£500 ish Photoshop + Casual Gaming

ssmacc · 16 Sep 2014 at 10:06

Hello All,

A friend of mine is in the market for a new PC, he's a professional photographer and will be using this mainly for work (Photoshop and lots of batch editing of large photos's). However, he'd also like to do some recreational gaming on it...

I've spec'd the below as a starting point, I went AMD but I'd guess Intel would be faster, but a little dearer?

His budget is around £500+VAT (I'm sure he could throw in a little more if it would be worth it) I'm a little behind on the latest tech. so feel free to completely overhaul the below...

Cheers

tamzzy · 16 Sep 2014 at 12:15

if he could spend a bit more, i'd get this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x VTX3D Radeon R9 280 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLYD316G2133HC11ADC01) £129.95
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £74.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £56.99
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £43.99
1 x Raijintek Arcadia Mid Tower USB 3.0 Case - Black £24.95
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £13.49
Total : £761.32 (includes shipping : £12.50).

failing that...this instead:
YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D Radeon R9 280 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320E Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £104.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £74.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-UD3P AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £65.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £56.99
2 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £55.99 (£111.98)
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £43.99
1 x Raijintek Arcadia Mid Tower USB 3.0 Case - Black £24.95
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £13.49
Total : £682.34 (includes shipping : £12.50).

compared to your original spec, the amd spec has:
a 970 mobo instead of a 990x (you lose sli/xfire...not a big issue given what the rig is supposed to do)
better psu
256gb mx100 ssd instead of a 128gb evo
cheaper ram (amd based systems don't benefit as much from fast ram like intel haswell)
with the cost savings, added a aftermarket heatsink for overclocking straight away
chucked in a dvd-rw for good measure
£20 cheaper than ur spec ;p

ssmacc · 16 Sep 2014 at 13:14

Looks good cheers, I'll run the spec by him.

tamzzy · 16 Sep 2014 at 15:02

forgot to mention, check which version of photoshop he's using. the latest one supports open cl. the older ones dont (only cuda).
if he's using programmes that support cuda only, then a nvidia gpu would be more suitable for him.

McGraw · 16 Sep 2014 at 17:47

Definitely push for the 256gb drive. I like the extra space to work on my photos and when I've finished I move them to the mechanical drive.

My pc is a joy to use with Photoshop so I'd thoroughly recommend the intel CPU.

Glad I went 16gb too as a decent panorama from RAW files can be pushing 14gb of usage.

I'm looking forward to seeing what improvements a discrete GPU will bring.