Solved building a photoshop computer

[jonass21]

I am building a computer that can adequately run photoshop for my wife (and gaming for me), who does casual/semipro photography. One specific question I had was if I have 32GB of RAM will a 60GB SSD suffice for a scratch disc? The specs of the computer are below, will it run ok?

Intel Core i5-3350P Ivy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.3GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 69W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80637i53350P - Newegg.com

MSI Z77A-GD65 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS - Newegg.com

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Profile Desktop Memory Model BLS8G3D1609ES2LX0 - Newegg.com

EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2662-KR GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Newegg.com

 

[linnemeyerhere]

I would jump to at least a 128 gb SSD or even better a 256 gb for the OS and most if not all software. Then add a top flight 7000+ rpm 2 or 3 TB spinner with at least 32 to 64 cache for data/pictures. Oh and then don't forget a back up target disk or cloud for the data just to be safe with all those pictures.

 

[Pauly]

Agree ^^ bigger drive would be better, no point building a decent spec machine that you cant run of the SSD, its only going to slow things down, if your photoshoping your probably going to want your working images on there and after a shoot that can equate to quite a few GBs with a decent camera and your programs and games will already be on there and dont forget about pagefile which will = total ram size & hiberfile if you use hibernation

 

[smarteyeball]

One specific question I had was if I have 32GB of RAM will a 60GB SSD suffice for a scratch disc?

For a scratch disc, yes - 60GB is fine with 32GB of RAM.

But I would make sure photoshop/OS is on a SSD for optimal performance.



(Guys, a scratch disc is essentially an 'overflow' drive for any data that exceeds the 32GB of physical space. Photoshop dumps data onto the drive. Since memory overuns aren't an every use occurrence, a small and fast drive solely for that purpose will suffice. The OP didn't mention what type of drive the actual app and OS will be on. )

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

You also might want to bump up the RAM to 16GB. The gaming won't need it but if working with large images and or very many images at once, your wife will appreciate the extra RAM. If she does any serious video editing 23GB might not be too much but you would have to run Win 7 Pro or Ultimate since Home Premium is limited to 16GB.

Also, be sure to make sure you have plenty of capacity for making backups. Ideally, you should have a minimum of one offsite and one onsite backup. An affordable scheme would include one or more external HDDs with enough capacity to back up everything on your internal HDDs for the onsite backup (the onsite backup drives should never be continuously connected to the PC) and a cloud backup service for the offsite backup (I use Carbonite's basic home service and have been happy with it).

I would never use less than 120-128GB for the boot SSD. By the time you load in your games and your wife's photo editing software, you could wind up with more than 60GB. If your games are very large, you may even need a 256GB SSD but that would be a bit extreme for most gamers. If you want to keep hibernation activated, the hiberfil.sys folder will occupy space on the SSD equal to 75% of the amount of RAM you have. It can be reduced but, if you or your wife use close to 75% of the RAM, you may actually want to bump it up to 100%. I kept hibernation enabled on my machine since it is used by my UPS to save any work I'm doing before shutting everything down if the power fails.

 

[jonass21]

I would jump to at least a 128 gb SSD or even better a 256 gb for the OS and most if not all software. Then add a top flight 7000+ rpm 2 or 3 TB spinner with at least 32 to 64 cache for data/pictures. Oh and then don't forget a back up target disk or cloud for the data just to be safe with all those pictures.

Agree ^^ bigger drive would be better, no point building a decent spec machine that you cant run of the SSD, its only going to slow things down, if your photoshoping your probably going to want your working images on there and after a shoot that can equate to quite a few GBs with a decent camera and your programs and games will already be on there and dont forget about pagefile which will = total ram size & hiberfile if you use hibernation

I forgot to link the drives. It will have a 120GB SSD fit os/programs and 60gb for scratch. And 750gb for data
I w planning putting the os/programs onto the 120GB SSD as I usually run a pretty tight ship application wise. I figured that would be more than enough space for Windows photoshop and 1 or 2 games.

I was going to use the 60gb SSD for scratch, that is not enough? Again she is not a full time professional photographer when she finishes a session she usually only has around 4gb worth of images so I am not sure that much space is needed? Am I just looking at it wrong?

I only linked the 1 ram disc but it will have 32gb ram is that enough plus the 60gb scratch disc?

 

[smarteyeball]

If you re-read, you'll notice that they missed the fact that it's for a scratch disc only.

So yes - 60GB is enough. And for the price of RAM, 16GB is a good sweet spot for home/semi-work needs.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

If you re-read, you'll notice that they missed the fact that it's for a scratch disc only.

So yes - 60GB is enough. And for the price of RAM, 16GB is a good sweet spot for home/semi-work needs.

Why have a separate scratch drive?

 

[jonass21]

If you re-read, you'll notice that they missed the fact that it's for a scratch disc only.

So yes - 60GB is enough. And for the price of RAM, 16GB is a good sweet spot for home/semi-work needs.

Why have a separate scratch drive?

From what I read it speeds up photoshop for when you use up all your available ram, it only needs to throw info into it occasionally and if something else is using that drive it can cause a bottleneck, seems like if you are doing real intense graphics creation and multiple layers etc. then you could potentially use a ton of excess space, but I didn't think that more than 32gb ram + 60gb ssd was necessary for a hobbyist

 

[jonass21]

If you re-read, you'll notice that they missed the fact that it's for a scratch disc only.

So yes - 60GB is enough. And for the price of RAM, 16GB is a good sweet spot for home/semi-work needs.

awesome thanks

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

If you re-read, you'll notice that they missed the fact that it's for a scratch disc only.

So yes - 60GB is enough. And for the price of RAM, 16GB is a good sweet spot for home/semi-work needs.

Why have a separate scratch drive?

From what I read it speeds up photoshop for when you use up all your available ram, it only needs to throw info into it occasionally and if something else is using that drive it can cause a bottleneck, seems like if you are doing real intense graphics creation and multiple layers etc. then you could potentially use a ton of excess space, but I didn't think that more than 32gb ram + 60gb ssd was necessary for a hobbyist

Why not just get enough RAM to begin with? If you should need temporary parking space, why not just borrow it from another drive? I do it all the time.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Today I saw a 128 gb ssd going for $99.00 usd with free shipping, do the 128 the same as the OS ssd and heck later you can run them in raid if you want or as the prices fall throw one in your lappy.

 

[jonass21]

Why have a separate scratch drive?

From what I read it speeds up photoshop for when you use up all your available ram, it only needs to throw info into it occasionally and if something else is using that drive it can cause a bottleneck, seems like if you are doing real intense graphics creation and multiple layers etc. then you could potentially use a ton of excess space, but I didn't think that more than 32gb ram + 60gb ssd was necessary for a hobbyist

Why not just get enough RAM to begin with? If you should need temporary parking space, why not just borrow it from another drive? I do it all the time.

This is just what I've read, I have never personally used photoshop. How much do you ram do you typically use and how intensive is your photoshop work? My wife will likely only use it for basic photo touch ups, not graphic creations, so I was hoping that 32GB of ram would be enough but pretty much everything on the internet says to get a scratch disc.

 

[jonass21]

Today I saw a 128 gb ssd going for $99.00 usd with free shipping, do the 128 the same as the OS ssd and heck later you can run them in raid if you want or as the prices fall throw one in your lappy.

Yeah it would only save me around 30 bucks to get the 60gb ssd instead of the 120gb ssd, but I just feel like that large of a SSD for a scratch disc wouldn't necessary for a casual user. Correct me if I am wrong

 

[smarteyeball]

You can always partition a larger drive so the space doesn't go to waste. ie 40Gb for scratch, the rest for apps etc

Another option would be to see how Photoshop goes without a scratch disc. If your wife then discovers her work often exceeds the Ram limit, buy the disc then. With 16GB or 32GB and semi-pro/casual work she might just be able to live with a few extra seconds of processing.


I haven't had PS installed for a while, so I honestly can't recall how often the scratch disc would be used.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Today I saw a 128 gb ssd going for $99.00 usd with free shipping, do the 128 the same as the OS ssd and heck later you can run them in raid if you want or as the prices fall throw one in your lappy.

Yeah it would only save me around 30 bucks to get the 60gb ssd instead of the 120gb ssd, but I just feel like that large of a SSD for a scratch disc wouldn't necessary for a casual user. Correct me if I am wrong

Your correct and you can find a 60-64gb SSD for chump change most likely. I was just thinking about recycle re-use as for me a 128gb is the new 64 of just a couple of years ago and in fact for me a 256 is the new 128 but there still real money but keep on falling. Can't wait for us to be talking about our 1TB raid SSD set up's in a couple of years.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

From what I read it speeds up photoshop for when you use up all your available ram, it only needs to throw info into it occasionally and if something else is using that drive it can cause a bottleneck, seems like if you are doing real intense graphics creation and multiple layers etc. then you could potentially use a ton of excess space, but I didn't think that more than 32gb ram + 60gb ssd was necessary for a hobbyist

Why not just get enough RAM to begin with? If you should need temporary parking space, why not just borrow it from another drive? I do it all the time.

This is just what I've read, I have never personally used photoshop. How much do you ram do you typically use and how intensive is your photoshop work? My wife will likely only use it for basic photo touch ups, not graphic creations, so I was hoping that 32GB of ram would be enough but pretty much everything on the internet says to get a scratch disc.

I actually don't have Photoshop but some scanning operations I do require three temporary folders for the initially scanned images, the color corrected images, and the final PDF made from the color corrected images. I'm not sure what a scratch disk is. If it's used for a temporary parking place for images in progress, I would think a folder or few on the data HDD would do the job. If more speed is needed, you could get a larger SSD, such as 256 GB, and either have scratch folders on it or make two partitions, one for the OS and the other for a scratch disk. If a scratch disk is to extend your RAM, it would make more sense to just put more RAM into the machine. Most MOBOs will support 32GB of RAM if used with Win 7 Pro or Ultimate (Home Premium supports up to 16GB RAM). The MOBO in my machine supports up to an insane 64GB RAM; I kept it "conservative" at 32GB.

Edit: Curiosity got the better of me and I looked up scratch disk. It's basically space on a drive that is reserved for virtually memory: overflow for when the demands on RAM exceeds it capacity. Here is a link that gives a good explanation on what a scratch disk is and what is needed.

 

[Layback Bear]

The one big problem I have notice with people that have bought a SSD is they got one to small.
Put as much SSD in your computer as you can afford.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

I cheap'd out back in the day when that first 64 was like $250.00 but with 128's going for 90 or less heck I picked up an OCZ 120gb for $49.00....just crazy and since I've settled on a 256 for my lappy and another for the monster desktop

 

[jonass21]

You can always partition a larger drive so the space doesn't go to waste. ie 40Gb for scratch, the rest for apps etc

Another option would be to see how Photoshop goes without a scratch disc. If your wife then discovers her work often exceeds the Ram limit, buy the disc then. With 16GB or 32GB and semi-pro/casual work she might just be able to live with a few extra seconds of processing.


I haven't had PS installed for a while, so I honestly can't recall how often the scratch disc would be used.

Ii think I'll try that, no scratch disc first, and see how it goes that way I can upgrade later if needed.