Spec me a photography build...£1500 (maybe Light gaming too?)

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I'm currently typing this out on a 2015 MBP - i7 2.2ghz/16gb 1600mhz /1.5gb intel iris pro/250gb SSD - Photoshop and Lightroom CC run fine but Lightroom can be a little choppy.

My budget is approx £1500 and I need everything.

Ideally, I would love a big 30+ inch monitor (Love the Idea of a 34"), SSD for scratch disk, SSD for OS and a big HDD to store files. I'd love a GPU that could game but I'm not going for 100+ FPS at 4k.
Also... is 16GB Ram enough nowadays? or should I be aiming for 32GB?
Am I right in thinking Intel would be a better choice? I've been googling it for some time and from what I can gather, an overclocked i7700k seems to be a favourite. Or is there a better CPU? Maybe an overclocked i5? Do I even need an OC'd build?

At the same time, I wouldn't mind a little bit of gaming if possible. It won't be AAA titles as I have an Xbox one X and even then, I barely touch that at the moment. It's an added bonus if I can play a few games on it though since I have a steam library with a few games in it from years gone by.

I was torn on getting a second hand 27" iMac with the fastest CPU I could find but a custom built PC would fare me better. Or am i wrong there?

Will m2 SSDs for certain things be that much better than standard SSDs?
It's been a long time since I've used a pc outside of work so I'm really not too up to date with current hardware.

I may be able to stretch a little more than £1500 if it means I will see noticeable performance gains but bonus points if I can get it for 1500 or less.

Oh...probably a biggie here...but I have no idea how to build a PC. There may be one or two people near me who can probably help me out but if not, would it just be a better idea to buy a prebuilt system?



Thank you
 
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Thank you for the replies.
I'm so used to just use the retina display on this MBP that I don't know a whole lot about which screens are best.

Photography isn't my full-time job but I do make a little bit of money on the side.
I only photograph dogs so it's a bit of a niche market anyway :)

Would the AMD build fare me better than an intel?
I want to squeeze as much as I can out of it for as long as possible (I won't be upgrading everytime something new comes out) so would an OC benefit me?
Also, would it make sense to cram another 16gb of ram in there?

I might also post this in one of the other forums as I see a lot of people asking for spec builds there too so the more knowledgeable people I can ask the better.
Thanks.
 
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I shoot with a 1dx so raw files are approx 20-25mb. All imported into LR, adjustments etc then one at a time over to PS, more adjustments, save and back into LR. Once I've done them all I then export. I don't ever batch process. The closest I do on a few pictures at a time is copy & paste adjustments on a few photos but then as the photos change I go back to doing it one at a time.

Am I right in thinking the 7700k is old tech now and it would be silly to buy into? Its extremely unlikely I'm going to venture into video anytime soon either so I feel like all the extra cores would just be overkill.
 
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Thank you for your input. I have so many questions! I wish there was somewhere near me (Bournemouth) that I could go in to and ask them all. Hopefully, Adobe software will one day make use of more cores than it does right now. I also thought that Adobe stuff favoured Intel or is that just a myth?

thanks.
 
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