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by E.J. Peiker on Tue Jul 09, 2019 1:27 pm
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Paul Skoczylas wrote:I too abhor subscription models.  Unfortunately, I hadn't upgraded to CS6 when I had the chance, and Adobe won't activate/deactivate CS4 anymore.  So I was forced into Adobe's subscription model when I upgraded my workstation (which was 10 years old!) recently.

-Paul
You can always bail and go to Affinity Photo.  There is nothing that it doesn't do for the photographer and many things it does better but you have to learn a whole new way of doing many things.
 

by Wildflower-nut on Wed Nov 13, 2019 9:52 pm
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EJ
You have had a few months to work with this set up. Any changes you would make? I'm thinking of replacing my windows 7 desktop which is becoming an antiquated.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Thu Nov 14, 2019 1:05 pm
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No, pretty happy with it and I've really been working it hard. The most impressive thing about this particular system, besides grat performance is that it is totally inaudible.
 

by Wildflower-nut on Wed Nov 20, 2019 5:25 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:As some of you may know from another thread, I have been working with Puget Systems to spec out, design, and build a new photo workstation.  Since retirement from Intel in 2009 I have slowed my pace of computer upgrades.  Before retirement I could very cheaply upgrade systems almost every generation because I built the systems myself and I could get the very latest CPU and SSD, the most expensive parts of a computer back then, for free every year.  Right before I left I built what was then the absolutely fastest PC you could build.  Five years later in 2014 I worked with the incredible folks at Puget Systems to spec out a new, top of the line system and that's what I have been using for the last 5 years with a mid cycle memory and graphics card update to keep the system working well and performing at a level that I needed, especially given moving to medium format for my landscape photography and due to the inherent depth of field losses with a larger sensor and much more focus stacking.  Five years on, in 2019, computer technology had moved sufficiently to build a new workstation that will hopefully last another 5 years with a likely mid-cycle update.  The specs of the new system were covered in another thread but I'll paste the info in again at the bottom.  The Windows Experience score on this system is 9.9 - the max number measurable.  Disk reads and writes are 7x using the M2 SSDs compared to the old style SSD, CPU video rendering is 2.7x, GPU video rendering is 2x (and that is comparing 10 bit per color on the new system compared to 8 bit on the old), Open GL is 2.3x as fast.  Easy mid-cycle upgrade options for the future on this system include a higher core count CPU, doubling of the system RAM, faster storage should it become available, and graphics card upgrade.

There are however some downsides...
- A tongue in cheek or be careful what you ask for one - I truly enjoyed watching Helicon Focus render a focus stack.  The program is very fast to begin with but with my old system I could physically see it build up a depth map and watch it render - this never got old.  On my new system, the rendering is so fast it basically goes from un-stacked to stacked in the blink of an eye.  I ran a quick comparison of a 6 image stack with a 50 megapixel Fuji Medium Format stack.  The old system took about 7 seconds to complete the task.  The new system does it in about 0.75 seconds...
- My very old web publishing program does not fully work in Win 10 Professional, even in Compatibility mode.  Web design works as it should but it will not FTP upload.  I have a workaround for now where I can still design pages in the old software and use FileZilla to upload to my site but FileZilla isn't smart enough to keep track of files that have changed since last upload so for now I have to keep track of that manually.  I have looked at a couple of other packages but none of them can handle the program specific templates and formatting so I see some serious work in the future to bring my web publishing software and website into this decade...
- The only other issue I encountered is that Dropbox changed its terms to a maximum of just 3 connected devices from a much higher number previously.  To link up my new system I had to unlink others that I really want to be linked.  The only way to change this is to buy a relatively expensive subscription plan that gives me WAY more space than I could ever want and more connected computers.  I abhor subscription models...

On the bright side, I had feared that I would not be able to activate Photoshop CS6 anymore or that my older version of Microsoft Office would not activate but those were no problem at all.

Here are the specs of the new system:
Case: Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C Blackout
Motherboard: Gigabyte X299 Designare EX
CPU: Intel Core i9 9920X 3.5GHz Twelve Core w/ 4.5GHz Turbo mode
Ram: Crucial 64GB DDR4-2666 (4x16GB)
Video Card: NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 PCI-E 8GB
Storage: 
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 SSD  (Primary System Drive)
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 SSD  (Internally mirrored backup System Drive and swpadisk)
WD Gold 12TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s  (Primary data Drive) mounted in a iStarUSA 1-Hard Drive Hot Swap Rack - my data is backed up to existing online external RAID stations and two Synology NAS RAID servers
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000W P2 Power Supply
CPU Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H60 CPU Cooler (Rev. 3)
Additional Cooling: Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound Upgrade
OS:  Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
I'm a little behind the curve these days.  Drive 2 as I read this is a mirrored backup up of drive 1 plus used for virtual memory.  Correct?
The working drive for files being worked on is drive 3?
The scratch file is where?
What are you using for a monitor
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Nov 20, 2019 6:07 pm
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1) Drive 2 as I read this is a mirrored backup up of drive 1 plus used for virtual memory.  Correct?
2) The working drive for files being worked on is drive 3?
3) The scratch file is where?
4) What are you using for a monitor
1) Drive 2 is a mirror, virtual memory which is never really needed with 64GB is on the same drive
2) Correct, it is a traditional HD, the system drive and it's mirror are m.2 SSD
3) On Drive 2
4) I am still using my previous monitor which is a 30" NEC Specraview but will likely go to a 32" 4K monitor soon.
 

by Wildflower-nut on Wed Nov 20, 2019 8:23 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:
1) Drive 2 as I read this is a mirrored backup up of drive 1 plus used for virtual memory.  Correct?
2) The working drive for files being worked on is drive 3?
3) The scratch file is where?
4) What are you using for a monitor
1) Drive 2 is a mirror, virtual memory which is never really needed with 64GB is on the same drive
2) Correct, it is a traditional HD, the system drive and it's mirror are m.2 SSD
3) On Drive 2
4) I am still using my previous monitor which is a 30" NEC Specraview but will likely go to a 32" 4K monitor soon.

Thanks for the help.

could you expand a little more on what this is?

WD Gold 12TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s  (Primary data Drive) mounted in a iStarUSA 1-Hard Drive Hot Swap Rack

My Specraview is probably going to be replaced.  What are you looking at.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Thu Nov 21, 2019 7:28 am
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It's a 12TB Enterprise Class hard drive and it is mounted in a hot swap rack that lets you swap out an HD without powering down the system.

I haven't decided yet on the monitor.
 

by Jim Zipp on Sat Nov 30, 2019 10:40 am
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E.J. Peiker wrote:No, pretty happy with it and I've really been working it hard.  The most impressive thing about this particular system, besides grat performance is that it is totally inaudible.
E.J.  Just received my system which is same model with different Graphics cardand processor (as you know) and agree.....  I cannot tell it's running even though right now it's sitting on my desk next to me!
Jim Zipp
http://www.jimzippphotography.com
 

by E.J. Peiker on Sat Nov 30, 2019 1:39 pm
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Yeah, it's the quietest system I've ever had.
Only when I'm doing some serious work that requires a ton of compute in both the CPU and GPU simultaneous do I hear a very slight speedup in the fan.
 

by Jim Zipp on Sat Nov 30, 2019 5:29 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:Yeah, it's the quietest system I've ever had.
Only when I'm doing some serious work that requires a ton of compute in both the CPU and GPU simultaneous do I hear a very slight speedup in the fan.
Yeah, I'm still just loading programs etc and haven't put any loads on it yet myself.  Really nice that it's so quiet.  I think I got good advice!
Jim Zipp
http://www.jimzippphotography.com
 

by Wildflower-nut on Tue Mar 24, 2020 3:04 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:It's a 12TB Enterprise Class hard drive and it is mounted in a hot swap rack that lets you swap out an HD without powering down the system.

I haven't decided yet on the monitor.
Did you decide on a monitor??
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Mar 24, 2020 6:14 pm
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Wildflower-nut wrote:
E.J. Peiker wrote:It's a 12TB Enterprise Class hard drive and it is mounted in a hot swap rack that lets you swap out an HD without powering down the system.

I haven't decided yet on the monitor.
Did you decide on a monitor??
My NEC 30" 2560x1600 monitor is still going strong and is calibrating to a Cd of less than 0.20 and now with zero photo income due the virus, I have delayed all purchases for the foreseeable future.

I have upgraded to 128GB since though and was surprised by how big of a difference that made with C1P open, a complex multi layer image open in PS and running the Topaz AI stuff simultaneously while playing music.
 

by Wildflower-nut on Tue Mar 24, 2020 7:36 pm
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I'm stuck at home ant thinking of upgrading my 24" nec and start working on my photo backlog. Thoughts?
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Mar 24, 2020 7:46 pm
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Wildflower-nut wrote:I'm stuck at home ant thinking of upgrading my 24" nec and start working on my photo backlog.  Thoughts?
27" BenQ
 

by Wildflower-nut on Wed Mar 25, 2020 1:50 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:
Wildflower-nut wrote:I'm stuck at home ant thinking of upgrading my 24" nec and start working on my photo backlog.  Thoughts?
27" BenQ


thanks!
 

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