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Monitor for RIP and Design?

k_graham

New Member
The 2nd item doesn't show.

I recommend a 4k monitor as it is 4 times the pixels of a 1080, but I also recommend a 2nd monitor so that can be a 1080 pixel, just for the convenience of cut and paste. If a NVidia video card you have a choice of a Gaming video card with HDMI output or a card to be used for CAD like the Quadro line, if the Quadro line you need a minimum of a K4000 Quadro, without the K designation it won't handle 4K, they do however use a weird Displayport video cable which is an issue as it means you will need a Display Port to HDMI conversion cable. For Adobe programs you are using, the Gaming NVidia chipped card will not be a problem, you should probably check regarding Onyx, I tried both Onyx and Caldera RIP when we put in a large format printer, the Onyx crashed all the time so we went with Caldera - I don't think it was the case but maybe it was the cheaper video card.

We ended up with separate RIP because Caldera runs on Linux however.

If you go the 4k monitor route remember a 28" 1080 monitor would be the equivalent of a 56" 4k monitor, but that may seem a might large for the desk so you may want a smaller unit, down around a 40 or 42" size.

Ken
 

Michael-Nola

I print things. It is very exciting.
The "which monitor is best for design" is an age old debate you will NOT solve here, or quickly. I can promise you that looking at great and expensive gaming monitors is not the best way to find your prize.

Monitors are all about target usage. Gamers don't care about color accuracy, but instead focus on refresh rate, black levels, gray-to-grays, max resolution, and more. None of which matters to us.

I could literally debate this for days. So instead, first I would suggest posting your maximum budget. Second, you should determine if you need a monitor NOW or if you can use a generic while you shop. And third, you need to decide on what your real usage needs require.

If you're buying for a team of designers and you need speakers as well as accurate color, that will narrow it down.

If your budget is $400 or $1500 that will narrow it as well.

If you want as much Adobe RGB spectrum as possible for the price but are willing to wait a few weeks to used-shop, that will narrow it down.

I can tell you that really good NEW Adobe RGB spec monitors run $800-1200 each and come with 0 features, poor size choices, and none of the "fancy" specs found on normal monitors. If you have kept an eye on model numbers for a while then you can find your desired model for $400-600 used, but you have to know exactly what you're looking for.

Do so much homework, and then come back confused, and then I can probably help you more lol.

If you want a super great choice on a new middle-ground price, color, and size, I would suggest the Samsung CH series. Designed for gamers, but it produces 125% of the sRGB spectrum and 92% Adobe RGB. Downside is the 1080 resolution and such, but again, we could play this game all day. Is this the best option for designers or Adobe color accuracy? Absolutely not. But I find it's a way better generic recommendation (for this quarter) than these expensive gaming monitors people buy when I do prepress consults for shops.

If you were looking at a great gaming monitors trying to get color accuracy, then you do better just buying any large screen junk you can find. That extra money is going nowhere.

Oh and anyone that thinks those Mac 5k or previous monitors are the best. No. They can get decent once tuned, but 1 no one calibrates them and 2 they are far too bright and oversaturated to ever produce D50 claibrated images. And for what you get compared to the competiton, not even close to a good value.
 

AF

New Member
Verify the video card you want is on Adobe’s list of supported hardware or you won’t get hardware acceleration from it.

Adobe supports 10bit video cards ($$$$) which require 10bit monitors ($$$$$$). But most rips will process colors at 16bit so it seems pointless to worry about it.

None of the above matters if you don’t have color calibration equipment and religiously maintain your monitor calibration and printer profiles. Barbieri is the best ($$$$$$$) but X-rite gets the job done and can calibrate your monitor.

As for motherboards, the better ones use thicker PCB, solid caps, min 105c components, heavy traces etc. if you want the machine to last you should pay attention to the quality. Filmsy MBs will suffer thermal fatigue and develop difficult to diagnose thermal issues.

A good computer case will have a ton of cooling with large 120-140cm quiet fans and adequate dust filters. Cost means nothing in this category since expensive may mean form over function.

Colorgate rip uses multicore APPE and takes full advantage of multiple core processors like the I7 Intel, Xeon etc. not sure if Onyx is configured this way but the multicore APPE cuts rip times by up to 90%. I have not seen a supported processor chart for APPE, but can confirm it works with Intel.
 

k_graham

New Member
I've built a couple computers and purchased used, it proved less stressful buying used-refurbished. Here is a Ebay search string that should bring up Xeons. Xeons being workstations it just seems the quality is better to begin with. As the Parity RAM for them is expensive I suggest buying all you want to begin with and get a suitable Video Card. The NVidia Quadro Cards are also suitable for CAD and it seems since the GeForce cards are now used more in Mining not so different in price on the used market. But you could substitute quadro k for GeForce though then you probably have to list the lower end GeForce cards you don't want. You will notice I attempted to eliminate anything with less than 16 gigs of RAM.

""quadro k"" ""xeon"" -k420 -k600 -k620 -4gb -8gb -6gb -12gb -k2000 -k2200 -k3000

The items in quotes are supposed to be in the viewable list, those with - in front , stripped out of list. Watch for a few days and something reasonably decent will likely show up. The only real issue was finding a Displayport to HDMI cable, I currently have a cheap one that works at 30 hz, with a better one thats supposed to be capable of 60hz coming.

When I last used the above after 3 weeks I ended up with a bit older HP Tower, Xeon, with 32 Gigs RAM, Windows 10 and a K5000 quadro for about 900 U.S. , that came with Windows 10 and oddly Microsoft Professional 2016 installed, as was advertised.

If you haven't a color calibration device, I originally purchased a EFI Spectro off Ebay that included disks for monitor profiing for under 500.00, we also used to profile our Color Copiers, but that's another story.

Ken
 

31legen

New Member
I wouldn't go 4K. I thought it would be better for designing but it only caused problems as a lot of programs won't scale for it. I'd look at the benq monitors. There expensive but well worth it. They are meant for the photography/design industry.
 

SignMeUpGraphics

Super Active Member
NEC MultiSync PA series or EIZO are great screens for graphical design. Should achieve full Adobe RGB coverage with most models when calibrated properly.
 

coastguy111

New Member
Awesome advice everyone so far. I really appreciate it. I'm gonna look into some of the suggestions made so far before finally pulling "the trigger" on something!!!!

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
 

Grizzly

It’s all about your print!
The 2nd item doesn't show.

I recommend a 4k monitor as it is 4 times the pixels of a 1080, but I also recommend a 2nd monitor so that can be a 1080 pixel, just for the convenience of cut and paste. If a NVidia video card you have a choice of a Gaming video card with HDMI output or a card to be used for CAD like the Quadro line, if the Quadro line you need a minimum of a K4000 Quadro, without the K designation it won't handle 4K, they do however use a weird Displayport video cable which is an issue as it means you will need a Display Port to HDMI conversion cable. For Adobe programs you are using, the Gaming NVidia chipped card will not be a problem, you should probably check regarding Onyx, I tried both Onyx and Caldera RIP when we put in a large format printer, the Onyx crashed all the time so we went with Caldera - I don't think it was the case but maybe it was the cheaper video card.

We ended up with separate RIP because Caldera runs on Linux however.

If you go the 4k monitor route remember a 28" 1080 monitor would be the equivalent of a 56" 4k monitor, but that may seem a might large for the desk so you may want a smaller unit, down around a 40 or 42" size.

Ken

I wouldn't go 4K. I thought it would be better for designing but it only caused problems as a lot of programs won't scale for it. I'd look at the benq monitors. There expensive but well worth it. They are meant for the photography/design industry.

I wouldn't go 4K either. Onyx doesn't have scaling support. I'm running windows 7 so if your running windows 10 it might work better.
Also, I have yet to get job editor to display the correct colors even when the monitor is calibrated. Outside of job editor it looks fine.
I'm probably missing something though.

Here are the ones i use. I like to have 1920 x 1200 monitors. Helps a lot to have the extra inch on the bottom.
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Compute...5773&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=dell+2415h+monitor

Great monitor with an awesome stand. Also, "Consistent colors right out of the box- the U2415 comes factory tuned at 99% sRGB coverage at a deltaE < 3".

I have a dual monitor setup. One always has job editor open, the other RIP-queue.

upload_2018-3-19_10-6-43.png
upload_2018-3-19_10-7-16.png
 

Pauly

Printrade.com.au
Also, I have yet to get job editor to display the correct colors even when the monitor is calibrated. Outside of job editor it looks fine.
I'm probably missing something though.

Are your printer(s) calibrated/profiled properly? if not then job editor wont show the true colours. Mine shows whats printed.
Canned profiles dont show properly, but some are close.
 

coastguy111

New Member
Are your printer(s) calibrated/profiled properly? if not then job editor wont show the true colours. Mine shows whats printed.
Canned profiles dont show properly, but some are close.
My printer is an Epson Surecolor 40600 which came with Onyx gamma print rip.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
 

coastguy111

New Member
I wouldn't go 4K. I thought it would be better for designing but it only caused problems as a lot of programs won't scale for it. I'd look at the benq monitors. There expensive but well worth it. They are meant for the photography/design industry.
I'm actually seriously considering a 2K IP BenQ monitor

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
 

bannertime

Active Member
DisplaySpecifications - Specifications and features of desktop monitors and TVs

Find a monitor you might think is right, then copy/paste the model number into the search bar on the website above. Look for the line item on sRGB or NTSC and see what's it's at. You'd probably like to be at 100% or more for sRGB. You'd be surprised to see how many aren't even 95%. Probably avoid one with NTSC unless you're looking for that, you'd know if you needed it, if you needed it kind of thing.

Then if you have a short list of monitors, compare everything else like contrast, IPS, FreeSync vs Gsync, then maybe refresh rate and aspect ratio. Currently, you're not going to need much more than 1080p. We don't work in UHD video editing.

Monitors I'd recommend are Dell Ultrasharps, NEC, and possibly BenQ.
 
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