Help needed photo editing pc spec?

Capri18

Capri18

Capri18

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12 Jan 2014
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4
Afternoon all, first of hopefully many post on this forum as I'm looking to get into building my own systems.

My better half is really into her photography and has recently started shooting in RAW to do post production on her shots, trouble Is our old toshiba laptop is rubbish and can handle the files.

What I need advice on is a spec to aim for,mI'm thinking in the region of £800 for the tower itself, i will also need to purchase a screen (will need to be a fairly good one) a mouse, keyboard and operating system (windows 7 preferably). The computer will mainly be used for photo editing, possibly some video editing too. Im not really a hardcore gamer but it would be benificial to have that power available.

Thanks for reading
 
You pretty much just need a decent processor, 8GB of more of RAM, an SSD and a basic graphics card.
 
Well here's a start, but not including the monitor, keyboard, mouse as you said;

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £169.99
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Boost OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card £143.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD316G1600HC9DC01) £115.99
1 x MSI Z87-G43 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard - FREE Alpenfohn Civetta Cooler!! £86.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £73.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02733) £67.99
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £65.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
1 x BitFenix Comrade Midi-Tower - White £26.5
1 x Samsung SH-118AB/BEBE SATA 18x DVD-ROM (Black) - OEM £12.95
Total : £838.46 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Pro's:
16gb RAM
Nice processor (overclockable)
Free cooler! :D

Con's:

Over budget
Not a particularly strong motherboard
No monitor, keyboard, mouse etc
Budget case
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 270X DEVIL 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £169.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard with *FREE COOLERMASTER SEIDON 120V COOLER £157.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLD316G2133HC11ADC01) £129.95
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £79.99
1 x BitFenix Ronin Tower Case - Black £69.95
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £994.43 (includes shipping : £8.00).



kind of done a ether in terms of blowing the budget, i7 gives you the extra 'power' for the video editing etc should the programs you/you other half use that utilize hyper threading. the gpu comes with 2 coupons for 5 free games(bf4 plus ruby reward) which you can sell to recoup some of the cost. you could knock back the motherboard as well.
no os included as ms do 90 days free trial for windows 8, you can save up money and buy the os once the trial finishes.
 
250GB SSD would be ideal, to provide plenty of room for her favourite editing programs as well as room to work on editing several large files, until they are ready to send to the storage HDD. Not that you couldn't get away with a 120GB (well, around 70GB after Windows, updates and drivers and some utilities are installed) depending on the programs she will use. But it will just give her more room and flexibility.

Nvidias are generally recognized as being better for video editing, in general, due to some programs making good use of CUDA. The new GTX 750's are expected to be released on the 18th February. So I'd wait and see their price. That should sort you out for editing and a bit of gaming, unless you don't mind spending more on a GTX 760 already available, or a slightly older GTX 660. I have also heard that the older Fermi models (e.g. GTX 500 series) are even better for video editing. They won't be as good for gaming though.

16GB RAM would be ideal but you can get away with 8GB for now, to get other things (like a 250GB SSD) into the budget.

It's a "K" (overclockable) chip, but it's at the same price right now as the non-K's. If you can't get an i7-4, then an i5-4 (i5-4670K/non-K) is your next best bet.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £143.99
1 x MSI Z87-G43 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard - FREE Alpenfohn Civetta Cooler!! £86.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
1 x Avexir Core Blue Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CW) - Blue Light £49.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £47.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
Total : £716.51 (includes shipping : £8.00).




And then monitor/Windows. Don't know how big of a screen you'd/she'd like but imagine you'd want an IPS of good quality, and the larger IPS ones are expensive. This is a 23" of good quality that I've tested and the colours are great right out of the box:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus SonicMaster MX239H 23" Widescreen Ultra Slim Bezel LED Monitor - Black with Bang & Olufsen ICEpower Speakers £209.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02733) £67.99




This is a cheaper IPS, can't vouch for its quality:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Iiyama Prolite X2380HS-B1 23" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £129.95




Keyboard and mouse I just tend to go for the cheapest that will do the job. So don't have any to really recommend. :)
 
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