Digital Darkroom - Hardware

Although I've been making photographs for over 50 years, it wasn't until the advent of the digital darkroom that I really obtained control over how my pictures were processed. I had always wanted a chemical darkroom but had neither the space nor the facilities for one. While in high school and the Army I did do some darkroom work and really liked it. My background of over 40 years working with computer software starting with mainframes and later with micro-computers (now PC's) gave me good preparation for what later became the digital darkroom.

In the 1990's I experimeted a bit with HP ScanJet scanners (which were primarilly document scanners) as well as an early slide scanner, the Nikon LS-10 Coolscan (2700 dpi). I used the then current Corel Paint as my software. Early printers left more to the imagination in the mediocre images that they produced. But it was a start. In early 2001 just after getting my first digital camera, the 4MB Olympus E10, I acquired my first Photoshop software - Photoshop 6.0 and a Canon BJ-8200 printer, and a Nikon ED-8000 Coolscan which gave me the ability to scan my 2-1/4" slides as well as my 35mm's.

This page covers only my hardware and the operating system. The Digital Darkroom - Software section covers all of my image processing software, and the Printer Information section discusses my printer and it's RIP software.

Followup (4/15/2008):

The new computer has now been in service for a month and it is running without a hiccup. My wife liked it so much that I built her a smaller version of it (see below), and it too runs faster than her old Media Center HP. Although we thought about Vista for her machine we stayed with XP instead because it is faster, more reliable and has better device driver support. Using the ASUS Probe software, I have constant monitoring of my system's voltages and temperatures. With ambient temperature at around 65-70f, the CPU runs around 30C at idle and up to max 45-50C under a full computing load. With my current room temperature at 72f (no AC here) the motherboard temperature is holding at 28C and the CPU ranges from 29-42C. The Enermax tower case has a 240mm side fan which can be set for either intake or exhaust, as well as a 120mm fan in the lower front of the case. I also installed an Antec 120mm fan in the rear slot for a case exhaust fan. The ambient temperature in my "loft" can exceed 80f in the summer and in my opinion, heat is a prime killer/aging factor of computer components. It's interesting to watch the CPU temperature climb 10-15 degrees Centigrade as its workload increases, and then drop back again when it returns to an "idle"state.

Computer Update (3/18/2008):

Earlier this year my just over two year old HP m7367c, which was previously described here, began to self destruct. The cause of this problem was a malfunctioning power supply fan. The fan is supposed to be termperature controlled whereby as the power supply heats up the fan will speed up and dissipate the heat. As the fan operation became intermittent, the computer ran hotter and the video card fan also stopped working which overheated the video card, which regisitered its frustration by releasing the smell of its frying components.

I could have replaced the power supply and the video card and kept using the computer. However as I've become more and more familiar with the Media Center version of Windows XP, my conclusion is that its too much "bloatware" for me. Reviewing the running processes in Task Manager after boot up always showed close to 70 running processes and lots of used memory. In the meantime, the previous computer which I built in 2003 was still happily running Ubuntu Linux and never hiccups (although Ubuntu upgrades are always a pain when it comes to Linksys wireless drivers). If Linux had any good 16bit Photoshop equivalent, I would leave Windows for good, but the Gimp software is only 8 bit and that just doesn't do the job.

So, I decided to build another workhorse. While not necessarily cheaper than an "off the shelf system" I feel that building my own system gives me better quality control and higher quality parts for the price. After spending hours on NewEgg.com and reviewing users comments until my eyes nearly quit, I selected the following components:

• Enermax full tower case and power supply combo (650watt "Infiniti" power supply - the HP was only 350 watts) a good source of clean power is essential for a robust system. The Enermax full tower case comes with a 240mm side fan which can be set for either intake or exhaust. An additional 120mm fan is installed in the lower front of the case to flow air over the 3-1/2" drive cage.
• Motherboard: ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe (uses nVidia nForce 570 SLI chipset)
• CPU: AMD Athlon 64x2 (dual CPU) 5200 (2.7ghz) Brisbane chip uses only 65Watts rather than 89 or 125 watts and thus runs cooler.
• Memory: OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2-800 (PC6400) memory
• Video (Graphics) Card: PNY nVidia GeForce 8600+ overclocked GPU with 512mb on board memory - PCI Express
• DVD/CD Burner: ASUS DRW-2014L1T 20X Lightscribe SATA
• Hard Disk Drives: 2 Seagate 7200.10 500GB Barracuda drives (SATA 3.0 GB transfer rate). Additionally I'll use my 2 slower 300GB (1.5GB SATA) drives from the HP system for additional storage - mainly on line image and site backup.
• Hard Disk Coolers: 2 Masscool (SYTRIN) hard disk coolers for the Barracuda drives. (More about this below).
• 120mm Case Exhaust fan: Antec quiet and not sleeve bearing. Sleeve bearings are cheap and fail more quickly.
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition upgrade. (I have an old Windows 2000 that I "upgraded" from).

Now for some details. Why did I choose what I did? First of all I look for reliability. I don't need the extra "edge" provided by bleeding edge components which have a hefty premium price and sometimes, bugs and device driver problems as well. In the past I've had excellent luck with AMD CPU's from a price/performance standpoint. They are very reliable and the nVidia chipsets are also stable. I have nothing against Intel CPU's, especially the laptop centrino processors.

I used an ASUS motherboard. This particular board (M2N-SLI Deluxe) was a midrange (price) board that has an excellent repuation. One aside, when examining reviews you may note that even though the majority of reviews are excellent, there is always an "unhappiness quotient" among reviewers. Also, DOA's or infant mortality failures. Years ago, when we built computers as a part of our business, DOA's and early failures were a fact of life, more so than today. They are a pain in the a.. but they do occur. Sometimes though they are caused by inappropriate handling. Sometimes it appears that carriers have a contest to see who can cause the most invisible damage to a package in transit....drop this one from the roof and see what happens!!

Use only high quality manufacturers. Although even the better manufacturers do have QC problems on occasion, their gear is generally better, easier to set up, and will last longer. Products from commercial vendors such as HP keep their prices down by using cheaper and "lower end" products. The motherboard in the HP m7367c is an ASUS board. It is an excellent, but basic, board. P5LP-LE" (LE=low end?). On the other hand, the video card used in the HP was really a cheap card.

AMD Athlon 64X2 5200+ CPU. This 64bit dual core processor fills the bill for my needs. It is reasonably fast, and this particular chip uses AMD's "Brisbane" 65 watt chip. The more "powerful" chips use an 89 or even 125watt chip. This means more power used which equates to more heat generation. This 2.7ghz chip performs very well for my needs. It is noticeably faster than the 32bit dual core Pentium chip in the m7367c. While I realize that there are many faster chips on the market now than the AMD I chose, they are pricier and the price/performance of the 5200+ is fine for me. The M2N ASUS board does support the AMD Phenom CPU, and if desired I can upgrade my CPU later if I choose.

Video card: Although I have used and liked ATI chipset based video cards, they have had annoying bugs at times including interaction with other components. At this point in time my feeling is that nVidia chipsets are more stable. Maybe AMD's acquisition of ATI means that things will get better. I chose the PNY 8600OC card for several reasons. First, it had excellent reviews. It is an excellent performer with good quiet cooling. Also it has 512mb of onboard 128 bit GDDR3 memory which provides excellent performance for my image processing. It is not heavy gaming board but it does have great performance especially when compared to my previous graphics adapter in the m7367c. It is overclocked, but in my system it runs at an average temperature of about 56-58C.

Hard Disk drives. This is a crapshoot. Off all components, hard disk drive reviews indicate an inordinate number of DOA's or early failures...regardless of the manufacturer. On our last trip to Albuquerque I picked up the two Seagate 500mb Barracuda drives on sale at Circuit City. The price was about equal to what was on the internet. I've used Barracuda drives for years and they seem to be inherently noiser and run hotter thn most other drives, but they are usually good, fast drives. Although both of these drives are in my new system, my wife has asked me to build her a system to replace her HP desktop and I ordered a 640GB Western Digital Caviar drive which I'll swap with my 500GB work drive for the extra space.

HEAT. I've become almost a fanatic about cooling. Where we live (Pagosa Springs, CO), we're at 7500 ft and it generally doesn't get oppresively hot here. However, for a couple of weeks in the summer it does usually get into the 90's and we don't have a/c. This means that my 2nd floor loft/workshop can easily get into the 80's by late afternoon, with the computer generating much of that heat. Heat is a prime determinant as to how long your components will last.

One reason I chose the full tower Enermax case for me (and the mid tower version for my wife) is the cooling. These cases have a 250mm cooling fan on the side of the case. My case came with a 120mm fan in the front and space for one in the rear of the case. The mid tower case has no installed front fan, so I've ordered two fans for it. I did also install one in the back of my case. This provides my case with excellent airflow. Avoid cheap sleeve bearing fans, the sleeve bearings fail much quicker than better bearings...hotbox anyone? One nice thing about the ASUS motherboard and the nVidia chipset and the nVidia graphic chipsets is that they have monitors. nVidia has a graphics card temperature monitor and ASUS provides a monitor for the motherboard, CPU, and associated fans. With temperatures running in the high 60's to mid 70's in my workspace now, my graphics card runs at about 56-58C, while my motherboard runs at about 31C. The CPU runs between 32-45C depending on it's workload and the CPU fan speed. With the monitor you can actually watch the CPU temperature rise as its workload increases, and lower as the CPU fan speeds up. For contrast, I put an older nVidia card in my HP system to replace the fried video card and it ran 20-30 degrees Centigrade hotter than the more powerful video card in my new system. Adequate cooling can make a big difference.

To keep the hard disk drives cool, I installed the Barracuda drives in Masscool (STYRIN) units. These units are not cheap (about $25 each). If they keep my disks happy they are worth it. These units fit in a 5.25" enclosure and the drive fits within the unit. Each unit has two 40mm fans as well as a heat sink. The Barracuda drives are running around 32C. I'm currently evaluating disk monitoring sofware called Stellar Smart (Early Disk Warning System) which provides temperature and operating information on each disk drive. Disk drives provide continuous information "s.m.a.r.t." . This can warn of impending problems. This little $29. program available on the internet provides a 30 day free trial, and so far, it looks good. It does have one little quirk in that a time/temperature graph occasionally stops showing the temperature and it must be restarted. This doesn't affect any "current" readings which are correct. It's only the graph. Logs are also not affected.

I do think that keeping track of various temperatures allows you to make sure that your system is well and happy. I'll be glad to answer any questions via feedback.

Why do I choose this configuration? Basically, because of what I process. I process 16 bit raw or tiff images. 16 bit 2-1/4" slide images can approach 300MB in size. When processing such images, as much memory and CPU speed as is available is needed to keep image processing speed at least tolerable. For Digital Camera output or 35mm images, processing is fairly speedy (except for upsizing to very large images for printing). However processes that take seconds for smaller images take minutes for larger 2-1/4" images.

Peripherals:

The main peripheral unit, aside from the Epson 9800 printer is a Nikon ED-8000 Super Coolscan. This unit was purchased in 2002 shortly after it was released. It is a slide scanner which can scan slides from 35mm up to 6x7cm slides at densities up to 4000dpi. This model has since been superseded by the 9000 series scanners. Although it comes with Nikon Scan software I prefer to use VueScan or on occasion Silverfast as discussed in the software section. The latest version of this scanner is the ED-9000 (or for 35mm only, the ED-5000).

Other peripherals are:

Epson R300 printer. This is my general purpose and 4x6" printer. It is a good unit, but in this price range there are many good printers.

Epson 4870 flatbed scanner. This enables me to scan prints. It can also scan slides, but the slide scanner does a better job with slides. VueScan or Epson's software is used with this unit.

Last edited:4/15/2008