Top end Pixinsight computer specification

[Martin Farmer]

Hello Group,

I would appreciate your help in identifying what would be a high end computer with sufficient performance to run Pixinsight for the foreseeable.

To start the ball rolling I’m interested also in CAD for my 3D printer so it’s going to be a dual purpose machine. I’m considering an AMD Ryzen processor with 64Gb of memory and an NVIDIA graphics card that will make use of the recently announced use of GPU with Pixinsight.  Finally the use of a solid state drive with conventional drive for backups etc.

what do you consider is a suitable specification and possibly identify some vendors (if allowed) that a suitable machine can be sourced from.

 

Thanks for your time - I appreciate it.

 

Regards

Martin

[tomato]

There will be better qualified folks than me on SGL to advise you on the specification, but your proposed set up sounds good to me. SSD is definitely the way to go for your processing access drive, I use mech drives for archive storage.

As regards (online) suppliers, based only on my one-off purchase, I can recommend PC Specialist, comprehensive choice of components, easy to configure your machine, I was kept fully informed of the assembly and despatch  process and PC arrived promptly and well packaged. 

StarTools now uses the GPU processing capacity, and it certainly speeds things up.

[sloz1664]

Hi Martin,

That computer spec will more than suffice in processing in both Pixinsight & CAD. What you will need in addition to the PC is adequate back-up for your infinitely growing imaging files.

Steve

[Alien 13]

The proposal sounds about right, I use two SSD drives and a HDD in my lappy so that one of the SSD is dedicated to the OS and PC drivers only with the other for the rest of the software and working space, the HDD is for mass storage. Dont forget some fast RAM too, 16 Gb is fine but 32 Gb is better.

Alan

[Starflyer]

The spec looks good, go for an NVMe M.2 SSD or two as the OS / apps drive they blow standard SSDs out of the water.

32GB of very fast RAM will likely out perform 64GB of slower RAM, either way setting up a good sized RAM disk for PI swap space makes a big difference. 

Look at the PI benchmark site for similar specs you're thinking of and you'll soon as the difference that different components will make.

[bottletopburly]

I’ve bought twice from Dino pc , second one only recently with my lad spending £1400 just on a base unit for gaming with a RTX 3070 graphic card  excellent response via email if you need info , system builder easy to navigate if certain parts are incompatible it will tell you or inform you to choose a minimum spec part etc price wise found to be reasonable and on par with the competition, his new pc is a beast i7 based 32gb Ram running off 2 ssd drives which we used from our older 18 months old system to save a few pennies ( now my processing pc) .

[malc-c]

I think the issue of specing a PC for a particular function is not as critical as it was a few decades ago (Other than industrial CAD or a serious gaming rig).  Having a "home" PC with 16GB of RAM was often only a pipe dream, let alone 32GB or even 64GB which these days is more affordable and available.  Most mainboards have NVMe slots for fast NVMe storage, and the latest generation are blisteringly fast, and now 1TB NVMe can be had for around £120 for a PCIe4 generation board, or if you want a a branded make with good reviews, Samsung 980 Pro 500GB drive can be had for the same amount.  I have a 250GB early generation Samsung Evo NVMe and booting to desktop is quicker than booting my daughters iphone  

My main PC is modest spec by today's standard.  ASUS Prime X370 main board, 16GB Vengeance DDR4 RAM, 250GB NVMe Samsung drive, First gen Ryzen 1500x 4core 8 processors 3.5Ghz and ann AMD RX550 graphics card, with a couple of 2TB physical drives to store files and images on.  Application wise it runs BlackMagic's Davinci Resolve, an industry standard video editing and processing application, Diptrace PCB cad application, and several astronomy applications without issues.  I've even run Blender which is a CGI animation rendering and modeling application, and whilst it wasn't blisteringly quick at rendering the scene, it still managed it in an acceptable time frame.    My system was self-built and set me back around £700 in 2017.

The point I am trying to make is that unless you are going to run the latest games that demand the top end graphics cards then there is little point in spending £1500 on the latest AMD or NVIDIA graphics card, especially if funds are tight.  But if you have the cash and can budget £3000 for a machine then go for it

[JSeaman]

I built three PCs last year at the start of lockdown and had PI in mind for it (at least partially), building yourself costs dramatically less than buying in a shop (~£700 each for these)

For RAM I went with 32GB Corsair Vengeance 3600MHz, two 16GB sticks, a nice balance on price versus performance (and it does perform well). I have run image processing, lots of PI stuff, software development tools and various other simultaneous activites and never come close to using it all. If you're wanting to load huge amounts of data into RAM for some reason then by all means go for 64GB but most people won't benefit from it. I just loaded 100 images (3gb worth) in PI and started monkeying with them and never ht 9GB RAM usage

I went down the Ryzen 5 360 / Tomahawk route for motherboard/chipset and it is very capable so a good choice, you can spend a lot more and get only marginal improvements

I chose 1 TB NVME PCIe card which is well worth getting, only ~£100 and very fast indeed

Last year PI was not using GPUs directly (see here: https://pixinsight.com/sysreq/index.html) but I went for a Radeon RX580 which I also recommend as a good all rounder

Chuck that little lot in a case with a power supply and you'll have a plenty capable machine and save a couple of thousand on buying it from a shop

[Frank the Troll]

Your spec is fine, get a NVMe M.2 SSD 1TB to pop in for : c drive

 and get a usb caddy for a 2.5" SSD, and you can swap storage drives  as needed

[BrendanC]

Do you mind if I recommend two things for backup? I'd consider that as important as the spec!

I've been using OneDrive's 1TB plan for the past year and it's invaluable. It allows me to work on images across machines, and it's really great knowing that it's working in the background to back everything up.

However, given the golden rule of three of backups - ie you should have three copies, in three different formats - I also use a very neat little utility called Bvckup, which you have to pay for, but that also works in the background to copy things to a local drive: see https://bvckup2.com/

I've recovered files from both - quick, easy, and reliable. The other golden rule of data: it has no value unless it's backed up!

[malc-c]

Good point on the backups - I've been using Macrim Reflect for ages.  The free version is fine for backing up complete drives etc, but if you want to backup individual files or folders then the home version is required and that's £47 (single licence but works on multiple PCs in the same household).  I back up to a NAS and an external network attached drive off the back of the router.  Off site backup isn't really a requirement for me as most of my final videos etc are on Youtube etc.

One option I found interesting and adopted by a friend is to use a wireless portable NAS run off an adaptor in his car.  This way he can back up his important documents and have them with him or stored in a place that is remote from his house.  Cost around £100 for a 1TB unit off Amazon...