Photoshop PC (500 exVAT)

qbazdz

qbazdz

qbazdz

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Hi,

Anyone would be so kind to help me spec out a PC for a friend?

It is a typical home/office PC with high usage of Photoshop and other more CPU intensive stuff.

The budget is 500quid ex VAT, this excludes a monitor (probably ex keyb and mouse as well). At the moment I am leaving ~80quid for a OEM x64 Win 7.

I came up with something like that:

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
Asus M4A88TD-M EVO/USB3
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), CAS 9-9-9-27, 1.65V
1Tb Seagate ST31000524AS Barracuda 7200.12, SATA 6Gb/s
Coolermaster Elite 370 case
500W Coolermaster Elite PSU
1 extra fan, DVD re-writer

This would be build and o/c by me (just a bit to get extra juice out of the CPU).
Any point of getting a 60GB SSD for it?

Thanks!
 
Let me make myself more clear - it is CPU intensive but it's not SETI or running Prime 24/7 ;)
If a i5 2500k combo can be build with a similar price/performance I wont hesitate to get it for him, but I though that 6 cores of 1090T would benefit him more for what he does.

As I said before, it is mainly Photoshop work, editing and managing tonns of pics and probably viewing them on his huge TV.
 
Picture2-1.png


Doesn't include a monitor, mouse or keyboard but I'm sure you can include them for just a little over budget. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=288 2500k wins in most tests so will probably be better even for what he does. The 2500k can be OCed further than the 1090 too.
 
qbazdz said:
Let me make myself more clear - it is CPU intensive but it's not SETI or running Prime 24/7 ;)
If a i5 2500k combo can be build with a similar price/performance I wont hesitate to get it for him, but I though that 6 cores of 1090T would benefit him more for what he does.

As I said before, it is mainly Photoshop work, editing and managing tonns of pics and probably viewing them on his huge TV.
Click to expand...

Regardless of peoples misconception, photoshop itself isn't that CPU hungry. This of course depends entirely what you do on it. If you are applying loads of heavy tweaks it can become cpu intensive... however RAM is where it's at with photoshop, the more the merrier as when you are working with large .tiff files etc it eats the memory.

If he is using Lightroom and doung multiple exports, then lots of RAM is definitely needed hear as well as a quick hard disk. I would try and squeeze an SSD into the budget for this kind of work. As much as I can't stand people who buy them to shave 10 seconds off their boot times, they do have a purpose in this line of work.

Here's what i've specced up.

An SSD for super fast exporting and importing of photo's. A large secondary drive to store large raw files etc and general storage.

I have included the 6 core phenom as it will indeed be better for photoshop than a 2500k. I have also included 16GB RAM which will come alive when importing hundreds of raw image files etc. Lightroom will eat this up no problem.



I realise I have contradicted myself in speccing the 6 core phenom after saying it wont be utilised or needed. Just to reiterate, this depends entirely on the level which you are using the software. Lightroom however is very cpu intensive I find and Photoshop on the other, not so much. So it all depends on whether he uses Lightroom, most photographers who use photoshop also use Lightroom. I personally couldn't live without lightroom.
 
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Moothead2 said:
SNIP

Doesn't include a monitor, mouse or keyboard but I'm sure you can include them for just a little over budget. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=288 2500k wins in most tests so will probably be better even for what he does. The 2500k can be OCed further than the 1090 too.
Click to expand...

You're missing a graphics card there.

You either need Z68 - more costly, but allows ocing of cpu and onboard gpu; or H67 - no overclocking, but on the cheap.
 
Another option:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £155.99
1 x Gigabyte H67M-UD2H-B3 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £84.98
2 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £65.99
1 x Antec High Current Gamer 620W Power Supply £49.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £43.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 330 Midi Tower Case - Black £28.99
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
1 x Intel Official i7 CPU Cooler (Socket 1366) £0.98
Total : £526.99 (includes shipping : £11.75).

Unfortunately Phenom II will not be faster than SB i5 - that's just not true based on any benchmark I've ever seen.

16GB of RAM, K series to provide the better (HD3000 vs HD2000) onboard GPU.

You could forgo 16GB for 8GB and include a cheap SSD - as above it will help with loading larger images etc :) N.B. This does bump the cost up a fair bit more:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £155.99
1 x OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-60G) £94.99
1 x Gigabyte H67M-UD2H-B3 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £84.98
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £65.99
1 x Antec High Current Gamer 620W Power Supply £49.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £43.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 330 Midi Tower Case - Black £28.99
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
1 x Intel Official i7 CPU Cooler (Socket 1366) £0.98
Total : £556.00 (includes shipping : £11.75).
 
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Buchanan0204 said:
Here's a comparison between the 2500k and the PhenomII. As you can see the 2500k is a better all rounder... however for specific tasks like photoshop and video editing. You can see it shines through and beats the 2500k.

If it's a photoshop machine as you said then I would always be enclined to get the AMD.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=288
Click to expand...

Using your own link, and looking at the Adobe Photoshop Retouch results:

Phenom II X6 = 18.6 secs
SB I5 2500k = 12.6 secs

Bearing in mind that lower is better, you shot yourself in the foot with that one ;)
 
Thanks all.

What is the point of buying 2500K with a H67 board?
I know for sure he will be doing mainly photoshop as he is not a pro and hasn't been using LR (which I personally adore :)).
How come a following HDD setup is going to be beneficial:
1- SSD, system, all software etc.
2- HDD, storage of all pics
Import photos to LR, by copying them to HDD (2).
Or is that suppose to happen later - import pics to SSD, do the work and than move to HDD (2)?

I think that Z68 boards would be better choice as he doesnt need a dedicated gfx card (wont utilize the power in PS, doesnt game). The only thing is that an HDMI port is a must.

I still cant understand how more RAM over CPU performance is going to improve LR speed?
I have a good old' C2D 2GHz and 4GB of RAM on win7 x64 and never saw LR use more than 1.5GB of it (although, probably haven't ever had more of it to spare ;)).

Thanks again.
 
The H67 chipset allows you to use onboard graphics.

The onboard graphics on the K series chip is better than none K series. It has HD3000 as opposed to HD2000.

Advantage of Z68 is that you can use onboard graphics, AND overclock.
It also features SSD-caching, which greatly increases HDD speed - give it a google :)
 
Cookeh said:
Using your own link, and looking at the Adobe Photoshop Retouch results:

Phenom II X6 = 18.6 secs
SB I5 2500k = 12.6 secs

Bearing in mind that lower is better, you shot yourself in the foot with that one ;)
Click to expand...

B*****D haha!!

OK you win! AMD, Pfft!! What was I thinking. Those SB chips really are good aint they, beating a six core chip is really something eh?

Anyway. My other points still stand, just get a 2500k instead of the AMD.
 
qbazdz said:
I still cant understand how more RAM over CPU performance is going to improve LR speed?
I have a good old' C2D 2GHz and 4GB of RAM on win7 x64 and never saw LR use more than 1.5GB of it (although, probably haven't ever had more of it to spare ;)).

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

It doesn't improve speed as such... it lets you work with more files at once, foe e.g. doing large exports of over 1000 raw photos. This does eat a lot of RAM and if you only have 4GB or so, then the pagefile will need to be used and this of course slows everything down.

Quoted from elsewhere:

Not sure if you have enough RAM? Just ask Photoshop. Believe it or not, it can tell you. Here’s how: Open a document that’s indicative of the type of image you normally work on. Work on the image, doing typical stuff, for about 10 minutes. Along the bottom left-hand corner of your document window, just to the right of the current document magnification readout, is the status bar. By default, it’s set to display your document’s file size, but if you click-and-hold on the right-facing triangle to the right of it, a pop-up menu of options will appear. Choose Show, then Efficiency. If the percentage shown is 100%, you’re gold, baby! That means that Photoshop is running at peak efficiency, because 100% of the time your image manipulations are being handled in RAM. If the efficiency number shown is, say, 75%, this means that 25% of the time, Photoshop ran out of RAM and had to use free hard drive space to make up for it, which means Photoshop ran much slower 25% of the time. An efficiency of 75% is pretty much as low as you want it to go. If it shows anything less than 75%, it’s time to buy more RAM. Pronto!
 
Right, ok.
Then I don't think he really needs more than 8GB.
Extra cash can be put towards an SSD, if it would really benefit him?

So far we have:
2500K
Z68 mobo
8GB of RAM
1TB F3 SpinPoint HDD
60GB SSD (Crucial? OCZ?)

Is there any point of going for a 620W PSU? or is it simply as it's on a sale?
 
Good spec.

No need for a such a powerful psu unless he/she is likely to add a discrete graphics card for gaming at a later date. Having said that at its current price its an excellent buy. Even a 400w psu would be fine.

As for an SSD, I'd say go for the ocz agility 3 as you'd be able to take advantage of the fast write speeds which should be useful with photoshop.
 
No point in Z68 unless you're getting an SSD really - the SSD caching in a main feature of it and pretty much the sole reason I'd recommend spending an additional £80 on a mobo.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £155.99
1 x Asus P8Z68-V PRO Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £150.00
1 x OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-60G) £94.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £65.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £43.99
1 x Antec 100 One Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £43.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUK) £35.99
Total : £605.94 (includes shipping : £12.50).

£490 exc VAT :)

You could cut some cost by using a cheaper Z68 mobo, but I've not seen ANY reviews for them so recommend a board that I've read to be really rather good.
 
Right... a small update as I got more details of my friend.
He will be using LR, probably less of PS now as most of the stuff can be done in LR so really any PS work will be on a single, max 1-5 pics at a time (RAW, ~10MPx).

He wants me to o/c his 2500K so we really have to get Z68 and an SSD for extra perf, as well as OEM Win7 x64 Premium.
8GB of ram is more than enough for him.
 
£50 over-budget, but no other way of getting what he wants without cutting some serious corners, and even then it will be over :p

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £155.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £144.98
1 x OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-60G) £94.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £79.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £65.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) £34.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1155/1156/1366) £19.99
Total : £673.92 (includes shipping : £10.00).

£551.60 exc VAT
 
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