Spec needed for graphics design £1800 budget

[fullmetaltony]

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

 

[fullmetaltony]

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

 

[fullmetaltony]

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

 

[fullmetaltony]

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.

 

[fullmetaltony]

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.

 

[fullmetaltony]

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.