Have i gone the wrong way with this build?

Knowing your budget would help. I'd actually suggest going X79 if you're going to be working with heavy duty Photoshop but then again that depends on your budget.

Id go with a Ivy Bridge quad core and a Z77. It's faster clock for clock, only time I would recommend 2600K is if your going for maximum overclock (4.6-5ghz)

The video card is major overkill if you don't game, you could get something much cheaper like a HD7750 and then you would only need a 430-450w psu which would also be cheaper.

If you need a serious machine then go s2011. But that will cost you at least 2x as much money.

Actually, I think you have a good list of quality parts.

Here are my thoughts:

For a new build, I think I would go with a 3770K . ivy bridge is a bit faster, clock for clock, and responds well to less than record level overclocks.
For multithreaded apps, the extra hyperthreads of the 2600K and the 3770K are good.
Regardless, I would loook for a Z77 based motherboard. They have added capabilities, and do not cost any more.

For 64 bit enabled apps like photoshop, 16gb is good.

Some apps can use the CUDA capabilities of Nvidia discrete graphics cards. If this applies to you, then consider one.
My understanding is that it need not be a high end card.
I see no problem with deferring the graphics card to later, and using the integrated graphics initially.
Then, you have time to do suitable research.

I love the samsung 128gb ssd. Intel is good too. They seem to be the most reliable.

The Seasonic 650 is an outstanding unit. I have no problem with it being stronger than you need. It will only consume the power that is demanded of it. Without a discrete graphics card, you would only need a 400w psu. With 650w, you can run the strongest of discrete graphics cards.

I am not familiar with that particular monitor. If you are doing graphics design, it might be a good idea to splurge on a really great 2560 x 1440 27" monitor, or even a 30" 2560 x 1600 monitor. Their quality will be the best. A monitor is one of the most future proof components you can buy today.

I think the haf-x is an ok case. Buy it if you love it.
With less emphasis on gaming and the need for cooling, I would look at a smaller, cheaper and quieter case.
The Antec solo II comes to mind: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Here is a review: http://www.silentpcreview.com/antec-solo2


Do post a list with links to the specific parts you are considering.

The Cuda point is kind of nil when talking about a photoshop build. I mean one could say the same about GTX cards being poor in compute and floating point math.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-rev...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-rev...

Either way I think the card is way overkill for a non gaming machine. I suggested a HD7750, then he could go with a 400w psu and still do some decent gaming.

Sorry on my delay, i didn't recieve any notifications of replies. Thank you all for your comments, it'll be easier if i reply seperately so starting with..

g-unit1111; My budget is £850 (it's now lower as i have purchased the monitor since my post) i don't want to over spend on components that will give only a few seconds better performance so somewhere in between good performance and good price is what im looking for.

geekapproved; I did consider the ivy bridge but for the price increase it didn't seem that much of a gain for a few seconds more. As for the graphics card i may drop that and use integrated graphics until i get the updated cs6 which seems to make better use of GPU more so the Nvidia CUDA range but only on certain filters and a few effects.

geofelt; As mentioned above the gains didn't seem worth the extra cost for me personally but if there were any reviews or benchmarks i came across. I will be taking your advice with the graphics card though as i am still not sure on which could work best but once i have everything up and running i could invest in a GPU later on. Im glad you agree with the Samsung SSD my uncle has it and says though the write speeds aren't the fastest available it won't be beat for stability so that won me over. The PSU was highly recommended but as you've all said im not sure if i need the power, i just wanted head room for future upgrades incase i was to invest in a decent quadro card or many more HDD as its essential i never lose my data so want to have a backup but rather than manually backing up data the RAID configurations sound appealing that along with setting up a scratch disk for better performance with photoshop but that is something i will have to research more to understand how exactly it works as compared to you guys im a mere beginner   (i've posted below the parts as you requested) I have updated the case too as the Fractal Design Desire R3 seems more appropriate for what im looking to build, saves the pennies too!  

(This was one of the reviews i could remember reading that made it seem like the ivy bridge 3770k wasn't a massive leap forward in terms of performance against price ( There is a near £50 difference between this cpu and the 2600k)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge...

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/intel_core...


CPU: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Sandybridge-i7-2600-Quad-...

MOBO: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-P8Z68-V-Motherboard-Socket...

RAM: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb-(4x4gb)-corsair-vengeance-blue-ddr3-pc3-12800-(1600)-unbuffered-cas-9-9-9-24-xmp-150v

HDD: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-seagate-st2000dm001-...

SSD: http://www.dabs.com/products/samsung-128gb-830-series-s...

CASE: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/fractal-design-define-r3...

COOLER: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coolermaster-hyper-212-e...

PSU: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/660w-seasonic-x-660-modu...

Thank you all again for your replies, hopefully you can give me more advice as i want to make sure i am going the right way with this and not wasting money needlessly!

Yopur build looks good.

If you will be running cpu intensive apps, I suggest you look into a "K" suffix cpu. 2600K or 3770K.
The "K" allows you to raise the cpu multiplier from the default 3.4 up to something in the 4.0-4.4 range.
That is a healthy increase in compute power for a small price delta.
How high you can conservatively go is determined by your cpu cooler in part, and the cm hyper is quite good.
The characteristics of the chip sample also matters, but there are no guarantees. As a guess, I think 4.0 is easily achieved by 90% of the chips.


If you care about your data, it is essential that you have some sort of EXTERNAL backup.

The value of raid-1 and it's variants like raid-5 is that you can recover from a drive failure quickly. It is for servers that can not tolerate any interruption.
Modern hard drives have a advertised mean time to failure on the order of 500,000+ hours. That is something like 50 years. SSD's are similar.
With raid-1 you are protecting yourself from specifically a hard drive failure. Not from other failures such as viruses, operator error,
malware, fire, theft, etc.
For that, you need external backup. If you have external backup, and can tolerate some recovery time, you do not need raid-1

I would buy a 16gb kit in the form of 2 x 8gb, not 4 x 4gb. Two sticks preserves your option to upgrade to 32gb of ram. I understand that photoshop can use all the ram you can give it to reduce workfile i/o.
Ram is cheap, you might consider buying 32gb up front. You will need windows 7 pro or ultimate to access >16gb.

I am considering overclocking but as i don't want to chance losing any data or have a cut out before i've saved work is a worry from the instability overclocking sounds like it has, on the other hand the performance increase could be handy and how unstable can it be for so many people to do it or intel even sell a cpu they offer the ability to overclock more efficiently!?

I figured 16gb would cover me for a good while but just to check is the performance the same with two RAM sticks or four? There seems to be a considerable jump in price with the two larger RAM sticks.

The raid still sounds appealing incase of HDD corruption which has happened far to many times in my past but i have learned and have an external 1TB drive to keep things backed up.

The way I look at overclocking is this:
Intel knows that the chips are good enough to run at 3.4 using their stock cooler.
That is all they will guarantee. The "K" is their approval to raise the multiplier to whatever level you want.
The chips will slow down or shut down if you attempt higher levels than the chip can handle.
Part of the process of overclocking is to stress the cpu to it's maximum, using a program like prime95.
If the cpu does not shut down after a few hours, it will never reach that stress level in actual usage.
So long as one does not raise the cpu voltage, I think you are very safe.

You do not need to oc at all, but it is nice to have that option available when or if you need it.

Ram is dual channel. The performance is the same with two sticks or 4.

You might find this report on component returns rates useful. It seems that 1tb drives might be better than 2tb drives:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-6/components-ret...

Thanks for the explanation, makes it sound more attainable on my part.

My bad with the Seagate HDD it's mean't to be the 1TB i was planning on getting two.

Im just searching into cases again which i know is more of a personal thing but stuck between the

Cooler Master Silencio 550 : http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coolermaster-silencio-rc...(in-out)-silent-case-usb-30-with-35-x-doc-sd-card-

and the

Fractal Design Desire R3 : http://www.scan.co.uk/products/fractal-design-define-r3...

Both are identical in price and i know the R3 has better cooling and airflow but people keep saying the Cooler Master is better but i can't see why?