Building a AMD64 mini PC

Add a second drive for a scratch disk, using the boot disk as a scratch will
slow down photoshop. I would also add an additional 1 GB of Ram.



"Ed Coolidge" <semi_DELETE_THIS_charm.TakeThisOut@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:KWhmf.1968$Dd2.996@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>I someone asked me to build a PC for Photoshop and office apps, but didn't
>want to spend a lot. Here's what I have so far.
>
> Black/ Silver Aspire X-QPACK Aluminum Micro ATX Desktop Computer Case
> Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX
> AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor
> AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor
> Corsair ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
> Maxtor MaXLine Plus II 7Y250M0 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
> NEC Black IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - Retail
>
> The last one I built for her I did with upgradeability in mind, but she
> only replaced a failed CD burner before passing it down to her new
> assistant so this time I just want something simple.
 >> Stay informed about: Building a AMD64 mini PC 

PhotoShop is not 'that' demanding. Besides PhotoShop has been around since,
well, forever and production was being done on the current technology of the
time. So if you really want to save money:

Get a cheaper case (cases are the least important of all)
a decent PSU
a gig of memory, or more, but for the sake of the buck..............
2 nice sata's, one just for data and scratch
and skip the 64 stuff, there is really no need. Upgrade potential is only
good to those who do so, otherwise its wasting money. Going with the latest
and greatest most times leads to allot of time overcoming new tech growing
pains.

Also I was trying to find an article about the AMD64's/P4's in relation to
micro cases and a problem with cooling. I don't recall which cases were
involved, however I would avoid micro if there are cooling problems. I don't
much care for the PSU's in standard micro cases either.

Just My 2 cents, and been using adobe software for some time now.

"Ed Coolidge" <semi_DELETE_THIS_charm.DeleteThis@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:KWhmf.1968$Dd2.996@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>I someone asked me to build a PC for Photoshop and office apps, but didn't
>want to spend a lot. Here's what I have so far.
>
> Black/ Silver Aspire X-QPACK Aluminum Micro ATX Desktop Computer Case
> Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX
> AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor
> AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor
> Corsair ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
> Maxtor MaXLine Plus II 7Y250M0 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
> NEC Black IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - Retail
>
> The last one I built for her I did with upgradeability in mind, but she
> only replaced a failed CD burner before passing it down to her new
> assistant so this time I just want something simple.
 >> Stay informed about: Building a AMD64 mini PC 

Sorry. I was just asking if there were any suggestions. If not, I'll
just order these parts.

BigJIm wrote:

>so what is the problem
>
 >> Stay informed about: Building a AMD64 mini PC 

JAD wrote:

>PhotoShop is not 'that' demanding. Besides PhotoShop has been around since,
>well, forever and production was being done on the current technology of the
>time. So if you really want to save money:
>
>Get a cheaper case (cases are the least important of all)
>a decent PSU
>a gig of memory, or more, but for the sake of the buck..............
>2 nice sata's, one just for data and scratch
>and skip the 64 stuff, there is really no need. Upgrade potential is only
>good to those who do so, otherwise its wasting money. Going with the latest
>and greatest most times leads to allot of time overcoming new tech growing
>pains.
>
>
>
Cheap cases have typically have poor ventilation.
As for the memory and hard drives, I'll see budge will allow for. How
big does a scratch disk really need to be anyway?

>Also I was trying to find an article about the AMD64's/P4's in relation to
>micro cases and a problem with cooling. I don't recall which cases were
>involved, however I would avoid micro if there are cooling problems. I don't
>much care for the PSU's in standard micro cases either.
>
>Just My 2 cents, and been using adobe software for some time now.
>
>
Again, cheap cases have typically have poor ventilation, regardless of
the size. The reviews I've seen for the Aspire X-QPACK used AMD64 CPUs
and didn't have problems.
 >> Stay informed about: Building a AMD64 mini PC 

"Ed Coolidge" <semi_DELETE_THIS_charm RemoveThis @earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:Qzlmf.1659$3Z.1142@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> JAD wrote:
>
>>PhotoShop is not 'that' demanding. Besides PhotoShop has been around
>>since, well, forever and production was being done on the current
>>technology of the time. So if you really want to save money:
>>
>>Get a cheaper case (cases are the least important of all)
>>a decent PSU
>>a gig of memory, or more, but for the sake of the buck..............
>>2 nice sata's, one just for data and scratch
>>and skip the 64 stuff, there is really no need. Upgrade potential is only
>>good to those who do so, otherwise its wasting money. Going with the
>>latest and greatest most times leads to allot of time overcoming new tech
>>growing pains.
>>
>>
> Cheap cases have typically have poor ventilation.

That's really not true.. I use codegen cases with antec PSU's very often.
Codegen have some of the lowest cost cases around. But they do come with the
vent and mounts for case fans, and by adding one to the rear, they cool just
fine.

> As for the memory and hard drives, I'll see budge will allow for. How big
> does a scratch disk really need to be anyway?

not a matter of BIG (unless you use premier) but a matter of having it off
the OS(source) drive. IOW a separate HD as far as scratch is concerned.
However, if she will be keeping many projects on disk or starts to use
INdesign and has many PDF projects going, storage space may become a
problem. 120 gigs should be enough and tell her that backiing up data is the
best way to protect it.

>
>>Also I was trying to find an article about the AMD64's/P4's in relation to
>>micro cases and a problem with cooling. I don't recall which cases were
>>involved, however I would avoid micro if there are cooling problems. I
>>don't much care for the PSU's in standard micro cases either.
>>
>>Just My 2 cents, and been using adobe software for some time now.
>>
> Again, cheap cases have typically have poor ventilation, regardless of the
> size. The reviews I've seen for the Aspire X-QPACK used AMD64 CPUs and
> didn't have problems.
 >> Stay informed about: Building a AMD64 mini PC 

JAD wrote:

>>Cheap cases have typically have poor ventilation.
>
> That's really not true.. I use codegen cases with antec PSU's very often.
> Codegen have some of the lowest cost cases around. But they do come with the
> vent and mounts for case fans, and by adding one to the rear, they cool just
> fine.

I did in fact say "typically". There are obviously decent cases that can be
found a low cost. While many of the ones I've seen have a fan in front, most
have very little ventilation for air to pass through the front bezel.


> not a matter of BIG (unless you use premier) but a matter of having it off
> the OS(source) drive. IOW a separate HD as far as scratch is concerned.
> However, if she will be keeping many projects on disk or starts to use
> INdesign and has many PDF projects going, storage space may become a
> problem. 120 gigs should be enough and tell her that backiing up data is the
> best way to protect it.

She does backup her data, it's just that she has to keep moving projects off the
drive because there just isn't enough space. She doesn't use in design or PDF
either.

I really think that the issue with having the scratch on the same drive is that
if windows runs low on memory it'll start hitting the page file a lot while
photoshop is trying to access the scratch at the same time. Whether or not this
situation occurs depends the PC and the memory demands of the apps being used.
 >> Stay informed about: Building a AMD64 mini PC 

"Ed Coolidge" <semi_DELETE_THIS_charm DeleteThis @earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:b1Zmf.3165$Dd2.949@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> JAD wrote:
>
> >>Cheap cases have typically have poor ventilation.
> >
> > That's really not true.. I use codegen cases with antec PSU's very
often.
> > Codegen have some of the lowest cost cases around. But they do come with
the
> > vent and mounts for case fans, and by adding one to the rear, they cool
just
> > fine.
>
> I did in fact say "typically". There are obviously decent cases that can
be
> found a low cost. While many of the ones I've seen have a fan in front,
most
> have very little ventilation for air to pass through the front bezel.
>
>
> > not a matter of BIG (unless you use premier) but a matter of having it
off
> > the OS(source) drive. IOW a separate HD as far as scratch is concerned.
> > However, if she will be keeping many projects on disk or starts to use
> > INdesign and has many PDF projects going, storage space may become a
> > problem. 120 gigs should be enough and tell her that backiing up data is
the
> > best way to protect it.
>
> She does backup her data, it's just that she has to keep moving projects
off the
> drive because there just isn't enough space. She doesn't use in design
or PDF
> either.
>
> I really think that the issue with having the scratch on the same drive is
that
> if windows runs low on memory it'll start hitting the page file a lot
while
> photoshop is trying to access the scratch at the same time. Whether or
not this
> situation occurs depends the PC and the memory demands of the apps being
used.

it has has do do with the program itself on drive 'A' trying to execute the
instruction from the 'A' hard drive and then the rendering to same drive.
accessing and outputing to the same drive as it were, without sounding too
techno.
 >> Stay informed about: Building a AMD64 mini PC 

That's not how it works at all. First of all, windows typically loads the
entire program into memory before windows even starts to execute a single
instruction. Also, if windows had to resume execution of a program that has
part of its code in the page file on the hard disk, windows would have to copy
that part back to memory before it can continue to run the program. Besides,
PCs simply cannot execute program instructions directly from the hard disk as
doing so would be insanely slow!


JAD wrote:

> it has has do do with the program itself on drive 'A' trying to execute the
> instruction from the 'A' hard drive and then the rendering to same drive.
> accessing and outputing to the same drive as it were, without sounding too
> techno.
>
>
 >> Stay informed about: Building a AMD64 mini PC 

"Ed Coolidge" <semi_DELETE_THIS_charm.TakeThisOut@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:vb%mf.2543$nm.947@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> That's not how it works at all. First of all, windows typically loads the
> entire program into memory before windows even starts to execute a single
> instruction. Also, if windows had to resume execution of a program that
> has part of its code in the page file on the hard disk, windows would have
> to copy that part back to memory before it can continue to run the
> program. Besides, PCs simply cannot execute program instructions directly
> from the hard disk as doing so would be insanely slow!

Sigh----- why do you asked questions about subjects you know everything
about?
Thats not even close to what I was referring to, If you REALLY want to know
how PHOTOSHOP works in relation to scratch disks, go to adobe. There they
will spell it out in 30 paragraphs or so, I on the other hand, am a man a
few words and when its goes off topic, even fewer.

>
>
> JAD wrote:
>
>> it has has do do with the program itself on drive 'A' trying to execute
>> the
>> instruction from the 'A' hard drive and then the rendering to same
>> drive.
>> accessing and outputing to the same drive as it were, without sounding
>> too
>> techno.
>>
 >> Stay informed about: Building a AMD64 mini PC