Build Thread 2.0

[Gorgon]

Just as an experiment I blew up a file well past my 32 gb of ram. It took a long time to process but once it was done simple operations in Photoshop, drawing, selecting, moving selections around, etc. were slow but perfectly servicable, forget about filters and heavy processing though, my CPU is not up to the task. I noticed it created 3 seperate 64 gb temp files on my 512 gb m.2. SSD. 

 

Maybe that's an option. Pretty pricey though. 

[Bokishi]

Nice, using an m.2 drive for virtual memory only is an idea

[Bartimaeus]

@Kirottu:

 

Another PSU option, if you haven't already purchased, would be the Corsair Vengeance series. 5 year warranty, semi-modular, incredibly dominant performance for a bronze series, and supposed to be a good price. It's a very new series (having come out this year), and is supposed to just absolutely blow away the competition at its price point. According to johnnyguru, its power efficiency numbers are more similar to silver and gold units, not bronze units, too. I would've mentioned it before now, but I was not aware of its existence since this "Vengeance" series is apparently Europe-only, and the North American variant is very poorly marketed.

 

(For those of us in North America, this new series has unfortunately been relabeled as the new "CX-M" series - it is distinct from the previous and well-known CX/CXM series that are popular for being pretty much the lowest quality you should ever go for a decent price, and is far superior.)

Edited August 28, 2016 by Bartimaeus

[kirottu]

Tomorrow is the day of ordering everything online. My brother visited me yesterday and we went through the list of parts. He agreed on getting a SSD. Everything else stayed the same. He did have a question about RAM configuration and didn't have an answer. Since both the CPU and motherboard support dual memory channel 2xwhatever RAM is the best choice, right? But what are the downsides of having, for example, 1x8gb RAM or 4x4gb RAM?

[Humanoid]

Going with one stick means it will simply be slower. Going with two instead of four makes sense because performance is the same (maybe someone can find a squillionth of a percentage difference if they really wanted to) but allows for future upgrades since most boards only have four slots. Another benefit is having less components in the machine overall makes it less likely something will go wrong. Troubleshooting two sticks if you do run into any issues is also easier than four.

[Bokishi]

Just got hardware sponsored by Zotac! They will send me computer hardware (like SSDs and videocards) to keep my rig constantly updated, and I'll post huge screenshots for their marketing. Not bad for a hobby, right now got an NVME SSD on the way...

[Gorgon]

How did you swing that. Are you some kind of internet celeb ?

 

On second thought you do kinda seem like the kinda guy who would pimp out his rig for the benchmark sites

[Bokishi]

I'm no celeb, but it started with Reddit. It seems like once somethings on there, everyone sees it. I was like, "my site has the largest screenshot in the world" and then it got lots of upvotes in the Witcher Reddit. Other people reposted it in other large subreddits, and it did well there too.

 

Then tech sites like HardOCP and WCCFTech, posted about it, using my site as an example of what Nvidia's new large screenshot tech can do. Then Zotac linked to one of my images in their Facebook. Zotac turned out to be fans of my website

 

I suggested to them that large screenshots can be a new form of benchmarking computer hardware, and if they would be interested in sponsoring my efforts to go larger and larger. I mean EVGA sponsors Kingpin, the guy that uses their hardware to get the highest 3dmark scores in the world. I said that I could be Zotac's "Kingpin" and use their hardware to get the largest screenshots in the world

[Gorgon]

I saw a test somewheres where they strung four Nvme m.2  together in raid configuration, apparently diminishing returns because of processor limitations and no free slot for a GPU, pretty silly.

 

Still, drool.

[Bokishi]

I think probably running nvme raid might be useful if you want access to data almost as fast as ram. I mean my use for nvme would be to host virtual memory on it only. Windows address 3x the amount of virtual memory as your physical memory. With 32gb I was getting at max, 128gb total memory to work with. I'm currently upgrading to 64gb ram, which would effectively give me 256gb total memory to work with (physical + virtual)

[Gorgon]

Yeah but doesn't Photoshop do the same thing with the scratch disks. You would imagine the swap files that contain your currenty open PS files would benifit from fast as well as large. 

 

Ideally I suppose you assign one SSD for system virtual memory and one for PS scratch disk. 

 

I'm not entirely sure how those interact, you assign RAM to Photoshop, whatever is left over that the system doesn't need, I think I could set mine to 24 gb max, nothing approaching 32 gb or 128 gb anyway, so I don't think you have the totality of your RAM+virtual memory available for Photoshop, not as it relates to PS file sizes anyway.

[Bokishi]

I don't need much memory for Photoshop, as it is only good for editing 30K x 30K chunks of an image. It can't open a 10 gigapixel file. I have to use Irfanview to stitch 2 of those things together, and that alone sucks up a colossal amount of memory, like all 128gb (32gb + virtual 96gb) and 2 hour wait time. Stitching 3 of them requires more memory than that

[Gorgon]

I see

[Bokishi]

Well I just read some good pointers from this guy, may try saving as a psb and I won't have to chunk it up before photoshop editing

 

http://galleries.aaronpriestphoto.com/Articles/PanoramaFileSizes

 

 

And already maxing out the new ram. This is just pc abuse now

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by Bokishi

[Gorgon]

I was following the development of Procreate and a few similar Ipad apps and they were commenting on there being good reasons for the lack of PSD support, lots of convoluted bloat and stuff only an Adobe engineer would know what to do with and a complete nightmare building a parser for it if they were to believed. If you don't need layers then don't use the native format. You can even have layers and not use PSD although sometimes they don't all export correctly or you have to save each layer individually, which doesn't matter as long as you are done with layer editing of course.

[Bokishi]

Yeah I'm trying to process a 30gp file. I have half the tiles loaded, and photoshop scratchdisk is at 2tb now. That doesn't seem efficient to me.

 

I've been having lots of luck with the png format, it can save in any resolution I've tried, and file size is not massive. Will try saving 30gp to it soon, I hope that luck continues

[Gorgon]

Sooo. hows using that 64gb. Does it feel any different, what applications are showing an impact ?.  I'm asking because 64 gb kits got really cheap all of a sudden.  

[Bokishi]

Irfanview allows me to stitch images together in sizes that just weren't possible with 32gb. I can have a 50 gigapixel raw image open in irfanview, and it takes up 40gb ram. Still room to go higher.

 

Photoshop is a little snappier too, with more room to do stuff before having to rely on scratch disk. Helpful when manually seaming these gp shots together, and every little brush stroke is 4K sized

 

Stitching is a little faster too, but maybe that's because I'm working off the NVME drive now

[teknoman2]

got me a XFX RX470 4GB.

i have to wait for a digital to analog signal converter to arrive though before i can connect it to my screen.

EDIT

this is driving me mad. the converter was supposed to arrive wednesday and its still not here. why is it that every time i want to upgrade my pc things can't go smoothly?

 

when i upgraded my CPU 2 years ago, the PSU died the next day and the screen a few days later

this time when i ordered the 470 it came 1 week later than what they told me and the converter looks like it will be another week late and i'm sure there will be more problems before i can use it

Edited October 1, 2016 by teknoman2

[Humanoid]

When I ended up having to install Mankind Divided on my system partition because it was the only one with enough space left, I had the realisation I should probably do something about that. Either I'd have to clean up all the games I had installed but hadn't played for years and thus were uselessly taking up precious space, or I could just add more space.

 

Naturally, I took the latter option. Out goes my 250GB Samsung 840 EVO and in comes a 960GB Sandisk Ultra II. I've now copied over my Steam library, which had previously been spread out over three different disks.

 

I also impulse-bought a Filco Majestouch 2 Tenkeyless keyboard with Black switches. Not my switch of preference, but in what I suspect was a pricing error, it was priced at somewhere between a third and a half of what the other models were going for. At that price I couldn't resist, though I'm doubtful it'll end up as my main keyboard unless this Tenkeyless thing that I've never tried before turns out to be an epiphany.

 

Just checking now and the price has been hiked from $102AUD to $269AUD so I guess my assumption about a pricing error was correct, but I've gotten a shipping notification (this is an eBay store) so all should be well. (Blues are $224, Browns $239 and Reds $287 so prices are all over the place admittedly)

[teknoman2]

2 weeks late but the converter is finally here. i will install the card later and let's hope the converter works and i don't end up having to go look for another 

 

EDIT

IT WOOOOOOOORRRRRRRKKKKSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!

i can finally use my new card

Edited October 13, 2016 by teknoman2

[Gorgon]

Soo, my endless monitor buying woes continue.

 

This is my current candidate. Decided I would rather have increased quality over size. 

 

http://www.benq.com/product/monitor/bl3201pt

 

Pros

 

It's 32', it has full swivel and nice build quality. 10 bit colour capable

 

Cons

 

It's expensive and old(ish). the HDMI are 1.4, so no 60hrz which kinda defeats the purpose of having them. 

 

Have no idea what I'm going to do GPUwise. I wouldn't go higher than a GTX1070. Maybe I just keep my 1080p hooked up for gaming if the Benq doesn't scale down very well. 

[Bokishi]

1070 can do 4K on high settings

[Gorgon]

Could go 27-28' that would pay for the 1080 right there, but there is still windows scaling to worry about. I use one or two older programs and from what I understand it's still very hit and miss how well they do.

[Gorgon]

I bought the Benq. Damn that was like pulling teeth.

 

 

lotta money.