Build Help - $2600 workstation - photography editing, 2D, graphic designs

[inflex2]

Hello everyone!

I'm building a workstation for photography editing, graphic designs, and little bit of gaming here and there!

Budget : $2600-2800 (I'm from central europe and prices may differ anyways)

Software :  Premiere, DaVinci, PS, AD Lightroom, Capture, AD After Effects, Avid

Display : 1920x1080 or 2560x1440

Build : Is the i9 9900k the best I can get in this price range for the tasks I demand from it?
How important will graphics card be? Should I rather opt for something alongside 2070s 8GBs / 2080s 8GBs or 1080 TI or 2080 TI 11GBs
AIO or huge Noctua will be enough?
RAM 32 or 64? Dual or Quadro?
Need solid mobo recommendation, I have no idea about mobos handling such work at all. Maybe Z390 Aorus Pro?
I'll need two NVMes slots.
Will Seasonic 650W Gold be enough or should I opt for a more powerful one?
Also : noise < temperature

Thank you very much!

[Radium_Angel]

7 minutes ago, inflex2 said:

RAM 32 or 64?

I am a fellow photographer who uses LightRoom extensively.

I have 64Gig (granted, ECC Reg DDR3) in my system, and can routinely chew up half that just in LightRoom (100MB RAW files from a Nikon FX camera)

[inflex2]

10 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I am a fellow photographer who uses LightRoom extensively.

I have 64Gig (granted, ECC Reg DDR3) in my system, and can routinely chew up half that just in LightRoom (100MB RAW files from a Nikon FX camera)

Thank you my friend! I am actually building this for my friend and although I do know something about hardware since I have built 5 pcs last few months I never actually built anything to such work that's why I need help. One thing, ram capacity then, solved!

[Guest]

I second @Radium_Angel's statement. When I'm tag teaming LR and PS, I can easily shoot past 32GB.

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, inflex2 said:

Thank you my friend! I am actually building this for my friend and although I do know something about hardware since I have built 5 pcs last few months I never actually built anything to such work that's why I need help. One thing, ram capacity then, solved!

I'd go dual screens, which I did, 1 screen for LR, one for PS/etc, dual screens are certainly highly useful. As to resolution, it sort of depends on their eyesight. I use 1920x1080 and have never felt the need for more screen space, but YMMV.

 

And as to CPUs, a single 9900k is certainly king, but there's something to be said for a workstation with dual Xeons (which, is what I went with...20 cores, 40 threads, pure joy)

 

How much gaming will he/she do? Adobe's CS suite is finally taking advantage of a GFX card, but in my exp on LR and PS, the difference isn't all that noticeable. Granted, my card is quite modest in a 660GTX Ti, but if they are not a hardcore gamer, I'd put the money toward other things (the RAM, SSDs, nVMEs etc)

[inflex2]

He said to use full budget to create really good workstation and to play new games if possible. I have created something like this and to me it looks like pretty good workstation :

i9 9900k 
Z390 Aorus Pro
G.Skill Aegis DDR4 3000MHz 64 GB 
RTX2080 Super Gigabyte WindForce
CPU Cooler Noctua NH-D15
PSU Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 650W
Storage 

 

SSD ADATA XPG GAMMIX S11P Pro 512GB NVMe - for System
SSD ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO 1TB NVMe - for work

Toshiba Performance 3 TB 3.5" SATA III - for export and storage

Can you rate it if possible?

Edited October 25, 2019 by inflex2
3 drivers in total (2 m.2 and one hdd)

[trevb0t]

57 minutes ago, inflex2 said:

Z390 Aorus Pro
 

SSD ADATA XPG GAMMIX S11P Pro 512GB PCIe x4 NVMe - for System
SSD ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO 1TB PCIe x4 NVMe - for work

Toshiba Performance 3 TB 3.5" SATA III - for export and storage

Can you rate it if possible?

Not compatible. The Z390 Aorus Pro has 2 M.2 slots, and you've got 8 M.2 drivers listed.

 

I would look at a 1TB SATA m.2 as your boot/game drive, a large NVMe as your creation drive. (Samsung Evo 970 Plus 2TB?)

Then get a 4TB Sata SSD for moving your crayon files to. Still great transfer speeds for moving your creation files. 

Grab a 4TB 7200rpm HDD for scratch files. 

 

The benefit is that your scratch/workload files aren't taking read/write life from your boot/game drive, since games and booting dont read/write a lot. 

The NVMe drive will likely only be beneficial in those processes that take a long time to render, so really you'll only use that for creation of large files, then overnight you'd transfer them accordingly to either your fast SATA SSD drive or your slower scratch HDD drive. 

 

[inflex2]

3 hours ago, trevb0t said:

Not compatible. The Z390 Aorus Pro has 2 M.2 slots, and you've got 8 M.2 drivers listed.

 

I would look at a 1TB SATA m.2 as your boot/game drive, a large NVMe as your creation drive. (Samsung Evo 970 Plus 2TB?)

Then get a 4TB Sata SSD for moving your crayon files to. Still great transfer speeds for moving your creation files. 

Grab a 4TB 7200rpm HDD for scratch files. 

 

The benefit is that your scratch/workload files aren't taking read/write life from your boot/game drive, since games and booting dont read/write a lot. 

The NVMe drive will likely only be beneficial in those processes that take a long time to render, so really you'll only use that for creation of large files, then overnight you'd transfer them accordingly to either your fast SATA SSD drive or your slower scratch HDD drive. 

 

Well there are not 8 M.2 drivers listed.
In reality these were their full names on the site I was looking for them - indicated it's interface and protocols of "PCIe 3.0 x4 / NVMe 1.3". My fault there completly! 
Will edit it now - to resume it for new people on this post, I did list drivers with PCle x4 in the end which indicated its interface if it makes sense. 

[trevb0t]

3 hours ago, inflex2 said:

Well there are not 8 M.2 drivers listed.
In reality these were their full names on the site I was looking for them - indicated it's interface and protocols of "PCIe 3.0 x4 / NVMe 1.3". My fault there completly! 
Will edit it now - to resume it for new people on this post, I did list drivers with PCle x4 in the end which indicated its interface if it makes sense. 

Ah, I misread. I thought you were listing x4 of the drives

[brob]

10 hours ago, inflex2 said:

 Is the i9 9900k the best I can get in this price range for the tasks I demand from it?

Unless most of the work is in Premiere, a 3900X would be the better choice. 

[inflex2]

6 hours ago, brob said:

Unless most of the work is in Premiere, a 3900X would be the better choice. 

I was asking about this CPU although I got information that i9 is more favorable due to it's Quicksync feature.

[brob]

21 hours ago, inflex2 said:

I was asking about this CPU although I got information that i9 is more favorable due to it's Quicksync feature.

As I said, if Premiere is the the heaviest used application then likely the I9-9900K would be a better choice. 

 

I don't believe photographic and graphic editing benefit at all from Quicksync. If you haven't already, Puget Systems has detailed cpu performance data for most of the apps you listed.

[inflex2]

Thank you very much! This is by far the best place I've been to tech-computer wise. Thanks for all help! If anyone has anything to add I'd be glad to hear your opinions.