I've been sticking with mostly Corsair parts, and now an MSI motherboard, I like what these two companies offer. My PC is the Corsair Bulldog barebones kit, with many of the parts swapped out or upgraded over the years.
I've had very good experiences with Kingston stuff, so stuck with their top shelf NVMe SSD and RAM.

Did a complete, from scratch, cache rebuild for both CS6 and CC. These used to take 24-36 hours (without 100% previews ... ). They each took about 2 hours on the new box. That's reading the data from the 4 TB Seagate Ironwolf HDD with its 512 MB cache, and writing the cache files and database to the NVMe partition. About 10 to 15 times faster.

Photoshop CS6 and CC load about 10x faster, about 2-2.5s.

Even when running these cache rebuilds, no CPU core got over about ~30% loaded.

Bridge and Photoshop load almost instantly. A 100% preview of a 20 MPx .ORF file takes about 2.5 seconds vs. about 14 seconds.

Cold boot to logged in and fully functional (can open Outlook 2003 and Windows Explorer) has gone from about 4m to around 25s. Resume from HIBERNATE is not quite instantaneous vs. about 2-3 minutes 32 GB RAM vs 16 GB RAM).

PIE Studio and FastStone Viewer load and display almost immediately, even when they have to build a cache of the images in the folder. In FSV, it can take 30s to cache a folder with ~1600 20 MPx RAW+ JPEG files in it.

Everything else just happens almost instantaneously. So fast, that my reaction times are not fast enough to get accurate timings.

The system is running at about 31°C, so hardly overheating ...

Re-partitioned the 4 TB Seagate to absorb the partitions off the very old 500 GB Seagate (25 May 2010 vintage) happened yesterday, with data transfer and check. This HDD has now gone back into the old PC, along with the 256 GB Kingston SSD boot drive.

There are still a few niggles to be sorted out. Some, like the CS6 Adobe Acrobat X trial copy problem, have been fixed. I still had the patch file for that.

I can highly recommend AOMEI Partition and disk management software, their Backupper software and the Pro version of SYNCBACK. Without these, the process would have been far, far more difficult, if possible at all. The only program that I had to reinstall was CLASSIC SHELL.

I've used the free version of SYNCBACK for about 20 years, so thought it time to buy it, in all good conscience!

Unlike COPY and XCOPY, SYNCBACK writes everything to a log file, and will try to read difficult files multiple times before giving up. Nearest MS program is ROBOCOPY, but I don't know if still works in later versions of Windows.

Unlike Windows, the AOMEI software checks and reports on the SMART condition of all your drives. A fairly critical thing, IMNSHO ...

I hate changing PCs ... However, I'm extremely happy with the outcome, so far, so good.
 
What are the package powers, core clocks, and ΔTs under sustained all core, AVX and GPU intensive workloads at thermal saturation?
Sorry, but I neither know, nor care.

Everything is running at default settings.

It is not memory bound, CPU bound, graphics bound, disk bound.
Handles everything I want it to do all but instantaneously.

It's running cool, compared with many PCs I have had, or worked on.
That's all that matters to me.
I really don't care about the innermost workings of any CPU (etc), just so long as it is reliable.

I do not design electronics for a living ...
 
Now that I FINALLY have Bridge 2022, Photoshop 2022 and ACR v23.5 (not their real names, of course ... :( ) up and running on my new PC, I'm hoping that everything is now settled.

All versions of Bridge now call Photoshop 2022 properly. ACR 23.5 could not overwrite the previous Camera Raw.8bi file ... !!!!

Adobe writes absolutely brilliant software, and then bugger it up with this sort of thing.
 
I neither know, nor care.
That would explain the apparent confusion of idle and active temperatures and erroneous conflation of routine thermal checks with electronics design. I do feel it's appropriate to caution the combination of not knowing and not caring appears to be facilitating incorrect conclusions, misleading statements, and elevated risk.

It's good you're happy with your build's throughput. From a due diligence perspective, however, it seems worth noting all workloads are bound by something, often different things at different stages of the task. Whilst you may well not know or care about this either I'm uncertain that absolves me as a thread participant.
 
Ryzen uses less power for the same or better performance, though this really only matters in high-load scenarios. The Intel 12-series CPUs will draw upwards of 220W if the motherboard is setup to allow it, and it has to be set that way to achieve the performance metrics you see in the benchmarks. A Ryzen caps out at something like 145W by comparison.

It’s quite a puzzling time in the PC space. Electricity is becoming harder to supply reliably due to a renewable push, yet you can theoretically build desktop machines that consume almost 1KW at full tilt. 350W GPUs and CPUs pegging 250W are next-gen premium performance. Intel and nVidia are the pioneers here on such power consumption in order to reach performance “wins,” and AMD is set to follow as increasing power consumption is the only way to provide competitive performance. It’s to the point that premium CPUs will not sustain full performance under an air cooler of any size.

Ryzen 7000 is around the corner, and it will be a significant boost over anything available today.
Randy, according to the real time electricity use program we have, the box is drawing ~140W idling with the monitor on and displaying the desktop. Around 70-80W when the monitor goes into sleep mode. That's a little less power hungry than the old PC, but only 10-20W in it. The old PC could ramp up to around 200W with all HDDs spinning and seeking, including the three big powered external drives (all plugged into a Pro grade UPS with monitoring software).

On a decent day, our rooftop solar panels generate 25-45 kWh and we generally use most on site (~20-25 kWh). Even in the dead of winter, on heavily overcast days, they generate 5-10 kWh, but the electric pool heater and 500W pump are turned off then.
 
Bridge from Adobe? @John King John
Use for?
Digital Asset Management, Herman.

I use keywording very extensively. All aspects of this process are massively faster. Everything just happens all but instantaneously, whereas before many processes were glacially slow, like 30 seconds to minutes, in some cases.

FastStone Viewer is great for search and find, initial assessment and the like.

With the new box, calling both PIE Studio and Adobe Bridge (and Photoshop) simultaneously from FSV barely even gets it into a sweat! I am yet to see a temperature sensor go over 31°C. This while running all the other general crap in the background (Outlook, Word, many browser windows). Cannot get memory use over 50%, or CPU use over about 20% (momentary peaks).

Fans barely run. With both case sides currently off, it's very obvious when any of them power up - 3x case fans, 1x PSU fan, 2x graphics card fans (plus enormous heat sink), typical Intel CPU heatsink and fan.

I'm very happy with the outcome, mate :) .
 
That would explain the apparent confusion of idle and active temperatures and erroneous conflation of routine thermal checks with electronics design. I do feel it's appropriate to caution the combination of not knowing and not caring appears to be facilitating incorrect conclusions, misleading statements, and elevated risk.
I'm sorry, but I'm not a CPU or chip designer. I rely on the finished product working adequately and competently. If it makes it to market, within reason, I trust that to be the case.
It's good you're happy with your build's throughput.
I am.
From a due diligence perspective, however, it seems worth noting all workloads are bound by something, often different things at different stages of the task. Whilst you may well not know or care about this either I'm uncertain that absolves me as a thread participant.
I'm not understanding what you are trying to say here.

The system is probably way over specced for the minimum I actually need, but we can easily afford indulgence of this nature. I did not want to go through this process, only to have the result be out of date in a year or two's time.

The system I've specified does everything I require of it, at default settings, and doesn't get hot or bound by any of its components - very far from it. The CPU is running at half the temperature of the previous Core2Duo it replaces (~30°C vs ~60°C), and the system as a whole is not stressed in any way. It is very fast running at those default settings.

From my perspective, that's a very good outcome.

At a rough estimate, I would put the whole system at around 8 or 9 out of 10 on an absolute scale.
To get to 10/10 would have cost 2x to 3x as much, or more, for a potentially just noticeable difference (JND) in performance.

The same assessment can be applied to almost anything, including camera systems.
 
Just a quick update on performance.

Using DPR's RAW sample images from the Fuji GFX 100, Bridge will open a 100% view in under 2 seconds, and Photoshop CC 2023 will hold two open simultaneously while using less than 22 GB RAM (along with all the other crap that is always running on my PC).

Opening from Bridge to ACR is near instantaneous, and ditto opening from ACR to Photoshop, with Photoshop already running.

The RAW files are around 200 MB each!
 
Partitioned the new NVMe SSD as 300 GB for the OS, 200 GB for the Bridge caches, and 400+ GB for fast, temporary storage.
Hi John! Are you satisfied with your new build?

Remember this thread now because I have just ordered things for a new build myself, current PC is almost 10 years and it feels like time to upgrade.

How comes you made three partions on your SSD? Why not one big and then use folders for the content instead?

(am planning things here, will also have a NVMe SSD for OS/programs and then one large HDD for storage. Will do a fresh start though, it really needs it)
 
Hi John! Are you satisfied with your new build?
G'day Daniel. Yes, mate. Way over specified, if truth be told! It's blindingly fast no matter what I have running. Never runs out of memory, or anything else.
Remember this thread now because I have just ordered things for a new build myself, current PC is almost 10 years and it feels like time to upgrade.
Also my position. More expensive and less optimal to upgrade my old box than to just build a new one.
How comes you made three partions on your SSD? Why not one big and then use folders for the content instead?
It makes backup and restore much simpler. Particularly when creating an image of one's boot disk.
(am planning things here, will also have a NVMe SSD for OS/programs and then one large HDD for storage. Will do a fresh start though, it really needs it)

The hard disk really should be server quality, and have a large on-disk cache. My new 4 TB drive is meant to run 24/7, and has a 512 MB cache. It's reasonably fast, and should last a very long time. Most domestic type drives are meant for an uptime of less than 10%.

I also partitioned it to "soak up" the three partitions off a 500 MB drive that will travel with my original PC box. That makes it 3 TB, so matches the existing 3 TB HDD from my original PC. There is also a 2 TB HDD for incidental backups and storage. All the big drives are Enterprise level quality. Saving money on disks is a fool's errand IMNSHO.

You really need two identical large HDDs, and a program like SYNCBACK that allows you to do automated scheduled backups. Alternatively, one can set them up as a RAID ONE array.

I cannot stress redundancy too much when any electronic storage system is to be relied upon!
 
<soapbox>

Personally I have moved to all SSD / NVMe drives in my household. I do not have a need for as much room as you all do (2x1TB on my laptop), so cost is not a big factor, and as with any media, backups are very important whether local or to a cloud service. I have been using electronic media for several years now and not had any failures. To be sure, it has not been as long as I used spinning platters, but I did have those fail a couple of times over the years. At this point, I do not think the newer tech is going to be any worse over the long term, so all SSD / NVMe for me here on out for performance if nothing else. NVMe especially is just incredibly fast.

It bears repeating - scheduled backups are essential no matter the media. RAID can be useful but is not backup. And you should be pulling at least some files from backups periodically to make sure it is working properly.

</soapbox>
 
<soapbox>

Personally I have moved to all SSD / NVMe drives in my household. I do not have a need for as much room as you all do (2x1TB on my laptop), so cost is not a big factor, and as with any media, backups are very important whether local or to a cloud service. I have been using electronic media for several years now and not had any failures. To be sure, it has not been as long as I used spinning platters, but I did have those fail a couple of times over the years. At this point, I do not think the newer tech is going to be any worse over the long term, so all SSD / NVMe for me here on out for performance if nothing else. NVMe especially is just incredibly fast.

It bears repeating - scheduled backups are essential no matter the media. RAID can be useful but is not backup. And you should be pulling at least some files from backups periodically to make sure it is working properly.

</soapbox>
I'm sorry, but I have had quite a number of SSDs/NVMEs within my experience fail - catastrophically and without warning.

HDDs almost always give significant warning of failure.

Of course, multiple forms of backup are essential, no matter what.
 
All the big drives are Enterprise level quality. Saving money on disks is a fool's errand IMNSHO.
Ok, this is a good point. As long as you can find enterprise quality with good performance without the extra need for additional cooling or something like they typically have in a enterprise application. Maybe I should rethink my choice there.

Currently this is what I have ordered for my new build:
  • MoBo: Gigabyte X570S AERO G Wifi
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
  • CPU-Cooler: Noctua NH-U12A
  • GPU: XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT 16GB MERC 319
  • Chassi: Fractal Design Pop Silent White
  • RAM: Kingston Technology FURY Beast RAM 64 GB 2 x 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz CL18
  • SSD: Samsung 980 Pro series 1TB M.2 (MZ-V8P1T0)
  • HDD: Seagate Firecuda 8TB 7200rpm 256MB cache
    /final edit: I ended up using two Firecuda in RAID1.
  • HDD: WD Gold something, 8TB probably (??!)
  • PSU: Seasonic Prime PX 750W
Old stuff i will reuse:
  • Optical: LG WH16NS40 16x Blu-Ray Mdisc
  • Monitor: Dell S2719DC 27” (have an old 24" as second screen also)

I'm aiming for a premium build for general use, mostly graphics, but also some video editing and occasional gaming. Future proof for 10 years more hopefully and also adding/changing storage solution.

Components are on back-order most of them, have only got the GPU so far.

Choice of HDD was maybe bad, I have good experience with WD Black drives in my current machine, could have gotten a such instead maybe, or if a Gold is better. Don't know about that. They are not too different but Gold might have somewhat better reliability (hope noise is not a problem either because that is important for me as well).
 
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Daniel, I don't know how the Ryzen CPU compares for imaging and general purpose use. I don't play games, so GP performance is far more important to me than gaming performance, which all the reviewers seem to concentrate on.

For Photoshop use, the i7-12700 kills the i5 12 series and the i9 11 series and earlier CPUs.

Apart from a bad batch in the mid 1990s (all single packed drives), I've always got good service out of my (many) Seagate HDDs. My supplier recommended the Ironwolf HDD, knowing my usage and requirements over the 20+ year period we have had dealings.

As I mentioned before, two HDDs are always better than one larger one. Less chance of single point of failure.

I have a friend's malfunctioning Samsung EVO SSD sitting on my desk ATM ... :( .

You probably don't need a 16 GB graphics card, as well as 64 GB RAM. My build works beautifully with a 6 GB graphics card and 32 GB RAM. That's playing with 200 MB Hasselblad X2D RAW files in Photoshop. The 6 GB card has never maxed out its own RAM, let alone impacted the system RAM.

Balance is of prime importance, otherwise it is very easy to blow 8-10 grand on a vastly over specified box. FCOL, even mine is over-specced to buggery!
 
As I mentioned before, two HDDs are always better than one larger one. Less chance of single point of failure.
Yes, I have two now. One is mounted as a folder on the other one :) very convenient solution. It "looks" like just one big drive in file system.
But, added noise/temperature with two drives instead of one. I do backup on critital things so no big deal if it goes down. And, like you said, mechanical disks usually gradually gets bad, so often you know if there is an upcoming problem. I tend to exchange drives after a few years just for piece of mind anyway :)

You probably don't need a 16 GB graphics card, as well as 64 GB RAM. My build works beautifully with a 6 GB graphics card and 32 GB RAM. That's playing with 200 MB Hasselblad X2D RAW files in Photoshop. The 6 GB card has never maxed out its own RAM, let alone impacted the system RAM.
Well, my current GPU is 6 Gb, it is good but sometimes the spec on those games demands a little more to run on decent settings, even though there are some tech to share memory sortof so that might not be such a big problem in the future. But also video rendering uses VRAM so it is not bad to have plenty of it. Whatever, it is not so much more expensive than a lesser card. This is something I will likely never replace also. RAM wise, yes 32 Gb could have been enough, but price difference was not too big here either.

Balance is of prime importance, otherwise it is very easy to blow 8-10 grand on a vastly over specified box. FCOL, even mine is over-specced to buggery!
Yes, at least I went with "old" stuff, these components were prime two years ago. Now they are still good but not the latest stuff. The latest is very steep. I had this philosophy on my last build almost 10 years ago, as long as you pick good components they are likely to last several years without feeling the need for some upgrade. Other times 20 years ago. Then your new computer felt old after two years :) better times now, cry once and you are done :)
 
Chassi: Fractal Design Pop Silent White
First, thanks for buying Fractal Design, I have stock in that company! ;)
Seriously that chassis looks nice.

HDD: WD Gold something, 8TB probably (??!
If you want to have a really quiet HDD, the enterprise ones are a good choice, but you should consider going for one that is bigger (>= 12TB) because they come filled with Helium and can be had with a 20 dB(A) noise level.
If you go for 8TB I think the noise level is about 34 dB(A).
I would recommend buying 2 HDD's and using RAID 1 just for extra safety.
WD Gold is the latest drive I put in my NAS, it lowered the total noise a bit.
I looked and found the 12TB in stock here.

Looks like a nice build overall.
 
First, thanks for buying Fractal Design, I have stock in that company! ;)
Seriously that chassis looks nice.
Ok, cool! :) yes, it looks great, funny thing that the white one does not come with solid sides, but the black one does. Well well. Guess the glass side shields some sound anyway.

If you want to have a really quiet HDD, the enterprise ones are a good choice, but you should consider going for one that is bigger (>= 12TB) because they come filled with Helium and can be had with a 20 dB(A) noise level.
If you go for 8TB I think the noise level is about 34 dB(A).
I would recommend buying 2 HDD's and using RAID 1 just for extra safety.
WD Gold is the latest drive I put in my NAS, it lowered the total noise a bit.
I looked and found the 12TB in stock here.
Thanks for advicing. Well. I have googled a few hours on this and it seems the WD Gold has some clonking sound (because of good function for reliability). Even though they are quiet, and especially the helium ones. They still make this sound. Don't know if I would like that considering the PC will sit next to me in a quiet room.
The disk I thought from the beginning, Firecuda, has not too high seeking noise, but a little more idle noise (28/32 db compared to 20/36 for the WD Gold 12TB), and also 5 years (limited) warranty. If I would buy two of those and run them in RAID1 I would have upped the security quite a bit anyway. Might be a good way to go.

Looks like a nice build overall.
Yes, I hope so. Unless there is some technology break through in a few years I think it will be a good build for quite some time.
 
Ok, this is a good point. As long as you can find enterprise quality with good performance without the extra need for additional cooling or something like they typically have in a enterprise application. Maybe I should rethink my choice there.

Currently this is what I have ordered for my new build:
  • MoBo: Gigabyte X570S AERO G Wifi
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
  • CPU-Cooler: Noctua NH-U12A
  • GPU: XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT 16GB MERC 319
  • Chassi: Fractal Design Pop Silent White
  • RAM: Kingston Technology FURY Beast RAM 64 GB 2 x 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz CL18
  • SSD: Samsung 980 Pro series 1TB M.2 (MZ-V8P1T0)
  • HDD: Seagate Firecuda 8TB 7200rpm 256MB cache
  • HDD: WD Gold something, 8TB probably (??!)
  • PSU: Seasonic Prime PX 750W
Old stuff i will reuse:
  • Optical: LG WH16NS40 16x Blu-Ray Mdisc
  • Monitor: Dell S2719DC 27” (have an old 24" as second screen also)

I'm aiming for a premium build for general use, mostly graphics, but also some video editing and occasional gaming. Future proof for 10 years more hopefully and also adding/changing storage solution.

Components are on back-order most of them, have only got the GPU so far.

Choice of HDD was maybe bad, I have good experience with WD Black drives in my current machine, could have gotten a such instead maybe, or if a Gold is better. Don't know about that. They are not too different but Gold might have somewhat better reliability (hope noise is not a problem either because that is important for me as well).
Looks to be a pretty well balanced build, Daniel.

Checked out the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, and it looks to be very similar in performance etc to the Intel core i7-12700 etc that I chose. A basic comparison here:


This comparison ignores the four extra GP cores in the i7-12700 for some unknown reason??

You certainly won't run out of memory or graphics capability any time soon!

I would not tie the two drives together in that way, as a failure by either could lead to neither being accessible.

I also like nice big boxes with plenty of airflow and drive space, with no special cooling devices other than case fans, etc, blowing in the right direction!

Mine runs cooler everywhere than my older box.
 
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