Building a computer for photoshop, need some advice please...

[Daniel Stone]

Hey all,

Well, as luck turn out, I've come across a Mac Pro on C-List in the past few days . It has 2x4-core Nehalems in it, all running at 3.0ghz(so 8 cores total), 16gb ram(1033mhz), 1TB HD space(2drives, 1x250gb, 1x750gb), Nvidia 512mb Quaddro FX video card, and comes with a fresh install of Lion! Not to mention having full CS5 suite installed on it, for $1200!!! It was a little "taller" than my original budget, but I sold a few things off locally to help fund the rest of it, and it seems to be a very happy camper opening and rendering some 2gb(starting file size) scans from 8x10 film!

I appreciate all of your efforts in helping me with this little project, but now that I can run windows(windows 7 pro came insatalled via Bootcamp in the purchase as well ), and OSX, I can get the "best of both worlds"...

now to find a suitable editing LCD monitor, but I'll need quite a few more pennies ...

-Dan

[Mike Anderson]

...Not to mention having full CS5 suite installed on it, for $1200!!! ...

As I understand Adobe licensing/activation/deactivation, when one sells a machine one can disable the CS5 on it to enable it (copy with same serial #) to run on a new machine, but it will continue to run on the old machine for 30 days and then become truly disabled. So caveat emptor installed software on Craigslist hardware.

...Mike

[Daniel Stone]

didn't know that, however, the person selling WAS a pro photographer, who "upgraded"(I'd call it a downgrade, but thats my opinion) to one of the new 27" imacs. IDK, it was nice of them to include it, but if it poops out after 30 days, well, life goes on I guess . Still an ok deal in my book for way more computer than I need at this moment...

Now to find those CS4 install disks...

-Dan

[paulr]

Hey all,

Well, as luck turn out, I've come across a Mac Pro on C-List in the past few days . It has 2x4-core Nehalems in it, all running at 3.0ghz(so 8 cores total), 16gb ram(1033mhz), 1TB HD space(2drives, 1x250gb, 1x750gb), Nvidia 512mb Quaddro FX video card, and comes with a fresh install of Lion! Not to mention having full CS5 suite installed on it, for $1200!!!

Score. That's the way to do it. I got a good deal on a used one too, but not that good. The video card alone is probably worth that.

Would be worth replacing the main drive so you're not relying on a used on. The old one can be used for time machine backups.

That video card is radically excessive for photography. Maybe it will tempt you into learning video effects and video editing ...

now to find a suitable editing LCD monitor, but I'll need quite a few more pennies ...

Keep checking Craigslist. I just got a great NEC monitor, with the dedicated calibration kit, for $300. I got it from someone who paid $1400 two years ago. He wanted a bigger one. The days of affordable high end LCDs has finally arrived.

[paulr]

Another thought, since you mentioned you went over budget ...

you might be able to sell that video card for an amount that will pay for decent used monitor and lower end video card that would be suitable for photoshop.

A regular video card would probably use a lot less energy, also. That quadro card is basically a high end computer stuffed inside a high end computer.