Photoshop rig

Devrij · 28 Jun 2012 at 11:12

Hi guys, I'm a bit out of the loop when it comes to pricing and value, and I'm going to build my gf a little photo editing rig so she doesn't have to use mine. It won't be used for gaming at all, so the gpu is just to assist in photoshop.

What I have already:
midi tower case (old NZXT beta)
monitors

What I'm after:

Doesn't have to be lightning quick, and I'm trying to keep it cheap, but I don't want it to be sluggish either. Something balanced in terms of budget and performance. I'm trying to keep it under £400 if possible, and am happy to consider AMD as well as intel, but I'm more familiar with intel overclocking.

This is what I have so far, but I'm not really sure how much gpu power is needed for photoshop work (she doesn't do loads of batch editing or big filters) so I left that out for now.

That brings it to £340, so £60 for a gpu. I'm debating sticking W8 consumer preview on there until we could afford a copy of W7, just to keep the short term budget under £400, but if there's a way to keep it under budget with an OS included and not too big a performance hit then I'm all ears.

Thanks!

arad85 · 28 Jun 2012 at 11:21

On CS5 and below, the GPU is only used for 2D manipulations like rotation etc. Onboard graphics will do (and save you money). CS6 introduces limited graphics card support fro things like liquify (IIRC). Look for a mobo with onboard graphics support and stretch to an i5 if you can.

Devrij · 28 Jun 2012 at 11:38

Really? Well that's something I didn't know. So I could just substitute an i5 for the i3 in this and I'm good? Z68 allows use of IGP and overclocking am I right?

mp260767 · 28 Jun 2012 at 11:38

if your not in a rush wait for the new ivybridge i3's to be released, the onboard graphics is supposed to be pretty decent.

if you can't wait, maybe consider going for a 1tb rather than a 2tb hard drive and one the H61 matx motherboards (Asus P8H61-M LE/USB3 is about £48), no real point getting the z68 as the i3-2120 wont overclock.

if the drop to the 1tb drive and h61 mobo is acceptable you could up the processor from the i3-2120 to the ivybridge i5-3450, cost would be £372.

Devrij · 28 Jun 2012 at 11:43

Ah, actually I forgot I'd be using dual monitors, so I would need a GPU, but something like a 5450 would cut it for that I guess. Brings the total to £525 with OS. Hmmmmm, I think I'd have to trim it down and stick with the i3 for now, which gives me £446. Any ideas on keeping the cost of the mobo down? If I don't need to use the IGP or have dual PCI-Ex16 slots there must be a cheaper option that still allows overclocking?

mp260767 · 28 Jun 2012 at 11:53

what are you looking to overclock ?, the i3-2120 will not overclock only the "K" series processors overclock.

the "K" sandybridge will overclock via p67/z68/z77 mobo's.

includes a 64gb ssd for the o/s and 1tb for data :

1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) £69.98
1 x Samsung 64GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC064D/EU) £59.99
1 x Sapphire HD 6570 Ultimate Edition 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express SILENT Graphics Card £49.99
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1333C9DC) £37.99
1 x MSI H61M-P31-G3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £35.99
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £32.99
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-7280S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
Total : £404.90 (includes shipping : £10.00).

Devrij · 28 Jun 2012 at 12:04

I know the K series chips are fully unlocked, but I thought the non-K chips still allowed you to tweak a few multipliers, albeit not much.

That spec would push it to just about £400 with an OS, and in fact I'd probably swap the gfx for a 5450 since they're so cheap. Might then swap the H61 board for a different chipset so I could drop in an i5 later on and overclock it. Perfect! Cheers dude

arad85 · 28 Jun 2012 at 12:53

Pointless overclocking the multipliers. You get a few % at best and at worst you'll get nothing. K series all the way for overclock. If you're thinking about upgrading the processor go for Z68/Z77 as that will support IvyBridge.

I'd agree with SSD and I've just added a second SSD for my data store which has improved lightroom performance significantly. That's certainly an upgrade you can do later though...