Quiet Photoshop workstation

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mumbuild
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2017 4:56 am

Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by mumbuild » Mon Jan 02, 2017 6:28 am

Hello everybody,

I am planning a Photoshop workstation as an upgrade to my old notebook, mainly for preproduction artwork for entertainment media. This will be my first build, so please feel free to point out any mistakes, small and large.

My primary concerns are:
  1. Photoshop brush performance (single core CPU), and general system responsiveness.
  2. Storage: including redundancy and backups in case of hardware failure.
  3. Silence: I would prefer the system as inconspicuous as possible.
  4. Modularity and expandability: I plan to review the system every six months and upgrade as my needs change.
  5. Cost: I hope to spend according to my needs but not beyond.
Parts list, or see pcpartpicker:
  • CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core
  • CPU cooler: stock Intel
  • Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2HP Micro ATX
  • RAM: 8 to 32 GB Kingston ValueRAM 32GB DDR4-2133
  • Storage: 3 to 5 x Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" SSD
  • GPU: none
  • Case: Silverstone Kublai KL 07
  • PSU: Corsair RMx 550W 80+ Gold
  • OS: Windows 10 retail / Linux
My questions for the build:
  1. CPU cooler: how does the Intel perform in terms of noise? I could later replace it with a Scythe Ninja 4.
  2. Motherboard: Would the single fan header pose a problem? The Silverstone case has 3 case fans. Could fan splitters realistically resolve this, ie. three fans connected to a single header? For a possible solution I found this: Phobya 3-Way PWM Splitter Cable
  3. RAM: What are your opinions on fast/expensive RAM? I sense this is mainly an issue for servers and gamers.
  4. PSU: Here I feel really uncertain. I would like sufficient wattage for future upgrades, possibly including a GPU, while maintaining quiet operation. Maxing the system specs on pcpartpicker displays a total power draw of 327W, which incl. 5 x SSD and 1 x GTX1060 GPU. Tomshardware’s review of the RMx550 showed the fan kick in at 275W, but I assume a scenario where every system component draws peak load is quite rare, if not wholly theoretical.
I look forward to your suggestions. Have a great day!

CA_Steve
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Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Jan 02, 2017 8:56 am

Welcome to SPCR.

CPU: While moving a brush around might only use one core, many PS tasks (like filters) can utilize more. I'd suggest spending more and getting an i5.

CPU cooler: I don't recommend the stock cooler. Scythe Kotetsu.

Motherboard: Gigabyte has primitive fan controls. Also, that's an odd uATX mobo with only two RAM slots. Look at Asus or Asrock. H110 chipsets won't support RAID...if that's what you are looking to do with all those SSDs...need to go with H170.

RAM: H110/H170 boards only support 2133 speed RAM. If you go with a mobo with 4 RAM slots, you'l have more flexibility. Can start with 2x8GB or 2x16GB now and add another pair later if needed. Unless your open images add up to more than 500MB, 16GB of RAM should be fine.

Storage: 3 to 5 x Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" SSD - Is this for some kind of RAID? I prefer a different setup. One SSD for OS/Apps, another for scratch disk/short term storage. A slow HDD for long term data storage and OS/App backup. An external removable drive for system and data backups. And a couple of thumb drives for document backups. The 850 EVO is a fine SSD. I'd lean toward the 500GB for it's faster write speeds. Another option would be the PCIe based 960 EVO M.2. You could just get one of these for OS/Apps/Scratch disk and it'd be faster than the two 850 EVO's.

GPU: none - Photoshop makes use of the GPU to accelerate many display functions as well as some filtering, etc. Chances are the integrated graphics will do just fine, but always nice to add a discrete later.

Case: Silverstone Kublai KL 07 - haven't seen any acoustic reviews on this case, yet. Note that there isn't an optical disk slot. Note the fans are 3-pin voltage controlled.

PSU: Corsair RMx 550W 80+ Gold - solid choice..and yes, it'll be passive for your loads. i5 + GTX 1060 + mobo / fans / 5 SSDs = 65W + 120W + ~ 50W = 245W under stress load (Prime 95 + Furmark). Real loads closer to 150-200W max. Doubt Photoshop can stress a GTX 1060. FYI, a SATA SSD uses maybe 2W.

mumbuild
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2017 4:56 am

Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by mumbuild » Tue Jan 03, 2017 3:38 pm

Appreciate your help, thanks Steve! :)

CPU: I will probably stay with the i3 6100 as I almost never use filters except for the occasional blur. Am still on Photoshop CS5 and CS2.

CPU-cooler: I will look to the Kotetsu, looks like a good long-term investment. Thanks for the suggestion.

Motherboard: I'm glad you pointed out the missing RAID support. I’m now looking at Asrock H170 Pro4S, in both ATX and uATX. I noticed that ASUS boards are similarly spec’ed but higher priced. Is the premium worth it, and what does it buy you, feature/quality-wise?

Storage: That’s right, I was planning:
  • SSD1: OS/OS/page file/swap.
  • SSD2+3, RAID1: Project files.
  • SSD4: Photoshop scratch.
  • SSD5: Misc media, non-critical data. An alternative would be a 3TB Western Digital Red HDD, however, if it's intermittently accessed I assume it would constantly spin up and make noise.
  • I also speculated about using an external SSD6 to host a clone of SSD1; so in case of OS shenanigans or drive failure I could simply swap SSD1 with SSD6 and reboot. Restoring an image from an in/external drive would be an alternative.
Case: Are 3-pin voltage controlled fans a problem? Would the motherboard still be able to control them?

I sense there are lots of nitty-gritty details regarding fans you won't find by reading specs or user manuals. Has anyone, by chance, written a fan-primer somewhere?

CA_Steve
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Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by CA_Steve » Tue Jan 03, 2017 4:30 pm

If it's a budget issue, you could just drop down to a high clocked Pentium and trade up to an i5 down the road. Also, I wonder how much benefit the 6MB cache on the i5 has over the 3MB on i3 (and Pentium)...

SSDs: Sooo....you want to buy SSDs with nerfed write speed (250GB class) and then RAID them to make them read faster? erm... you don't happen to be reading old Photoshop build guides where they recommend having lots of separate drives in order to maximize the data transfer? With PCIe based SSDs taking over performance applications, it's time to obsolete those things I think... <shrugs>

Asrock makes decent boards and has great BIOS level fan control (which you'd need for the Linux boot). Downside is some of the boards only work with PWM case fans and some of the boards provide only 1 DC case fan control (the rest PWM). I haven't kept track of which are which. Perhaps another member will pipe up and comment. Otherwise, you might have to replace the Silverstone's fans with PWM ones.

Oh, here's another case or two to look at - Fractal Design Define C and Mini C..I don't see the KL 07 showing up in shopping searches.

vishcompany
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:46 pm

Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by vishcompany » Wed Jan 04, 2017 3:43 pm

FWIW I am running Lightroom (same RAW engine as photoshop) on two different machines here: i3-6100 and i7-6700K. In normal day-to-day work with small and big files (32MB Fuji RAW) there is no noticeable difference. As long as there are no batch processes, which use multiple cores (creating previews), I am just not able to tell the difference.

About SSD: +1 on what Steve said. Get less, but bigger SSDs and organize your data accordingly. Offline backup is always a good idea. (I am running a hot swap bay and feed it with good old 3 1/2" HDDs every now and then. Plenty of leftovers from the times before I switched to SSD).

About the case: The KL07 lookes like a nice case, but it's huge for what you are planning to do. You could go much smaller. You also won't need much ventilation (Skylake chips are pretty easy to cool; the new Kabylake CPUs run a bit hotter).
Heck, you even could go with a Milo ML05: I built a Skylake based workstation (Pentium G4400 running photoshop and powerpoint nicely) for my mum. It can take 4 SSDs, but needs mITX, which is a bit more expensive.
Otherwise Steve's case suggestions are very sound proposals.

mumbuild
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Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2017 4:56 am

Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by mumbuild » Thu Jan 05, 2017 9:10 am

I'm budget minded, if that's what you mean. I will use it purely it as a production system: if it could handle images sized up to 10000px with 3-10 layers max without brush lag, and have near-instant transformations and canvas flips (and preferably be acoustically discreet) I'd be happy. That's all. I would, however, really prefer not spending on performance or features beyond this. I've noticed that my peers often buy the most expensive workstation with a "just to be safe" kind of approach, and I came to wonder if that's really necessary.

The SSD layout is based on a, possibly, idiosyncratic preference: I like an approach with smaller drives, where one can be physically replaced with an identical clone, rather than multiple diverse partitions across larger drives. With tight deadlines I just feel more comfortable with swapping a disk rather than struggling in software with image restoration. Since my current SSD, an old Kingston, feels fast enough for my needs I figured the 256 GB would suffice -- or for full disclosure, I wasn't thinking about speed at all, only capacity, redundancy, and compartmentalization.
As to the RAID setup, I was looking for a method that would provide continuous backups of critical files, minute-to-minute, and RAID1 appears to do this without slowing write speeds.

It's sort of a "gee, wouldn't it be nice if..." experiment. I mean, if it doesn't work out then at least I'll have spares. :)
Hopefully this clarifies my thinking (or folly).

I've updated the parts list with Fractal Define mini-C. Asrock was kind enough to confirm that 3-pin and 4-pin will autodetect and be controllable through their UEFI Fan-tastic Tuning on the H170M-Pro4s.
  • CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz
  • CPU cooler: Scythe Kotetsu 79.0 CFM
  • Motherboard: ASRock H170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151
  • RAM: 8 to 64 GB Kingston ValueRAM 32GB DDR4-2133
  • Storage: 3 to 5 x Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" SSD
  • GPU: none
  • Case: Fractal Design Define Mini C MicroATX
  • PSU: Corsair RMx 550W 80+ Gold
  • OS: Windows 10 retail / Linux
By the way, about the mini-C, I noticed the SSDs are mounted behind the motherboard. Any chance this could cause problems with the Scythe Kotetsu's back plate?

Thank you both for your advice. I greatly appreciate it!

CA_Steve
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Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Jan 05, 2017 11:23 am

10000px means 10,000 pixels? as in 100 x 100 image size? Ok, that's a major reset on my thinking. Even with 10 layers, that's only 100k pixels. You could do that with very little CPU/GPU horsepower. An i3 will run circles around this.

The Mini C is a nice case. The SSDs mount on the backside of the removable panel that covers the cooler opening, not the front. So, they aren't mounted under the mobo. It's mobo->standoffs->case panel the mobo mounts to->removable SSD mount panel->space->exterior case panel.

mumbuild
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2017 4:56 am

Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by mumbuild » Thu Jan 05, 2017 3:57 pm

Sorry Steve, I was being sloppy and unspecific. I'm referring to image width. Normally I don't go beyond 10000 pixels wide, though occasionally I may go as high as 15000. The exact dimensions vary with ratio. Let me try if I can list it neatly and give some indication of file sizes:

Code: Select all

Image Dimensions (10k):	Approximate size @ 1 layer*
10000 x 7272 pixels		 200 MB
10000 x 5400 pixels		 150 MB
10000 x 4200 pixels		 120 MB

Image Dimensions (15k):	Approximate size @ 1 layer*
15000 x 10900 pixels		470 MB
15000 x 8100 pixels		 350 MB
15000 x 6300 pixels		 270 MB

* I'm reading the image sizes off Photoshop's info, maybe real life sizes are slightly different, but it's probably a good ballpark number.
There, isn't that neat. :mrgreen:

Normally I stay at 5k and 8k. When I keep the layer count down (below 5) my old notebook can manage images up to 5000 pixel wide. Works ok, but I'd like to eliminate the occasional stalling and choppiness because they interrupt my workflow.

CA_Steve
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Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Jan 05, 2017 5:27 pm

Ok...that's an entirely different animal. :)

Here's a nice RAM sizing table courtesy of Puget Systems. It's for CS6 and a couple of years old, but I'm guessing Photoshop hasn't become more RAM efficient over time. :)

vishcompany
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:46 pm

Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by vishcompany » Sat Jan 07, 2017 6:59 pm

Sorry for coming back late. Your files being rather large, I got interested in your question. Also I do not want to recommend something, which turns out to be utter BS in the end, just because I use different software and smaller files.

Installed a test version of PS elements 15 on both machines and downloaded this file (91MB) to fool around with. Mind you, this is just a jpg, but you can download it and open it in your current setup to get a feeling for it yourself.

The i7-6700K rig runs on a Z170 mobo with 8GB RAM @2666 (2 Sticks of 4GB each), file opened from 850EVO 1TB
The i3-6100 rig runs on an H110 mobo with 8GB RAM @2133 (1 Stick), file opened from 840EVO 500GB

Both machines run win7

opening the file 3 times on both machines (closing PS between each run):
i7: 3.1-3.3 seconds
i3: 3.4-3.5 seconds

Zoom in to 1:1, use the brush at 70px width and wipe out some sections felt equally responsive on both machines, no lagging. CPU load while brushing was ~15% on the i7 and ~25% on the i3. I mean total load, distributed equally to 4 cores.

Not knowing about layers, I did not add any.

But:
Opening a 178MB DNG to camera RAW and then click "open image" to transfer the file into PS:
i7: open in Camera RAW: ~3.9 seconds @60% load (all 8 cores busy), transfer: ~3.6 seconds @100%load
i3: open in Camera RAW: ~5.9 seconds @80% load (all 4 cores busy), transfer: ~6 seconds @100% load

Using the brush was again equally responsive on both rigs.

It is a boring test file, you can download it here, if you like.

The i7 is a 4core/8thread CPU @ 4GHz
The i3 is a 2core/4thread CPU @ 3.7GHz

I leave the conclusion to you, it is hard to say, where the position of an i5 (4core/4threads) will be here. I guess somewhere in between. Let us know, how you decide. :)

mumbuild
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2017 4:56 am

Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by mumbuild » Thu Jan 12, 2017 12:48 pm

Hey guys,

we're all late coming back, it's just the season. Thanks a lot for your feedback. The depth and details are beyond anything I expected, I'm overwhelmed.

I will run with the latest build from my penultimate post. I looked at some reviews of the new Kaby Lake and H270 motherboards, but there's nothing tempting. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes these reviews seem kind of surreal. I saw benchmarks in Adobe CC applications with the i7 and i5, and from fastest to slowest the difference was 0.20 seconds for an entire task sequence. However, they then had colored graphs stretching across the expanse of the the page which gave a rather different impression. Anyway, regarding component selection, my overall impression is that it really does pay to be honest about your needs and carefully consider what you need the system for. The better you know your needs, the wiser your decisions will be, but I guess that applies to all areas of life.

It will be a while before I can put it together. Until then, so long! :D

CA_Steve
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Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Quiet Photoshop workstation

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Jan 12, 2017 1:36 pm

Enjoy your build.

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