Help needed for pc part choice

[PlanetPenwith]

Hi

Im a newbie on this forum and would like some help with choosing parts for a PC. Im a photographer and will be getting the new Nikon 36mp D800. I will be using Photoshop CS5. What sort of desktop power would help me with my editing?

Im new to pc builds so im hoping experts like you may be able to help me...power unit, processor, motherboard, graphic card etc etc

Would really appreciate any help please, thank you for looking

Myke

 

[keynes]

Morning,
What is your budget?

 

[PlanetPenwith]

Apologies, I forgot to add that! £1000 - £800 approx for the pc the rest for a 27" monitor...or unless you can advise me othertwise

 

[Frank100]

Hi,

I would say you've got lots of choice considering your budget. I use a bit of Photoshop CS5 at work and it's not particularly taxing my four/five year old MacPro, which is a dual Xeon system. Add to that you lose a little performance running Windows on a Mac.

You could build a PC round either AMD or Intel. You wouldn't need a particularly high end graphics card but presumably you would want to be backing up your work onto a second disk. Do you already have a disk you back up work to? If not a second internal one is one option and an external USB one is another.

Here are a couple of prospective builds for you to consider. They offer plenty of capability for the price. I've just focused on the PC for under (or about) £800. Also there are many options available to you, these aren't the only specs you should consider.

Here's an all AMD/ATI one: -

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 430 BLACK CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD FX-8350 Eight Core CPU (4.00GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3+)
Motherboard
ASUS® M5A99X EVO R2.0(DDR3, USB3.0, 6Gb/s,CrossFireX/SLI Win 8 Ready!)
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1GB AMD RADEON™ HD7770 - DVI,HDMI,2 mDP - DX® 11, Eyefinity 3 Capable
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE AMD CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £770.00 including VAT and delivery.

Unique URL to re-configure: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/quotes/amd-bulldozer-top-spec-pc/gSAZksh2a3/


Here's an Intel/Nvidia one: -

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 430 BLACK CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-3770 (3.4GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z77-M: MICRO-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 650 - DVI, HDMI, VGA - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £821.00 including VAT and delivery.

Unique URL to re-configure: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/quotes/intel-ivy-bridge-pc/vkwdLQtXgE/

You could drop this build down to £760 inc VAT if you dropped down to an i5 but I would suggest the i7 offers better longevity for work use.

There's no reason why you couldn't swap the graphics cards about and have an Nvidia on the AMD build and the ATI card on the Intel one.

I've gone with a pretty basic case for these builds, you might fancy a bigger, flashier case.

I'd probably go with an AMD build if it were me. At work I've bench-marked an 8 core 3.6GHz AMD on the Sabertooth board and it quite comfortably outperformed an HP off the shelf PC with an i7 2600 processor in it (hyper-threading enabled). This was on CPU processing tasks of various types. That makes me think the 8 core 4.0GHz is going to be pretty good.

Have a play with the system builder and maybe post some of your builds back to the forums for people to comment on.

 

[PlanetPenwith]

Hi Frank,

Many thanks for your help, much appreciated. I will keep in mind the AMD system you suggested. I will be working with 75mb RAW files so I think the system will be nice and fast for me. Best wishes to you