Budget photo editing pc

jaxlad

jaxlad

jaxlad

Associate
Joined
7 May 2013
Posts
60
Hello need some advice. Want to build my partner a tower to do photo editing on but have no idea what's good and bad for photo editing. Looking at spending around £600. Unless you really think more would be best. Thank you in advanced for your ideas and advice.
 
What do you need, just the case and internals?

Do you need a monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, Windows within that budget as well? (this will make things harder if you need everything)

EDIT: Also will any gaming be done on this PC?
 
Last edited:
Just the tower and every thing in it. Got my old gaming monitor which should be OK and got mouse and keyboard. Thanks guys
 
Most photo editing software isn't massively power hungry, and tends to be fairly single threaded (adobe especially loves IPC). So something like an i3 8100 should do the job. But stretching to an i5 might be worth the extra money, and you can get away with integrated graphics, so can save some money there.

This should be a pretty good place to start, I've included a fair sized SSD that should make everything nice and snappy and keep you going for a while. And there's a little room to grow. eg. space for more RAM if you need it and if you want some light gaming as well you can throw in a 1050ti or 1060.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £442.60 (includes shipping: £11.70)​
​
 
Thank you for the reply. To answer you question my budget is £600.
That system you shared looks good. Think I'll prob go i5 test for a little more power. Would I be better with more ram?? Think I read that photoshop works better with more Ram?
Cheers peeps
 
StarShock said:
Most photo editing software isn't massively power hungry, and tends to be fairly single threaded (adobe especially loves IPC). So something like an i3 8100 should do the job. But stretching to an i5 might be worth the extra money, and you can get away with integrated graphics, so can save some money there.

This should be a pretty good place to start, I've included a fair sized SSD that should make everything nice and snappy and keep you going for a while. And there's a little room to grow. eg. space for more RAM if you need it and if you want some light gaming as well you can throw in a 1050ti or 1060.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £442.60 (includes shipping: £11.70)
​
Click to expand...

As an addition to the above i would also consider upping the ram to 16gb and getting another SSD drive to standalone as a scratch disk.
Both of these will come in to play if the photo editing involves multiple layers being utilised.
 
jaxlad said:
Thank you for the reply. To answer you question my budget is £600.
That system you shared looks good. Think I'll prob go i5 test for a little more power. Would I be better with more ram?? Think I read that photoshop works better with more Ram?
Cheers peeps
Click to expand...

Worth noting that the i3 8100 is a 3.6ghz quad core CPU so will be fast enough for most Lightroom and Photoshop use
 
jaxlad said:
Thank you for the reply. To answer you question my budget is £600.
That system you shared looks good. Think I'll prob go i5 test for a little more power. Would I be better with more ram?? Think I read that photoshop works better with more Ram?
Cheers peeps
Click to expand...

basic GPU to allow for GPU acceleration - also allows display port or HDMI 2.0

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £607.03 (includes shipping: £11.10)
​
 
This is a great place to start. that i3 is comparable to my 6600k in my editing(and gaming...) rig. Have no trouble with it whatsoever for some very intensive work.
I agree with bumping the ram to 16gb as the igpu will be using some and 8gb is quick to be eaten up now with windows, 1 chrome tab and a photoshop workload.

StarShock said:
Most photo editing software isn't massively power hungry, and tends to be fairly single threaded (adobe especially loves IPC). So something like an i3 8100 should do the job. But stretching to an i5 might be worth the extra money, and you can get away with integrated graphics, so can save some money there.

This should be a pretty good place to start, I've included a fair sized SSD that should make everything nice and snappy and keep you going for a while. And there's a little room to grow. eg. space for more RAM if you need it and if you want some light gaming as well you can throw in a 1050ti or 1060.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £442.60 (includes shipping: £11.70)
​
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom