AMD or Intel for Photoshop

Thats a very tight budget if you allow £80 for monitor and say £20 for other accessories that leaves £350. Your not going to get a good i5 2500k rig for that unless its been pre-abused to near death or built with matchsticks. I don't think i3 suits your uses either you want cores.

things like these

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Phenom-II-X6-1055T-6-Core...
Thats a nice 6 core but you would need to buy a HDD and a cheap GPU + windows which would make it total around £410

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-PHENOM-II-x4-QUAD-CORE-1T...
Thats basically complete and falls in budget

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Core-i5-2400-Quad-Core-...
There's an i5 2400 but you would need to add windows to the price (+£70)

Thanks for getting back to me wr6133. I can stretch my budget to a total of £500 (this is the maximum I can go) but don't want to if I don't need to. I see that you haven't listed any AMD FX series CPUs, is there a reason for that? And out of the three that you've listed, what order of preference would you put them in?

And by the way, what monitor would you recommend for that price (or under if possible)?

if you look around you could get a nice 1080p monitor maybe around 22"

here - http://www.ebuyer.com/370651-lg-e2242c-bn-led-lcd-21-5-...

from a reliable website too

this one would be better for an extra £5 http://www.ebuyer.com/367831-philips-226v3lsb-lcd-led-2...

Order I would take them is

i5 2400
just buy this to add to it http://www.cclonline.com/product/55272/GFC-02050/Operat... this one will push you overbudget with windows and monitor though but its worth it if you can . Only worry on this one is lack of brand name parts used.

Totals about £450

Phenom II X6 1055T
this one involves a bit more effort in adding hardware and loses out in photshop benchmarks to the i5, does have double the RAM of the i5 though and a better featured mobo, its still a good performer though you would need to add these

HDD
http://www.cclonline.com/product/66223/ST500DM002/Hard-...

Windows
http://www.cclonline.com/product/55272/GFC-02050/Operat...

GPU
http://www.cclonline.com/product/81817/EAT6300HD41-1080...

and a cheap cd drive (£10 tops)

would take its total to around £425-ish leaving £80-ish for the monitor.

Phenom x4 (This one may be "complete" but its the lowest performer for your uses)

*edit* I omitted FX as for the price of the better FX chips (81xx) you can buy i5. Most of the FX rigs on ebay are cowboy built gamer boxes advertising 8 cores in huge lettering then using gyppo parts on the rest.

Thanks for the response. Is there a real difference between i5 2400 and i5 2500?

How is this PC? It's an i5 2500k:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=20...

What sites do people normally use to buy customised PCs that are at decent prices?

its not bad although they dont have the PSU listed so it most likely a crappy one.

seems decent but remember to add windows for £70

if your after custom its either build yourself or order from sites like ccl, scan or aria

If the PSU is rubbish then will this have an effect on the performance of the PC? If so then how much?

I've been told that the PSU is 500W OEM power supply. Is this bad news?

It means its the cheapest 500W PSU they could find so its likely junk... will this effect performance? Well it could if its pushed hard and goes pop... will you push it that hard? unlikely..... so really it boils down to can you accept the specs with a poor PSU personally I wouldn't but thats because I overclock everything I can just because I can   so a iffy PSU to me is a big big no no, in your case I think it may be something you have to accept the only machine of the linked ones so far to have a major brand name PSU was the Phenom X6 .... I don't think its worth taking a performance loss just to have a brand name PSU in your case. You can always replace the crap PSU a few months down the line when funds permit.

i agree and if in the future you do want to push your PC it can always be replaced.

So if I go ahead and purchase it then I'll be able to experience a good performance from the PC? Is the motherboard (ASRock H61M-VS) ok as well for my use?

And when you guys say push the PC, are you talking about OC or are there other things that I could possibly do to make the PSU go 'pop'?

Sorry for bombarding you guys with so many questions, I just don't want to regret anything after I make the purchase.

Thank you.

So if I go ahead and purchase it then I'll be able to experience a good performance from the PC? Is the motherboard (ASRock H61M-VS) ok as well for my use?

And when you guys say push the PC, are you talking about OC or are there other things that I could possibly do to make the PSU go 'pop'?

Sorry for bombarding you guys with so many questions, I just don't want to regret anything after I make the purchase.

Thank you.

Its not the worlds best motherboard but for your uses its fine. By push it i mean overclock heavily or run it hard constantly. It will peform well for your uses