About to buy "Titan Triceratop" Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz, need help configuring

Euge

Euge

Euge

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Hi all,
I'm ready to buy the Titan Triceratop Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz, but I need some help configuring it. To all you young bucks out there have mercy on me. You're dealing with a 50 something old fart :confused:

Machine will NOT be used for gaming. I need it mainly for Photoshop, net use, office etc. Processing lots of RAW files in Photoshop CS5.

To "SSD or not to SSD?"
Do I really need SSD, once my machine is switched on, it's on for the day. SSD sizes seem small to me. Is there much tweaking needed when it comes to loading apps? Would you recommend 64 or 128 Gig, Crucial or OCZ or the 80Gig Intel. For my setup am I better not bothering with SSD and going for more RAM. More on RAM later

Power Supply
Is the 650W power supply strong enough? I will be putting in a few more 1TB harddrives.

Graphics
Just going to leave it as standard (OCUK GeForce 430)

RAM
I want to upgrade the RAM. Is 8Gig enough for photo editing or should I go for 16Gig? Would you recomend The CorsairVengence Blue 16Gig.....looks good value. But I'm open to suggestions.

Motherboard
What mobo is fitted to this rig, anyone know?


Hard Drive,
Want to upgrade from 500Gig to a 1TB drive, any recommendations?

Keep in mind I'm trying to do this without spending a shed load of money on the upgrades, so best bang for buck is what I am after

Thanks for your time

Euge
 
First of all. Would you never consider throwing the parts together yourself? Gives you a lot more options and keeps costs wayyy down!

The answer to the most of those questions is really... "How much photoshopping do you do?"

How many photos would you edit at one time? What sort of photoshopping are you doing?

I myself do a lot of photography work and use lightroom and CS5, so I'm familiar with their requirements.

Always best to get a 1TB drive... there only an extra tenner on the 500GB... Samsung F3 is my choice.

Once you can answer the above question I'll be able to help you a lot more and answer the other questions.

P.S. So many people will barge in and just scream "Buy an SSD, bes thing ever." When in actual fact they have no idea what you are doing with the PC or on what level.
 
I do not own a SSD currently but my friend does and on the several occasions I visit and jump on his PC I can tell ya I do want one after seeing what his can do.

Can you get by just fine with a standard hard drive? Yep but a SSD makes the system so smooth. We both have a pretty close system and his boots faster and it just seems like every prog and browser you open is instant and smooth.

I dont see anything wrong with a recommendation of a SSD as a boot drive. Just my opinion anyways.
 
Thanks Buchanan,
I've been down the road of putting pc's together and it would work out cheaper. However the choice is overwhelming. I currently have a UCUK Titan 3yrs old P5Q mobo and Q6600 CPU 2.4 @ 3.2. It's a great machine it came prebuilt.

As for photography, semi-pro, I mainly do weddings and portrait, plus involved in a club. I shoot Canon 5Dmk2 and 1Dmk4, 99% shooting is in RAW. Quick batch processing is what I am after on that. Generally print at 15X10 on Epson 3800 for salon work. I use CS5 and ACR (no lightroom) Topaz and Nik Software plugins. I also use Photomatix Pro 4.0 for HDR. I usually shoot5 or 7 bracketed shots. This can slow things down on the pc.
 
Euge said:
Thanks Buchanan,
I've been down the road of putting pc's together and it would work out cheaper. However the choice is overwhelming. I currently have a UCUK Titan 3yrs old P5Q mobo and Q6600 CPU 2.4 @ 3.2. It's a great machine it came prebuilt.

As for photography, semi-pro, I mainly do weddings and portrait, plus involved in a club. I shoot Canon 5Dmk2 and 1Dmk4, 99% shooting is in RAW. Quick batch processing is what I am after on that. Generally print at 15X10 on Epson 3800 for salon work. I use CS5 and ACR (no lightroom) Topaz and Nik Software plugins. I also use Photomatix Pro 4.0 for HDR. I usually shoot5 or 7 bracketed shots. This can slow things down on the pc.
Click to expand...

Ah... clearly a much better photographer than I was. I was a wanabee haha!

I would say. Forget the SSD to start with and then if you feel the need for one, or images wont import quick enough... then you can always buy one and plug it in yourself (easy enough)

If your happy to go down the route pre-built, fair enough... takes the hassle out of it I suppose.

With regards to RAM. You will know the answer to this better than anyone.... does your RAM usage ever go above 80% when doing your work. You should watch it in task manager and see. If you start to use lots, then maybe 8GB would be ideal.

Personally for serious editing I would advise 8GB minimum. It's so cheap these days anyways... no excuses really.

Samsung F3 for the storage and boot drive at the moment. Depending on how many raw files you have... could get more than one, again cheap.

650W PSU is more than enough... will power plenty of drives!

If you want more ram... this is the stuff to buy http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-290-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517
 
Buchanan you are a font of wisdom.
Thanks for the advice and suggestions. I'll skip the SSD for now. Go with a couple of Samsung F3's and def get the mem you suggest.

Ah... clearly a much better photographer than I was. I was a wanabee haha!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say that I'm a better photog than the next guy. But I found the best thing I did for my photography was to take a business course. It helped me focus and develop LOL something I could sell
Anyway thanks for your advice, I'll def act on it
Euge
 
There doesn't appear to be anymore suitable hard drives on OcUK at the moment in the 1TB range. The seagate is a good drive but the price has went through the roof for some reason at nearly 50 quid!!

Just buy the F3 from elsewhere then :)... simples ;)
 
Why dont you spec what you are going to buy prebuilt with it's cost and we can see what we can build for the same outlay.....unless your deadset against building yourself.

The reason we favour that XMS RAM is that it doesnt have agressively styled heatsinks. Depending on the heatsink and layout of the mobo having those heatsinks can cause clearance issues.

I think buch has set you on the straight and narrow. Just thought you might be curious to see what we would get with our money doing it ourselves.
 
Honosuseri and Buchanan you guys are swaying me towards building myself.
My budget is £800. These are the general specs I would like:

Case: Nothing flash, but must have room for at least 4 HDD. Good cooling All fans to be included in price

CPU:Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor

CPU Cooling: Open to suggestions, but something that will keep the CPU low on temps

RAM: At least 8Gig of Corsair XMS DDR3 1600 MHz (as recommended by Buchanan) 16 Gig if possible. Or any RAM you might suggest

Power Supply: I reckon something around 650W

OS: Win7 Home premim

Graphics Card: As this is for photo edting it doesn't have to be top end. BUT I don't want it to be a bottleneck on the system

SSD: I think I should be able to include a Crucial M 128 in my budget

HDD: Something between 1 and 2 TB

Motherboard: I haven't a clue !!!!!!!!!!! But reading on here I see a lot of people suggesting I68 (I think this means it will be processor upgradeable)

Optical Drive: Open to suggestions. It doesen't have to be Bluray. But I would like it to include burning software

Misc: Arctic Silver or equivelant, Extra fans if you think I need them.

Overclocking is NOT essential as I know running 8 or 16Gig of RAM will cause problems and possibly not allow me to OC anyway.

Roll on the shopping list. If you think this should be a new post let me know


Thanks in advance for all your help
 
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That board has onboard HDMI. So there is technically no need for the graphics card. However, you did say you wanted one. It's a choice thing. I've never been a fan of onboard graphics. However it will be absolutely fine and wont affect performance at all. Also saves you 25 quid..

P.S. You also get free shipping, so knock another 12 quid off.

You will be able to overclock fine with that cooler and the the ram. I've personally used both before and both are excellent.

The dvd drive should come with an OEM copy of Nero to burn your stuff. If not, I'll post you a copy :)
 
I think buch has shown you how far your money can go. Obviously you can change lil bits around. The case is often a personal preference and the site does daily offers so if you dont order today check back and see what's on offer. You might get the RAM cheaper or the HDD you never know.

I personally in your case wouldn't bother with the GPU for the reasons buch already gave and that spec'd card is low-profile.....does the case take half height cards or is there an adapter supplied?

I think you would be wiser putting the £25 from the GPU into changing the DVD to Blu-ray as you had it on your wish list ;)

If you have any prob's or questions involving the build you know where we are......good luck
 
Buchanan0204 said:
How does this look.

Click to expand...

would say this will be fine for the ops needs and £8 cheaper, doubt he'll he aiming for the 5ghz club ;)

I'm personally tempted by the fenrir evo tho as it goes with the extreme7 colour scheme i.e black/gold, tho not sure it'll give much better performance than the tranquillo(or if it'll fit in the lian li a05).
 
honosuseri said:
I think buch has shown you how far your money can go. Obviously you can change lil bits around. The case is often a personal preference and the site does daily offers so if you dont order today check back and see what's on offer. You might get the RAM cheaper or the HDD you never know.

I personally in your case wouldn't bother with the GPU for the reasons buch already gave and that spec'd card is low-profile.....does the case take half height cards or is there an adapter supplied?

I think you would be wiser putting the £25 from the GPU into changing the DVD to Blu-ray as you had it on your wish list ;)

If you have any prob's or questions involving the build you know where we are......good luck
Click to expand...

Some very good points there. You will know yourself the case is a personal choice. Just pick any yourself really. I just threw that in there as it wasn't a gaming case and looked classy IMO of course.

Your quite right. If you ditched the GPU which isn't required, you could well get a bluray drive. Great if you have a 1080 monitor and a decent set of speakers :D
 
fowler002 said:
would say this will be fine for the ops needs and £8 cheaper, doubt he'll he aiming for the 5ghz club ;)

I'm personally tempted by the fenrir evo tho as it goes with the extreme7 colour scheme i.e black/gold, tho not sure it'll give much better performance than the tranquillo(or if it'll fit in the lian li a05).
Click to expand...

Don't see why it wouldn't fit in that case. The cooler isn't as big as others in it's class. It gave me really good temps when I worked with it a few months ago. Fins are easily bent though, just be careful when handling it.

Need to check how it compares to other coolers temps wise... should be charts somewhere. It's great for the price and as you say it matches :)
 
Thanks for the input guys, really appreciate it. The spec looks good to me. My only concern is the graphics card being "low profile". From the pic on OCUK it looks like the mounting bracket is full hieght. I do prefer to have a graphics card. On the RAM front, am I better springing for an extra 8Gig now? I know from my current setup when I bought an exrta 4Gig of Corsair XMS2 6400, 800MHz RAM I could not get it to work stable on my ASUS P5Q (probably due to the OC). Will the Gigabyte Z68XP handle all 4 dimms populated?
I hope to be ordering Tuesday. I'll keep you informed on my build progress
 
Euge said:
Thanks for the input guys, really appreciate it. The spec looks good to me. My only concern is the graphics card being "low profile". From the pic on OCUK it looks like the mounting bracket is full hieght. I do prefer to have a graphics card. On the RAM front, am I better springing for an extra 8Gig now? I know from my current setup when I bought an exrta 4Gig of Corsair XMS2 6400, 800MHz RAM I could not get it to work stable on my ASUS P5Q (probably due to the OC). Will the Gigabyte Z68XP handle all 4 dimms populated?
I hope to be ordering Tuesday. I'll keep you informed on my build progress
Click to expand...

I would personally stick with the 8GB at the moment. If you need to add another 8GB later on, then do that. However I'm pretty sure it's not needed.

No idea why it was mentioned that it was low profile. I never seen that advertised on the page, or in the description (maybe I'm missing it :() However usually with these type of cards you get a full size bracket and you can swap over. The low profile one is for media PC cases etc. Anything small form factor basically. Again though. I know I put it in the original spec list, however the onboard really would be suffice and wouldn't hold you back with anything... onboard is fine for 1080P video and the likes.

The board can support upto 32GB of memory... so it will handle all four dimms being loaded with ease. This may hinder your OC however, as your fully aware of.

I would say 8GB of RAM with a good overclock is going to be a lot better for processing raw files than 16GB of ram with no overclock. When applying textures and using topaz etc... it's all CPU.
 
I did mention the low profile gfx card. I'm still unsure as to wether it comes with a spare full height bracket or not however.......

To be honest you really really dont need it. The only downside to onboard gfx (gaming uses aside) is that it uses system RAM (you can define how much it uses in the bios). I think mine is set to 256mb or possibly 512MB (so not even 1GB). It's a HTPC so no gaming just watching HD video, web browsing etc and performs very well on my 22 inch monitor or 37 inch HDTV. To put it in perspective that £25 gfx card is essentially buying you 512MB of dedicated video RAM......you can buy 4GB of system RAM for that outlay =P

I would think for your needs it would be worth considering ditching the gfx card and the heatsink and use that £55-60ish to get an i7 cpu instead of the i5. The i7s hyperthreading will be useful for the tasks you are asking of the CPU. For gaming rigs we suggest the i5 as games dont utilise the hyperthreading so the extra expense of the i7 is largely wasted.

I'm not suggesting buchs' spec is wrong, like i said before a lot of it is personal preference. I'm just giving you food for thought ;)

When you have the funds and are ready to order start another spec me thread. As I mentioned before there are daily as well as weekly offers so any spec you are happy with now could well be improved on at the time.
 
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