I7 860 + Radeon 5850 for running Photoshop CS4

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Within the next month or so

BUDGET RANGE: <$1,500

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Photoshop CS4, Lightroom, Excel, Web

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: keyboard, mouse, speakers, optical drives, hard drive, wireless network card

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: Newegg (US)

PARTS PREFERENCES: n/a

OVERCLOCKING: No

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: No

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1080

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Looking to build a system that can run CS4 efficiently and doesn't make a ton of noise. Don't really care about having a system with a lot of bling and I won't really be playing any games on it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are the parts I'm looking at:

Monitor:SAMSUNG P2370 High glossy black 23" 2ms(GTG) Widescreen LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 DC 50000:1(1000:1) - Retail ($264.99 at Newegg)

Case + PSU: Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply - Retail ($109.99 at Newegg)

CPU: Intel i7 860($289.99 at Newegg)

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD4P or ASUS P7P55D ($169.99 at Newegg)

Memory: OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Voltage Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G1600LV6GK - Retail ($129.99 at Newegg)

Video Card: ATI Radeon 5850 ($259.99) - if I can find one that becomes available, I'm not in a huge rush

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I currently have a Thermaltake Xaser III V2000A case that I can reuse and just get a new power supply (I think mine right now is 450watts), but I'm kind of inclined to get a case that's smaller and more quiet. Is that pointless or should I just get a new PSU and quieter fans?

For the hard drive, I currently have a SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drive and a Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive (backup drive currently). Should I buy a new hard drive for loading the OS and programs? Am I going to have a bottleneck in the speed of the Samsung drive? I don't really need the extra space, just worried about speed.

Any thoughts or anything you would change?

Thanks

Is there a reason you want the Radeon 5850 if you're not playing games? I recently built a PC for photography, so mostly running LR2 and CS4. I got a cheaper video card and placed the money I saved towards, i.e. an IPS screen.

I'll be happy to share my parts list with you if you want.

^Totally agreed, best answer so far.

Thanks for the feedback so far.

era86: There wasn't any reason in particular I was looking at that power supply other than the fact that it came with that case. I thought 500w seemed low but it didn't seem like my power needs would be quite as high since I'm not using SLI or overclocking. Is the Spinpoint F3 going to be significantly faster than my Spinpoint F1?

Jidonsu: No reason in particular other than it's a new card that seemed to be getting decent reviews. I was under the impression CS4 made good use of the graphic card which was the reason I was looking for a good graphic card. I'd love to see the list of parts you just put together.

Outlander_04: What Quadro graphic card would you recommend in its place? The main reason I was looking at the 860 over the 920 was because of that Anandtech review that era86 linked to. Would certain memory configurations (w/ price being equal) put one over the other? They seem pretty close at is right now.

Thanks,
Doug

Ok, I guess I'm looking at a PNY Quadro FX 380card then ($125.99) unless there's a reason to step up to the PNY Quadro FX 580($184.99)

Should I be looking into Xeon processors instead of the 860 or 920? How hard and safe is it to overclock the 920? Is that going to be my best solution by far?