Photo Editing/Gaming PC Build

[janicskovsky]

I'm looking to build my first computer soon and was looking for some opinions on my component choices. I will be using this for Photo editing and gaming predominantly. My current laptop struggles at the moment to run programs like Photoshop while working with several quite big files.

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Corsair H55 57.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 2GB WINDFORCE Video Card
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Optical Drive: LG UH12NS30 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer
Card Reader: Akasa Interconnect Pro 5.25 Inch Card Reader

I am not sure about whether to go for a 4770K or get the locked version. Oveclocking is something that I may look into in the future but not much at the moment. If I were to go with the K, would it be alright to use the stock cooler until I decided to overclock? For me there is only a £20 ($33) difference in price. Thanks in advance for any help on the matter.

 

[dacads]

For £20 I would go with the 4770k as you can overclock now or in future. Yes of course it's ok to use the stock cooler until you overclock. However I would go with an air cooler such as the K2 Mount Doom instead of that AIO

 

[varkanoid]

For photo editing the more memory the better.

 

[janicskovsky]

Thanks for your replies!

However I would go with an air cooler such as the K2 Mount Doom instead of that AIO

I will look into that cooler, I haven't looked the CPU cooler as much as the rest of the build as Overclocking wasn't a huge issue for me until I saw the price difference.

For photo editing the more memory the better.

Would 16GB not be enough? I have read that more is better but thought I would start with 2x8 (rather than 4x4) and then I would be able to double up if I found that I needed more or wished to upgrade in the future.

 

[korgtronix]

I would change the black hard drive I can't see it being worth the premium over the blue or Seagate Barracuda drives when it will be mostly used for storage.

 

[janicskovsky]

I would change the black hard drive I can't see it being worth the premium over the blue or Seagate Barracuda drives when it will be mostly used for storage.

My reasoning behind the Black over the Barracuda (or other WD ones) was I am going to be transferring/accessing etc a lot of pretty big photo files fairly regularly and saw that it was over twice the speed as moving multiple files than the Barracuda. Is this not true or worth it? Thanks for the input.

 

[Danny75]

My reasoning behind the Black over the Barracuda (or other WD ones) was I am going to be transferring/accessing etc a lot of pretty big photo files fairly regularly and saw that it was over twice the speed as moving multiple files than the Barracuda. Is this not true or worth it? Thanks for the input.

For around the same price, you can get a 250GB SSD, and a 2TB Barracuda, and keep the files you're working on, on the SSD, until they are ready to store. That is the even better/faster (and quieter) option, imo.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD2003FZEX) HDD £109.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £67.99
Total : £187.58 (includes shipping : £8.00).





YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £119.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
Total : £189.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).




Even if you need to transfer already stored files back to the SSD regularly, for more editing, I doubt you would notice much speed difference. The Barracudas of today are very close to the Caviars speed-wise. I wonder if what you came across was slightly old info, possibly? Regardless, the above is what I'd personally do.

 

[janicskovsky]

For around the same price, you can get a 250GB SSD, and a 2TB Barracuda, and keep the files you're working on, on the SSD, until they are ready to store. That is the even better/faster (and quieter) option, imo.

That's interesting, I hadn't considered doing it this way! Though the only problem I could see is that I work with Lightroom which reads the file path in order to access them. Would constantly moving them backwards and forwards everytime I wanted to view them in Lightroom (and potentially do more editting) be more hassle than it's worth? I will definately look into this set up though.