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Building a PC for my Mom, Need Some Assisstance

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February 17, 2014 9:41:37 AM

Hey guys, I'm in need of some help. My mom's computer died a few days ago, and she decided to get a new PC instead of fixing her current one. She wants me to build the new one for her, after seeing how well my custom-built gaming PC runs. I am more familiar with the higher-end parts used for gaming PCs after doing research when ordering parts for my system (and getting help on these forums, of course.), but I'm not familiar with parts that would be used in a PC like my mom wants, so I'm going to need some suggestions.

Approximate Purchase Date: As soon as possible, preferably this week.

Budget Range: $400

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Amateur photo editing, general web-browsing. She plays Facebook games like Castleville, but that's about it as far as gaming goes. Nothing very demanding.

Are you buying a monitor: No

Do you need to buy OS: I'm not sure. Her hard drive still works, but I don't know if she can still use her Windows 7 install if it's in a different system.

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg is what I used before, but wherever I can get the best prices on the parts would be best.

Location: Elk Mound, Wisconsin, USA

Parts Preferences: None

Overclocking: No

SLI or Crossfire: Probably not

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Additional Comments: As mentioned before, this PC will be used for amateur photo editing. My mom says she wants to learn how to use Photoshop (she's been using a pre-installed Windows program so far.). That's probably the most demanding thing she'll be doing. Other than that, it's just being used for web-surfing, watching videos, and playing CastleVille and Jewel Quest.

We have a mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers, hard drive, and maybe a case that can be used. It's an older Dell case (from the Windows Vista era). I've heard that the design of Dell's cases can make it hard to find parts that fit properly or something. I'm not sure about that though, for all I know whoever wrote that didn't know what they were talking about.

If you need any extra information, please let me know.

More about : building mom assisstance

February 17, 2014 9:47:25 AM

A couple of things:

Photoshop is great, but probably way too over priced for her needs. There are a number of free or low cost applications that are fine for amateurs.

GIMP (free)
Paint.net (free)
Paintshop Pro (<$100)

As for the case, I'd say get a new one. $50 or so.
The OS will have to be reinstalled. New motherboard. And depending on exactly what it is, activation may burp.
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February 17, 2014 9:56:41 AM

Cheap computers have come very far. A lowend dual core with DDR3 should be ample as long as she's not editing extremely huge files. 4GB RAM should do it. You might want to try something with a CPU soldered on.

AMD E-350 boards are going for cheap on Newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Also Intel just came out with the J1800 for 60$!
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/msi-bay-trail-j1800i-j...

Spend the rest of the money on a graphics tablet is she's artistically inclined, they have come down in cost too.

I am using a 1.6GHz Sempron with 1GB RAM from 2005 to do graphics editing, and it works fine. CPU performance is good, no waiting for things to finish, but I am limited in the size of the files I can work with by my RAM.
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February 17, 2014 2:21:38 PM

USAFRet said:
A couple of things:

Photoshop is great, but probably way too over priced for her needs. There are a number of free or low cost applications that are fine for amateurs.

GIMP (free)
Paint.net (free)
Paintshop Pro (<$100)

As for the case, I'd say get a new one. $50 or so.
The OS will have to be reinstalled. New motherboard. And depending on exactly what it is, activation may burp.
She already has photoshop. She bought it a few years ago.

jrazor, how large would you consider "extremely huge?" She has a pretty nice camera, and the pictures she takes are at a high resolution (larger than 1920 x 1080 anyway. I'm not sure what is considered a high resolution in photography).

I forgot to mention, my mom has taken wedding pictures for people, and apparently they were all satisfied enough that they were recommending her to friends and family. She had to stop for a while because she got too busy, but I think she intends to improve her editing and photography skills to bring in a little extra money every once in a while. For now she just needs something that can be used at an intermediate level, so that she can keep improving. If she begins to consider going even further, she'll get a higher-end system.

I have a few questions as well.

How much of a difference will the amount of cores make for photo editing? Also, would you advise using an APU, or a CPU + entry-level GPU combo?

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February 17, 2014 2:36:03 PM

It is only CPU intensive when you apply a filter to an image, and the time could take 1 second with 1 core, or .25 seconds with 2 cores. Not a big deal to me because applying filters is not something that happens constantly. Professional photographers often work with huge image files and apply filters in batches to hundred of photos at a time, so there is a need for speed.

4 GB should be fine even for high res. Its when you get into RAW images and many layers that RAM gets chewed up. An APU is fine, as long as the built-in GPU supports OpenCL. if you are using GPU acceleration in Photoshop (CUDA, OpenCL) if she has a recent version that supports it, a discrete GPU might help.

As far as image quality, you're really not going to notice any difference with a discrete GPU.

If you really want to play it safe and some future proofing, for 400$ you can do an i3 build easy, excluding OS.
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February 20, 2014 10:10:29 AM

My mother just informed me that she would like to get into video editing as well. How much is she going to have to spend for an entry level video editing PC? Also, can I get some example builds to get me started?
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February 20, 2014 10:23:19 AM

This build pushes the budget a little, but I included a new HDD and case. I wouldn't re-use the old Dell case, and you can't officially re-use the Windows 7 either. I would just keep her old HDD as a secondary storage drive.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD A10-6790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-HD2 Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($77.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($59.98 @ OutletPC)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($39.92 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Green 380W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($34.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($16.98 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $474.83
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-02-20 13:22 EST-0500)
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February 20, 2014 12:08:24 PM

That looks like a pretty nice build. I just did a bit of research on that APU, and I'm pretty impressed. How long do you think it would last if my mom really gets into video editing?
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February 20, 2014 12:18:17 PM

That's hard to say, but it should hold its own for a while. I don't see how you'll get much better performance in that budget range. I could put together a build around the FX-8320, but the price will go up a bit. Let me know if there's much wiggle room in the budget. I could also put together an Intel build, but the price would go up again.
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March 4, 2014 11:26:57 AM

Sorry it took so long for me to reply, I've been extremely busy. I think I'll go with your APU build shortstuff_mt. I would like to see that FX-8320 build before I order the parts though.
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Best solution

March 4, 2014 12:11:06 PM

Sure thing. Here's a basic system built around the FX-8320.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($154.14 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($44.99 @ Microcenter)
Memory: GeIL EVO POTENZA 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($59.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 1GB Video Card ($26.99 @ Microcenter)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($37.99 @ Microcenter)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $524.04
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-04 15:10 EST-0500)
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March 4, 2014 10:36:25 PM

Alright, one last question. How large of a performance gain would there be if I went with the FX-8320 build over the 6790k build? I saw that the 6790k's single-threaded performance is about on par with the 8320, but the 8320 has 8 cores and better multi-threaded performance. I'm not sure how this would affect the things my mom will be doing with her computer. I didn't research the difference in performance between the 5450 and the 6790k's GPU, but from what I understand the GPU performance won't matter much.
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March 14, 2014 7:20:07 PM

I ended up getting the FX-8320 build. I got a Radeon 6450 instead of a 5450, though, but other than that I followed that build.

Thank you for all of the help everyone!
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