Best PC workstation for CS5.5 Graphic Design Work

Custom built pc's have a huge advantage if your hubby can maintain it for you but buying hp or lenovo you are stuck with their support procedures (I'm in south Africa and both companies could take up to 14 days to answer a support inquiry). Also going for a build like msi x79 m/b you could easily upgrade to 128 gb ram where on a prebuilt or oem workstation your usually limited to 4ddr3 ram dimms wich usually supports up to 16gb ram, also I agree with previous posts on the duel xeons... They are easily outperformed by much cheaper i7 hexa core proccessors...

Most of the gaming pcs based on sandy bridges build handle adobe photoshop extremely well I've even seen a photo collage designer using a Alienware A51 pc for working with more than 100 layers with raw images in each layer shot with her Nikon d3x some of her end products had sizes up to 17 gb for a single collage.... Her answer is  gaming pc's as they are usually extremely over built and ridiculously stuffed full of ram. I use a Nec spectraview monitor for graphics but I'm a amateur photographer and I believe it's the best on the market but as an amateur everything I believe is highly questionable. Also quadro and tesla Cards are amazing at number crunching but they are extremely expensive. So... I recommend asus sabertooth x79 or msi x79 m/b, intel core core i7-3960x hexa core 3.3 ghz CPU, 8x 8gb corsair ddr3 2133 MHz ram for sabertooth or 8x 16gb transcend ddr3 2133 MHz ram for msi, get a couple of ssds in raid 0 for primary storage and a couple of seagate constellation ES 2tb hdds for random/backup storage, I highly recommend using asrock mukii 1050 PSU very reliable as a workhorse and pairing it with a lian-li premium chassis. Optical drives and OS is your choice but take in consideration that cracked versions of Mac OS are unreliable and does not support all hardware. Linux is stable and reliable if you are willing to learn how to make your preferred apps to work on it but win 7 is the all round best although it eats your resources... All third party software like Internet security etc. also slows your system down massively so look for security suits that are suitable for gaming as these can be set to give adobe products priority and have minimum impact on your workflow. Also spend some time looking at gaming mice and keyboards as they have brilliantly ergonomic designs and most of them offer user programmable buttons for shortcut keys and macros I use a razor naga epic edition mouse on my Linux pc for photoshop cs 5 and gimp.

Hope you find your dream machine

HI,

to answer your questions directly

Dual Xeons? almost never unless red 4k with multiple layers or heavy animation.

Quadro? almsot never unless using solid works or have a need for 10bit color (and a cheap blackmagic card takes care of this) and are based on older GTX cards in other words you pay far more for slower tech

ECC ram NEVER NEVER on a workstation only for a server with high i/o transactions its much slower.

a single i7 with faster GHz than Xeon will vastly outperform and be much less money..

usually buying HP or other tier 1 means giving up options or having to spend way too much to get them... why not have your hubby build it?

Scott

ADK

For apps you listed, unless you work with 500mp images in PS, a single CPU system seems a better fit.

Workstation-class dual CPU systems usually only make sense in two cases:

1. when you can't achieve the performance you need with a single CPU.  E.g. CAD, 3D modeling apps, fluid dynamics, etc.
2. when a feature you need / want that is only available on dual CPU motherboards and systems.  Such as memory expansion (to 512GB on C602 chipsets), I/O bandwidth (total number of PCIe lanes available / possible).

Another reason people may go for a workstation class system is the engineering, build quality and certain support aspects that come along with it.  It's not easy to find a desktop that has all of the features of, say, HP Z800 or Z820:

• fully tool-less assembly including PSUs and optical drives
• optimized airflow and reduced power consumption, heat generation and vibration that go along with it (not easy to achieve on a system put together from COTS components due to variable heat sink sizes).
• handles
• rackmounting
• on-site support (3 years usually included, up to 5 years available, including an option of a 4-hour on-site response)
• single point of support for all components sourced from that vendor.  E.g. all patches and updates are available on a support page dedicated to a specific workstation model.

Have I missed anything?

Yet another reason is vendor certification - e.g. Avid used to only certify HP Z-series systems and their support wouldn't talk to you (if at all) unless you have one of those.  It often helps to have a system that support is familiar with.

That said, if a single CPU (Core i7) system does what you need performance-wise, then a Xeon-based system can't touch it (BFTB-wise) with a mile-long stick.