# PC spec



## shaneoneill (Dec 21, 2009)

Hi All, 

Newbie here.

Just looking for some advice on a new PC (not interested in Mac just yet!)

Here is the approx spec I am going for, can be tweaked:

Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition 3.33GHz 8Mb Cache, Manufacturer Supplied Cooler, 12Gb DDR3 CORSAIR Triple Channel (6x2GB) 16'', 2'''Gb SATA Hard Drive, 3''GB SATA Raptor 1''''rpm Hard Drive, , I7 - Asus P6T Delux V2 SLI/X-fire 64''FSB DDR3 2''' x6 X58 chipset, ATI HD 577' 1'24MB GDDR5 PCI Express DDR DVI, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit,

My questions are:

Is anyone running Lightroom on 64bit Windows, if so any issues?
Does anyone see any potential problems with this spec?
Is LR Win 7 compatable?
Would Lightroom benefit from a Solid State Drive?

As you can see, i am just trying to give Lightroom every chance and save some time for me ..

Any help/feedback/suggestions are much appreciated ..

Regards,
Shane


----------



## johnbeardy (Dec 21, 2009)

Are you building this yourself? It sounds good.

I've heard good reports of SSDs for the system drive and for the drive containing LR's catalogue.

John


----------



## shaneoneill (Dec 21, 2009)

Hi John, 

Thanks for responding. I am not building this myself but am commisioning http://www.cougar-extreme.co.uk/ to do it. Approx cost so far is £24'' inc postage to Ireland which to me is a good price. I've specified that I want this system to run silently and haver also mentioned the programmes that I want to work on it. Although they cannot guarantee anything they will try to minimise any fuss.

So you think this PC will work well with LR? Can you expand on using SSD too?

Thanks again, 

Shane


----------



## clee01l (Dec 21, 2009)

[quote author=shaneoneill link=topic=8682.msg58533#msg58533 date=1261398272]Just looking for some advice on a new PC (not interested in Mac just yet!)

My questions are:

Is anyone running Lightroom on 64bit Windows, if so any issues?
...
Is LR Win 7 compatable?
[/quote] I just upgraded hardware to a 64bit machine. Before that I upgraded my dual core 32bit Vista to 32 bit Win7. 

LR did not notice the Vista =&gt; Win7 switch. 
With the new machine. I used Windows Easy Transfer to move all my settings to the 64 bit machine. I then D/L'd LR from the Adobe site and it installed as 64bit, found my .lrcat file and behaves just like the other system (only much faster).
My only wrinkle is the the new machine came with 1''Mps Ethernet on the MoBo where as my laptop has Gigabit. My LR Archived images are on the NAS and I suspect I'll need to add a Gigabit card to rectify that situation.


----------



## RikkFlohr (Dec 21, 2009)

Downside to Windows Seven 64 Bit is that the CD/DVD Burn options on Export are not available. You must remain 32 Bit (For now, at least) to use that functionality.


----------



## happycranker (Dec 22, 2009)

Diglloyd.com had a quick review of SSD but for the MAC, but it will give you some indication of the potential on a PC.


----------



## johnbeardy (Dec 22, 2009)

£24'' seems on the high side. Have you tried specifying a similar machine at Mesh?

I've seen a few comments about SSD but unfortunately some were not in public forums, and I can't recall which. They seemed remarkable, so I'd ask/research them more - it might be a better choice than the 1'k rpm drive which I assume is your system drive.

John


----------



## joemontana57 (Dec 24, 2009)

I just got a machine with very similar specs to yours. The only difference being a 7,2'' rpm system drive, different i7 processor.

I got a Dell Studio XPS with an i7 92' processor and 12G's of RAM, windows 7 professional 64 bit. It is *blazing*!


[quote author=shaneoneill link=topic=8682.msg58533#msg58533 date=1261398272]
Hi All, 

Newbie here.

Just looking for some advice on a new PC (not interested in Mac just yet!)

Here is the approx spec I am going for, can be tweaked:

Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition 3.33GHz 8Mb Cache, Manufacturer Supplied Cooler, 12Gb DDR3 CORSAIR Triple Channel (6x2GB) 16'', 2'''Gb SATA Hard Drive, 3''GB SATA Raptor 1''''rpm Hard Drive, , I7 - Asus P6T Delux V2 SLI/X-fire 64''FSB DDR3 2''' x6 X58 chipset, ATI HD 577' 1'24MB GDDR5 PCI Express DDR DVI, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit,

My questions are:

Is anyone running Lightroom on 64bit Windows, if so any issues?
Does anyone see any potential problems with this spec?
Is LR Win 7 compatable?
Would Lightroom benefit from a Solid State Drive?

As you can see, i am just trying to give Lightroom every chance and save some time for me ..

Any help/feedback/suggestions are much appreciated ..

Regards,
Shane


[/quote]


----------



## pknoot (Dec 24, 2009)

For that price, you should consider a Mac Pro!


----------



## kwdaves (Dec 25, 2009)

The specs look really good for your system and here in the US the price would be about right for one of the systems with four slots for hard drives and at least a 65'W power supply. I've seen at least three variations of Core i7 processor/X58 motherboards based systems: budget performance with only two or three hard drive slots such as those from HP; midrange systems with slots for four hard drives; and high end liguid cooled systems that can have six hard drives. 

Lightroom 2.X runs well on my "ancient" quadcore with Windows 7 64 bit (as it did with Vista 64 bit).

FYI, a similarly equipped MacPro would cost closer to $58'' US and that is without the 1',''' RPM hard drive.


----------



## ricardo (Dec 31, 2009)

Well this is what I built in November 2''7:
1)Thermaltake toughpower W'117RU 75'W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 8' PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
2)Intel Core 2 Extreme QX67'' Kentsfield 2.66GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 13'W Quad-Core Processor
3)Western Digital Raptor WD15''ADFD 15'GB 1'''' RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive
4)CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) 24'-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 8'' (PC2 64'') Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4'96-64''C5DHX
5)3ware 965'SE-4LPML PCI Express Lanes: 4 SATA II Controller Card RAID Levels ', 1, 5, 1', Single Disk, JBOD, KIT (this is very important if you want to get full use of hard drives and MoBo)
6)EVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 88'' GTX 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
7)GIGABYTE GA-X38-DQ6 LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Ultra Durable 2, Ultra Cooling Intel Motherboard
8)Microsoft Windows Vista 32-Bit Business

I built this system myself 2 years ago, and as most of you know this is a dinosaur by now. This is not the case with this set up as I tell most of my friends. You can look up the parts and see that the prices have held which tells me this is good hardware. And it is, I have not shut down this machine in the last 2 years, only restarts for updates and not a single crash or bug or whatever anyone says about pc's(Macs do get viruses and are prone to just as many problems). 

One thing I can tell anyone who has a custom machine built is the order of how software is loaded. Since my primary software is Adobe I Install that up first, it does matter!!! This of course after all the updates for windows have been done. I Know Mac users don't have to deal with this to much, but the benefits are far greater for me at least. Than I install the rest of my software according to importance. I got to tell you that I have not seen a single Mac come close to doing what this machine does even today. LR screams and it's not even 64bit I can export 1''' images shot in raw to jpeg at the highest setting in a couple of minutes. 

Now getting to the juicy part and to answer Shane's question you are on the money with your set-up, it really all depends on your budget. I am building a 64bit machine with windows 7 and I got to tell you I did a test in LR2 took 3'gigs worth of images batched them out in a minute and half "3' GIGS" When I'm done building it I will give the specs.

One last thing once all updates are done my machine never goes online. This is my work environment and the one thing I have learned over the many years no matter what always have safe sex well figuratively speaking. The world wide web is the biggest prostitute out there not to offend anyone but I think you all know what I mean... And I'm not a Mac hater either hell one of my many first computers was a Macintosh Plus.

Happy New Year to all...


[quote author=shaneoneill link=topic=8682.msg58533#msg58533 date=1261398272]
Hi All, 

Newbie here.

Just looking for some advice on a new PC (not interested in Mac just yet!)

Here is the approx spec I am going for, can be tweaked:

Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition 3.33GHz 8Mb Cache, Manufacturer Supplied Cooler, 12Gb DDR3 CORSAIR Triple Channel (6x2GB) 16'', 2'''Gb SATA Hard Drive, 3''GB SATA Raptor 1''''rpm Hard Drive, , I7 - Asus P6T Delux V2 SLI/X-fire 64''FSB DDR3 2''' x6 X58 chipset, ATI HD 577' 1'24MB GDDR5 PCI Express DDR DVI, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit,

My questions are:

Is anyone running Lightroom on 64bit Windows, if so any issues?
Does anyone see any potential problems with this spec?
Is LR Win 7 compatable?
Would Lightroom benefit from a Solid State Drive?

As you can see, i am just trying to give Lightroom every chance and save some time for me ..

Any help/feedback/suggestions are much appreciated ..

Regards,
Shane


[/quote]


----------



## jplumansoc (Apr 27, 2010)

I'd recommend going down to the Core i7-95'/94' as the extra 2''-3'' MHz wouldn't make that big of a difference, spend the extra 5'' on setting up a RAID for your hard drives, you will find a bigger increase in performance there rather than a couple extra MHz. Lightroom is more HD IO bound than cpu bound.

I just did a review of my Core i7 with Lightroom export speed.
http://www.jplumansoc.com/blog/2'1'/4/27/hardware-review-lightroom-and-your-processor.html


----------

