Computer for Adobe CC:

Would it make more sense to build a brand new x99 system with a 5820k such as:

X99 board
5820k
4x8gb DDR4
Case
700w gold/plat psu
SSD's for OS/Storage
etc.,

OR

Purchase something like a used dell t5500 with 2x Xeon x5670 cpu's and a crap ton of ram, also with SSD's.

Price wise it would end up being fairly similar, maybe slightly cheaper with the xeon setup.

What I don't know is, would the older tech of the s1366 cpu's cost more to get to modern stuff, such as getting a better SATA controller and USB 3.0/3.1 controller be a waste of money / time?

Does Adobe CC use more than a 6 core 12 thread chip? Are adobe products limited by the read/write speeds of SSD's? (I believe the onboard sata controllers for that era would be limited to sata 2?)

This build would be for my Fiance who does the adobe CC work for her photography business. She primarily uses a very high end MBP, but when doing a lot of the photographs at once it starts to heat up, and a desktop build would provide with some flexibility to add more ram and upgrade / update things in the future as her business grows. She would still likely use the laptop, especially when traveling, but having a more powerful computer for the home base would be useful.

Thanks!

If she does primary photoshop work, I'd go with the X99 setup.
If she were doing premiere or after effects, I would go with the dual Xeons.

I know Premiere and After Effects will use all cores and threads, but I am not 100% sure on Photoshop.
If Photoshop doesn't use all cores, then it may be beneficial to go with a 4790K processor as the cores are more powerful going by the Passmark scores, 12,961 over 6 cores vs 11,241 over 4 cores, which come to 2160/core for the 5820 and 2810/core for the 4790K.

I would recommend at least 2 SSD's on the system, 256 or more for the OS and Apps, and a 500-1TB SSD for the photos.
16GB minimum Ram.

I am still using Adobe CS6 on my system.

Definitely X99... No gain really after 6 Cores.

So 5820K and OC as much possible and stable.

Adobe Photoshop CC CPU Multi-threading Performance

Probably won't OC it much / at all, it will still be a very large speed increase over her MBP at stock. I'll throw a 212 evo or something on it, and perhaps in a year or two if its going slowly i'll OC it a few hundred Mhz. Overclock for Play, not for work stuff!

I'm thinking 2x1tb SSD's in Raid is probably the way to go? I'll read up on NVMe and a few other things to see if worthwhile.

I kinda figured, I did read that some of the effects in lightroom / pshop can use as many cores as you have, but I'm thinking the newer haswell tech would by far and away be more beneficial. This build will probably occur in 2 months, maybe DDR4 will be cheaper by then. Board / CPU likely purchased at Microcenter, as I'll be visiting friends in the Minneapolis area in a few months.

I had only considered the t5500 due to mega processing ability, but its significantly slower per core IPC and scary old motherboard features (usb 2.0, no sata 6 etc) are kind of a turn off. Plus I'm guessing the idle power usage is probably in the 200w range, as opposed to likely 80-100 on an x99 system.

I would think the newer system would be faster, but the t5500 would probably be a bit cheaper. I just got one a few months ago actually (getting into video editing) and through a 6 core cpu in. The system in my sig ended up costing $360when all was said and done, but $150 of that was for the SSD and GPU. It was $210 with just a spinner and a crappy quadro nvs card.


oh and, you are correct, it is sata2, not sata3. Giving me 250MB/s read and write.

I found a t5500 with 2x x5670, 6gb ram, and a v7800 for 499$, but adding 2xtb SSD's will add a lot of cost

geforce man said:

I found a t5500 with 2x x5670, 6gb ram, and a v7800 for 499$, but adding 2xtb SSD's will add a lot of cost

Click to expand...

not sure how much those cpus go for, but in my case it was cheaper to buy a t5500 with a low end cpu and buy the 6 core separately than to get a t5500 with a 6 core cpu to start with. but yeah, those tb SSDs aint cheap!

might want to look at other dell models with the e3 **** v3 xeons as well. might be cheaper to find a used dell as opposed to a home build once you factor in ram and OS. Good luck!