Seeking advice on Upgrading PC to good photography capacity

I would like to purchase a new pc that will be able to handle Light room, and extraction software (about 400 RAW images at a time)
I am thinking about
DELL Desktop 540MT INTEL CORE 2 QUAD CORE Q9400
HARD DRIVE 1TB
GRAPHICS 512MB NVIDIA GEFORCE 9800GT
MEMORY DUAL CHANNEL 4GB(4X1034M 800MHZ
WINDOWS VISTA OPERATING SYSTEM
Wha do you think? Do you have any other Ideas?

The only thing I'd add to that purchase would be a 1Tb external hard drive for backup.

i just bought a new computer from gate way. i had planned to build my own but with problems from my very old dell, i was pretty much forced to buy one. a 1tb internal hard drive is a little over board but bob makes a very valid point of getting an external hard drive. the intel core 2 quad is a great processor. i run 8 gig of memory and while your 512 invidia is a great video card (i run one simular) a 1 gig is better. i will not down dell but if you look at unit for unit i found dell was alot more expensive for what you get, and dell's customer service is not what it used to be. they charge for absolutly everything - even for over the phone tech support. i like the gate way so far and unlike some companies that run proprietory equipment, gate way is very upgradable

john101477 wrote:

a 1tb internal hard drive is a little over board

Everything else you said, John, is right on, but on this I disagree.

Hard drive storage is relatively cheap and the price difference between a 500Gb drive and a 1Tb drive is marginal. For a new machine that will live long enough to see several major operating system and application software upgrades, not to mention years of photo work, I'd consider 1Tb to be a minimum requirement for a professional graphics machine.

For my desktop machine, I'm running 1.5Tbs of internal storage (3 500Gb drives) and I wish I had more. I have a handful of 500Gb drives for external backup and a couple of cute little 40Gb mini hard drives (cannibalized from old laptops) for field work.

yeah i see what you mean Bob, myself i am scared to death that my internal will crash and i will loose all my work thats why i use the external hard drives for storage. the internal is only required to run CS4 at the moment but i may incorporate lightroom 2 here soon for faster processing. as for new OS coming and going i know the new windows is suposed to launch in august but with my system i should have no problems. also something i didn't mention is that my computer has two additional slots for hard drives. as far as function this new gate way is pretty slick. my only beef is the nvidea geforce gt120 512 ddr2 memory video card which i may upgrade the next time i feel rich. don't get me wrong it runs good for CS4 but i know with the 1gb i could run a second monitor with no problems and still be faster than it is now

Personally, I don't think there's really such a thing as too much HDD space. My first PC was a Pack-o-hell (Packard Bell) with 2 meg of RAM and 125 meg of HDD space. Of course then, 125 megs of HDD space was so much that I almost never imagined I'd ever use it up.

A couple of quick questions: What are you shooting with, I.E. what is your typical RAW file size? Are you editing several files at a time and/or batch processing? Either way you'll be at the mercy of your available memory. I'm running Intel duo core w/4 gig memory using Photoshop CS3. This configuration runs fine until I have much more than a dozen RAW files open at once. Of course, Photoshop tends to be a resource hog so Lightroom might behave better under the same conditions.

Space and memory are your friends.

As far as Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. I haven't purchased a PC off-the-shelf since the 386 was king.

Back in the mid-1980s, my girlfriend bought her first computer, a Kaypro 16 (a 29-pound "portable" ). She had the option of a 10Mb or 20Mb hard drive. She went with the 10Mb drive because we were both convinced we'd never use up all that space. And back then it was true. Now that "unfillable" hard drive wouldn't be able to handle even ONE raw photo.

The problem with estimating storage requirements isn't just that future software will demand more space, but that our own usage habits change according to the conditions at hand. When I did a future requirements analysis for additional hard drive space for a company back when hard drives were really pricey, I accounted for everything BUT human behavior. What should have lasted the company six months actually lasted them six weeks. When people saw the extra space, they went nuts with it.

Now with hard drives so affordable, the only caveat I'd give is, Don't let your hard drive capacity exceed your ability to back it up.

john101477 wrote:

yeah i see what you mean Bob, myself i am scared to death that my internal will crash and i will loose all my work thats why i use the external hard drives for storage.

That's pretty much opposite of my practice.

The internal hard drives are generally much safer than the externals. As long as they have good cooling from air-circulation, the internals have it good. They have a more stable power supply, they don't get jostled around as much, and they're less likely to get zapped with static electricity through careless handling. I have a much higher failure rate with external drives. If I use an external as a primary storage drive (which is rare), I have at least one other external as its backup.

If you have your work on the externals, what are you doing for backup of that work?

hmmm maybe i need to go buy the two new internals to fit into this thing . thanks Bob scare me even more buy makin me think i'm still not safe .

I'm told DDR3 memory works better but you need a compatible mother board .

I agree that Photoshop and such like needs as much memory as possible and a fast spinning Hard Drive to get the images off the drive .


I use a Mac myself , but when I do use Windows , I prefer XP as Vista uses up too much memory for all the fancy effects . I also have XP set in higher performance mode / Classic Mode so it looks like Windows 98 .

If I want eye candy , I'll use OSX : - ) )


The other important things on Windows is use apps to keep it's Registry in order and defrag the hard drive , so the computer spends less time and energy looking for things .

I'm told the same applies to Compact Flash Cards - you are better off , backing up your pictures obviously , and reformatting / wiping your cards .