I built the PC I use to scan and run Photoshop. It's a dual PIII 866 with
1.25G, two 18G SCSI drives and so forth running Win2K. I don't have
experience with faster P4's but I really like dual processors and SCSI.
Why? Because I'm writing this email while my scanner is going and both
processors are at 65% or so. Dual PIII motherboards are cheap and PIII 1G
processors only cost $135 or so. You can build a dual AMD machine also but
I have my doubts about the stability. has some good
info.
As for RAM, they type you need will pretty much be dictated by the processor
and motherboard you choose. All PIII's use SDRAM, most P4's use RDRAM
though some now use SDRAM (SDRAM is cheaper) and AMD's use DDR. I doubt the
type of RAM will have as much of an effect on system performance as the type
of processor and the amount of RAM. One problem with P4's and RDRAM is that
the memory has to be installed in matched pairs. For example, you'll need 2
256MB sticks and 2 512MB sticks if you want 1.5G or RAM. SDRAM can be mixed
in any combination.
Hard drive: As I said I have SCSI which is nice but it's more money. SCSI
offloads the IO processing from the CPU which is nice as it makes the
machine more responsive. However, the new ATA100 7200rpm IDE drives are
nice and perform very well. I'll let someone else discuss the benefits of
RAID.
Paul Wilson
PS. Get a good case. The case will probably outlast the rest of the
components and a good one will make installation much easier. I got one of
these:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Zabrovsky [mailto:alexz@zoran.co.il]
> Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2002 4:29 PM
> To: pwilson@gomez.com
> Subject: [filmscanners] Building PC system for image editing
>
>
> Hi all.
> Preparing to acquire IV ED within few weeks I've started to
> consider the PC
> system to handle post-processing and image achivating.
> Currently my regular system is quite old Compaq laptop running on
> 333 MHz Celeron + 192 MB memory. I realize that it will be
> probably quite
> hard - nearly impossible to run image editing software on 35 MB files
> expecting for reasonable performance from that machine, however
> laptop can still be used as scanner's host for download.
>
> I'm considering constructing myself the PC system (have
> previous experience
> doing that about 5 years ago though), however, it seems I'm
> out of date of the PC technology being confused by the
> choices of the parts.
> I rely on the List helping me out to clarify that and to
> understand what
> really I need.
>
> 1. Memory. I understand this is the most important resource for image
> processing. I'm planning to start from 512 MB right from the
> beginning,
> however the DRAM types seem to be overwhelming: SDRAM, DDR, RDRAM,
> DDR ECC (not talking about EDO which are probably out of
> questions though).
> I'm familiar with SDRAM technology, but others sounds to be
> quite new and unknown (for me, at least).
> I paid attention the DDR and RDRAM types are considerably
> more expensive
> then SDRAM.
> The question is whether this is really justified ?
> What is the benefits of those DDR and RDRAM against SDRAM ?
> Will I gain real life performance with those new types
> compared to SDRAM ?
> Finally, your opinion about DDR/RDRAM price/performance
> compared to SDRAM
> (let's say SDRAM 133 MHz) ?
>
> 2. Processor. I think I would opt for something like P4 1.6-1.7 GHz
> which sounds to be enough given there will be no serious
> constraints on the
> memory amount. What about AMD Ahtlon ?
>
> 3. As about HDD I think there is no too much choices to
> contemplate about.
> The bigger, faster and reliable is better. Depends on the
> local market
> offerings. BTW, should I pay more for SCSI interface ?
> What is RAID ? Any opinions about it ?
>
> 4. Display card. Which one would you recommend ? (not
> necessarily to be the
> most expensive though...)
>
> 5. CD-RW. Are there DVD-RW available for PC installation ?
> Are they worth the expense ?
>
> Well, other parts are non-brainers which doesn't really
> relates to image
> processing performance, so I'll not clatter the query by those.
>
> Would really appreciate any responses with clarifications.
> Links to the helpful sites are welcome as well.
>
>
> Regards,
> Alex Z
>
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