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New Build Advice

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Steve Seaney

New Member
Joined
May 10, 2017
Messages
4
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
I am in the process of building a workstation that will be used for my home office and lightroom.

I am an 'amateur' sports photographer. I typically take and review over 2000 images during football season... System performance bottlenecks can be a pain. I shoot with a 5DMKIII in raw and sort through the images to find the 'best' images.

I currently store my catalog and 'working' images on an SSD. I'm planning on going to an M2 'drive' to increase disk I/O.

Is there a particular motherboard / cpu recommended for lightroom?

Are there any thoughts on the following build?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($306.69 @ Jet)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - Vortex Plus 54.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($25.99 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Thermaltake - CL-O004-GROSGM-A 4g Thermal Paste ($7.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($159.73 @ Jet)
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Sport LT 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($219.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: MyDigitalSSD - BPX 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate - BarraCuda 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($114.95 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB ARMOR OCV1 Video Card ($249.00 @ B&H)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA P2 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit ($132.89 @ OutletPC)
Other: Silverstone LC 10 Full ATX (Purchased)
Total: $1447.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-05-09 23:12 EDT-0400


Thanks,
Steve
 
I am in the process of building a workstation that will be used for my home office and lightroom.

I am an 'amateur' sports photographer. I typically take and review over 2000 images during football season... System performance bottlenecks can be a pain. I shoot with a 5DMKIII in raw and sort through the images to find the 'best' images.

I currently store my catalog and 'working' images on an SSD. I'm planning on going to an M2 'drive' to increase disk I/O.

Is there a particular motherboard / cpu recommended for lightroom?

Are there any thoughts on the following build?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($306.69 @ Jet)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - Vortex Plus 54.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($25.99 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Thermaltake - CL-O004-GROSGM-A 4g Thermal Paste ($7.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($159.73 @ Jet)
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Sport LT 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($219.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: MyDigitalSSD - BPX 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate - BarraCuda 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($114.95 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB ARMOR OCV1 Video Card ($249.00 @ B&H)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA P2 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit ($132.89 @ OutletPC)
Other: Silverstone LC 10 Full ATX (Purchased)
Total: $1447.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-05-09 23:12 EDT-0400


Thanks,
Steve
Steve,

I have had excellent luck over the years with ASUS brand motherboards. I really appreciate just how long my ASUS boards get BIOS updates. I have also had a Hyper 212 CPU cooler, to which I added a second fan. In general, fans with sleeve bearings wear out faster than fans with other kinds of bearings. Spend the extra money to get peace of mind here.

I would strongly recommend that you stay away from Seagate HDDs. HGST drives are much more reliable although they do cost a bit more. Also, for performance reasons, I would suggest a 7200 rpm drive.
 
Last edited:
You may be interested in this recent article ....
The Ultimate Video Guide to Building a Photo and Video Editing Desktop Computer

I have no affiliation with anyone involved, but found some interesting info, especially related to needs of video v stills, etc. I will be rebuilding myself in the not too distant future, but gobsmacked that the machine I had built approx 7 years ago is still going strong. I attribute this to using the best components available at that time.

I would put in a second internal 4gb drive and have an automated tool a) back up your C drive and b) Back Up your data to the second drive. (Then at a frequency of your choice you can back up also to an external drive).
 
You may be interested in this recent article ....
The Ultimate Video Guide to Building a Photo and Video Editing Desktop Computer

I have no affiliation with anyone involved, but found some interesting info, especially related to needs of video v stills, etc. I will be rebuilding myself in the not too distant future, but gobsmacked that the machine I had built approx 7 years ago is still going strong. I attribute this to using the best components available at that time.

I would put in a second internal 4gb drive and have an automated tool a) back up your C drive and b) Back Up your data to the second drive. (Then at a frequency of your choice you can back up also to an external drive).

Thanks a lot for the great reference!

Steve
 
I did a recent build with the same processor, and tried a Gigabyte board (GA-Z170X-Designare), and it was a fiasco of compatibility issues. The Gaming ones seem more widely used so it may be better. Gigabyte was horrible to deal with, at one point asking me to send my drives to Asia so they could test, as "we do not have any Samsung 850 EVO's here". NewEgg was nice and refunded me for both boards (at first they said it was a bad board, then later admitted it was their design but they could not debug without the type of drives that fail). I got rid of Gigabyte and went back to ASUS, who is also painful to deal with but seems to work better (in one data point).

I think what you have for the Gigabyte will work fine, as it's a standard SATA on the other port (and only one port), but Gigabyte's approach to support left me totally turned off. FWIW.

Anyway... since you are going for an overclocking board and "K" processor, I would look to get at least 3000 mhz memory. It usually does not cost a lot more, and it gives you a bit more headroom if you want to tweak speed.

It was an interesting read on the MyDigitalSSD, I had not paid attention to them before, they seem surprisingly well respected for a little known brand.

Have fun!
 
Last year i was orientating on a new system too. I was hesitating building a system because of all trouble i had in the past with drivers and incompatible hardware (however they should be compatible).
Then i discovered the phenomenon 'Hackingtosh' (link), hardware that is optimal compatible for Mac OS but i used it for building a Windows system. Via Tonymacx86 i put together a fast system (CusoMacPro) and it turnes out to be a very stable (and fast) one.

I wrote a blog about my search but it's in dutch... If you are interested maybe google translate can help out :)
https://digitaalfotobeheer.blogspot.nl/2016/01/nieuwe-computer.html
 
Last year i was orientating on a new system too. I was hesitating building a system because of all trouble i had in the past with drivers and incompatible hardware (however they should be compatible).
Then i discovered the phenomenon 'Hackingtosh' (link), hardware that is optimal compatible for Mac OS but i used it for building a Windows system. Via Tonymacx86 i put together a fast system (CusoMacPro) and it turnes out to be a very stable (and fast) one.

I wrote a blog about my search but it's in dutch... If you are interested maybe google translate can help out :)
https://digitaalfotobeheer.blogspot.nl/2016/01/nieuwe-computer.html
I can navigate my through the Dutch with the help of Google Translate. I've spent a fair amount of time in the Netherlands.

Thanks!
 
Last year i was orientating on a new system too. I was hesitating building a system because of all trouble i had in the past with drivers and incompatible hardware (however they should be compatible).
Then i discovered the phenomenon 'Hackingtosh' (link), hardware that is optimal compatible for Mac OS but i used it for building a Windows system. Via Tonymacx86 i put together a fast system (CusoMacPro) and it turnes out to be a very stable (and fast) one.

I wrote a blog about my search but it's in dutch... If you are interested maybe google translate can help out :)
https://digitaalfotobeheer.blogspot.nl/2016/01/nieuwe-computer.html
If you are concerned about the legality of running a MacOS on non-Apple hardware, see this post: Are hackintoshes legal? | Official Apple Support Communities

If you do a search on this topic, you will find that lots of people run Hackintoshes, and Apple seems to turn a blind eye. But there is always the risk that they can change their minds and make an example of you.

Phil
 
If you are concerned about the legality of running a MacOS on non-Apple hardware, see this post: Are hackintoshes legal? | Official Apple Support Communities

If you do a search on this topic, you will find that lots of people run Hackintoshes, and Apple seems to turn a blind eye. But there is always the risk that they can change their minds and make an example of you.

Phil
I was interested in Hackintosh because of their hardware choices, however i keep Windows on my main system (and MacOS on my macbook).
 
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