Spec needed for graphics design £1800 budget

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Hi, please help out a friend of mine who's been given the go ahead to get a high end PC to use for his graphic design work. The budget is £1800.
He needs everything with the following specifics:
Monitor needs to be 27" at least
He'll need Win 7 OS and also Office 2010
He's going to be using Autocad 2010 and Adobe CS5, often both running concurrently.

He's also a gamer, but his primary use of this PC will be strictly for work, with Forza 4 out in a few days he wont be off his 360 in his spare time anyway.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to help out, not sure if he'll be ordering from OCUK as his boss is looking to lose some cash if I understand it correctly. But I'll do what I can to convince him :)
 
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Depending on the type of Design work he's doing, colour reproduction could be very important, thats why I went with the superior monitor, using IPS screen, OPs post gave the impression the main use is work, with gaming being secondary, hence I sacrificed the 580 for the 560 and went with the better monitor. Obviously up to OP/OPs friend which he'd prefer.
 
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I'll have to get him to investigate the IPS screen and what IPS is. Thanks for the specs though. I predict he'll go for something along the lines of Reaper's spec as there's another mate with a 580 rig prodding him in that direction. lol
Thanks again guys
 
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Thanks guys, he doesn't think the type of work he's doing at the moment would justify the IPS screen (interesting reading the review of the Dell screen though).
He's put this spec together (pleased to report he's buying from OCUK, result). Anything you can see wrong with it? (apart from the fact the case bundle is OOS right now, so that'll need to be changed), MS Office is OOS on OCUK so he's going to pick that up locally.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game**
£449.99
Samsung S27A350H 27" Widescreen LED Monitor - Glossy Black
£259.99
Corsair PC Starter Bundle 3000c - 650D Case / TX 650W V2 PSU / H60 CPU Cooler (Cooler Half Price)
£246.97
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail
£169.99
Corsair Vengeance Blue 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9B)
£95.99
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050)
£79.99
Gigabyte Z68A-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
£72.98
OCZ Vertex 2 50GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTX50G)
£64.99
LG CH10LS20 10x BluRay-ROM / 16x DVD±RW Lightscribe Drive - Black (Retail)
£47.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS)
£44.99
Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 (3 User) - Retail (KL1837UXCFS)
£21.43
Logitech K200 Media Keyboard (920-002733)
£12.98
Akasa Premium 2m v1.4 HDMI Cable with Gold Plated Connectors. - 3D, Ethernet & 4K x 2K Resolution Support. (AK-CBHD01-20)
£11.99
Blaze M0602 Laser Mouse - Black
£10.99

Total :
£1,617.91

He's looking to order today
 
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That monitor is only 1080p... whilst it's good, when i had it, i felt a little cheated by it's res compared with the dell equivalent. It was quite noticeable as everytihng is jus quite big on it... running ps3 and xbox off it is awesome though, thats my 2p
 
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change the graphics to one of these:
Gainward GTX 580 good edition £372
MSI GTX 580 Twin Frozr II £384
Gigabyte GTX 580 OC special edition £390

get the i7 2600k over the i5 2500k if the graphics programs support hyperthreading (i'm 99% sure they do)

use this windows + hard drive bundle to save ~£10: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-000-OP&groupid=33&catid=1963&subcat=

get two lots of the Gskills ripjaws X ram. same price and performance, but will be compatible with air coolers if you decide to use one in the future

use the cheapest HDMI cable you can get your hands on, assuming that its the latest version that supports HDMI 1.4 or whatever it is (there is literally no difference between cheap and expensive cables)

use the money you have saved to get:

a decent motherboard (that gigabyte one you selected has pretty bad build quality, and not all of the Z68 features that will help you immensely)

a bigger, newer SSD if you can afford one:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-009-CR
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-008-CR


and if you want you could also go for the case + antec 650W modular PSU + antec Khuler 620 separately
 
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Agree with the above post.

a newer ssd would be good!

dont rush into buying, make sure you have explored all options as you may live to regret it!
 
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change the graphics to one of these:
Gainward GTX 580 good edition £372
MSI GTX 580 Twin Frozr II £384
Gigabyte GTX 580 OC special edition £390

get the i7 2600k over the i5 2500k if the graphics programs support hyperthreading (i'm 99% sure they do)

use this windows + hard drive bundle to save ~£10: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-000-OP&groupid=33&catid=1963&subcat=

get two lots of the Gskills ripjaws X ram. same price and performance, but will be compatible with air coolers if you decide to use one in the future

use the cheapest HDMI cable you can get your hands on, assuming that its the latest version that supports HDMI 1.4 or whatever it is (there is literally no difference between cheap and expensive cables)

use the money you have saved to get:

a decent motherboard (that gigabyte one you selected has pretty bad build quality, and not all of the Z68 features that will help you immensely)

a bigger, newer SSD if you can afford one:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-009-CR
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-008-CR


and if you want you could also go for the case + antec 650W modular PSU + antec Khuler 620 separately

Thanks Reaper, great advice there, have passed it on. I hope he takes it, I would.
 
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Design dependent it would be beneficial to have a monitor that is good for colour reproduction. However it would need to be colour calibrated if the screen was going to be used for retouching and print based work. Might be a good call to go dual display set up? As you mentioned running the programs concurrently. If colour isn't a huge factor two cheaper 24" displays?
 
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I don't know exactly what he does, I game with him regularly on the 360 and me might have told me sometime when I wasn't paying attention (oops). But he was quickly dismissive of monitor quality being needed for his work, so fair enough there.
 
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Design dependent it would be beneficial to have a monitor that is good for colour reproduction. However it would need to be colour calibrated if the screen was going to be used for retouching and print based work. Might be a good call to go dual display set up? As you mentioned running the programs concurrently. If colour isn't a huge factor two cheaper 24" displays?
 
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If he is spending time on AutoCAD and other design software it might be worth looking in to the lowend range of the Nvidia Quadro cards Nvidia Quadro cards This would impact the potential game playing. it really depends on what he is doing on AutoCAD and the complexity of the drawings like 3D work?

Also 90% of Autodesk products don't support multi threading unless your rendering so clock speed is more important then number of cores.
 
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Hey guys, it was me that fullmetal was trying to help out with specs etc so massive thanks to him and you guys for helping me choose my ultimate work/gaming pc lol.

its been a long evening and i have got everything apart from CS5 installed on the beast now so when i have woken up in the morning and had a nice strong coffee i will update you with the spec i went for in the end and show some piccys etc of my build. Its looking a little untidy at the mo, but tomorrow i will be running some cables round the back of the case and tieing the rest up to make it look more presentable.

Its been a lot of fun doing this but i will not hesitate to say that i was bricking it too lol, especially when i was installing the CPU, my wife said it looked like i was trying to diffuse a bomb........

Anyway, im tired its been a long night, but thanks again for all your help, will update tomorrow.
 
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Nice one Jez, so glad you're happy with it, get those pictures uploaded mate, we all love looking at the fruits of a build.
I've been following General Hardware forum for nearly a year now and there are countless people that the GH regulars have helped out with choosing the right spec. They all do this for free, and I'm blown away with how generous they are, long may OCUK General Hardware forum continue.
 
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