i9-9900K + Optane + Photoshop & Video Workstation

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kirkdickinson

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Jan 18, 2001
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I am wanting to build a bleeding edge Photoshop and Video Editing computer.

My last build was 2011 and it has held up well. I used a i7-3630K Sandy Bridge-E 6 Core CPU and even today, it has decent Passmark CPU ratings. it dropped off the charts at cpubenchmark.net, but was 11,999 and had a pretty high single thread cpu score (1684), which with Photoshop is the most important score.

Here is my tentative list:

  • Intel Core i9-9900K Coffee Lake 8-Core
    Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240 AIO CPU Liquid Cooler
    ASRock Z390 Taichi LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z390
    G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (4 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600
    GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080 DirectX 12 GV-N1080WF3OC-8GD 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5X PCI Express 3.0 x16
    Rosewill White Edition, Gaming ATX Full Tower Computer Case
    Intel Optane SSD 905P Series 2.5" U.2 480GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 3D XPoint
    ASRock Model U.2 Kit M.2 to U.2 Add-on Card
    SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 1TB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4
    Seasonic FOCUS Plus Series SSR-850PX 850W 80+ Platinum ATX12V
    LG Electronics 14x SATA Blu-ray Internal Rewriter
    Windows 10 Pro 64-bit - OEM
https://secure.newegg.com/Wishlist/SharedWishlistDetail?ID=gXqToQLIexM=&&cm_mmc=snc-email-_-sr-_-wishlist-gXqToQLIexM=-_-10/24/2018

I want to use the Optane drive for the boot drive and programs and keep all user data on the Samsung drive. I will use a couple large WD red drives that I already have for bulk storage.

Programs that I run every day:
Photoshop
InDesign
Illustrator
Vegas Pro (video editor)
Dreamweaver
 
I'd be more tempted to use the SSD as boot and the optane as scratch space, as the high I/O and low wear rates will work better for a scratch drive, then bulk store elsewhere, I think that's where you'll the drives doing what they are best at
 


OK, definitely don't do any gaming. I see that Adobe lists Quadro on the supported list.

  • nVidia Quadro: 2000, 4000 (Windows® and Mac OS), CX, 5000, 6000, K600, K2000, K4000, K5000 (Windows® and Mac OS), M4000, M5000, P2000, P4000, P5000
What is the advantage of a Quadro card over the GeForce 1080?

Thanks
 


nothing unless your app doesn't support regular cards, cuda cores are cuda cores.
 


I saw a 8700K build with an Optane boot drive and a slight overclock it was crazy crazy fast. I just wanted that crazy fast boot time. I know that the Optane would make a great scratch drive too, but probably wouldn't get one that big. One of the 64 Gig M.2 Optanes would make a sweet swap drive for Photoshop. There are only two M.2 ports on this board if I remember. What about switching to a PCI Optane interface and then using an Optane swap and a samsung working drive + bulk storage? I know that using all the M.2 lanes will disable some of my SATA options, but don't understand exactly how that works.

Right now, my current rig that has all the programs that I use is about 9 months in on a fresh windows 10 reload. I have a 500Gig SSD boot drive that has 244used. I had a lot more used, but used junction points to map some of my user data to spinning drives.

Still thinking this through. I know the Samsung is fast, but the Optane is faster, I haven't seen any real world head to head comparison tests.
 
"I just wanted that crazy fast boot time"

My system is all SATA III SSD.
It boots in 0.0 sec.

Adding up the hours when I'm not actually using it and it is idle...that costs me approx $50/year.
But leaving it ON also allows much easier scheduling for nightly backups. It can do its thing in the hours between 1AM and 4AM, when I'm fast asleep.
You have budgeted in backup space for this, correct?

Optane drives such as the 905p are about 5x the cost of an NVMe drive, 7x the cost of a SATA III drive.
How much is that boot time worth to you?
 


I haven't kept up with the technology of video cards. For the type of work that I will be doing, is there a sweet spot in the price point?
 


I don't shut mine down every day either, but it always seems that I have to reboot when I really would rather not for various reasons. I leave mine on 24/7 and have backups and syncs to my server scheduled at night. Even imaging my boot drive and storing a copy out to the server.

Boot time is only one part of a really fast NVMe drive.
 
Difficult to say without knowing what you'll be doing, and even with knowing what you'll be doing to be honest about it.

1080's have dropped in price, but so has the whole range, now that RTX is here.

Do you want to bet on whether adobe and others will make use of the RTX hardware, either raytracing or the AI driven Super Sampling? I think that they will, in which case a 2070 would be a good buy, more than good enough in raw cuda performance and nearly the best on the market for additional functionality if it becomes available before the 3000's
 


NVMe? For your use, sure. Absolutely. If I had a newer board, I would as well.
Optane for 5x the price? Well....maybe not. Still too much $ per GB.


And even in those rare situations when this SATA III system gets rebooted, it is still under 30 seconds, including time for the BIOS to do its thing.


Just like SATA III SSD was stupid expensive early on, Optane will come down in price as well. Give it some time.
 


But you are locked into everything else from a hardware perspective.

Any evidence of the 'optimisation'?

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-2017-Mac-Pro-vs-PC-Performance-934/

Here we have mac machines costing at least twice as much and with more memory beating a PC in most tests, but not PS.
https://petapixel.com/2018/01/25/photoshop-speed-test-mac-pro-macbook-pro-imac-pro-vs-gaming-pc/
No reason the the PC couldn't get the memory or the GPU.

https://tricky-photoshop.com/photoshop-mac-windows-better/
 


This article might give you some idea of where price vs performance starts to curve off.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Photoshop-CC-2018-NVIDIA-GeForce-GPU-Performance-1139/
 


LOL, I like the MacOS, but I think I have bought my last one. Just more bang for the buck with PC and Windows 10 is not horrible.
 


This current system when it was fresh could completely shut down and reboot in 58 seconds. When new had a Samsung PRO SATA III. It was fast. When I loaded all my programs on it, that "Re-Boot" time went to about 2 minutes. That drive got too small and I have a generic SSD drive in now and it is slower than that.

I have a pretty decent computer right now that most Photoshop users would be plenty pleased with. I just have money from a publishing job that I use to upgrade my equipment every year, and this year is time to upgrade the PC. If I can't get something significantly faster than this 2012 Sandy Bridge Hex core, I don't see the point of upgrading.

Maybe I should spend my budget this year on a new FreeNAS server. That is about as old as my workstation.
 


Thanks. This is exactly what I need to help me with my research. :)
 


That i9 and all it goes with will be significantly faster than your old Sandy.

For a NAS, I went through that cost eval 2 yrs ago. Self built Server 2016 box, selfbuilt FreeNAS something, or a purpose built NAS box.
I ended up with a 4 bay Qnap.
 


I did a pretty nice FreeNAS build about 3 years ago. It is humming along nicely. I like it. I built a second cheaper one just to run a PLEX server for my grandkids at my house. No more sticky fingers mangling DVD's. Just lost remotes.

The Qnap 4 bay is probably a lot cheaper. I have drive redundancy, snapshots, and all the good stuff that comes with FreeNAS. Not sure what Qnap offers today. Looked at Qnap, Drobro, and Synology at the same time. This is what my FreeNAS build looked like:


  • 6 - WD Red WD40EFRX 4TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" NAS Internal Hard Drive - B
    Capacity: 4TBPACKAGE: N/AStyle: N/A
    Model #:WD40EFRX
    Item #:9SIA2W01A21484
    $178.95 $1,073.70

    iStarUSA D400L7-DE8BK Steel 4U Rackmount High Performance Quiet Server Chassis
    Model #😀400L7-DE8BK
    Item #:N82E16811165389
    $375.99

    SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7-F-O Micro ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C222 DDR3 1600
    Model #:MBD-X10SL7-F-O
    Item #:N82E16813182821
    $249.99

    SUPERMICRO SSD-DM032-PHI SATA DOM (SuperDOM) Solutions
    Model #:SSD-DM032-PHI
    Item #:N82E16816139090
    $69.99

    SeaSonic S12G-450 450W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Active PFC Power Supply, Intel Haswell Ready
    Model #:S12G-450
    Item #:N82E16817151139
    $69.99

    Intel Xeon E3-1231V3 Haswell 3.4 GHz LGA 1150 80W BX80646E31231V3 Server Processor
    Model #:BX80646E31231V3
    Item #:N82E16819117316
    $254.99

    4 - Crucial 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Server Memory Model CT102472BA160B
    Model #:CT102472BA160B
    Item #:N82E16820191593
    $62.99 $251.96

    Total: $2,346.61

 
My Qnap TS-453a was about 1/2 that.
Box + 16GB RAM + 4 x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf + 8TB Seagate (to backup the NAS to) was about $1300.
RAID 5, 24/7 for almost 2 yrs, zero issues.

All the house PC's push nightly backups via Macrium Reflect. The NAS backs up weekly to the 8TB.
 


Cool. I really should set up all of my office computers to push the Macrium Reflect backup instead of just my own. :) I have been doing manual ones occasionally and the main user directory gets pushed to a backup directory on the server for each computer every night. I use Vice Versa a lot. I only have 7 computers plus the server. Each computer has a 4TB drive for Photos and Documents. Every night they pull/sync to those directories on the server. The user directory and email directory get uploaded to to User backups on the server.

Once a week, an old tower in another building pulls down the backups of everything. It rotates part of the data each night and copies, videos, documents, backups, etc..

I have a a handful of 4TB drives that I copy critical data on and put in the safe. I also have a 1TB Dropbox account that I keep some important things on.

My backup system is maybe a little chaotic.

The nice thing about the FreeNAS is the snapshots. I had a user delete an entire directory on my server and didn't find out about it for a month. All those changes had been synced out to every other computer and my backups before I found out. I used a snapshot and rolled back that directory deletion.

I have thought about building a second FreeNAS server and doing rsyncs between the two.

 
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