More Mac Questions- SS drives, Epson Printer Compatibility etc...

[eric black]

Tax refund is coming and I finally can invest in a computer upgrade. I have past posts where I have asked questions related to Macs, iMac's in particular but I want to make sure I have current answers prior to doing the purchase-

My current plan is to get a 27" iMac with i-7 quad processor, stock up on RAM and get photoshop cs5- most of my questions relate to options available and "how to"

My questions are-
1. Is aftermarket RAM easy to install in one of these (I am fairly mechanically adept)?
2. Is there any advantages to a solid state drive in addition to the 2 TB hard drive I am planning on having?
3. Are there any options I should consider to get max speed out of this unit crunching multilayer drum scan files of 4x5 to 8x10 transparencies?
4. Have the issues with hooking these computers to an Epson 9600 printer been resolved- ie the color management issues (or others?)
5. I have another question on Aperture that I will stick in another post- dont want to crowd this one too much.

Thanks for bearing with me as I continue to figure all of this out- its been a long road to get to the point where I finally have the means to do this purchase.
E

[David de Gruyl]

1. Is aftermarket RAM easy to install in one of these (I am fairly mechanically adept)?
2. Is there any advantages to a solid state drive in addition to the 2 TB hard drive I am planning on having?
3. Are there any options I should consider to get max speed out of this unit crunching multilayer drum scan files of 4x5 to 8x10 transparencies?


If you have not looked yet at macperformanceguide.com (http://macperformanceguide.com/) you should.

The ram should be fairly straightforward (I do not have an iMac, but the ram is accessible). You need a screwdriver. Unlike the unfortunate design of the mini, which is a severe hassle.

I'd certainly recommend an SSD for applications and system disk. Also works great when used for scratch disk in photoshop. If you buy one after-market, get one with good write performance.

Memory is the single biggest speed booster, and that can only be used with photoshop CS5 (CS4 has a limit of 3 GB). Next is the speed of the scratch disk, and you already have the processor covered.

Can I assume that you considered and rejected the mac pro?

[sultanofcognac]

1) a seven-year-old can change RAM - check www.macsales.com
2) solid-state drives are quicker but have a shorter lifespan
3) not really
4) nope
5) the post just before mine suggests downloading a demo - which I think is a very good idea

[David de Gruyl]

2) solid-state drives are quicker but have a shorter lifespan


All hard disks should be assumed to be about to fail. Always. (I'll take my IT hat off now).

[Leigh]

I just had my first hard drive failure in over 30 years of working with PCs.

Fortunately it was one 2TB drive in a dual 2TB array set up as fully-mirrored RAID-1, so I didn't lose any data.

I would strongly recommend a RAID-1 configuration for all your working files. This frees up the main drive for applications and stuff that can be readily replaced.

Mine is a Western Digital MyBook Studio II, which is available in various sizes. It comes pre-formatted for the MAC, with built-in RAID management software.

That drive supports Firewire-800, which is much faster than USB-2. I transferred 231GB of data from the backup to the new drive in about 40 minutes.

- Leigh

[David Aimone]

Basically doing the same on a 2.4GHz 24" iMac, but not using Photoshop. I am using Aperture, Lightroom and a bunch of Nik Software plugins. Works great, easy to install RAM. Not sure about the Epson printer. I'm looking into a 3880 myself. The Epson V700 works well with the computer though.

SS drive is worth it too, as well as extra memory.

[Darin Boville]

Don't buy an iMac now unless you can't wait--updates should be here in a month or two.

--Darin

[gnuyork]

If you have not looked yet at macperformanceguide.com (http://macperformanceguide.com/) you should.

Memory is the single biggest speed booster, and that can only be used with photoshop CS5 (CS4 has a limit of 3 GB). Next is the speed of the scratch disk, and you already have the processor covered.

Can I assume that you considered and rejected the mac pro?

I would argue that for Photoshop processor speed is the bigger performance booster even over memory. I read up on Lloyd's performance guide as well, and this was interesting... Maybe this doesn't apply to the iMac...

http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProWestmere-Photoshop-CoresSlower.html

[David de Gruyl]

I would argue that for Photoshop processor speed is the bigger performance booster even over memory. I read up on Lloyd's performance guide as well, and this was interesting... Maybe this doesn't apply to the iMac...

http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacProWestmere-Photoshop-CoresSlower.html

Depends on where you start measuring. (memory, I mean). Many of my scans will require over 3 GB right off the bat, and adding layers will ... make them take more memory. Swapping to disk is slow.

The trouble is "how much is enough". The difference between 16 and 32 GB of ram is small. The difference between 4 and 16 is huge.

BTW, you can't get more than 6 cores in an iMac, so that link does not seem relevant.

[gnuyork]

You're right. I was reading it in regards to a Mac pro purchase, but that's why I stated that it may not apply to the iMac. So by that logic, more RAM may be what is needed.

I also found it interesting that with the 6 and 12 cores that you need triple channel RAM. According to Lloyd, unless 32 Gigs is actually needed you would take a small performance hit. I originally ordered 32 Gigs of RAM and sent 8 gigs back, no sense in paying more money for a performance hit. So far I have not needed the RAM, but I do use Adobe After Effects that utilizes RAM for previews, so I may need more at some point, but I will try to upgrade in multiples of 3.

[hassiman]

I am using a 2006 Intel MacPro with 9GB RAM... I soek on large scan files from my CoolScan 9000 and never have a problem with speed using CS5 and LR3. I would HIGHLY reccomend CalDigit's fine external RAID VM series external drives run in RAID 1 configuration. They interface with FW800/400/ USB 2 and eSATA and are VERY fast. The new VR Mini's will actally run in the fielf via BUS power through FW800. CalDigit pre-tests the boxes before shipping... been using them for years after ending up with a stack of dead WDs and LaCie drives at the university I work at [IT department] I have had numbers of CalDigit external drives running our data for years 24/7 with no problems whatsoever.:)

I do not work for CalDigit

[gnuyork]

I was running a macbook pro (the first intel model 2007ish?). Large files on that were a waiting game.

Now I also have a wide gamut monitor that I can color calibrate. To me that also make a big improvement, though I did OK with the laptop and a couple of trial and error prints.

[Mike Anderson]

...
I would strongly recommend a RAID-1 configuration for all your working files. This frees up the main drive for applications and stuff that can be readily replaced.
....

That's the approach I took (with a Guardian Maximus (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax)). Plug and play on a Mac. I only bother to back up the Guardian drive to another (cheap) external drive, then move that cheap external drive offsite. I, like Leigh, assume I'll be able to reconstruct a system drive containing OS and applications without a backup.

...Mike

[brucemcelya]

Eric,

I think an important point to take from Lloyd's Mac site is: Anything but a macpro is a dead-end mac. All macs are nice, but macpros can be expanded, and their potential time in service is longer than notebooks or i-macs. Per his suggestion, I purchased an '09 macpro 4-core for 1700, put in all the data drives plus backup, memory (getting cheaper every day), and CS5. My screen is an Eizo S1932, a modest graphics unit that is good enough for what I do. All that for a bit more than a new Imac, and you have a good six years of quality expandable graphics computing. Since my file sizes to date are smaller than others, I hope to get eight years out of the '09 macpro, while upgrading drives every few years. As a hedge against obsolescence, I'll get a couple extra video cards now, while cheap and available, to use as spares. Five years from now the card that's in there won't be around, or it will be very expensive. Just a guess. A couple of extra case fans seems a good idea too.

Hyper-tension has gone down measurably since escaping the dark side into the light of unix, but that's another subject. Quite simply, the macpro affords me more time for LF photography.

bruce
http://www.pbase.com/bmcelya/home

[paulr]

The best SSDs now are excellent, and have enough longevity that you just don't have to worry about them wearing out. Right now the top dogs are probably the OWC Mercury drives, but there's a brand new Sandforce controller chip coming out soon, which could things up.

They're still too expensive to use as a data disk. Photoshop CS5 can use all the RAM you throw at it, so in most cases you'll get more performance for your money by upping the RAM than by using a fast scratch disk.

You can get some productivity gains by using an SSD scratch partition in a different sense: the way video and audio people use scratch is to have a fast volum for their active files (as opposed to storage). This lets your regular saves happen faster. Ideally you'd save the file in an uncompressed format (like layered tif), since the compression algorithms in the open/save actions are single threaded and slow. You can save in a compressed format (like PSD) at the end.