Photoshop and VM machine

stuart38 · 10 Mar 2008 at 21:33

Sorry to do this but I am so out of date with my knowledge of current hardware. I need to upgrade from my AMD 3700+ shuttle system and have a few specific requirements.

Machine will be used for (in priority order):
- Email internet and all the usual stuff
- Photoshop CS3, usually ~30 images loaded into memory at once
- 1 or possibly 2 VM's when working from home - running enterprise software; IBM MQ, TIBCO EMS, TIBCO Administrator, several databases Oracle, MS SQL etc
- Video editing from digital camcorder in adobe premier pro
- Playing music
- Would like to run a virus scanner (I usually dont as they are too resource hungry)

Must be 64 bit as I would ideally like >4GB ram, probably 8GB (not sure on OS yet but will be MS)

I May consider a server spec machine as I have been tempted by the HP ProLiant ML350 G5 - 2 x Quad-Core Xeon E5420 2.5 GHz with free processor and ram upgrades to 2GB for £1000 leaving me to spend about 300 on disks and some extra ram. However the price of FBDIMM ram is quite high and the fact it only has a PCI Express x8 graphics slot is a worry as Im not sure how it would handle photoshop or video editing?

If anyone has any suggestions on what I should look at buying I'd appreciate it. I don't ideally want to buy overpriced extreme cpu's and I dont think??? I need SLI Crossfire or even the latest and greatest graphics cards to run photoshop slickly (please tell me if I'm wrong) but I would like dependable quality and as much future proofing as you can get with a PC!

Appreciate any assistance

Stuart

stuart38 · 11 Mar 2008 at 07:02

I forgot to add that I will probably be adding a second monitor to my PC (maybe a 24" dell) and any graphics cards would need to be able to cope with this. I don't need it to play games though!

semi-pro waster · 11 Mar 2008 at 07:42

This is quite well under the budget but includes a decent quad-core based system, it has 8gb Ram, 3 hard drives (one for boot and two that you could use as a striped or mirrored array). The graphics card is one I don't know too much about but it has 512mb Ram and ATI graphics cards are often thought to have slightly higher image quality although that might be more illusory than real.

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PQ PC2-6400C5 (2x2GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit (F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ) £49.99
(£58.74) £99.98
(£117.48)
Asus P5K-E WiFi Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £88.99
(£104.56) £88.99
(£104.56)
Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7200S 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£19.96) £16.99
(£19.96)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £133.99
(£157.44) £133.99
(£157.44)
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKS) £54.99
(£64.61) £164.97
(£193.83)
Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Gun Metal Black) £78.99
(£92.81) £78.99
(£92.81)
Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £22.99
(£27.01) £22.99
(£27.01)
Sub Total : £726.88
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £21.72
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £131.00
Total : £879.60

stuart38 · 11 Mar 2008 at 09:45

How does this look?
I read a few reviews on the differences between the p35 and x38 chipsets and figure I dont need the extra gfx related features of the x38 boards.
The Dell screen is a bit of an impulse purchase so would appreciate any comments on how good it is or if I should look at any others around the same price. it will mainly be used for photoshop so needs to be good but doesnt need to have the fastest response time in the world

semi-pro waster · 11 Mar 2008 at 10:27

The most obvious issue is that the Ram needs 2v+ and the motherboard will supply 1.8v by default unless there is a recent bios update to fix that, you can get round it but it is a bit more hassle. Another option is to go with the G.Skill that I picked initially because it boots at 1.8v and up.

You don't really need the AS5 since the retail heatsink will come with thermal paste pre-applied.

Other than that it should all work together fine.

chris74 · 11 Mar 2008 at 10:55

Yeah drop the artic silver unless you plan buying a third party cooler or you decide that your going to overclock the q6600.

With regards the monitor i dont know an awful lot about that particular model except to say that I have the dearer 2407wfp. What strikes me is that you state that your main use will be photoshop in which case i would choose a monitor that provides better colour accuracy rather than size. Perhaps read some reviews and pick the monitor that would best suit the needs required of it.

Its obviously your call on the case but I'd personally rather have the corsair 620 and perhaps a cheaper case such as the Coolermaster CM-690 or Lian-li pc7. Oh why not look at the Asus p5k-e wifi mobo?. Its a great board and I believe it can be purchased elsewhere for under £88.

Just my 2 pennys. Either way im sure what you have would be more than capable of doing what you have in mind.