobs just fine.

 

[Pete Askew]

I'd second the Eizo. I have an Eizo Coloredge in the UK and I use NEC monitors in Germany (Spectraview and 2090UXi). The Eizo is better value for money I think and I think Hamish's recommendation is a good one. No recommendations to make regards a PC but agree that for 2D work the CPU and RAM are far more important as long as you've got a reasonable graphics card. I can imagine that you'd achieve a pretty reasonable machine within that budget. It's worth noting that Nik are doing a special offer on their complete collection for Lightroom / Aperture (249 Euros) at the moment making it not much more than SilverFX alone.

 

[alfie Wright]

Thanks all for the help & advice, very much appreciated!

I've been trying to source a Eizo S2243W all week, but there seems to be very little stock around atm. Even Eizo UK don't have stock! ColorConfidence.com state up to 10 weeks on their website!! I need something quicker than that, so any other suggestions? Dell U2410 is tempting me, but seems to get mixed reviews on the web!

I've ordered some PC parts, so they should start to appear here soon, hopefully.

Thanks again for your input! alfie.

 

[Mark Grant]

Try the Dell U2412M, very good when calibrated, low price and very low power consumption at about 22 watts when calibrated. ( I have bought two of them recently)

Only standard sRGB and not the wide gamut or what ever it is called, very good though if that is all you need.

some links:
Dell U2412M Review ( Use the brightness and contrast settings from that review)

Amazon:
Dell Ultrasharp U2412M 24 inch IPS Widescreen LED Monitor: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

pcbuyit:
Dell Ultrasharp U2412M 24 inch IPS Widescreen LED Monitor Black REV A05

No speakers built in, the dell soundbar is available very cheaply on ebay if you need it.

DELL AX510 MONITOR AUDIO SOUNDBAR SPEAKER ATTACHMENT - BLACK DELL P/N C729C | eBay