Activity Feed Forums Software Discussions General Software Topics What PC question again

  • What PC question again

    Posted by Ewan Chrystal on November 7, 2016 at 6:22 pm

    What spec PC is everyone using? My laptop through the toys out the pram today and It might need replacing. I run flexisign pro, and occasionally AI and PS. Also, laptop or desktop? PC only please.

    Ewan Chrystal replied 8 years, 3 months ago 8 Members · 9 Replies
  • 9 Replies
  • David Hammond

    Member
    November 7, 2016 at 6:52 pm

    Our RIP is an Acer box, with AMD quad core processor, 8gb RAM, and runs smooth as anything.

    Go into any PC world or Curry’s, and you can get a decent spec machine off the shelf. They’ve an acer with i7 processor and 8gb ram for £650.

  • Steff Davison

    Member
    November 7, 2016 at 7:10 pm

    If you are running graphic intense programmes I think you need minimum 16gig RAM a couple of SSHD drives as well as a big storage hard drive.

    Photo shop needs plenty of processing power, preferably Intel.

  • David Rogers

    Member
    November 7, 2016 at 9:19 pm

    My take on it is that you buy the best you can afford to do the job.
    One thing to remember is that if your (older) software isn’t written to take advantage of multi-cores or large amounts of memory then it’ll end up just running on one core and not addressing the full memory especially non 64 bit versions. Clock speed will have a bigger impact.

    SSDs make for nice fast boot drives although not such a big deal for Photoshop scratch disks as no great performance advantage as they are better at writing and reading lots of small files rather than one giant one.

    Quality hard drives for storage. Couple of 2 or 3Tb will see you sorted for a fair while.
    I’m not a fan of RAID…and just do backups to another HDD on the network not inside the same case

    Dave

  • Hugh Potter

    Member
    November 8, 2016 at 12:27 am

    My PC really needs a fresh install and possibly a big upgrade, was top of the range custom built about 7yrs ago but still (mostly) copes with my needs,

    Unlike Dave, I’m a massive fan of raid.. it has a mirror raid set-up which I wouldn’t be without, I’ve had three hard drive failures in the time I’ve owned it and each time it has been a simple case of swapping out the knackered drive for a new one, usually bigger and faster, press a few commands and it rebuilds the duplicate drive of its own accord, I then swap the old ‘good drive’ for the same as the new one, it builds again. No loss of data, programmes, etc etc etc, just carry on as before.

    Sadly still on XP pro so a max of 4 gb ram but the q6600 quad core still does the main business.. I tempted (while I can) to stick to the old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!!

    The onyx rip /ai is on a networked laptop or reasonable spec and I’ve had no issues yet!

    But basically I agree with buying the best spec you can afford!!

  • Myles Brewer

    Member
    November 8, 2016 at 1:11 pm
    quote Ewan Chrystal:

    What spec PC is everyone using? My laptop through the toys out the pram today and It might need replacing. I run flexisign pro, and occasionally AI and PS. Also, laptop or desktop? PC only please.

    Glad you posted this Ewan as I am in a very similar situation. I currently have Flexisign Pro 8.1 as main software with AI & PS but rarely use them. All on an 8 year old 32bit XP machine (Dual Core AMD with a measly 2GB RAM) which regularly blue screens on shut down & is painfully slow!! 🙁

    I bought a refurbed i5 Quad core Lenovo last year with 4GB RAM 150GB HDD + additional 1TB internal HDD on 64bit windows 7 which I am desperately trying to transfer everything over to before the XP dies completely!!.

    I am now looking to get another PC to use purely as design & RIP station with new rental version of flexi 12 + RIP, AI & PS. The Lenovo will then become just admin.

    I was thinking i7 Quad with 16GB RAM & maybe SSD. (Do I need any special graphics card?)

    I also just bought WD My Cloud with 4TB which will take backups from both PC’s, everything networked via Gigabit ethernet switch.

    I too would love a bit of advice on if this setup will work or if there would be a better way to do it

  • A.Kordowski

    Member
    November 8, 2016 at 1:17 pm

    Get an AppleMac…….. :tongue:

  • Colin Crabb

    Member
    November 8, 2016 at 1:54 pm

    Our design PC’s

    I7 processor
    20GB RAM
    Geforce GTX 1050 graphic cards (768 CUDA to take advantage of GPU performance with Illustrator etc etc, cheaper than Quadro cards)
    Windows 10 64bit Pro
    500GB solid state drive for Windows & Adobe
    1TB hybrid drive as scratch disk

    Very quick to start up, handles huge files with ease. We ordered a barebones set up from Novatech (case, power supply, motherboard, processor & some memory) and extras, assembled here.

    We built a FreeNAS server out so don’t store files on local drives.

  • Ewan Chrystal

    Member
    November 8, 2016 at 1:54 pm

    I just bought this for £140 from fleabay. Still got software to load and it will be a second machine for my new guy but we’ll see how it is

  • Ewan Chrystal

    Member
    November 10, 2016 at 3:25 pm

    Wee update, Got my laptop back up and running. Had to wipe the hard drive and start from scratch. I’ve gone back to windows 7 as we reckon 10 was the issue. Also got some proper cloud backup sorted with Backblaze – unlimited backups for $5 a month so happy with that.
    I’ve decided to hang on to this machine for a bit and see how it goes. Its got i5 2.50ghz, 12gb ram, W7, geforce 630m 1gb dedicated graphics so theres no reason why it shouldn’t perform well enough, as long as it doesn’t crash again.

Log in to reply.