Maximum PC

Long story short, want to build a machine for means of storing MANY photographs in various files ranging to Hi-Res JPEGs to TIFFs. Just to give you an idea: Using a 200GB external HD full of digital images and, there's less than 15% space left. With this, I'm thinking of some big time storage. Also want to be able to plug in devices via Firewire and USB. Using a Viewsonic Professional Series 19" CRT so I don't know if a high end graphics card will be much of a priority other than viewing the photos (this will be a NON-GAMING PC if that helps). I figure RAM will also be a big necessity since I work with the Adobe programs. Also want a decently quiet machine. Budget will be around $1000-$1400 but there's possible room for going slightly over. Not really looking at upgrading in the future other than maybe another internal hard drive and maybe more RAM.

Through help from another computer forum, we came up with the following setup:

-AMD 3200+ 90nm (I'm going to also get some Arctic Silver and a Zalman or Thermaltake heatsink since I understand the stock one is a little noisy)
-ASUS A8V Deluxe
-Corsair Value Select (2x 512MB) 184 Pin DDR PC-3200
-Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA w/16MB buffer (getting 2 of these NON-RAID)
-NEC Dual Layer DVD Burner
-Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600 128MB
-Enermax Noisetaker 370watt ATX 12V V1.3 model
-Antec P160 case
-NEC Floppy Drive
-AMC 6 in 1 card reader
-XP Pro

Shopping through NewEgg, ZipZoomFly and ChiefValue I'm able to purchase the gear for a little over $1200 and some change so this is definitely (note that it is spelled correctly) in the budget range.

Is there any room for improvement? Changes or upgrades that you guys would suggest? Let me know if I left out any vital information that would help out the recommendations.

1....If not gaming, and primarily for photo editing......you can probably go with a less expensive card
2....more RAM
3....less volume on primary HDD....80GB plenty.....trust me ...if you do a lot of editing ....and have lots of images on a real large drive.....and you start filling it up.....defrag is going to take a while longe
4....archive with DVD burner as you are.....and if you need more hard drive space.....get secondary HDD either internal or external.

if you want to speed up photo editing........
faster proc
3-4GB of RAM
RAMdisk(around $50).....you load a bunch of images into RAMdisk and set temp file of Adobe into RAMdisk and have at it.

If you do commercial photo work .....you might consider saving up and getting the SONY monitor that's dominated the MaxPC Gear of Year awards the past 5 years or so....it's around $1500.....and also get monitor calibration kit with the hood........did the initial calibration for a commercial photograpgher who just bought that monitor and calibration kit....instant jealousy....

Ram: 1GB minimum
CPU: whatever you can afford
Mobo: Best you can afford, pci-x are a major plus
Storage: Load up on raid 1 arrays or start a raid 5

Friends have 2 raid 1 storage arrays and an external drive and just have enough space.

For the DVD burner I was going to archive the images on my External HD since those are the oldest images that I don't work with much. So I can have that 200GB external free. I don't mind the defrag. I keep my computers running overnight, and I let them defrag themselves when I sleep using Diskeeper.

Would another set of 2 512MB do the trick to bring up the total RAM to 2GB? Or should I purchase possibly 2 1GB sticks and hope that it meets my budget? I haven't checked the prices on the 1GB sticks, but from others they mentioned that 2GB would be just fine.

I did have the 3500+ selected as my original processor, but that had to be cut to meet the restraints of the budget. Maybe I can work it back in somehow?

Alex, what gains will I get from PCI-E? I was told there were minimal gains from PCI-E compared to AGP, and I can save some money sticking to AGP.

Not PCI-E, PCI-X. It is used for higher end raid cards.

What if your external drive fails? Will you need those images again? Questions you must ask yourself.

Oh okay. I'm not familar with that terminology. Could you explain a little more about that? I believe the ASUS A8V has dual RAID channels if I wanted to go RAID.

Since you will be doing alot of photo editing you might want to consider more ram..i think. I would go with this video card instead

Wouldn't a high end graphics card serve not a lot of purpose? This computer will primarily be used for just the photo editing, no games whatsoever. I have the Radeon 9600 selected because it's still a decent brand name I trust, and I can get it for $70-80. I'm interested in hearing about the need for a better GC.

1st, I want to say that keeping that amount of pictures on an external HD is a no no. Ever have one go bad? Trust me, you don't want to.

The set-up I am using pretty much does the same as what you want. I use my slaves for more than pictures, I back those up on 750 zips.

This is my set up-

Cooler Master Wave Master
Gigabyte GA-7NNXP
Athlon Barton 3200
1536 mb PC3200 ram
BFG GeForce FX 5900XT OC 128MB
DVDRW
750 Zip
80, 120 & 160 hard drives

Check out the link for the mobo, I chose this because I can hook up a lot of IDE hard drives. I can also hook up multiple optical drives. The board has a lot of potential to grow as you need it. It also has a feature called Gigabyte backup. I load windows, load mobo drivers, then Windows update, install browsers & Office & Works.I make sure everything is registered by opening it once. I scan with Panda, then reboot & run the backup, once that is done, I install my AV. If for some reason I reinstall windows, it is an F9 click away & I'm back up and running in a few hours.

The case I may not recommend if you put HD's in and take them out. It is pretty tight in there and unless you pull the mobo tray out, you can't easily swap drives. If you don't swap drives, it's a great case. I like that the power button is on the outside, and that my drives are hidden by the door. Pet peeve is having to look at different color drives than my case. I love the fact that it has the sound port on top as well as USB ports on top also.

Video card- BFG is a good name, you could get away with their cheaper line. When I bought mine it was more than what I needed. BFG has a lifetime warrenty. I dislike ATI cards because they are a PITA to upgrade drivers. If you do not use a driver cleaner your asking for trouble 9 times out of 10. From what I've seen here with the ATI card we have, one day hubby will be doing something & his screen will freeze, it's usually a sign that his drivers need updating; I'm not big on updating- why fix what isn't broken?

Well, when your only internal hard drive is almost full, there's not much you can do . Didn't know much about upgrading until now. For that, I store photos that I hardly do work with anymore. Some date back to 2003. I try to save them on CD-R, but the cd folders are getting a little full for now. The DVD burner will come in handy.

Eh, that Gigabyte board doesn't show up for Socket 939 processors when I search on NewEgg and ZipZoomFly. Either way, I'm pretty solid on getting the ASUS.

Internal hard drives will stay inside the PC at all times. Actually, I'm considering switching the case to a Lian-Li found here.

I'll consider about the Nvidia card.

That idea about PCI-X I did research on, and it seems more geared towards a server computer. I don't know if it would be needed for my machine.[/url]

That's why I still like zips. They kid me all the time here about my 750, but IMO there is no easier way to store pics than that 750 zip. I can c/p pics there easily and edit the disks as needed.



Sorry, I saw the 3200 and thought Barton. The Barton is actually quicker than the 939 3200. My kid has one (939 3200).

Do me a favor, go over to Asus and play around with their site. Use the mobo main page (for the one your getting) then look for downloads for the board, also try some of the DL links, go to their forum. From what I've seen, Asus has the worst web site for support. The other day we were looking for info for another Asus board- half of the site was down for 2 days- not cool. If your comfortable with using that brand after that, then cool, enjoy. Here's the link for the post.



Nice case, what color drives will you use, black?



check out this page at Techspot.com. This will show you what I mean about ATI cards. Scroll down to posts by PreservedSwine, his instructions are how drivers should be updated for ATI cards.

If you spend much on a videocard get a quadro. Many color balancing softwares/sensors are based on their 2d output.

There is a difference between raid onboard and raid with a controller card, the latter being more advanced and expandable. There are a few motherboards with 4sata ports with a chip that support raid 5 onboard.

I am able to download the latest 1.009 update for the mobo bios. I navigated it some to find out info for the board. I was able to get around it with no problems. I should be fine on that end.

Color drives I'm not picky on, but the NEC drive comes in a silver color (which is a surprise since no one else has a silver colored DVD drive). The floppy drive I may not be so lucky, but I can live with black or beige.

Thanks for the info on the website there. I'll read the info and come up with a decision on the graphics card.