Recommendations for a budget photo editing machine

[mattie]

Hi all

My current desktop is getting a bit long in the tooth, it's an athlon II x2 250 with 4Gb RAM and it's starting to grind a bit when photo editing, part of which I suspect it just the W7 Pro install getting a bit bloated and partly the hardware getting a bit dated.

I principally use GIMP but I'll perhaps be going with either PS Elements or Lightroom in near future - but unlikely to be PSP given the online-only model. Images are bog-standard DSLR DNG RAW files, if this makes any odds.

I'd appreciate advice on what I could do for around £250 to £300 that would freshen it all up a bit.

I assume the usual board, processor and RAM upgrade would be in order, and I'd appreciate advice on what to get within the budget and in light of what I could recycle from my old machine.

It's got a Radeon 5570 with 1Gb RAM on PCI-e that I would plan on using, unless there's a compelling reason to change - it's not going to be used for heavy gaming.

I've bought a microserver so I only keep working files on the machine, which suggests it might be worth going for a small SSD. Otherwise a bog-standard SATA Samsung 500Gb drive will be reformatted and go in.

Optical drive and bog-standard case and all peripherals can be reused, although I'm toying with the idea of getting a new monitor as my samsung 19" is a bit restricting - that'll be a separate budget, although advice on a decent monitor appreciated as an aside - I'm not that clued up on cost vs quality trade-off so haven't fixed a budget for a new monitor yet.

I can get a copy of W7 through wife's work, so no need to factor that in. I listen to Last.fm when working through a £40 set of 2+1 logitech speakers, so no real need for superb multi-speaker audio.

I'd also perhaps need a new power supply as the current is from a Asus barebones of slightly dubious provenance and quality.

If anyone could give me a start towards the sort of things I should be considering, that would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Matt

eta: Apols if this is in wrong forum, there seem to be a lot of requests for advice in this one?

 

[mickyflinn]

What motherboard do you have ?

 

[mattie]

Can't recall precisely, I'm afraid, but it's an Asus of around 3 years' vintage with (I think) an AM3+ socket.

I think it comes up at point of booting, so I'll make a note next time I restart (currently doing a batch file transfer but will restart afterwards)

 

[mattie]

Apols for delay in response,

Motherboard is an Asus M4A78LT-M-LE, an AM3 socket with 780G/SB700 chipsets.

Would fitting an AM3+ procesor be sensible, does any one know? I could bump up the processor and RAM and fit an SSD for not much outlay.

Cheers

Matt

 

[mattie]

Would this lot be sensible?

Gigabyte 970A-DS3 AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard - £55.99 (sale price this week) - stock code MB-385-GI
AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail - £83.99 sale this week - stock code CP-338-AM
GeIL EVO Veloce Hot-Rod Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-14900C10 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit - £59.99 - Stock code MY-145-GL
OCZ Vertex Limited Edition 100GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive - £59.99 - stock code HD-035-OC

Comes to £270 plus postage.

Is this lot likely to draw more power than an Athlon II x2 on the aforementioned motherboard, especially if I use both the SSD and my old SATA drive together? The power supply came fitted to the old Asus barebones but it's probably about 5 years old now (eta - is was reused from the build before the Athlon), might be worth investing in a new one.

 

[mattie]

If possible, could a mod move this thread to general please?

Apologies for starting it in the wrong place!