Office machine w/Photoshop

[Josh]

Forumites,

Been a while since I specced and built a machine but need an office capable machine with some light photoshop use. Not fussed about brands, so I need a case and everything inside, 1TB NVMe (minimum) and 16GB RAM (minimum) would be good.

It's an office machine so an APU or Intel onboard graphics should be enough? Don't need peripherals or monitor

Budget, £500 or so. Upgradable over the next 4/5 years so no sockets that are EoL etc.

Have at it, cheers!

 

[dfour]

Your budget is a bit tight if your after a non EOL chipset. It only leaves AM5 and ddr5.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming A620M-PLUS WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASU-01397) = £136.00
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 8500G Six Core 3.5GHz (Socket AM5) APU with Radeon 740M Graphics (SKU: PRO-AMD-01798) = £179.98
• 1 x TeamGroup Vulcan EXPO 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C38 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FLABD532G6000HC38ADC01) (SKU: MY-0B2-TG) = £99.95
• 1 x be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 10 450W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply (SKU: CA-14T-BQ) = £46.99
• 1 x Kolink KLM-003 Micro-ATX Case - Black (SKU: CA-054-KK) = £27.95
• 1 x WD Blue SN580 1TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-WDC-00540) = £64.99

Total: £555.86 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

You could drop to 16 gig of ram but that would only save about £35.
The 8500g comes with a wraith stealth cooler to save money.

 

[Tetras]

Upgradable over the next 4/5 years so no sockets that are EoL etc.

What kind of upgrades do you need available? If you're thinking of something like photoshop, a starter CPU like the 12400 would have a big upgrade in the 14700 and similar for AMD between the 5600 and 5900X, so depending on your intention, I wouldn't rule out 1700 or AM4. I'd be surprised if either system needed the CPU upgrading for light Photoshop usage in that timeframe, though the newer AI features can be demanding on the GPU.

 

[Josh]

Your budget is a bit tight if your after a non EOL chipset. It only leaves AM5 and ddr5.

Total: £555.86 (includes delivery: £0.00)

You could drop to 16 gig of ram but that would only save about £35.
The 8500g comes with a wraith stealth cooler to save money.

Cheers @dfour - what would change if the budget was £750?

@Tetras - CPU really, maybe SSDs etc for more storage, 99% of the time this will be an office PC but the less "my PC is slow" from the family. It might not be needed tbh but I'm "futureproofing".

 

[dfour]

All I would change is a better case with decent airflow like

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Kolink Stronghold M Micro-ATX Case - Black Window (SKU: CA-068-KK) = £44.99
• 1 x Kolink Satellite Micro-ATX Cube Case - Black (SKU: CA-005-KK) = £44.99
• 1 x Jonsbo V4 Black Micro-ATX Case (SKU: CA-012-JB) = £48.94
• 1 x Jonsbo C6 Micro-ATX Mesh Case - Black (SKU: CA-031-JB) = £50.00
• 1 x Kolink Citadel Mesh Micro-ATX Case - Black (SKU: CA-051-KK) = £52.99

Total: £241.91 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

A gold rated psu to increase power effeciency with a higher power rating so you can add a low end gpu should you want ot later

PURE POWER 11 | 500W silent essential Power supplies from be quiet!

Best combination of features at a very popular price

www.bequiet.com

You could also get cas 30 ram as that might help with rendering and gaming (AMD recommend cas 30 ram for ryzen 7)

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FF3D532G6000HC30DC01) (SKU: MY-0B8-TG) = £109.99

Total: £109.99 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

Beter cpu cooling so it is always quiet under load like a assassin king mini (depending upon the case you went for in the end)

Assassin King 120 MINI V2 – Thermalright

www.thermalright.com

I ran one as a stop gap on my 5800x and it coped with normal use and gaming

or a apx120 for real low pofile cases.

AXP120-X67 – Thermalright

www.thermalright.com

 

[Mel_P]

I built an AMD 3600 based PC as I mainly do photoshop / lightroom but one thing I do is convert RAW files to DNG as my photoshop is ancient.

I found that the 3600 was SLOW for this conversion. I had a look round and decided that an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X would be best for this - as it is 12 core / 24 threads. IT ZIPS through these RAW to DNG conversions - using each thread / file. Pleased with it for this specific use"

 

[JollyJamma]

Forumites,

Been a while since I specced and built a machine but need an office capable machine with some light photoshop use. Not fussed about brands, so I need a case and everything inside, 1TB NVMe (minimum) and 16GB RAM (minimum) would be good.

It's an office machine so an APU or Intel onboard graphics should be enough? Don't need peripherals or monitor

Budget, £500 or so. Upgradable over the next 4/5 years so no sockets that are EoL etc.

Have at it, cheers!

£500 is a little tight but certainly doable, especially with second hand hardware.

I’d spend a little more and get an AM5 rig with 32gigs of RAM and a 2tb SN850X SSD.

You could get a used 5900X and B550 motherboard for a good price if you really had to stick to the £500 budget.

Intel LGA1700 is EOL but is still fantastically fast. AM5 will receive more CPUs in the future.

A 7600X would be ok. Fast but not amazing. For light photoshop work it would be fine. More cores is more better for that sort of workload and a lot of apps now make good use of 8 cores so consider the 7800X or similar.

14700K is a beast too so cheap it’s a good deal, just hard to cool given its TDP to size of IHS.

 

[JollyJamma]

Cheers @dfour - what would change if the budget was £750?

@Tetras - CPU really, maybe SSDs etc for more storage, 99% of the time this will be an office PC but the less "my PC is slow" from the family. It might not be needed tbh but I'm "futureproofing".

Long term, consider getting an 8 core CPU.

If you rarely upgrade then don’t worry too much about the future launches of the socket.

If you just need a good but cheap upgrade, a used AM4 5900X is a great and cheap option for a work machine.

Just know that you’ll need a GPU with a 5900X as it doesn’t have in iGPU.

 

[tamzzy]

if it's only light photoshop use, this is the perfect scenario for an ex-corp computer with an 8th gen i5, and a cheap quadro chucked into it for good measure
shouldn't cost more than £250

I did this for my Dads office PC. he went from 1st Gen i5 windows 7 32bit. to a SFF HP with i5 8500 and a quadro GPU running windows 11 , night and day difference ... for about £100 - £150. plus a quadro P400,P600 will support hardware playback at 4k with virtually no load on the CPU