Snow Leopard photographic/workhorse build

[DBP]

It's probably worth mentioning that, for overall system design, I've mainly been influenced so far by:
- Lloyd Chambers macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html
- Jeremy Daalder www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/141/Build+a+powerful+PC+for+Photoshop+and+other+imaging+applications

Both good sources. Hmmm. I hadn't realised Jeremy had got into the custom build area. I'll have to talk to him about it next time I see him.

Many months ago, and bearing in mind I was planning in the context of a possible Mac Pro at the time, I'd come to settle on an SSD (lower optical bay) and four HDDs (2 x dual-drive striped RAID, each divided into 'fast' and 'slow' partitions). This would yield a very fast volume (A), two fast volumes (B, C), and two slow volumes (D, E), which I could use as: A - system, B - data, C - scratch, D - primary backup, and E - secondary backup (a clone of D or, possibly, a Time Machine volume).

Any comments on striped RAID? Some say it's well worth it, but others not. I suppose it comes down to the individual user's requirements and usage pattern, but I'd be interested to hear your views.

I use it in lammergeier to merge two drives into a fast volume. It does multiply the probability of failure, and double the amount of data which would be affected by the failure, but especially for scratch volumes the impact of failure is minimal, and with decent backups the impact for precious data can be acceptable.
Actually I split mine into two volumes: fast and slow (but not a 50% split: after measuring the drives with disktester fill-volume I decided on a 70/30 split). I think you were saying in your design you'd been considering B and D (data and primary backup) on the same set of drives. Not only does that have a risk issue, the performance of backups would be horrible, with the heads continually seeking backwards and forwards. Either leave the slow area unused (you can actually leave it unpartitioned and unmounted), or just put infrequently-accessed data there (for me my iTunes library fits there nicely with room to grow). Or more-specifically: data that won't be heavily accessed at the same time as the data on the fast area of the drives.
As Lloyd says: buy twice as much disk as you'll actually use.

If you look at my lammergeier build I set aside:

• 128 GB SSD for boot, applications, and home directories (although big chunks of my home area are symlinked to the "fast" striped volume),
• 128 GB partition on another drive to clone the boot volume to (even more important with a CustoMac than a Mac Pro),
• 240 GB SSD for Lightroom catalogs and Photoshop scratch,
• "Primaries": SATA & eSATA drives to contain media (photos/etc) and also a 2 TB FW800 because I already had it,
• "Secondaries": SATA "docks" (direct SATA, eSATA, USB3, and FW800) for backup drives (including Time Machine).

Because I reused a bunch of drives I had, most of my "primary" storage runs at 80-110 MB/s. Over time these drives will get upgraded to faster ones, but that's in fact acceptably fast. Even when working on 3 GB TIFF files! Photoshop CS6 saves files in the background now, and when opening one of those huge files I don't mind waiting a few seconds.
Having the Lightroom catalogs and Photoshop scratch on a super-fast SSD is key to a fast machine, and the boot SSD obviously helps a lot too. The drives that store your images don't need to be blindingly-fast. Of course, things like backups and image-integrity checks do benefit from more speed so it shouldn't be ignored (but a lot of that happens in parallel to multiple drives in my setup, even without striping).
My ACR cache is on the boot SSD, but if you're using DNG files with embedded fast-load data that does put a bit more load on the "image" drives instead of concentrating it on the cache. Also if you use Bridge heavily it puts a lot more I/O into its distributed cache files, but I don't.

BTW, I have ~ 4TB of data used on the primaries (total of ~6.5 TB capacity) at the moment.

Incidentally, the HD4000 graphics is handling my two screens admirably. You'll have seen Lloyd's opinion about enabling GPU accelleration in Photoshop, and I generally concur. One of the other advantages of using recent hardware and Mountain Lion.

Moving on to case fans: as far as I can see, the R4 has seven fan mounts (2 front, 1 rear, 2 top, 1 bottom, 1 side) and they're all capable of taking 140 mm fans (and some can also take 120 mm fans). Originally, I'd been planning to have 3 intake fans (2 front, 1 bottom) and 1 exhaust fan (rear), or else 3 intake fans (2 front, 1 bottom) and 2 exhaust fans (1 rear, 1 top), but then I came across noise concerns with the current version of the HX650 PSU. I changed the PSU to an HX750, but it's a physically larger unit and (I believe) will block the R4's bottom fan mount. Currently, the plan is for 2 intake fans (front) and 1 exhaust fan (rear).

Any comments on what might be the best fan configuration? As mentioned above, I will be adding at least a few drives, but I doubt I'll be adding a full set of PCI cards. While it would be ideal to have a build that's both cool and quiet, the former is the higher priority. Thanks.

You don't need a gale blowing through there. The NH-D14 will keep the CPU cool, and you generally just need a gentle breeze flowing through for the rest. The 140mm central fan of the NH-D14 will move air across nearby components. That motherboard has a bunch of radiators on it, and a gentle breeze will let them work. A gale would make them work slightly better, but there's a big jump in performance from no air movement to slight air movement.
Similarly any HDDs will benefit from a slight movement of air, and the front 120mm fans should provide that. In my case I've got these spinning quite slowly, and those drives are idling 2-4C above ambient. Mind you, some drives (including one of the old drives I'm using as part of a backup set) run hotter: in that case 14C above ambient.

One extraction fan at the rear should be fine. Once you've got your graphics card/etc in you can see how the airflow would work: it's possible that an intake fan on the bottom would just blow air towards the card and no further. You could add a side-fan, or maybe the top front fan will blow enough air through past drives towards the CPU. When designing the airflow, part of the design will presumably include where the SSDs go (which don't generate much heat): top or bottom.
Keep in mind that you can upgrade the provided Fractal fans with other units which are quieter and/or move more air.

As an aside, I recently started working on a system in a Define R3. While its design is a cut above the old style of PC case, it's made me really happy that I chose the Obsidian 550D for my own workstation. Ease of access (including not having to get around the back with a screwdriver and force the side panel off/on) is wonderful.

 

[YWO]

Both good sources. Hmmm. I hadn't realised Jeremy had got into the custom build area. I'll have to talk to him about it next time I see him.

Image Science's website is probably the best resource I've found for practical advice on monitors for photographic work. I bought my main monitor (27" NEC) there, and it is serving admirably.

I think you were saying in your design you'd been considering B and D (data and primary backup) on the same set of drives. Not only does that have a risk issue, the performance of backups would be horrible, with the heads continually seeking backwards and forwards.

I agree regarding drive access contention and risk management; my fault for not making my terminology and backup process clear/consistent. On my current machine, my backup process is to compress data from my main drive (and having a Mac mini, that's my sole internal HDD) to my external drive as a background task; once that's completed, I copy the archive from my external drive back to a partition on my main drive. At any point in time, I have my working data and two recent archives on two drives. Further copies of archives go to my networked drive. With the 'Mac Pro' drive configuration I outlined, I probably would have compressed data from B to D, then copied the archive from D to C. But that configuration will become irrelevant before too long, all going well.

If you look at my lammergeier build I set aside:

• 128 GB SSD for boot, applications, and home directories (although big chunks of my home area are symlinked to the "fast" striped volume),
• 128 GB partition on another drive to clone the boot volume to (even more important with a CustoMac than a Mac Pro),
• 240 GB SSD for Lightroom catalogs and Photoshop scratch,
• "Primaries": SATA & eSATA drives to contain media (photos/etc) and also a 2 TB FW800 because I already had it,
• "Secondaries": SATA "docks" (direct SATA, eSATA, USB3, and FW800) for backup drives (including Time Machine).

I'd taken a quick look at both your builds, but haven't read through them thoroughly yet. My compliments on the detailed notes.

Incidentally, the HD4000 graphics is handling my two screens admirably. You'll have seen Lloyd's opinion about enabling GPU accelleration in Photoshop, and I generally concur. One of the other advantages of using recent hardware and Mountain Lion.

Yes; I'd considered a low-powered card (GeForce 210) as a possibility. I know the Core i7 2700K has HD3000 graphics built in, but (whether HD3000 works well or not) I wanted a discrete graphics card for maximum flexibility within the parameters of my design goal.

You could add a side-fan, or maybe the top front fan will blow enough air through past drives towards the CPU. When designing the airflow, part of the design will presumably include where the SSDs go (which don't generate much heat): top or bottom.

I'd be putting SSDs into the 2.5" mounts, most likely. Speaking of SSDs, any thoughts on the OWC drives? Chambers rates them very highly, but I've found very little said about them outside the Mac scene, so far.

As an aside, I recently started working on a system in a Define R3. While its design is a cut above the old style of PC case, it's made me really happy that I chose the Obsidian 550D for my own workstation. Ease of access (including not having to get around the back with a screwdriver and force the side panel off/on) is wonderful.

I did think about getting a bigger case, but my planned build is probably overkill already. I'd describe myself as a serious photographer, but not a professional (I don't earn my living from it) or necessarily advanced (that might or might not be accurate, depending on who I am talking to). I don't need a system as powerful as I'm planning, but it will be nice to work on ... I expect the slowest partition on the slowest drive in my new system will (unless full) be tangibly faster than the fastest partition I currently have.

 

[DBP]

Image Science's website is probably the best resource I've found for practical advice on monitors for photographic work. I bought my main monitor (27" NEC) there, and it is serving admirably.

Are you located around Melbourne?

I'd be putting SSDs into the 2.5" mounts, most likely.

Hmm. I see where they're listed in the specs, but hadn't noticed them visually. Are they stuffed around the side with the cable management behind the motherboard?

Speaking of SSDs, any thoughts on the OWC drives? Chambers rates them very highly, but I've found very little said about them outside the Mac scene, so far.

I've been using an OWC Mercury Electra in a MBP for quite a while. No complaints at all. The explanations of why the Enterprise drives are better make a lot of sense, but that is a huge price hike.

I did think about getting a bigger case, but my planned build is probably overkill already.

Fair enough I suppose. My case is a whole AU$25-30 more expensive than the R4.

 

[YWO]

Are you located around Melbourne?

No, but (for future builders considering Image Science) ordering and delivery worked out smoothly.

Hmm. I see where they're listed in the specs, but hadn't noticed them visually. Are they stuffed around the side with the cable management behind the motherboard?

They are, and it turns out that they are not as convenient as I'd thought they might be (cannot install/remove SSDs from those mounts without removing the motherboard first). It seems the mounts are more useful as cable tie points:
www.legitreviews.com/article/2020/4/ (picture/comments near the bottom)
www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Product-Review-Fractal-Design-Define-R4-159 (picture/comments halfway down)

Still, the R4 has eight 2.5"/3.5" drive bays, so using two for SSDs will not be a problem.

 

[YWO]

After more reading and planning, I've arrived at the drive configuration below. My selected motherboard has six internal SATA ports (two SATA3, four SATA2), and I'm intending to use all of them.

Samsung 840 Pro 128 Gb SSD, MZ-7PD128BW - Boot (SATA3)
Manufacturer: http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MZ-7PD128BW
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009NB8WR0/
For this drive, I was looking for a good, durable SSD, with cost a secondary consideration. There were a few candidates for this role, including the OWC Mercury Electra 6G, OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G, Intel 520 series, and OCZ Vector series. It seemed clear that all of these were capable options, so it came down to reputation, price, and availability. Even though the OWC drives were not performance leaders, from what I could see, they were attractive possibilities due to OWC's background in Mac equipment. In the end, widespread praise, excellent performance, reputation, and local availability for the Samsung 840 Pro saw it rise to the top of the list for me.

Kingston HyperX 3K 120 Gb SSD, SH103S3/120G - Scratch/Catalogue (SATA3)
Manufacturer: http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/hyperx
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007R67FNA/
For this drive, I was looking for the best value-for-money SSD, so I looked at reputable, low-cost, and locally-available drives. I'm loading up my build with 32 Gb RAM and am not expecting to have to handle large image sizes, so I doubt I'll be placing many demands on a Photoshop scratch/Lightroom catalogue volume. The Strontium Hawk (I wasn't familiar with the Strontium brand; it's from Singapore) and Kingston HyperX 3K clearly stood out as leading candidates for this role. While the Hawk has received good reviews and is very slightly cheaper, the HyperX 3K has good reviews and the Kingston name on its side.

Western Digital Caviar Black 2 Tb HDD, WD2002FAEX - Data (SATA2; two-drive RAID0)
Manufacturer: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004CSIG1G/
I'd settled on the 2 Tb Caviar Black as my main working drive some time ago. There are many competent drives in this class, but the Western Digital name kept coming to the top in my reading over the past few years. Having followed Lloyd Chambers's writings at macperformanceguide.com for some time, I'm curious to experiment with RAID and see if it will work well for me. I'm planning on a striped RAID partition for data, and an additional two partitions per drive for backup boot volumes and secondary internal backup volumes.

Western Digital Caviar Green 3 Tb HDD, WD30EZRX - Backup (SATA2)
Manufacturer: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=780
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RORMF6/
For this drive, I was looking for capacity and reliability. It will be my primary internal backup volume, and will be handling long, sequential read/write operations. The 3 Tb Caviar Green offers the lowest cost per Gb out of all the drives available to me, and reviews indicate that it matches my criteria. Since I'll only be using this for backup purposes, the aggressive head-parking behaviour (i.e., short idle time before the drive parks its heads) noted in one review will probably be quite appropriate; I expect this drive will be 'sleeping' most of the time, yet will be readily available when I need it. I might create a Time Machine partition on this drive, but am not sure I'll make much use of it. With this build, I'll have three internal backups (1 x Caviar Green, 2 x Caviar Black) and will probably set up an eSATA backup volume, adding to the other backup volumes I've mentioned earlier in this thread.

Lite-On Blu-ray/DVD/CD optical drive, IHBS312 - Burner/Player (SATA2)
Manufacturer: http://www.liteonodd.com/en/bd-internal/item/bdinternal/ihbs312
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BGXYPI/
After initially not intending to have an internal optical drive, I decided that I'd probably find this inconvenient at some point. It will take up an internal SATA port, but if I really need more internal drives than those listed above, I'd get an appropriate PCI card with two or more ports and move the optical drive to one of the slowest ports. Looking through these fora, the IHBS312 seems to be a suitable option.

My selected case has eight internal 3.5" drive bays, so I'll probably put the SSDs in the two lowest bays (since they'll generate very little heat) and space out the three HDDs across the remaining six bays. I'm assuming that leaving an empty bay between each pair of HDDs will be optimal for airflow and acoustics. There will be two 140 mm fans blowing across the drive bays, directing the airflow towards the back of the case (CPU, motherboard, et al.).

I think the drive configuration above will serve me well for a long time, but am always open to further comments or suggestions. The advice I've received so far has been very helpful. Thanks.

 

[DBP]

Samsung 840 Pro 128 Gb SSD, MZ-7PD128BW - Boot (SATA3)

Seems like an excellent choice. I have a 128 GB Samsung 830 here in mine.

Kingston HyperX 3K 120 Gb SSD, SH103S3/120G - Scratch/Catalogue (SATA3)

For this drive, I was looking for the best value-for-money SSD, so I looked at reputable, low-cost, and locally-available drives. I'm loading up my build with 32 Gb RAM and am not expecting to have to handle large image sizes, so I doubt I'll be placing many demands on a Photoshop scratch/Lightroom catalogue volume.

When setting up my own system I knew that my working set of catalogs was going to be close to 100 GB (those previews build up). This is for ~100,000 images BTW. So I went for a 240 GB drive here.
For Photoshop, even with 32 GB RAM (I let Photoshop use ~23 GB) the scratch disk will still get used. So speed should not be ignored. I sometimes end up with lots of layers and file sizes grow quickly, even when I'm not starting out with a 20-frame 5D2 composite panorama!
For Lightroom catalogs, you want the fastest drive you can get as it does hammer that disk. So I'm not sure that you just want a low-cost drive.
I ended up with a 240 GB SanDisk Extreme here.

BTW, I apologise for using the wrong spelling of catalogue: in the context of Lightroom I've been working with Americans for too long.

Western Digital Caviar Black 2 Tb HDD, WD2002FAEX - Data (SATA2; two-drive RAID0)

I'm planning on a striped RAID partition for data, and an additional two partitions per drive for backup boot volumes and secondary internal backup volumes.

This might not be as flexible as you would like. You could partition the disks and leave one partition per drive for non-RAID, but where on the disk would that be? A boot volume needs to be within the first TB so you couldn't put it at the end (the slowest part) of the drives.
In my build I have my boot clone partition on the end of a smaller drive. It may end up simpler to just put in an extra SATA HDD instead.

Western Digital Caviar Green 3 Tb HDD, WD30EZRX - Backup (SATA2)

For this drive, I was looking for capacity and reliability. It will be my primary internal backup volume, and will be handling long, sequential read/write operations.

Seems fair!

Lite-On Blu-ray/DVD/CD optical drive, IHBS312 - Burner/Player (SATA2)

I have this drive in my HTPC across the network, but in fact for lammergeier I have a slim USB DVD writer which is easy to plug in if I ever need it (e.g. received a CD of images by post for judging a photo exhibition last week, had to get them onto the machine somehow) and it doesn't use up power or a SATA port. These aren't expensive these days. You might want that SATA port for an extra HDD...

My selected case has eight internal 3.5" drive bays, so I'll probably put the SSDs in the two lowest bays (since they'll generate very little heat) and space out the three HDDs across the remaining six bays. I'm assuming that leaving an empty bay between each pair of HDDs will be optimal for airflow and acoustics. There will be two 140 mm fans blowing across the drive bays, directing the airflow towards the back of the case (CPU, motherboard, et al.).

Rather than worrying about putting the cooler ones at the bottom due to convection issues and separating the HDDs, I would be more concerned about putting the HDDs where they'll get the most air movement. So for example that might mean you don't want to put a drive in the very top position. See how the airflow is with your fans installed.

 

[YWO]

For Lightroom catalogs, you want the fastest drive you can get as it does hammer that disk. So I'm not sure that you just want a low-cost drive.

While I almost certainly won't be taxing my scratch/catalogue drive as much as you would yours, this has prompted me to look into some more performance measures. Apart from various articles, I've been taking a look at Anandtech's SSD benchmarks:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/65

My general impression is that going from 128 Gb models to 256 Gb models will give an overall increase in performance. The 256 Gb Samsung 840 Pro and OCZ Vector drives seem to be the best overall performers in the mid-range, with the Samsung faster at reading and the OCZ faster at writing (as a broad generalisation). While the 240 Gb Intel 520 drive is only somewhat competitive against those two, there is the attraction of Intel's quality, which seems to translate more into reliability and longevity than IO speed. The problem is that we're dealing more with impressions than with objective data here. I suppose only time will tell; in the meantime, an SSD is going to be better than no SSD.

You could partition the disks and leave one partition per drive for non-RAID, but where on the disk would that be? A boot volume needs to be within the first TB so you couldn't put it at the end (the slowest part) of the drives.

With 2 Tb per drive, I'd configure each with a 300 Gb fast partition (combined to yield a striped 600 Gb data volume), a 200 Gb intermediate partition (yielding two backup boot volumes), and a 1.5 Tb slow partition (yielding two secondary backup volumes). Those volume sizes could change a little, but that's the rough configuration I had in mind.

All things considered, I think the key question now is how much demand I really think I'll put on a scratch/catalogue volume over the next few years. Probably not much, but then I am building for the future to a significant degree. I've noted that Daalder's high-end builds each feature three SSDs (boot, projects/catalogue, scratch) and one HDD (general storage) ... though this seems rather pedestrian compared to some of the hardware that Chambers writes about.