The New Hardware Thread

[Dogg Thang]

Thanks guys. Really appreciate the info, especially all those details, [MENTION=7539]briareos_kerensky[/MENTION] . [MENTION=9465]Brad[/MENTION] it seems you're right about the video card. Looks like the CPU and the RAM will be the main thing that counts when it comes to the type of work I'll be doing. Will see if I can adjust the specs and see where I hit.

Edit: One more question I just thought of. If I get a high spec machine like this, is it likely to sound like a 360 with fans blasting all the time or are they better these days?

[briareos_kerensky]

Dell machines are silent; at work I have three of the newst workstations rendering constantly throughout the day and not a single wisper. Your experience may wary with handbuilt machines, but with the right fans (Noctua, Scythe) and/or a (partially) soundproofed case and you won't hear a thing.

Looks like the CPU and the RAM will be the main thing that counts when it comes to the type of work I'll be doing. Will see if I can adjust the specs and see where I hit.

My suggestion is to get a dedicated swap drive, Photoshop loves dedicated swap drives. If you're going Creative Cloud, take a look at the supported GPUs to take advantage of the advanced acceleration features, especially with certain filters it can be a game-changer.

[Dogg Thang]

Yep, I'm on CC mostly using Photoshop, Premiere, Flash and After Effects. Will see if I can find the supported GPUs. I realise this is probably a rookie question but what is a swap drive?

[briareos_kerensky]

Premiere and After Effects benefit particularly from a supported GPU, much more than Photoshop. The Media Encoder can take advantage of OpenCL or CUDA for rendering and this speeds up process a lot. The supported GPUs are listed on Adobe's website.

Swap occours when there is no more RAM available and the OS allocates HDD space for that purpose; if you need to read and write at the same time on a single drive performance will decrease. And no matter how much RAM you have, Photoshop will always swap (I have 64GB and CC2015 always uses at least a 1GB swap file). With Premiere and After Effects, swap is particularly critical, because their files take up a lot of space.

[Dogg Thang]

Ah okay. Got it. Thanks for all that. Really appreciate the info! So my next step will be to go looking at those supported GPUs and I'll take it from there. Cheers!

[Dogg Thang]

Another drive question guys. I see the Scan people divide them into four: an OS drive, a media cache drive (the swap drive, right?). a project drive and storage drive. The media cache drive isn't added by default on their site. But I'm wondering what the separate project drive is for? Guessing it is for the projects you are working on at the time as the storage drive will access slower, right? Can the media cache use the same SSD as the projects?

[briareos_kerensky]

Those are definitions that they use, if you ask me what you need is: boot drive, file drive, swap drive. The first is a fast, relatively small drive, like a 256-512 MB SSD, where you install the OS and programs. The file drive is where you store your data, a 2TB or larger drive. Swap drive where you place OS' and programs' swap files, and it's a commodity really; you can keep the OS' swap file on the boot drive and programs' swap file on the file drive.
I guess that Scan differentiates between a drive where you place files you are working on and a drive where you store files you're done with. It's a nice setup in theory, but I would argue that you can backup files you're done with on external drive(s) that you connect when you need to retrieve data. Or a NAS.

[Dogg Thang]

Cool, thanks. It is ridiculous the amount of options when buying a computer. It needs to just be simplified into maybe small, medium and large.

[Dogg Thang]

And another question! I have a really old Dell from over 10 years ago. Decent in its day I suppose. Am I right that the chances of being anything worth saving in this computer are negligible? Thinking of just binning it. Seems to have a Creative Sound Blaster Live sound card. Might that be worth keeping?

[speedlolita]

Not even remotely.

[Dogg Thang]

Into the bin it goes then. Thanks!

[Asura]

And another question! I have a really old Dell from over 10 years ago. Decent in its day I suppose. Am I right that the chances of being anything worth saving in this computer are negligible? Thinking of just binning it. Seems to have a Creative Sound Blaster Live sound card. Might that be worth keeping?

It depends. For instance, I got an old Dell to run Guild Wars 2 with a few minor upgrades, meaning the whole setup cost less than ?40.

Plus, you can always use an old computer as a file server or ICS server (basically it's like having a router with its own hard drive). Alternatively, if you've ever wanted to build a MAME arcade machine, you can do that with a modest spec machine.

You could, also, use it to stream your Steam games to run on your living room TV.

[Dogg Thang]

Not sure it would perform all that well on Steam games except for old ones (which, actually, all of mine are...) but it would run MAME well with the good old games. But there are probably neater options these days. It is a bit of old workhorse. I'll weigh it up with my space options (small house).

[speedlolita]

A Dell from 10 years ago almost certainly has a Pentium 4 in it though. Pentium 4 are garbage, even if it were to run certain games it would run them extremely poorly. Why sacrifice your experience for the sake of saving a few hundred?

I dunno, what Asura described is how I started out with PC gaming but now? Kinda of a rolling upgrade process. lol

[Asura]

Admittedly, space is something you always need to keep in mind.

Another thing with old computers is the specific reason they are of little use. When I fixed up this Dell, at the same time I threw away a PC of around the same age. Both were underpowered by modern standards but whereas the Dell was just weak, the other machine was worn out as well. It had seen so much use over those 10 years that it was on its last legs.

The Dell that Blobcat is using today is old, but it's like a rock. A very solidly built machine. All I did was fit a graphics card bought from CEX and it'll play Guild Wars 2, Left4Dead 2 etc. which is fine for what we want to do with it.

I suppose what I'm saying in a roundabout way was that there was an era, 10+ years ago, where Dell machines were like that - they were seen as the apex of the pre-built industry and commanded a high price (daft high really) but what you got for it, usually, were machines that were extremely well planned and well built.