
Building a Lightroom PC - chambo622
https://paulstamatiou.com/building-a-windows-10-lightroom-photo-editing-pc
======
07d046
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.

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

~~~
Bromskloss
In what sense are they calibrated if things vary between displays?

~~~
AmVess
They do a base calibration. Do a Google search for Dell Calibration report. It
shows what they calibrate. Keep in mind, it's still a pretty loose
calibration. I've never once gotten two of the same models that look the same
out of the box.

~~~
nerdwaller
This has driven me nuts more than once. I’ve very intentionally ordered two
“matching” monitors at the same time, supposedly from the same lot, and they
were vastly different. It may be an overreaction but since a number of years
ago I’ve gone to just one big and nice monitor (even if it’s not technically
as nice as the others) because those details get in my head so much.

As the saying goes: “comparison is the thief of joy” - so I remove the second
thing to directly compare to.

------
virtualritz
I use both Lightroom and Darktable regularly.

While DT has a bit more bumpy UX, it makes up for that by being more flexible
than LR and really fast on Linux with a good GPU with OpenCL support. And
there is nothing that LR can do that DT can't.

I.e. you don't need to shell out 6k for new box to make LR run fast. Just bite
the bullet and learn another RAW editing app.

If you have thousands (or ten thousands, in my case) worth of RAWs processed
in LR, just keep editing them in LR if you still have to. I often hear this as
a reason why people don't want to switch.

I switched to DT in 2011. Everything before is LR. I use LR when I get images
from friends who use LR and want me to do some advanced stuff for them or when
I have to touch one of my pre-2011 RAWs. It is always slow on the same
machine, compared to DT, but it's quite ok if you use it occasionally. :)

~~~
adamweld
Lightroom is slow as fuck in my experience. Just bought a new laptop with a
top of the line i7 CPU, SSD, 32GB RAM, 1050 GPU, etc. and it tears through
video editing, solidworks CAD work, etc.

But even still LR lags constantly working with a small collection of photos
from my M4/3 camera. Like I can't scroll through a collection without it
hanging.

I assume this is caused by poor GPU utilization, but it's very frustrating
whatever the cause.

------
buro9
Paul, did you consider buying an existing workstation like the HP Z840 (
[http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/business-
solutions/z840-workst...](http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/business-
solutions/z840-workstation) ) or similar?

I did this a number of years ago and never regretted it and dual-Xeon has
really helped with DxO PhotoLab and Adobe Lightroom processing time (compared
to all the other computers I had access to).

Even years later I still believe that this is performing better than something
I could've built myself. I think of computers like cars, in that if you
upgrade 1 part significantly for performance (i.e. the engine) that it forces
upgrades to everything else (i.e. brakes, chassis, cooling). A pre-built
workstation balances all of these things to give one package where all of the
potential is achievable.

~~~
fyfy18
Following on from this, if you don't need the latest hardware (i.e. you are
currently using a laptop as your main device), you can buy used workstations
on eBay rather cheap.

At the end of 2016 I bought a three year old Dell T3600 with 32GB ECC RAM and
a 8c/16t Xeon E5-2670 (Sandy Bridge) processor. I just threw in a modern
graphics card (GTX 1060) and SSD, and it's perfect for my needs. Total cost
was under €600.

I still have a laptop, so if I'm out I will just SSH in to work.

~~~
cheeze
+1 here. Buying used professional grade gear is the way to go. I just built a
fileserver with better passmark than threadripper for 700 dollarydoos (plans
for lots of concurrent transcodes), and got ECC ram to boot.

------
striking
N.B.: the "switch to Windows" is from macOS and not from Linux, just in case
anyone was wondering. I think it's very interesting that the availability of
Linux on Windows helped the author choose Windows.

~~~
eksemplar
The switch stories are always either “from Mac-OS” or “to Linux”, the former
being a “oh no you didn’t” and the latter being “I’m with cool birds now”
narrative.

It’s basically non-stories because your OS matters as little as what
programming language you use.

Pick the one that works for you, but don’t become a fucking missionary or tie
your personality to your brand of choice.

~~~
slantyyz
>> Pick the one that works for you, but don’t become a fucking missionary or
tie your personality to your brand of choice.

I find that people naturally tend to want others to be like them.

It doesn't matter whether its politics, religion, OS, camera brand, camera
sensor size, programming language, diet fad or whatnot.

Maybe it makes them feel better about the choices they made?

~~~
digi_owl
More like people want external confirmation that they made the right choice.

------
cageface
I'm leaning in the same direction myself. My 2017 MBP Pro has been a
disappointment. The touch bar is a nuisance. The excessively large trackpad
leads to a lot of phantom taps, and I'm _still_ using adapters to plug things
into it.

Since I'm wrapping up the last of my iOS client work there's nothing really
tying me to macOS any more and a PC seems to provide way more bang for the
buck for the things I care about - Android Studio, VS Code, Ableton Live,
ZBrush, and a bit of gaming here and there. Apple's hardware playbook for the
last few years seems to consist entirely of making things thinner for
thinness' sake and making piecewise upgrades harder and harder.

~~~
josephg
2016 MBP with touchbar reporting in. I have the 13” model without a dedicated
graphics card, and I made the mistake of getting an external 4K display. The
laptop can use the display, but everything is remarkably sluggish for a
computer I paid $3000aud for. Especially safari with a few tabs open. The most
embarrassing part is that I sort of got used to it and stopped noticing, until
I spent time on my Windows gaming pc. The difference is night and day.

I’ve recently ordered an external thunderbolt GPU enclosure, and I’m hoping I
can solve the performance issue that way. But in the long run ... I’m not
really sure what I want to run on my next computer. To be honest all the
answers seem a bit bad. Macs are overpriced and underpowered. Linux on a
laptop still seems like an endless stupid time hole - I had the Ubuntu
installer reliably kernel panic on me the other day. And windows ... does
windows support smooth scroll yet? Can you turn off the telemetary and pre-
installed games in the start menu? Will I be able to install and try out the
database or exotic programming language of the week on Windows, or will it be
more fighting?

Is it just me or did computers stop feeling better with each generation? When
did we lose our way?

~~~
sjellis
"Linux on a laptop still seems like an endless stupid time hole - I had the
Ubuntu installer reliably kernel panic on me the other day."

Reading comments like this, I can't help but feeling that somebody is missing
a trick here: I don't doubt your experience, and I've seen similar comments,
but they don't match my experience at all, which is that Linux works with no
tinkering. It would be really interesting to collect experience reports from
folks like you, to see why there is such a divergence, and figure out what
could be done about it. Back in the day, the worst cause of Windows crashes
was basically a single problem: the quality of ATI drivers were bad, and once
that was clear, it got fixed.

~~~
josephg
Thats a great idea. For what its worth, in my case I was using the 16.04.3 LTS
installer (17.10 had been pulled at the time due to a bios issue). The kernel
was panicking on boot because of issues using the opensource noveau driver for
my NVIDIA gtx1080 graphics card. I needed to blacklist the driver to get the
installer to boot. (And once I did that it ran fine.)

I ran into exactly the same bug installing ubuntu on my friends' PC a couple
of weeks ago. In his case he has an nvidia graphics card from a few
generations ago. (8xx series? 7xx? I can't remember.)

Whatever the bug is presumably its been an unfixed problem in the 'LTS'
release branch for 2+ years.

------
cheeze
This seems like _massive_ overkill, but it doesn't look like OP actually cared
about money, given the $400 VESA mount and the $159 (wat) custom PSU cables.
Also surprising that one would spend that much money only to get a little bose
speaker.

But if ya can afford it, more power to you.

~~~
skeleton
In regards to speakers, I found over time I rarely use speakers and are thus
happy with a rather basic set (maybe not quite as basic as OP). Headphones is
where I prefer to put the majority of my audio budget.

~~~
cheeze
Totally fair, just surprising that one would splurge on literally everything
else but not a decent pair of speakers.

Although it looks like OP does know what he is talking about and gave options
for higher quality speakers if one wanted them.

------
aneutron
One thing to keep in mind: Disabling UAC is a VERY BAD IDEA. No matter how you
look at it. Look at it this way, if you do that, then any moderately smart
ransomware will be able to do wonders on your PC.

That's reminiscent of a 4chan post where the user downloads a program, tries
to execute, is then warned by Firefox, but ignores it, warned by the AV
Software, but disables it, warned by Defender, and disabled, and finally
warned by UAC and disables it, only to get it infected and flame away because
Windows sucks.

~~~
PStamatiou
Agreed - I mention that in the post as well. It can allow for any automatic
software to take over. Known risk, especially for when I was setting
everything up and installing 100 different things and getting the UAC full
screen takeover so often.

------
strictnein
> PCPartPicker.com is one relatively new resource that I have found to be
> invaluable.

Just the greatest site ever, if you're into building your own PCs. Fun to
browse other builds, and then it makes it so simple to put together a system.

~~~
qume
I second that - Anyone reading this thinking about building a PC, make sure
you use this site. Can't stress that enough.

~~~
troylinn
Second that, it pulls data from a number of retailers and has localized sites
with local retailers which is a nice touch.

Something I noticed is that if the item price can’t be displayed you can
search around the item options and enter your own pricing to get a feel of the
price of the system if parts would be in stock

------
tabs_masterrace
I've had similar a experience doing Android Development. I much prefer OS X
over Windows 10 for doing work, but performance can be a real issue.

Over time, and with every new yearly incremental software refresh, compile
times on my MacBook getting slower and slower, it started to hurt
productivity. So looking at options for new hardware, I realized I could
either spend $3000 on a new Mac, that on paper might not even be that much
faster then my current machine, or just throw together a PC from components
for a bit over $1000 and get a much faster machine.

There is just no good Mac option if you're looking for a simple i7, 32GB RAM,
256 SSD for a reasonable price.

~~~
rozenmd
Some of the Thinkpad range fit your criteria, and can be tricked into thinking
they are Macs...

------
ranqet
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.

~~~
PStamatiou
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.

~~~
vondur
I don't think that Premier does really take advantage of video cards. I saw a
video where they had switched a really old GTX 660 vs a 1080ti and the render
time was not changed between them.

~~~
PStamatiou
I did a bench of the Premiere Pro h264 benchmark ("PPBM") with CUDA
acceleration and without (software): the difference was 7m 4sec without GPU
and 48 seconds with GPU.

~~~
vondur
Sorry, I should have phrased it better, you don't have to have the latest and
greatest video card for Premiere. But, yes, you are correct, having GPU
acceleration does work.

------
ternaryoperator
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.

~~~
REALiSTiC
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/](https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-zealand/) and
[https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-
zealand/auckland/](https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-zealand/auckland/).
They're simply marvelous!)

~~~
Terribledactyl
[https://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog-
development...](https://paulstamatiou.com/responsive-retina-blog-development-
part-1/)

Jekyll, and a whole lot of attention to detail.

------
bob2001
I love the detail that the author goes into, it's a nice change of pace from
the normal articles on the web. His travel photography is also stunning,
almost makes me want to do something with my travel photos as well, but once I
see how much time he puts in, I think I'm not going to do it until I'm well
retired.

At any rate, I'm glad he enjoys what he's doing and shares i with the world,
the photography really gives an effect of how he saw it, which is all to rare
with people's vacation photos.

------
patrickg_zill
Paul (and anyone else who uses Sony cameras) I would like to suggest that you
test out Capture One for processing your RAW files.

I have found it does a better job of handling the Sony files than just about
anything else. Also is GPU accelerated.

My experience is based on the Sony RX10 files, and a friend of mine who uses
it for handling his A7Rii files.

A free version is available for use with Sony RAWs; or you can upgrade to the
full version of the software at a low price. Just a happy user, I have no
financial interest in the company.

~~~
nicolaslem
Lightroom is plain bad with Fujifilm X-Trans raw files so I tried to find an
alternative but I couldn't. The Lightroom workflow really is what makes the
difference. I feel at home with Lightroom.

So I keep exporting jpegs that look like garbage until Adobe decides to have
decent support for the Fuji X line.

~~~
ropiku
Try Capture One since they have specific support for X-Trans since version 10.
Or if you want to continue Lightroom you can bulk transfer the raw files with
Irident X-Transformer then import them in Lightroom. Only worth it if you
really want the best quality.

------
alkonaut
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 to get to 4k@32".

~~~
altano
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 eagerly awaiting).

It's not perfect and I'll occasionally come across some old utility that was
built 10 years ago and renders poorly, but never a commonly used or modern
one. The level of inconvenience doesn't even register.

What do you want to use that doesn't work? Please be specific!

~~~
alkonaut
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](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.

~~~
altano
Wow that screenshot of DotTrace is pretty bad, thanks for sharing. Skype
supports high dpi just fine though (I use it regularly).

------
omgtehlion
[offtopic] show me a 1080ti for $799 and I'll buy it on the spot.

Effing miners devoured everything even for twice the price...

~~~
PStamatiou
Unfortunately yea that was the price when I purchased it - I got it shortly
after launch and built the pc later

------
JepZ
Well, if you think water cooling is cool, try passive cooling.

A few years back I build my current PC:

\- Core i7-4770S (Haswell, so you see its not that new anymore)

\- 32GB RAM

\- SSD 840 EVO 1TB (not that new either)

\- some passive PSU

Last year I added an

\- AMD Radeon 460

So the whole thing is completely passively cooled.

So no noise at all and I am pretty happy with the performance. I don't know
what 'instant' performance in Lightroom means, but so far my experience with
Darktable was just fine (actually, I was wondering why some options have a
'slow' or 'fast' suffix). That said, I am just a casual Darktable user, so I
take all my photos in RAW and JPG and view them most of the time in the JPG
version, but when I would like to create a photo calendar of some sort I use
Darktable to get the most out of the pictures.

The only downside is that hardware doesn't age that good :-/

    
    
      $ grep -m1 bugs /proc/cpuinfo 
      bugs            : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2

~~~
digi_owl
Passively cooling 65W TDP?

~~~
JepZ
Apparently ;-)

Actually, I bought the CPU, mainboard and cooler assembled together from
mifcom, so they did the testing that everything runs stable and smooth.

Just looked up some other details:

\- Mainboard: ASUS Z87-Deluxe

\- Case: Xigmatek - Asgard Pro

\- PSU: 500W - FSP Aurum Xilenser

\- CPU Cooler: Thermalright Macho HR-02 passive [1]

As you can see that cooler is pretty big. The case isn't too fancy but it does
the job and venting slots on the upper side. Interestingly dust doesn't seem
to be a problem, in fact I never had so little dust in any previous pc.

[1]:
[http://media.bestofmicro.com/N/G/460924/gallery/Thermalright...](http://media.bestofmicro.com/N/G/460924/gallery/Thermalright-
HR-02-Macho-Zero-13_w_600.jpg)

[2]:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Xigmatek+-+Asgard+Pro&t=ffab&iax=i...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Xigmatek+-+Asgard+Pro&t=ffab&iax=images&ia=images)

~~~
digi_owl
Now that is a brick of a cooler.

------
pmlnr
Both me and my wife recently realized something: the JPEG produced by the
Pentax cameras we own are 90% of the time better than what we achieve with
hours of raw conversion tweaking.

Given that I'm not doing retouching most of the time, dealing with raw files
becoming more and more a pain, without an actual gain.

Had anyone else thought about this?

~~~
hultner
I usually shoot to JPEG and RAW simultaneously. Most times I never touch the
RAW file but in case I ever want they're there. Disk space is cheap nowadays
so redundancy isn't a real problem for me anymore.

Haven't used a Pentax expect for my trusty K1000 so I don't know if they
support that.

~~~
pmlnr
The higher end ones can - they even have an option to choose between PEF and
DNG for RAW format.

This is what I'm doing as well, but the DNG files take 20-30MB of space, even
at pathetically low 16MP (/s, high quality 2MP was enough for A4 prints...)
resolution, and disk space is not THAT cheap once you want local and offsite
backups as well.

------
Arn_Thor
A lot of the photos are great! And a lot of them..meh. Which is fine! I'm no
star shooter, and far be it from me to judge someone wanting to show off their
holiday. But he's spent an inordinate amount of time editing quite a bit of
photos that surely could be left on the hard drive, or simply given a batch
auto-touch-up by Lightroom in a matter of hours. And it's even stranger that
the hobby would drive him to such a monumental and costly upgrade.

~~~
titanomachy
Consider the possibility that he simply has a (relative) lot of money.

~~~
jacobush
And time!

~~~
PStamatiou
It's a project :) I get joy some going in depth with everything I'm passionate
about. I do it with my photosets (spent a year editing the 11k+ photos and
then designing/developing the 9 photosets):
[https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-
zealand/](https://paulstamatiou.com/photos/new-zealand/)

and other projects like my RasPi Frame: [https://paulstamatiou.com/getting-
started-raspberry-pi/](https://paulstamatiou.com/getting-started-raspberry-
pi/)

or documenting one of my design projects at work:
[https://paulstamatiou.com/twitter-video/](https://paulstamatiou.com/twitter-
video/)

------
vondur
Looks like he built a really fancy and nice gaming machine. Makes sense to
switch to Windows if you are a gamer.

~~~
midnitewarrior
Good gaming PCs are good development and creative machines. All of these
activities excel with more cores, ram and gpu cores.

------
BuckRogers
The setup is nice but I'm long over the tower on the floor. I actually wanted
to go back to the start of my computing journey (Commodore128, then 286, etc)
and get a desktop[0] again.

It's very unfortunate that while Intel was still probably the right call for
Adobe software, the I/O impact on from Intel's Meltdown patches are going to
be significant on that machine. Once it all settles down and is finalized in a
few months that is.

As well, the watercooling thing was pretty neat back in at the turn of the
millenium. That's when the Celeron 300A and custom machined watercooling was
big. I lost interest once CPUs became mostly no longer thermally limited
(exception for Intel's current CPUs with the +~18C IHS issues). In general I
prefer air cooling because I tend to always go for simplicity. A fan on a
chunk of metal is pretty easy to troubleshoot and repair upon failure and
reliable.

I did get my 80's form factor desktop again. I built a Ryzen system[1] back in
March 2017, the first new computer I put together since 2008 and I love it. I
get by at least.

[0]Back in the day, horizontal desktops were referred to as desktops and
towers were towers.

[1][https://i.imgur.com/JpgeAje.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/JpgeAje.jpg)

~~~
yemich
I can tell you are a computer wizard with the perfectly aligned windows and
task manager open. How long did it take you to prepare for that photo?

------
maxx
There are lot and lot of advices in this article you SHOULD PRECISELY NOT
FOLLOW when you build an editing PC.

> Watercooling

Watercooling addicts will try to argue that you can achieve a better cooling
performance than with aircooling. The truth is that watercooling is at best
only 1 or 2 degrees cooler than a proper aircooling system, or even worse in
some tests. Then they will argue that watercooling provide a better
performance/silence ratio, which also falls short when you consider that top
aircooling systems are basically dead silent. You really don't want to deal
with water in your PC (even with all-in-one systems) for nothing to gain.

> Not using a calibration device

I don't even understand how you can come up with the idea of writing an
article about building a PC for photography/video editing while you don't
already use and don't even plan to use a calibration device. The point is not
even if you plan to publish, print or whatever, what is at stake is the way
you view your own images. And there is ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE in buying a top of
the line monitor if you don't calibrate it.

> Buying the best performing components

For 60-70% of the price of the top of the line product, you will get 95-99% of
the performance of it. The same best performing product will anyway be
"obsolete" (compared to the new best performing product) in a couple months
and its price will drop 20-30%. This has always been true and will always be
true for any PC building. This is even more true for an editing station since
the top of the line will not even give you the 1-5% performance benefit you
should expect.

> Buying a gaming video card

Particularly the top of the line. Your editing software will never use the
processor and the memory that comes with such a gaming video card. And only
pro cards will provide you 10-bit workflow, which is what you need if you
bought an editing monitor with 10-bit panel and 99-100% Adobe coverage. You
can buy an entry-level pro card, it will be more than enough for
Lightroom/Capture One/Photoshop/Premiere/etc. IF you don't buy a pro card,
then why do you buy such a monitor?

> Bothering with huge overclocking or with RAM latencies (!)

I agree it's quite easy now to do some overclocking, but you should not aim
for the extreme. It's your work machine, you want stability.

> Delidding your CPU

What?! Just don't that. Let's be serious a minute.

~~~
PStamatiou
I think you are misinformed about the current state of watercooling (even
AIO). I'm running a very hot overclocked machine running extra voltage than
normal. A 280mm radiator is an improvement over even the largest copper hsf.

As for the gaming card - it's not top of the line (that would be Titan Xp and
Titan V) - but yes it's very high-end. So why did I opt for that? Why not? I
do a ton of 4K gaming and VR as well. Definitely not the primary goal but a
nice side benefit. I mention some of the games I play in the setup section.

As for the pricing - obviously monetary concerns were not much of an object
with this build but the price of my graphics card has doubled since I
purchased it. And RAM has gone up another $100.

But yes - it will get outdated in just a few weeks. The benefit of the PC is
that I can just swap out an upgrade to the next high-end thing over a weekend
when I want. I already did that once - this build started out as a 7700K
cpu/mobo and I swapped them out for an 8700K before publishing this.

~~~
maxx
> I think you are misinformed about the current state of watercooling (even
> AIO). I'm running a very hot overclocked machine running extra voltage than
> normal. A 280mm radiator is an improvement over even the largest copper hsf.

I'm not saying it's not an improvement, I'm saying the improvement is
marginal, meaning it's not worth it.

> I do a ton of 4K gaming and VR as well. Definitely not the primary goal but
> a nice side benefit. I mention some of the games I play in the setup
> section.

I think that's my point, it's more a gaming/overclocking station than an
editing workstation. The article is fine and well written from this
perspective.

Oh, and a small bonus for you: you should move your cpu watercooling radiator
from front to top. In your configuration your radiator is basically heating
your whole computer, including you graphic card. Since the graphic card is
warmer and usually louder, this is not what you want.

------
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.

------
gt_
The first item in the ‘Tweaking Windows’ section is _Disable User Account
Control_. Can someone share a clear explanation of what this means and the
nature of the risks involved?

~~~
dc3k
UAC limits software to user privileges, even if you're running an
administrator account. If you're running an administrator account, you just
click YES in a popup to grant elevated privileges when they're requested. If
you're running a user account, you enter an administrator password. Disabling
UAC lets anything you run use administrator privileges without alerting you.
Similar to running a Linux box as root. It's a really stupid thing to disable.

~~~
midnitewarrior
It may be stupid depending on what you are doing, and how savvy a user you
are.

The problem with UAC is that 90% of users have no idea when it would be
necessay to click "no" when that dialog box shows up. For them, it's the box
that always annoys you and you have to just click "yes" to make it go away.

I understand what it's supposed to do, but have had it disabled since it was
released, and have saved hours of task interruption it in exchange for no
other problems.

~~~
zamalek
> how savvy a user you are.

I strongly disagree with that caveat. As a savvy user, UAC behaves like a
burglar alarm for me. I am not savvy enough to open a 7z, PDF, JPG or DOCX in
a hex editor and determine whether it contains an exploit. Even if I were
alone on the planet due to the ability to do so, I wouldn't have the time to
do anything else. Because I have UAC enabled, if I open a zip file and get a
UAC prompt I know that something is fishy.

There are known unknowns and your savvy is perfectly suitable for that;
however, your savvy won't help at all for the unknown unknowns. Double-
clicking an .exe isn't the only way to get pwnd.

> you have to just click "yes" to make it go away.

Exactly, UAC doesn't really work for non-savvy users. In which case, who is
the target audience?

------
dingo_bat
The only issue I have with this glorious build is the totally inadequate Apple
keyboard. It doesn't have so many keys I need to be productive. Not to mention
it's simply too small to use. Also it fits in with the rest of his setup like
an apple in a bucket of oranges.

Also, OP should take a look at VS code. It integrates very well with
GNU/Windows.

------
riku_iki
It was also a good investment. After recent spike in RAM and GPU prices he can
sell it and make good money.

~~~
PStamatiou
Yeah no kidding - price of the graphics card doubled since I got it.

------
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.

~~~
unhammer
How's performance on that, have you compared with plain Windows or wine?

~~~
anfractuosity
I think I tried and failed to get lightroom to run in wine quite a while ago.
Maybe the situation with that has improved now? I haven't used it on plain
Windows I'm afraid.

I don't do anything that intensive though, just brightening images and tagging
which seems to work fine for me.

------
petepete
I believe Capture One Pro will take better advantage of all that hardware than
LightRoom.

------
jccalhoun
This is really interesting. Reminds me to a degree of John Siracusa's OSX
reviews. I am struck by how customizable windows is. Is it possible to
customize osx to such a degree?

~~~
mikewhy
I'm not sure, but much of this was to get Windows to function as baseline
macOS anyways.

------
balls187
Great write up, and incredibly impressed with your post on New Zealand.

I recently upgraded from a 5d2 to a Mark4, and the integration with the iphone
made for an interesting workflow. As I shoot, I take mental notes about what
type of adjustments I'll make in post processing, and with Lightroom Mobile, I
was able to take a handful of shots, and share them via social media.

I'm considering switching a workflow from my heavy duty gaming rig, to using
something like a Surface Pro.

------
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?

------
msh
Is it really worth using 6K on a non work PC, even if you have the extra cash?

I think, personally, I would prefer a 3K machine that I replaced twich as
often.

------
gharient
What I want to know about is that lovely desk

~~~
PStamatiou
It's a walnut humanscale float sit/stand desk:
[https://paulstamatiou.com/stuff-i-use/#desk](https://paulstamatiou.com/stuff-
i-use/#desk)

------
ranqet
Question for Paul, if you could use a Windows machine for work, would you? If
not, why?

~~~
PStamatiou
For actual work I would miss two things: Sketch (design app) which I need to
use because our Twitter design team has a lot of shared assets for it. There
is Figma design but I can't use that in isolation. Then I also need Framer for
prototyping which is currently mac only. Those would be some very significant
hurdles to jump over if I was to use it for 100% of my work too.

~~~
kuon
I had the same problem, but affinity designer helped me move to windows.

------
Aloha
Anyone can be an amazing photographer - but there is a distinction between a
camera nut, and a photographer, to this end, Ken Rockwell makes a really
interesting point:

"You need to learn to see and compose. The more time you waste worrying about
your equipment the less time you'll have to put into creating great images.
Worry about your images, not your equipment."

[http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm](http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm)

You can guess which category I feel this fellow falls into.

I hope he got a great deal of pleasure building his system - it does look very
impressive (if not downright pretty), but it doesn't make me think any more,
or less of his photography.

~~~
PStamatiou
I am definitely of the same mindset - but it's also my hobby and I do get some
fun from building a bit of an overkill system (and documenting it in detail)
:) I also viewed the build as its own project - I tend to do these very long
blog posts about such projects in the 12 years I've been running my website.

I started out with just the cheapest camera I could get my hands on, including
working on my high school's yearbook staff in ~2000. Now that I've been
working for over a decade and have some resources I pick up a few gadgets here
and there for my hobbies.

~~~
Aloha
Awesome!

I'm still a film guy when I want to go make pretty pictures - though I've
taken some killer stuff on my iPhone of all things - I dont have a good
digital camera, so all of my really good cameras are still film bodies -
nothing to me beats the Ergonomics of an EOS-1

At the risk of giving myself the hug of death -
[https://leho.blastpuppy.com/~aloha/photos/](https://leho.blastpuppy.com/~aloha/photos/)

------
stef25
Isn't this a good use case for the iMac Pro?

~~~
t0mislav
I guess at the time of building this PC, iMac Pro stil wasn't announced. It
would be great to hear what author thinks now about iMac Pro.

~~~
PStamatiou
It was - but iMac Pro can't be upgraded. You want a new motherboard/CPU for
the next gen that comes out in 9 months? Can't just go out and swap the parts
out over the weekend. Also the Vega GPU in it is not as performant.

------
pcunite
_Then I installed my essentials:_

Atom text editor (Give vsCode a try too). Also look at FileSearchEX, the
proper way to find files.

------
pcunite
_I have little use for any of the features included in Windows 10 Pro_

Except securing it with Software Restriction Polices.

------
duke360
very nice and informative... i also think you like to write a lot :D

------
th0ma5
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 puppy being paper trained just behind the
camera, or a bunch of pocket change and random pens in a pile usually on that
desk, but I do lament that I may never have such a simple, clean, and
uncluttered living space. The spaces I may ever have will have things like
unvaulted ceilings, windowsills, trim, standard door size passages between
rooms, probably _carpet_ heh...

I do wonder if such things prevent clarity of thought.

~~~
tlrobinson
"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](http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html)

~~~
reitanqild
There's another dead comment that explains a lot of it.

I cannot see a reason why that particular comment is dead so I guess it's
based on the posting history.

------
farslan
Not related to the blog post, but I think Paul has one of the best looking
personal websites on the web. Simple and clear, but very delightful to read.
Also he has amazing travel posts with nice photos. For example, his Japan post
triggered me to travel to Japan three years ago. Keep up the good work Paul.

~~~
PStamatiou
Thank you!! It's the very rare comments like this that bring me joy. While I
mainly do the site and photosets just for myself (so so many times when I'm
out to dinner with folks and am telling a story about some trip I can
instantly pull up the set and show the journey) it's nice to see when others
get some value from it, especially for something that has consumed countless
nights and weekends over the years.

~~~
Kagerjay
I really like the blog as well, its one of the nicest I've seen.

Are you using your own custom made jekyll site?

Just curious about how you designed your blog and what components you use

------
ss248
Really expected more when i read the title. It's a stretch to call this a
"water-cooled machine", when it's just one all-in-one CPU cooler.

Water-cooled machine should be a custom loop. It's a lot more hassle, but
that's exactly why it's interesting. All-in-one systems are just like
traditional air systems with big radiators, the only big difference is that
you can move the radiator around.

~~~
PStamatiou
Custom loops are such a hassle between leak testing, constantly changing the
liquid, adding anti-algae additive. I've done many of them when I was really
into PC building in the early 2000s (I was even on the FutureMark 3DMark Hall
of Fame for a while for some extreme overclocks). The new AIO coolers are
extremely performant and a no-brainer cost wise. No harm in trying out the new
tech :)

~~~
ss248
You don't have to constantly change the liquid if you don't go for the looks
and use the good coolant, instead of shampooie colored one.

If you have build custom loops, you should really understand the difference.
AIO are much closer to traditional air coolers, than to custom-loop water
cooling.

Keep an eye on VRM btw. Point of failure in your system right now.

