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Building a Lightroom PC

paulstamatiou.com

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Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#111

Post by PuffinBlue »

> I wanted to place the more active drive that I would install the OS on there, and leave the less active Lightroom scratch drive in the standalone M.2 slot.

> I couldn't quickly ascertain how each slot was identified in the UEFI and I didn't want to mistake installing Windows on the wrong drive. To solve this I only installed the SSD under the heatsink first and would install the other one after I had Windows up and running.

I've found this to be the best way to install Windows whatever the circumstance as it will often install the bootloader on whatever the BIOS says is attached to slot 0 and then the rest of the operating system to the disk you specified.

By only having one disk installed you save the hassle of sorting it out later.

Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#112

Post by parski »

Great article. I have almost the exact same components and I'll definetly get use of the overclocking segment when I get around to it.

Why did you go with a water cooler?

Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#113

Post by alkonaut »

altano wrote: post #107
alkonaut wrote: post #100

Word of caution 4K@27" is still pretty terrible in Windows. It's fine if you stay in specific apps for 99% of the time (such as a cad workstation or a Lightroom machine as in this case) but 27 requires scaling and many apps simply don't scale well. The "simple" solution is to run 4K at 32" or larger where you can run att 100% scaling. Unfortunately, if you want a screen with decent color you are adding serious money…

Why is this said in every discussion of high-dpi displays? I've been using high-dpi displays on Windows for longer than Retina was a thing and it's totally fine with only the extremely rare app/dialog not supporting it. My main display right now is 4k@27" with scaling on. Most apps are built properly and Windows now even supports fringe features like multi-monitor setups with different scaling ratios (a feature I was…

I definitely use lots of apps that aren't rebuilt in the last decade which is pretty common in the enterprise (in house stuff).

But among the "new" and "widely used" apps on my desktop right now that don't scale well (i.e. bitmap scale) are e.g. Skype, McAffee, Cisco AnyConnect (it seems about 50% of the apps on my desktop are not properly DPI aware, but simply bitmap scaling).

That's not the bad part though, I can learn to live with a few blurry bitmap scaling apps (and the odd miniature one that doesn't scale at all for some reason), but the bigger problem is apps that partially scale so they become unusable. Here is a screenshot I just took, of JetBrains DotTrace (a profiler) at 2x scaling (At a laptop with 15" @ 4K): http://prntscr.com/i4tpmb It not only looks terrible, but some things are actually unusable.

The bad thing about that kind of bug is that when an app is unusable, even if it's only one app of 100 that you use, you have no choice but to change scaling or resolution just to do that task which is a terrible interruption, especially for scaling that might require a logout to take effect.

Edit: I don't consider multi monitor with different DPI's a fringe feature, since the high DPI is very common on laptops so any setup with a laptop plus an external screen will often be using different scaling for the laptop screen and the external screen.

Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#114

Post by lhl »

PStamatiou wrote: post #22
07d046 wrote: post #19

I can't imagine spending $6000 on a computer for editing photos and then saying "It also means I don't plan to buy and meticulously use a color calibration device". My computer might not be half as fast, but at least I know my blues are the shade of blue I think they are.

Fair point :) I should reconsider. The UltraSharp line is factory calibrated but yea that doesn't mean much as it varies between display.

Well, it's calibrated to a specific delta-E so the amount of variation is limited - in practice, unless you're in a room with controlled lighting and are doing professional work (neither of which seem to be the case) calibration doesn't really matter.

(I went with an LG 32UD99 w/ some similar criteria of decent content creation performance and some gaming - it was reasonably priced, performs well enough, and more importantly, the thin bezels and lack of logos is quite schmexy - will have a hard time going back to anything branded. The LG comes w/ Freesync but I have since swapped out my Vega 64 for a 1080Ti, and as you mentioned, HDR is pretty pointless atm on PCs so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. LG showed a slightly improved 32UK950 at CES.)

Anyway nice build writeup, didn't spot anything too out of wack on the build-side and the inclusion of the CL timing chart was a nice thing since I've often seen people get confused/mess that up.

As a fellow long-time Mac user forced to migrate (mostly in Linux, but Windows for VR and LR) I liked the part of the writeup on environment/keyboard tweaks. One thing I didn't see was about privacy. Windows 10 is very invasive. I used O&O ShutUp10[1] to go through all that stuff but there are a lot of tools [2] and other considerations [3].

Besides WSL, I've still found Cygwin to be indispensable as there's still system-level stuff that doesn't work outside the WSL (interacting w/ PowerShell scripts and such).

[1] https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

[2] https://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comparison-of-windows-10-p...

[3] https://senk9.wordpress.com/checklists/windows-10-privacy-ch...

Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#115

Post by dingo_bat »

pjmlp wrote: post #91
owenwil wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who made the same jump, Windows wasn't really a viable platform for non-dotNet developers until that happened. The state of Linux on the desktop is, frankly, a disaster — I spent months on trying to make it work, but wow, it's not worth the time.

Windows has been a viable platform for software development since always. I have been developing Windows software since Windows 3.1 and my first UNIX was Xenix, followed by DG/UX, Aix and many other variants. Windows is perfectly viable developer OS for C++, Delphi, Tcl/TK, Perl, Python, Java and .NET developers. Microsoft did a mistake not following up on Windows NT POSIX support, because that is what many care abou…

> GNU/Windows

I LOL'ed.

Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#116

Post by walshemj »

cheeze wrote: post #41
ranqet wrote: post #5

So, the main reason he switched to a Windows machine was to use the latest/fastest hardware with Adobe Lightroom and Premiere, but then he goes on to say the Lightroom and Premiere don’t take advantage of many core CPUs, the fastest GPUs, fastest SSDs, etc... And Windows is fine after tweaking and adjusting dozens of settings. I’ll just stick with a Mac.

Mac isn't really an option if you want a powerful desktop though, unless you want to spend $5k I guess...

But a $5k Mac will lag a $5k Pc in performance.

Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#117

Post by Terribledactyl »

REALiSTiC wrote: post #110
ternaryoperator wrote: post #95

This is a brilliant post. The ability to navigate around the article easily and then parachute into a section and revel in detail is beautifully executed. Using links to add asides is another excellent touch. When scowls complain that the Web is crap, this is where you take them to see what the Web could in fact be.

Can anyone shed some light on how some blog posts of his are done (coded, styled, built)? (For example, https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-zealand/ and https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-zealand/auckland/ . They're simply marvelous!)

https://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog-development...

Jekyll, and a whole lot of attention to detail.

Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#118

Post by walshemj »

tlrobinson wrote: post #20
th0ma5 wrote: post #8

Step 1. Be wealthy :P I am always enamored with the simplicity of one's living space being directly proportional to wealth. I try hard to not have much stuff, but my living options are seemingly always going to be working class style places with pretty much the antithesis of what is apparent in this photo. Of course the camera lies, and I shouldn't compare my insides to some else's outsides. There's probably a new pu…

"I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars." http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html

That is probably because they are buying non running examples for parts and also do DIY as they cant afford the > £200 ph for a BMW mechanic.

Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#119

Post by anfractuosity »

I use Lightroom in VirtualBox which seems to work ok for me

(I don't really do that much fiddling with the photos though).

The photos are actually stored on my Linux filesystem and provided to Windows via VirtualBox's file sharing feature.

And then I just rsync the photos to a backup computer.

Re: Building a Lightroom PC

#120

Post by lhl »

spookyuser wrote: post #86
PStamatiou wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Premiere Pro definitely takes advantage of GPU and CPU very efficiently. Lightroom does not - which is why instead of going for some 18 core i9 7980XE build where it has more cores but a much lower clock per core, i opted for just 6 cores but with a very high clock.

It doesn't feel like it uses my AMD card at all. Whenever I check taskmanager it's always using CPU, even when rendering. Don't know if it just doesn't support AMD cards, but I'm not sure what would help increase it's performance aside from RAM now.

Actual encoding for renders is all CPU based: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2122549

Personally, I use DaVinci Resolve, but the results are largely the same, with exports being largely entirely CPU dependent: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-1...

Looks like Puget Systems does a lot of performance shootouts, including some Premiere ones: https://www.pugetsystems.com/all_articles.php

Philip Bloom recently did a writeup of his switch from a Mac to a PC for his editing machine (yes, it's definitely a trend, unless you are a FCP diehard or doing audio production, the Mac is sadly done as a content production platform): http://philipbloom.net/blog/makingtheswitch/

Will be interesting if they revisit some of the shootouts post-meltdown/spectre patching...

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