Building PC for photography

[gavincato]

Hi guys,

My i7-6700k system is getting a bit long in the tooth and time to upgrade. I'm a wedding photographer and really want something to help crunch export times (i.e. exporting camera raw files to jpegs). I mostly use Photo mechanic, Capture one & jpeg mini. Capture one is the priority for the system (if you don't know it, just pretend it's lightroom).

My current pc has some stuff I can re-use.

4 x 16gb 3200 ddr4
Corsair rm750i 750w psu
Samsung sm951 m.2 drive
Geforce 980ti (I'd prefer to hang onto this one then get the next generation when it comes out).
2 x 1tb samsung 2.5" ssd
Several 10tb mechanical drives which are in a raid0 for my (very large) dropbox folder.

Wondering if I can get some advice on if any of the above would be a big bottleneck in a new system and which cpu / motherboard combo I should look at. I'm currently a bit stuck on the 12 core vs 16 core 3900x/3950x. I'd prefer the fastest, but it does look like for photographers that there's probably less than 5% difference between 3900 & 3950.

I'd also like a very good, very stable motherboard with several m.2 slots for future use.

thanks heaps

Gav

[Quadrum]

If for what you are doing you only see a 5% performance increase in the 3950, I’d go with the 12 core instead. If I had to choose a motherboard, I would probably go with any Asus or Gigabyte board that supports the chipset, finding ones with multiple m.2 slots is pretty easy like these:

 

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-TUF-X570-Plus-Motherboard-Lighting/dp/B07SXF8GY3/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?keywords=x570+motherboard&qid=1581453956&sprefix=x570&sr=8-5
 

https://www.amazon.com/Asus-Prime-X570-Pro-Ryzen-Motherboard/dp/B07SW925DQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?keywords=x570+motherboard&qid=1581454013&sprefix=x570&sr=8-8
 

https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-X570-AORUS-PCIe4-0-Motherboard/dp/B07SVRZGMX/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?keywords=x570+motherboard&qid=1581454013&sprefix=x570&sr=8-7
 

 

Hope this helped!

[Radium_Angel]

17 minutes ago, gavincato said:

wedding photographer

You poor bastard. (I'm a fetish photographer)

What I found made the biggest difference for me, is using the spinner drives for final storage of finished images, but using an nVME for holding the RAW files for working with.

The GFX card (I use lightroom) didn't make much of a difference as far as acceleration goes, but then again I do very minimal post processing, preferring to get it right in the studio, thus saving myself the time afterwards.

 

[Quadrum]

As a side note if you’re looking for more than two m.2 slots, Threadripper boards are more likely to have that, but I believe there should be a few that will support ryzen with 3+ m.2s. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

[gavincato]

Thanks guys

 

Here's my prelim build.

 

New parts ;

 

Gigabyte X570 Aorus master

Ryzen 9 3950x

Samsung 970 Evo plus 2tb

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv X case

NZXT Kraken Z73 cooler

 

Parts to use from my old system ;

 

Samsung sm951 m.2 ssd (boot drive)

750w psu

4 x 16gb DDR4 3200

2 x 1tb Samsung 2.5" SSD

Geforce 980ti

 

Anyone poke any holes in this setup or does it sound ok?

 

cheers

 

Gav

 

 

 

 

[Quadrum]

On 2/11/2020 at 8:47 PM, gavincato said:

Thanks guys

 

Here's my prelim build.

 

New parts ;

 

Gigabyte X570 Aorus master

Ryzen 9 3950x

Samsung 970 Evo plus 2tb

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv X case

NZXT Kraken Z73 cooler

 

Parts to use from my old system ;

 

Samsung sm951 m.2 ssd (boot drive)

750w psu

4 x 16gb DDR4 3200

2 x 1tb Samsung 2.5" SSD

Geforce 980ti

 

Anyone poke any holes in this setup or does it sound ok?

 

cheers

 

Gav

 

 

 

 

Everything looks pretty balanced. Only thing is that the gpu might not be quite up to par with the new cpu and 64gb of ram, but you did say you wanted to hold on to it, so it’s your preference. Hope all goes well!

[brob]

Considered an Asus motherboard. Perhaps the Strix X570-E or ROG Crosshair Hero VII. The case RGB is compatible with Asus Aura Sync.

 

I'd also suggest an Aura Sync compatible cpu cooler. This would allow for lighting synchronization across all compnents.