THOUGHTGRAFF

If you’re like me, you care more about what you do with your computer than how it works. Of course that sort of outlook just won’t fly when your computer decides to take a bowel movement on you. No my friends, when that sort of event happens, you force yourself to care—a lot. And when you decide to care about your computer, all sorts of new and wonderful (terrible?) things come bursting into your awareness. Curiously enough these things mostly take the form of acronyms—acronyms and what I can only surmise is some form of WW II naval code.


So by now, if you’re me, you’ve been up many nights drinking waaaaaaaay too much Major Dickinson and Spicey Chai, while obsessively pouring over in equal parts Wikipedia, Newegg, and Adobe forums, trying to answer that most illusive of questions…

Just what makes a good Photoshop workstation?

I do almost all of my work in Photoshop. Sometimes I use InDesign, but most of my work takes the form of digital paintings. So since my computer needed to be replaced I thought this was a good time to build a workstation that could leverage all of what Photoshop has to offer.

What does Photoshop have to offer?

Photoshop CS4 (the latest version) is special. It’s special because it’s the first version of Photoshop (from now on PS) to offer support for 64 bit processors. Unfortunately for you and me, Apple decided to scrap support for 64 bit Carbon in favor of Cocoa. Since there wasn’t enough time to redesign CS4 in Cocoa, Mac users have to wait till CS5 for 64 bit support. Windows is a different story. CS4 runs in 64bit mode natively in XP 64 and Vista 64/ Windows 7 (Lame, I know).

Wait, why should we care about 64 bit anything?

64 bit processors can address data orders of magnitude higher than 32 bit processors the result of which is, computers can now effectively have up to 16.8 million terabytes of RAM, in theory anyways. That’s why if you work with huge images (like photographers) you care. With PS the rule of thumb is, more RAM = more better—er?

Scratch that Scratch Disk

PS uses your hard drive to store temporary files when its data gets out of hand. Generally speaking, we don’t want PS reading from and writing to the hard disk. Reading and writing to hard disks (unless you’re using some type of Solid State Drive) is slower than reading/writing to RAM (which is a Solid State Drive). So the more RAM a system has, the less of that nonsense will be going on.

Unfortunately we still need the Scratch Disk, just in case. Good news is that with advances in hard drive technology drive speed has sped up. We can optimize the Scratch Disk by placing it on an isolated hard drive of its own (you don’t want that many read/writes happening on your main disk where your OS is installed) and making sure we’re using a fast drive with a good amount of drive cache (around 16mb is good for 160gb drive). If you have the money (300 bucks or so) you can spring for a SSD with SLC technology. SLC drives have far less writing errors than previous version of SSDs, so I’d go with that. If you do choose an SSD that doesn’t have a PCIE or mini PCIE connection type (as in SATA) you’ll need to buy a mounting kit (they’re much smaller than normal optical drives).

Hardcore

Like it or not, marketing hype or not, more cores = more computational might. Using filters (such as Gausian Blur) on high resolution images requires processing machismo. And if you’d like to be able to do something else at the same time as your applying that Gausian Blur to your 45 megapixel image, then you’re going to want more computational mojo. Enter quad and eight core processors. The good thing here is that it’s not about processor frequency speed as much as front side bus speeds. I f you have 800mhz RAM and a 533mhz front side bus then your RAM will run at 533mhz. For a PS workstation we want processor power (parallel cores) + fast RAM access (RAM plus FSB speed). To top that off we’ll also want a good amount of processor cache to hold the processor’s instruction set, at least 1mb per core.

Some other things to consider for your PS processor is heat and power requirements. This is where smaller is better. Because transistors for the time being are as small as they can be, CPU makers are trying to shrink the size of the surrounding chip, to increase efficiency. That’s good for us, because low heat = longer operational life. Low power on the whole reflects lower heat. That will be something to consider as we delve deeper into the whole system.

Motherboards without puns

Your mobo (as the kids say) is the root of the system. If the motherboard doesn’t support a system component then you can’t use it. There’s a couple of things that are important when looking at motherboards. Because this is a workstation, we want higher quality parts. That means solid state capacitors, good heat sink, and board layout (a good board layout should make logical sense like making sure cable connections can reach and pcie card slots aren’t so close together they block other card ports).

Output ports are always high on the list. Most people know what kinds of output ports they want/like so I’m not going to go into that, but it is important to have the ones you need. You’ll also want to make sure that the board supports your processor type and socket (socket 775, or core i7; core 2 duo or quad core or core 2 quad).

Another important item is the bus speed of the board. You want to make sure it matches your processor’s bus speed. In most case you’ll wan this to be faster than the processor so you have room to upgrade in the future. That goes for RAM speed as well. You want RAM speeds that match or exceed processor bus speeds, even if you plan on putting in some lower speed RAM (just makes it a little more future proof). Also ram configuration is important. Depending on the slots of RAM and the max amount the board can support for one stick (ie, a 4gb stick), this can vastly increase the cost of RAM. 4gb sticks are much more expensive than a 2gb stick. If you plan on getting 8gb of RAM, it will be cheaper if you can spread that RAM out over 4 slots as opposed to 2. Finally pay attention to the max RAM the board can actually support. Sometimes manufactures skimp on the total RAM because most users, even gamers don’t need more than 4gbs of RAM.

Often overlooked is the BIOS options for the board in question. A good manufacturer will generally have extensive control over the different components of your mobo. This is important for us because we want to be able to highly tune our workstation to maximize its performance.

One last thing I’ll point out is on–board video. On–board video used to be a joke, but Nvidia is turning that around with there latest chipsets. The 9 series chipsets from Nvidia support DX 10 and Open GL 2.1. There capable of streaming full HD video and playing games like Crysis on low settings. Pretty impressive for an integrated GPU. Apple thought so too, so all of the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros come with the 9400m chipset (and so does the new Mac Mini btw). Nvidia has also come out with a workstation integrated GPU called the Quadro FX470. This is exactly the same chipset but, and it’s a big butt, with workstation quality Open GL drivers, making a sizable difference in quality. Although PS mostly relies on your CPU, since CS3 PS has leveraged the system’s GPU for screen redraws, freeing up the processor even more. So although video cards are not the most import aspect of a PS workstation, an integrated GPU can be an easy optimization (and inexpensive too).

3D in the PS

Photoshop since CS3 has provided some limited 3D object support via 3D layers. Depending on what you use PS for, you may need this kind of new functionality. One such application I can think of might be matte painting for motion pictures. CS4 has even more 3D support. You can now import a 3D object into PS and change its texture and lighting source. You can manipulate the object in 3D space as well (zooming in and out, scaling, and rotating). This adds even more importance to having some kind of Open GL compliant GPU, even if it can’t play HD videos. You can buy a video card today for $30.00 or less that will fit the bill nicely.

The case for form factor

If you’re not an enthusiast, form factor PCs may be a little off your radar. Motherboards these days come in 3 basic flavors; ATX, microATX, and Mini ITX. ATX, as you may have guessed is a full–sized PC. Mini ITX is only 6.7″ x 6.7″ (almost as small as the Mac Mini board). And, microATX is somewhere in the middle. If you’re like me, space matters. I want all the desk real estate I can get. If I can fit a workstation into a 7×7 in case I’m going to do it. If you’re going to go with a tiny case like me, then quality matters. If a case is cheap, the makers have usually skimped on the design. When there’s so little space design matters even more than usual. Some good manufacturers of small cases are Antec, Jetway, and Thermaltake. When you find your case make sure it has plenty of ventilation. Airflow is key when making a performance computer, especially if you plan on using a stock cooler. Mini ITX motherboards usually come without expansion slots. At most they’ll have one PCIE, but more often than not they’ll have a mini PCIE for wireless/bluetooth expantion cards. If we were making a video editing workstation, I’d recomend a full-sized ATX or ATX extended case and motherboard so we could SLI or Crossfire together parallel GPU (Like the Quadro FX 4800), but this is a PS workstation, so I’m going with microATX, a good compromise. MicroATX will usually have the footprint of a tabloid size piece of paper (11 x 17 in). Some are smaller. The microATX boards are roughly 9″ x 9″ in size. They usually have 2-3 expantion slots and can fit an ATX size power supply (PSU).

Green PSU

There have been some marked improvement in power management and countability in the computer industry (like so many industries) of late. PSUs now have different levels of power efficiency certifications, Plus 80, Plus 80 Bronze, Plus 80 Silver, and Plus 80 Gold (you can find out more here). Plus 80 PSUs can dole out power as needed by detecting power needs and adjusting. These variable power PSUs can run at (you guessed it) a constant 80% percent efficiency. They can really help with the longevity of your system plus cut down on the power bill.

One quick note: Motherboard manufacturers that comply with the European ban on harmful substances in electronics are certified ROHS. Look for that if you’d like to help mommy earth.

Workstation wrap up

So, what did I end up with you ask? I’ll tell you friend:

• CPU
  Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33GHz, 1333mhz FSB, 4mb L2 cache
• Motherboard
  ASUS P5N7A-VM LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 9300/nForce 730i Micro ATX (bus speed 1333mhz, 800mhz RAM, RAM max 16gb, 4 RAM slos 240 pin, 5 SATA 3Gb/s connections, 8 channel Realtek high definition audio, hdmi, dvi, d-sub ) - I read in several places that this board’s north bridge can get extremely hot, but that’s ok, I’ll just replace the heatsink for it if need be.
• GPU
  NVIDIA GeForce 9300 chipset
• RAM
  G. Skill PC 6400 RAM 800mhz, 1.8v, 240 pin, 4 x 2gb
• Hard Drive
  Western Digital Caviar Blue WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive - didn’t need a very large drive since I have a big external
• Case
  Thermaltake LANBOX Lite VF6000BNS Black - a microATX form factor case

Final final final thoughts

The rest of the parts I already have. I decided to go with the lowest speed 45nm quad core because this computer is intended to work with a program optimized to use quad cores and 64 bit processors. I might even under clock the CPU a bit to lower power consumption and increase longevity even further.

I’m disappointed that these early 9300/9400 motherboards are plagued with problems. It seems like this board is the least problematic out of the microATX category.

I may end up returning this motherboard for the Asus P5N-VM WS which has an integrated Quadro FX 470 chipset. Since it’s workstation grade, it ought to have been more thoroughly tested before being released into the wild. We’ll see I guess. I will update again when the station is finished.

Long live the puter.