cmox
02-28-2008, 03:33 PM
Some words about what I use...
The whole workstation cost ca. 1200 Euros (ca. 1800$) including Windows XP Home, it was assembled from pieces by a mailorder house. I could have paid twice that price for a Mac Pro, right. I use this PC for one year and had no trouble, no data loss, and not one single crash.
Nvidia
Board: DFI LANparty UT nF3 Ultra-D. This is actually a board that gamers love. Based on nVidia nForce 3 Ultra with integrated RAID controller.
CPU: AMD X2 3800+
Graphics card: Matrox G550
Power: Enermax 365Watt
RAM: 2x 1024MB MDT plus 2x 512 MB = 3000 MB
The hard disks are the interesting part:
1. 4x 80GB SATA Hitachi as a RAID 0+1 using the RAID controller on the mainboard. It has two partitions, "C" for Windows and the programs and "D" for the data that I currently use, e.g. a part of my archive
2. 1x 320 GB IDE as internal backup.
3. In one slot I have an eSATA controller. This is for my external backup disk, a 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint in an external Icy Box case that allows USB2 and eSATA. In fact, eSata is lightyears ahead of any USB disk. Probably the fastest backup I ever had.
I spare you the description of the case (huge) and fans (many).
But one word about the performance: a b/w scan from my Imacon is pretty big. One 35mm negative as a 16 bit Tiff has ca. 75 MB. This is opened in Photoshop CS2 in about 2 seconds. Not too bad.
I spent ca. 45 Euro on a wonderful program named Acronis True Image which allows disk images. In case of a crash I can easily retrieve the whole setup and my data, much better than any other backup software I ever used (Retrospect was the worst by far).
What really annoys me is that I paid something to Microsoft. If Photoshop were available for Linux or if GIMP had 16 bit Tiff processing I would have a Linux (Ubuntu) computer.
The whole workstation cost ca. 1200 Euros (ca. 1800$) including Windows XP Home, it was assembled from pieces by a mailorder house. I could have paid twice that price for a Mac Pro, right. I use this PC for one year and had no trouble, no data loss, and not one single crash.
Nvidia
Board: DFI LANparty UT nF3 Ultra-D. This is actually a board that gamers love. Based on nVidia nForce 3 Ultra with integrated RAID controller.
CPU: AMD X2 3800+
Graphics card: Matrox G550
Power: Enermax 365Watt
RAM: 2x 1024MB MDT plus 2x 512 MB = 3000 MB
The hard disks are the interesting part:
1. 4x 80GB SATA Hitachi as a RAID 0+1 using the RAID controller on the mainboard. It has two partitions, "C" for Windows and the programs and "D" for the data that I currently use, e.g. a part of my archive
2. 1x 320 GB IDE as internal backup.
3. In one slot I have an eSATA controller. This is for my external backup disk, a 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint in an external Icy Box case that allows USB2 and eSATA. In fact, eSata is lightyears ahead of any USB disk. Probably the fastest backup I ever had.
I spare you the description of the case (huge) and fans (many).
But one word about the performance: a b/w scan from my Imacon is pretty big. One 35mm negative as a 16 bit Tiff has ca. 75 MB. This is opened in Photoshop CS2 in about 2 seconds. Not too bad.
I spent ca. 45 Euro on a wonderful program named Acronis True Image which allows disk images. In case of a crash I can easily retrieve the whole setup and my data, much better than any other backup software I ever used (Retrospect was the worst by far).
What really annoys me is that I paid something to Microsoft. If Photoshop were available for Linux or if GIMP had 16 bit Tiff processing I would have a Linux (Ubuntu) computer.