Build-Your-Own "Ultimate" Adobe Photoshop CS6 PC

Summary: Photoshop is a big, heavy application that, when pushed hard, can bring even a high-end system to its knees. For hardcore graphics designers, a dedicated piece of kit is essential.

Without a doubt, the single most-requested feature here on Hardware 2.0 in the ‘Build-Your-Own PC’ category is for an “Ultimate” Photoshop system. Now that Adobe has officially launched Photoshop CS6, it’s time to take a look at this new release and prepare a hardware package that does it justice.

It seems that the reason why people are interested in the hardware specifics for a PC with Photoshop is because it’s a big, heavy application that, when pushed even modestly, can bring even a high-end system to its knees. Even small bottlenecks in performance can mean a lot of time spent twiddling your thumbs while the program chunters through a task. There’s no doubt that the better your hardware, the better your Photoshop experience will be.

Well, here it is, a guide to building your “Ultimate” Photoshop CS6 system.

Personally, I’m not much of a Photoshop user, and most of my “art” ends up looking like the 4chan Rage Guy, so please don’t ask me any Photoshop-related questions!

While I’m specifically looking at a system suited to Photoshop CS6, this build will work equally well for any of the big Adobe products, such as Premiere Pro CS6 or even the ‘full’ Master Collection CS6 package.

To build the “Ultimate” Photoshop system you will need to choose four components carefully. These are:

• A fast, quad-core processor
• Lots of RAM
• Lots of big, fast hard drives
• A graphics card that supports GPU-acceleration found in Photoshop CS6

Let’s take a look at these four components in more detail.

Processor

When it comes to Photoshop, there are three CPU-related facts that you have to accept. Intel CPUs trump AMD silicon, speed of the CPU matters, and pushing the cores beyond four doesn’t have a huge impact on performance. Here’s a benchmark to support all the above statements, and based on my testing these conclusions are just as applicable to Photoshop CS6 as they were to CS5 or 5.5. AMD makes some good CPUs, but for Photoshop you should be looking at Intel processors.

So, we’re going to start building this Photoshop system by putting an Intel Core i7 at its heart. I recommend the excellent 3.6GHz Core i7-3820 CPU (which turbo-boosts up to 3.8GHz), a part that will set you back about $310.

RAM

You need RAM, and lots of it. Consider 8GB an absolute minimum, and take that to 12GB or 16GB if your motherboard allows. There’s not need to get fancy or fast RAM aimed at gaming systems for this build. In fact, you’re better off sticking to the quality desktop RAM from reputable vendors.

Stick with RAM from Crucial or Kingston and you won’t go wrong. Not only will you get a quality, stable product, but these companies offer excellent warranties if you do end up with a bad stick of RAM. This RAM also works out a lot cheaper than the stuff aimed at gamers.

Storage

A Photoshop system needs masses of storage. This is not just because the application itself is huge, or because the output can be massive. It’s because in order to get the best from Photoshop you need multiple drives, with each one dedicated to handling a specific task.

Ideally, you need four drives. One for the OS, one for the application, one for your output files, and one to act as a “scratch disk.”  A “scratch disk” is what Adobe calls using a portion of a hard drive as virtual memory. You can get away with fewer disks, for example two disks — one for Windows and the applications, the other to ask as storage and a “scratch disk” — but it’s far ideal. Trying to run everything on a single disk is best avoided as it’s going to create a significant performance bottlenecks.

Since this is an “Ultimate” system, I’m going to recommend that you use four disks. You’ll need two large hard disk drives (HDD), and two fast solid state drives (SSD). You’ll install Windows onto one of the hard disk drives, and Photoshop onto the other hard drive. Then you’ll use the one of the solid state drives for your output files, and the other as a “scratch disk.” This setup gives you the best possible storage performance, eliminating a number of potential bottlenecks.

It’s worth noting that you don’t need big solid state drives for this build because they’re only used for short-term storage. Once you’re done with a project, it’s a good idea to move the files to a hard disk drive where the cost-per-gigabyte is much lower.

Graphics card

Photoshop CS6 features a new Mercury Graphics Engine, and this comes equipped with a number of GPU-accelerated tools, including blur effects, liquify effects, and adaptive wide-angle effects. To make use of these GPU-accelerated tools you will need a system kitted out with a graphics card from the NVIDIA Quadro lineup, something you won’t find in a standard system.

At the high-end these Quadro graphics cards become super expensive, with a Quadro 6000 setting you back $4,000. Thankfully, you don’t need a high-end card to power the new features found in Photoshop CS6 and we can make do with something more modest, such as the Quadro 2000.

Putting it all together

OK, let’s put this all together into a complete system. Here’s a complete list of components (including case and operating system):

• CPU: Intel Core i7-3820 3.6GHz - $310
• Motherboard: ASRock X79 Extreme6 - $250
• RAM: 16GB kit (4GBx4), Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR3 PC3-12800- $105
• HDD: 2 x Western Digital Caviar Green WD30EZRX 3TB ($180 each) - $360
• SSD: 2 x Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F120GB3A-BK 2.5″ 120GB SATA III ($150 each) - $300
• Graphics card: PNY VCQ2000D-PB Quadro 2000D 1GB - $410
• Optical drive: LG WH12LS39 12X Blu-ray Burner - $80
• Power supply unit: CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W power supply unit - $105
• Case: Thermaltake V4 Black Edition chassis - $50
• Operating system: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit - $130

Total price: $2,100

Once you’ve built this system I recommend giving it a thorough stress-test to shakeout any problems before you start working on it. Adobe CS6 applications are incredibly demanding and will uncover even the smallest flaw in your system. Better to find any problems before putting the system into a production environment.

Image credit: Adobe.

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Move Over, Boys! Studies Show More Women Are Becoming Hardcore Gamers!

Stereotypically, they have taken on the role of the disapproving girlfriend, arms folded, eyes rolling, as the boys huddle around a glowing television, gripping controllers as they go into battle.

Women, however, are no longer an enigma in the hardcore gaming community.

In fact, professional women are dedicating hours a week to video games – comprising 42 per cent of gamers, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

As the Star Tribune reports, that statistic includes games played on handheld devices, such as solitaire and ‘Angry Birds’ which are popular with women.

But hardcore games are reportedly becoming increasingly popular with the demographic.

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MacBook Pro 2012 could feature Liquidmetal technology

Summary: But there are potential obstacles to constructing a notebook chassis from Liquidmetal, the primary being how the material handles heat.

The blogosphere just won’t let go of the idea that Apple is on the verge of using Liquidmetal technology in one of its products. Last week it was the iPhone 5 that was going to get the Liquidmetal treatment, and now it’s rumored to be a feature of the MacBook Pro 2012 refresh.

SlashGear reports that Apple could cast the chassis of the next MacBook Pro from Liquidmetal. But, just as with the iPhone 5 rumor, that this raises all sorts of issues related to whether this metal is transparent enough to radio frequency to allow Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to work properly.

A possible solution to this problem is offered up in the design of the Wi-Fi + 3G/4G iPad. The chassis of this product is machined out of aluminum, but in order to give the cellular antennas a window out to the world, there’s a black plastic panel at the top of the tablet. It’s not a particularly elegant solution, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about it.

But there’s another possible obstacle to constructing a notebook chassis from Liquidmetal, and this one relates to how the material handles heat. The datasheet lists the thermal conductivity of the Liquidmetal as 6 Wm^-1K^-1, which makes it a far poorer conductor of heat than aluminum, which has a thermal conductivity of around 35 Wm^-1K^-1.

What this means is that Apple would need to redesign the cooling system of the MacBook Pro to take into account the fact that a Liquidmetal shell would be far poorer at dissipating the heat generated by the system than the current aluminum shell. However, buried on Liquidmetal Technologies website, a reference signals a way to tailor the material for specific thermal and electrical conductivity, so there may be possible to re-engineer the material to overcome this problem.

I like the idea of a Liquidmetal MacBook Pro — or for that matter any portable — more than I do the idea of making the back of an iPhone out of the material. The first reason is production. Casting is normally a much quicker process machining parts, and this gives the Liquidmetal chassis an advantage over how Apple currently manufactures parts for portable systems.

Another reason for switching from aluminum to Liquidmetal is that portables have to deal with countless bumps, scratches and abrasion on a daily basis. Liquidmetal would certainly offer a system far greater protection than aluminum does, and keep the hardware looking better for a lot longer.

Image credit: iFixit.

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Should we allow Facebook access for actively serving military personnel?

Summary: The wife of an active-duty soldier learned of his death, not through the military’s very carefully thought-out death-notification procedure, but over Facebook.

A few days ago, we became aware of a very sad story. The wife of an active-duty soldier learned of his death, not through the military’s very carefully thought-out death-notification procedure, but over Facebook.

CBS News: Wife of Fort Carson soldier learns of his death on Facebook

Death is a fact of life in the military, as it is in other very dangerous jobs, like police work or fire fighting. All of these organizations have developed a notification procedure that needs to accomplish a number of goals.

First, it needs to communicate the news in a respectful manner, in keeping with the magnitude of the notification. Next, it provides people on-hand for those crucial first minutes when a family learns of a loved one’s loss, in order to both keep the situation under control and safeguard other family members. Third, it’s designed to create a memory, so when family members think back over the years, their impression is one that, while deeply sad, is also one of dignity.

When this soldier’s wife learned about her husband’s death over Facebook, she had to experience it in a completely uncontrolled environment. A fellow soldier, also serving in Afghanistan, informed the wife directly, via a Facebook instant message and then a voice conversation. About two hours later, the military notification team arrived at the family’s home.

ZDNet’s Friending Facebook columnist Emil Protalinski and I debated whether we should even cover this story, because it was yet another sensationalistic Facebook story.

We eventually decided we’d each cover it according to our “beat” — he’d cover it as a Facebook story and I’d cover it as a government story. Here’s Emil’s piece, which provides details on the actual situation, which I won’t be discussing.

See also: Soldier’s wife learns of his death via Facebook

On one hand, it’s another sensationalistic story. On the other hand, it’s part of the changing world that’s Facebook, social media, and the military.

I originally chose not to write this on Gov because I know families are thrilled to have access to their loved-one soldiers via social media. I started off by thinking I’d have to say that this is another reason to block social media from the warfront — and I just didn’t want to say that in this context.

Facebook is changing everything, including death notifications.

The military has a very solemn, dignified way of notifying next-to-kin, but they need the time to make that happen — even if only the travel time to the spouse or loved one for the notification team. But Facebook is instant, so there’s no way for DoD to have responded faster. It’s the curse of openness vs. propriety.

There was a time, of course, when soldiers could only talk to home via snail mail letters (censored, of course) and the rare phone call. While this was hard on families and those serving, it did manage to help preserve operational security.

But as the global Internet has proliferated, even into war zones, families are able to stay more connected to their loved ones over IM, Skype, email, and the various social networks. OpSec was still observed in the most mission-critical cases, but otherwise, Internet family communications made for happier soldiers and happier families, especially in recent times, as tours of duty have been extended and extended again.

American soldiers are among the most disciplined and well-trained professionals in the world. Most of them, when instructed on a policy or procedure, can be counted on following that policy or procedure. After all, we trust them with billions of dollars of gear and really dangerous weapons, so we certainly should be able to trust them to follow orders.

Those orders extend to family communications.

Soldiers know what they can and can’t tell their families. Many soldiers talk to their families regularly, but sometimes the folks back home don’t know where in the world their loved one is deployed. That’s because our troops know what they can say, and when to keep quiet — even when it comes to family.

In this recent Fort Carson case, something went wrong. At this point, it’s not clear if the soldier who told the wife about her husband’s death had been properly instructed in how to handle that situation. If the woman in the husband’s platoon violated standing orders about death notification and decided to notify the wife herself, then she’ll be subject to possible court martial procedures.

So this brings us back to the original question: should we allow social network and Internet access for actively serving military personnel? A corollary to that is whether an incident like this is justification to cut off social network and Internet access for our serving troops?

My answer, carefully thought out, is “yes” and “no”. Yes, we should allow social network and Internet access for our troops, and no, this incident does not justify cutting our troops off from their families.

The reason is simple: trust. Fundamentally, the entire military structure of the United States of America runs on one thing: trust. We train and we trust. If we can’t trust our troops to know right and wrong when it comes to what to say when talking to home, then we can’t trust our troops to know right and wrong in far more dire situations.

And we must trust, for to have a military without trust is to merely have armed chaos. Sure, from time-to-time things go wrong. Some soldiers misinterpret training messages, friendly fire kills in the fog of war, some troops suffer under psychological trauma that results in trouble of varying degrees.

Even so, we must trust our troops. Our military has long turned mistakes into opportunities for additional training, and this Facebook incident is one of those areas where additional training may be needed.

The fact is, while our soldiers are the best in the world, they’ve also been fighting this war for a long time, stop-lossed over and over. Every opportunity we can give them to keep in touch with their families will help them during their long terms of duty.

Our condolences go out to the family of Staff Sgt. Christopher Brown. He had served twice in Iraq and was on his second deployment to Afghanistan. This time, he had been in-country for only a week before he was killed. He was the recipient of a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and an Army Commendation Medal.

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A 4 year Old Kills His Father Because Of A Game Console!

The daily “Asharq”, quoting police Jizan (south), said that a child aged four and seven months, took his father’s pistol and shot him on the brow bone, killing him instantly.

The newspaper said the child had asked his father to buy him a PlayStation, but he came back without the valuable game console.

The child grabbed the gun when his father got rid of it and shot him at a close range

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