Long time since I've ventured out into the technical forums. Last desktop build I did was Socket A so I'm more than a little out of touch! The wifes PC is starting to struggle a little so we've decided to bring things up to date a little. The machines most demanding use will be photoprocessing/editing, no gaming or other heavy duty use. Current plan is to go for an i5 build with a total budget of about £600 and this is my thinking so far:
CPU - i5 2500K
MoBo - Gigabyte Z77X-D3H (over the Z77 for the additional 6GB SATA ports)
Graphics - Integrated
Memory - Probably 16GB, no real preference beyond that atm.
Cooler - Probably stock unless there's something that will give a marked improvement and fit the case without being noisy or blowing the budget. Not overly fussed about OCing but will take an easy gain if it's there.
Storage - This is where it gets interesting! Current thinking is a total of 4 drives to try and allow PS to move data around as optimally as possible:
1x SSD around the 120GB mark for the OS etc
1x SSD no smaller than 30GB purely for the OS pagefile
1x small SSD purely for PS scratch area.
1x Mechanical drive 1TB+ for data storage (With NAS for backup)
With this in mind I'm currently looking at a 120GB Samsung 840, a pair of 60GB Intel 330s and whatever 1TB drive is best value at the time I order (Will be within the next week or so)
Not sure if the drive arrangement is overkill, opinions are welcome but I've always believed that swap files etc are always best on their own physical drive to minimise the impact of virtual memory traffic on other IO and SSDs are pretty cheap for small drives. I've also never really played with RAID (too many horror stories of entire arrays being lost!), is this still relevant in the SSD age or not?
Currently planning to use my old Antec Sonata case which is equipped with an Enermax 350W PSU which i'm guessing will need swapping out for something more powerful.
Can anyone offer advice on whether there are any real bottlenecks here that are worth addressing, things I've overlooked, specific components to suit etc.
CPU - i5 2500K
MoBo - Gigabyte Z77X-D3H (over the Z77 for the additional 6GB SATA ports)
Graphics - Integrated
Memory - Probably 16GB, no real preference beyond that atm.
Cooler - Probably stock unless there's something that will give a marked improvement and fit the case without being noisy or blowing the budget. Not overly fussed about OCing but will take an easy gain if it's there.
Storage - This is where it gets interesting! Current thinking is a total of 4 drives to try and allow PS to move data around as optimally as possible:
1x SSD around the 120GB mark for the OS etc
1x SSD no smaller than 30GB purely for the OS pagefile
1x small SSD purely for PS scratch area.
1x Mechanical drive 1TB+ for data storage (With NAS for backup)
With this in mind I'm currently looking at a 120GB Samsung 840, a pair of 60GB Intel 330s and whatever 1TB drive is best value at the time I order (Will be within the next week or so)
Not sure if the drive arrangement is overkill, opinions are welcome but I've always believed that swap files etc are always best on their own physical drive to minimise the impact of virtual memory traffic on other IO and SSDs are pretty cheap for small drives. I've also never really played with RAID (too many horror stories of entire arrays being lost!), is this still relevant in the SSD age or not?
Currently planning to use my old Antec Sonata case which is equipped with an Enermax 350W PSU which i'm guessing will need swapping out for something more powerful.
Can anyone offer advice on whether there are any real bottlenecks here that are worth addressing, things I've overlooked, specific components to suit etc.
