Photo editing build

andythelandy · 13 Aug 2011 at 12:47

Hi folks, its been about a year since i last built and a pc and i'm well a truly out of the loop. My Dad has asked me to find him a cpu, and motherboard and ram for him, his use for it is going to be editing raw images in softwares like photoshop no gaming atall, his budget is up to £300 but under would be good, ive had a quick look around and had thought about maybe one of the 6 core amds? but would this be worth it, I could do with some pointers.

Cheers

Reaper 392 · 13 Aug 2011 at 13:04

i wouldnt go for the AMD route. an i5 2500k will beat anything any AMD can throw at it. the intel will also overclock much further.

if you get 34 more posts you will be able to get free shipping which will make your money go a bit further, but even without you can get something fairly decent.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Asus P8P67 LE Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** B3 REVISION ** £74.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £44.99
Total : £301.37 (includes shipping : £9.50).

seeing that it wont be used for gaming i'm sure your dad wont be interested in being able to use more than one graphics card to get extra FPS in games, so i specced a cheaper motherboard that doesnt do it properly

andythelandy · 13 Aug 2011 at 14:14

Thanks for the reply, so you think the i5's are a much better option for crunching? How do the cheaper i5's fair? I mean he's coming from a old e4300 with 2gb of ram so I think maybe one of the lower clocked i5's might suffice its still going to be a massive leap in speed.

Reaper 392 · 13 Aug 2011 at 14:22

andythelandy said:
Thanks for the reply, so you think the i5's are a much better option for crunching? How do the cheaper i5's fair? I mean he's coming from a old e4300 with 2gb of ram so I think maybe one of the lower clocked i5's might suffice its still going to be a massive leap in speed.

the reason ive specced the 2500k is its the only i5 sandybridge that can be overclocked. even on the standard cooler it can happily get to 4Ghz (the phenom and older gen i5's and i7's will need a pretty decent cooler to get to that speed

also, you might want to check this benchmark of the i5 2500k vs the phenom X6 1100T:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/203?vs=288
(that site is a very useful benchmark site that will also tell you the i5 2500k is better than equivalently priced older generation i5s and i7s)

andythelandy · 13 Aug 2011 at 14:24

Only one that can be overclocked? Whaa why's that? and thanks for the link i'll have a look at that.