Photoshop build - recommendations please

Selekt0r

Selekt0r

Selekt0r

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I've been asked to build a PC (base unit only) for a family member - mainly for Photoshop + general home/office usage. Budget max £700, but better if less little less.

Won't be overclocked at the moment, but want to provide some flexibility to do so in future. No gaming whatsoever, so I'm presuming onboard Intel HD 4600 GFX on Haswell will be OK.

I was thinking along the following lines:

Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) £55.99
Asus Z87-K Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £91.99
Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £167.99
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £67.99
Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £79.99
Western Digital Caviar Red 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD20EFRX - OEM HDD £89.99
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02733) £73.99
Total : £657.92

Any suggestions for improvements gratefully received :)
 
It all dpeends on how heavily they use photoshop.

I know that CUDA and Open GL both aid photoshop use, so a low level GPU may actually help. Whereas overclocking a CPU will not.

I think you can come down to a locked i5, a B85 motherboard and a small GPU, a 750(ti) or a R9 260.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C10D3B1K2/16G) £119.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £74.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £59.99
1 x Toshiba 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA200) HDD £56.99
1 x MSI GeForce GT 610 SILENT Low Profile 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £29.99
Total : £606.50 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Good old AMD, get lots of bang for your buck.

Just add a case.
 
Stulid,
I'd have said that the GeForce 610 is somewhat under-specced for Photoshop. In some benchmarks the Intel 4600HD actually beats it.

I'd go for a GTX750 personally, it'll give you plenty of power for Photoshop manipulation and should still perform well with Photoshop in 4-5 years time.
 
Doomedspeed said:
It all dpeends on how heavily they use photoshop.

I know that CUDA and Open GL both aid photoshop use, so a low level GPU may actually help. Whereas overclocking a CPU will not.

I think you can come down to a locked i5, a B85 motherboard and a small GPU, a 750(ti) or a R9 260.
Click to expand...

Seems like a false economy to cut back on the M/B and CPU for the sake of £50?

I'm sure a decent dedicated GPU would boost performance compared to the HD 4600, however I believe the HD 4600 is used to provide CUDA acceleration in Photoshop (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-4770k-haswell-performance,3461-3.html) so I'm willing to try it without first as one could always be added later.
 
stulid said:
The little Geforce card is just to provide a pic, not to do anything demanding.
Click to expand...

Sure - I understand the need for one in the context of the AMD option, however I think a dedicted GFX may be unneccesary for the Intel build where the onboard HD 4600 can be used and will probably be good enough.
 
Selekt0r said:
Sure - I understand the need for one in the context of the AMD option, however I think a dedicted GFX may be unneccesary for the Intel build where the onboard HD 4600 can be used and will probably be good enough.
Click to expand...

Then put a better GFX card into the build (upto £60) and it will be faster than the HD4600 and still the same price as the intel spec.
 
smilertoo said:
Double the ram to 16gb at least; photoshop performance will plummet if it starts having to use the scratch disks all the time.
Click to expand...

That much RAM will be OTT for the intended user (retired gent who edits photos for a hobby / photo club). Can always add more later if necessary. Besides, any scratch disk usage will be on SSD so performance should still be OK.

stulid said:
Then put a better GFX card into the build (upto £60) and it will be faster than the HD4600 and still the same price as the intel spec.
Click to expand...

True (and thanks for the alternative), but I'd prefer to go Intel. :o
 
Don't worry too much about the power of the graphics card unless you use features that really need it. I still use a 8800 GTX at work. :)

Even a basic card will have enough performance for the average user.

http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PhotoShop.htm

The best thing about the Mercury Graphics Engine is, it uses both OpenGL and OpenCL. Which means, you do NOT need a CUDA enabled video card from NVidia.

Let me repeat that, Photoshop CS6 itself, does not use CUDA, it uses OpenGL and OpenCL for GPU acceleration. So there are no hacks, mods, etc. to get your video card to work. All you need to do is setup PhotoShop CS6 to your your video card.

This means, you can use pretty much any of the newer video cards from AMD/ATI, Intel and NVidia. However, keep reading. There are some things you are going to need to know.

NOTE: There are some 3rd party plugins for Adobe Photoshop that use the CUDA technology. If you use any 3rd party plugins that use the CUDA technology, then you will need a NVidia graphics card.
Click to expand...
 
Right, I've got the OK to go ahead now, and have tweaked the components a little:

spec.jpg


Any final recommendations before I hit the 'buy' button?

In particular, the Teamgroup Vulcan Orange looks to be good deal for fast RAM, however why is the Orange £10 cheaper than the other colours (I can't see any difference in spec - is it just that the orange is harder to shift because it's not as popular a colour...? :confused: )
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £82.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £74.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £68.99
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C10 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (TXD38G2400HC10QDC01) £61.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 530W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £53.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £41.99
1 x BitFenix Comrade Midi-Tower - Black £29.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
Total : £626.40 (includes shipping : £11.25).



Newer designed case.
Faster RAM

Still don't get why they don not want Win8.1, i use to hate it but after a few months have come to embrace the improvements and general speed improvements.

Also put the "K" CPU back in, was that an oversight on your part?
 
16GB of memory would be better, it's amazing how quick it gets eaten up when you load up a pile of .RAW image files
 
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