Photoshop / Lightroom £550 build

[richyb_safc]

Hi All,

Been a while since I've been on here...I've been itching to build a PC recently and my brother in law has now given me an excuse!

Over the last few years he's gotten heavily into photography and has started to get quite busy with weddings etc, he has spent a fair bit on cameras/lenses but is still doing all of his editing on an old laptop.

He is still weighing up whether to buy a laptop, mac, pre built pc or home build. As his budget is relatively low hopefully I can show him the benefits of a home build (price, upgrade-ability, etc) with the help of you wonderful people...

He has given me a budget of £750 including a monitor. He is after a calibrated monitor which I don't know much about at all. I've assumed about £200 based on one of these, leaving about £550 for the PC...

I've tried to focus on what I think are they key components for Photoshop and Lightroom (CPU, RAM, SSD), leaving room for future upgrades to things like graphics card, a CPU cooler to allow a decent overclock, another SSD as a scratch disk (if they're still required) and maybe a decent larger HDD for storage - he's currently using an external 3TB drive which I've assumed he can transfer too and from as he's working on various albums.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of suggested improvements to this build but this is what I've got so far...

Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £173.99
TeamGroup Elite Black 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD316G1600HC11DC01) £119.99
Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £49.99
Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £39.95
Asus HD 5450 SILENT 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Low Profile Graphics Card £25.99
Zalman Z1 Midi-Tower USB 3.0 - Black £30.95
Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £77.99
Total £594.34

Again, I've tried to suit this to Photoshop and Lightroom as much as I can, I know I may have gone too far with the RAM and cut back too much on the GPU, and there are various other concerns (PSU size, case quality, etc).

Hopefully the PC I end up with gives him a nice performance boost (which I'm pretty confident about) but also leaves plenty of room for small upgrades in the future without needing big changes.

If any one has any suggestions they would be a great help!

Thanks in advance,
Rich

 

[ShivP]

Do you know what res the photo's are being edited at? Are they quite high? Often 8GB RAM is enough to edit photo's decently so you might be able to get away with that.
Only problem I can see is you would want a bigger SSD to use as a scratch disk for the photos to quickly access the one's that are being worked on. Also the BitFenix Neos case is probably a better choice, and the GPU isn't needed at all

Oh, and the PSU could be switched out for a superflower unit which are better in pretty much every way

 

[richyb_safc]

I'll find out...

300 dpi is his standard, so 8GB RAM could be more than enough? I could reduce that and add an extra SSD to use purely as a scratch disk...

That case does look nice, I'd just used Zalman before - I'll have a look at that.

So would you use no GPU at all? I had thought that but it just felt wrong I've only ever built gaming PCs before. I did read that the newer photoshops can use some processing power from the GPU, I guess this is fairly negligible if there's plenty of RAM and CPU available?

I'll look into that PSU as well.

Cheers for that, it's a great help!

 

[Doomedspeed]

What size files? Are they A5 or A0, comparatively?

300dpi on a small image (A5/A4) is simple but if he messing around with A1/A0 sized images, that's a whole different story.. I'm sure he'll know.

No GPU is needed, some aspects of PS do utilise GPU power but on your budget its better to invest in CPU/RAM.

The CPU is a good choice. As PS is single threaded the faster the CPU the better..

You can easily go under budget, with the suggestions from above.

 

[richyb_safc]

Thanks, I'll get rid of the GPU then. As I said, it just didn't feel right!

I don't think he does much above A4 or A3 but I'll check with him and update this later Today. I've reduced the RAM to 8GB for now.

I've updated my basket with the suggestions from Shivy but added an extra SSD as a scratch disk, is this worth the extra £50 or could he live with one drive plus a USB back up until he upgrades? I'm not sure how much PS relies on the scratch disk for performance...

Thanks again,
Rich

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I thought this might be useful for some of you:

https://translate.google.com/transl...r-Photoshop-und-Lightroom-1109093/&edit-text=

Edit!!



The video is in German but indicates they generated 30 jpegs at the same resolution as the RAW files. They used sRGB and 87% quality for the jpegs.

The chart says 4GB of RAM per channel was used.

The camera used was a Nikon D800.

Parts of Adobe CS are OpenCL accelerated now.

You are more likely to be RAM and storage speed limited for CC. I would make sure the scratch disk is on a fast drive.

 

[ShivP]

The v300 256gb is selling at a great price also, and everyone may say its borked with its nand but for that price not much compares (mx100 is a few £ more.) To save money go for the v300 256gb, it should reach quoted speeds anyway though ideally you'd want mx100

 

[richyb_safc]

Thanks everyone,

CAT, those graphs are really useful cheers. Looks like I'm sticking with the CPU - I'm still not 100% on the RAM though...I've knocked it down to 8GB at the minute, there's no saving buying 16GB in one go so that will leave a decent upgrade when he's got a bit more cash to spend. 8GB should still be a decent upgrade for now.

I'm still a bit confused about the scratch disk though...how much difference will he see having two SSDs rather than one initially? Can the OS disk be used as the scratch disk or can that cause problems? My current thought is that a second SSD would offer a good upgrade option, assuming using one disk to start with isn't going to limit him too much...

Here is my current basket taking into account the suggestions. Again, please feel free to tell me where I've gone wrong!!

Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £179.99
Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £59.99
Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £49.99
SuperFlower Golden Green HX 450W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
BitFenix Neos ATX Tower Black/Black £29.99
Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £77.99
Total £509.93

 

[richyb_safc]

Hello again,

I've changed this build a few times now but I'm hoping to get it fixed now so I can keep an eye on this week only over the next few weeks...

My current basket is:

Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail - £185.99
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02733) - £77.99
Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard - £61.99
TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) - £59.99
Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) - £49.99
SuperFlower Golden Green HX 450W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black - £49.99
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD10EZEX - OEM ** Single Platter ** HDD - £42.95
BitFenix Neos ATX Tower White/Red - £29.99
Kingston USB 3.0 Media Reader - (FCR-HS3) - £14.99
LG GH24NSB0 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM - £13.99
Total £587.86

I'd like to get it down to below £550 which I hope to do taking advantage of today/this week only and any voucher codes I get (assuming OcUK still send out voucher codes occasionally). I've got a month or so to buy bits so hopefully I can wait for a few good deals. If anyone has any suggestions to get some cost out please let me know though...

I still have a few questions, which hopefully someone can give me a bit of help with...

1) I've added a hard disk to use for storage, it seems silly not too when 1tb is so cheap. What would the best set up be for this?

a) OS on a HDD partition and SSD purely as a scratch disk​

b) OS on a SSD partition with the HDD purely for storage, with a clean SSD partition as a scratch disk​

c) OS and scratch disk on an un-partitioned SSD, with the HDD purely for storage​

d) Something else...​

2) I haven't included a graphics card which limits the display output to the 1xHDMI available on the motherboard. Will he still get a decent resolution output or is it worth including something cheap and cheerful like this?

3) Have I missed anything with any of the SSD, HDD or CD drive compatibility with the case? I'm not sure what effect the 7mm height has on the SSD etc. Hopefully I haven't missed anything obvious like motherboard mounting but as I haven't built anything for a while I just want to double check

4) I've swapped Windows 8.1 for 7, I had the windows 8 dev preview and it was horrific. I know they've changed it a bit since, adding a start bar etc, but is it at the point where anyone would recommend it over Windows 7?

I think that's it, if anyone has any other suggestions on the spec in general let me know. I've tried to balance it reasonably well but also focussed on the components which will hopefully give him plenty of time before a major upgrade is needed.

Cheers again everyone, hopefully I'll be building again in a few weeks
Rich

 

[ShivP]

1) I'd have the OS + scratch disk on the SSD - There should be enough room on the SSD with just the OS for the pictures being worked on and two/three programs. Then mass storage of photos can be transferred onto the HDD after they have been worked on

2) Output should be just fine, will run at 1080p fine

3) They will be fine, have fitted an SSD in the Neos myself, and a CD drive and all works (just screw in the SSD and the HDD is toolless)

4) Go for 8.1, there's a number of programs which add start menus etc, make it just like windows 7. Booting is faster, and it runs smoother overall. possible free upgrade to Win10 as well (don't quote me on this though )

This SSD is superior - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-011-SH

This power supply to save a few quid - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-098-XG - it's modular too
Will he need the CD drive for burning photos etc or will it not really be needed?

 

[richyb_safc]

Cheers again Shivy.

1) I take it that's without a partition?

2+3) noted, cheers.

4) ok, I haven't really followed it since I got rid of my PC. Sounds like it's actually a step forward though, I had the Vista and general consensus that XP -> Win7 was the best route in mind - even though I ran Vista from release myself ...
I'd forgotten about the mention of a free upgrade, that would definitely make it worthwhile!

Cheers for the SSD, just out of interest what makes it superior? I haven't heard of the manufacturer before - there aren't any reliability issues are there? Actually, the same for the manufacturer of the PSU. Have I just been out of the component loop for too long?

EDIT: Cheers for suggesting a modular PSU, having used them for my last couple of builds a few years ago I would have regretted missing that!

Yeah, he burns images to CDs so it will be needed and used quite frequently.

 

[ShivP]

Cheers again Shivy.

1) I take it that's without a partition?

2+3) noted, cheers.

4) ok, I haven't really followed it since I got rid of my PC. Sounds like it's actually a step forward though, I had the Vista and general consensus that XP -> Win7 was the best route in mind - even though I ran Vista from release myself ...
I'd forgotten about the mention of a free upgrade, that would definitely make it worthwhile!

Cheers for the SSD, just out of interest what makes it superior? I haven't heard of the manufacturer before - there aren't any reliability issues are there? Actually, the same for the manufacturer of the PSU. Have I just been out of the component loop for too long?

Yeah, he burns images to CDs so it will be needed and used quite frequently.

Xigmatek PSUs seem to be okay, however if you'd prefer there is this BeQuiet - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-073-BQ

SK Hynix have been making stuff for quite a long time iirc, seems to be a decent SSD and it's a good chunk faster which is a bonus

 

[richyb_safc]

Cheers, the Xigmatek is rated at 500W rather than 400W for the same price. I'm not sure if this is just the rating and if there is any real difference, but running further below the rated power can only help in terms of life and reliability. A quick google hasn't shown any horror stories so unless anyone wants to share one I'll probably stick with the Xigmatek.

You can't argue with more speed when you're already spending for a SSD, SK Hynix it is

 

[richyb_safc]

I've just realised he needs wireless as well. Will something like this do? It's nice and cheap but will it have any real effect on speed or signal strength vs some of the more expensive options? He does upload quite a lot so speed will matter.