New build for photoshop (99%) and gaming (1%)

[flyoverfred]

Hi all,

I've never built a PC before and need a new one. It will be pretty much used for photoshop and a tiny amount of gaming. I don't need a monitor.

I only edit photos and do no video editing, I believe hyperthreading in photoshop is mostly used in video editing.

As a complete novice i've not really much idea where to start

I'd like to get the best bang for buck fast as can be system for around $1500 ( will be purchasing parts from either newegg or micro-centre)

SSD is a must, I want the system and any progs to boot quickly and will probably ( advice appreciated) use another for a photoshop scratch disc - i've read the OCZ Vertex 4 is pretty quick and there are good deals at the moment on ssd's.

i want a minimum of 16gb ram but a mother board that can take 32 if I feel the need to stick more in.

I've no idea about the rest of it !!

any help gratefully received !

cheers
Aidy

 

[g-unit1111]

Here you go:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($314.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($36.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($154.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Blackline 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($83.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Corsair Neutron Series 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($209.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB Video Card ($299.99 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case ($109.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling 750W 80 PLUS Silver Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($24.97 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 (64-bit) ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1585.86
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-09-12 13:06 EDT-0400)

The Corsair Neutron series is based on a new controller and I've read pretty favorable reviews of it, unlike the Force GT series.

 

[TheBigTroll]

here you go

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hfIo

 

[geofelt]

If you are only editing photos, not video editing, then get as much ram as you can. Fortunately, ram is cheap.
A 32gb kit will cost about $150. Perhaps one like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231557
To access this much ram, you will need Windows pro or ultimate; home premium is limited to 16gb. With 32gb, you may never have to access a scratch disk.

With your budget, a 3770K would be good @$320, but for $100 less, the 3570K would do the job just as well, since the only thing you give up will be hyperthreading.

For a video card, you may not need fast processing, but lots of Vram can be helpful.
A card like the GTX660ti with 3gb of vram would be good, really good gor gaming.
Like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130811

Just about any Z77 based motherboard with 4 ram slots will do. I think they all support 32gb of ram. $130 or so for one.

I love the SSD. It makes everything feel so much quicker. Discount synthetic benchmarks. They push the ssd using high queue lengths like 30 when we normal users do one or two things at a time. Modern SSD's in practice all perform about the samd....Fast. Figure out how much space you will need and plan on having at least 20%free space on the ssd. As a SSD fills up, it may slow down as the unit has more difficulty in finding a free nand block to to a write directly instead of a read/rewrite cycle.
From a reliability point of view, today, I would stick with intel or samsung only. Plan on about $1 per gb.

You might want to read this document I found on optimizing CS5 performance:
http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/products/photoshop/pdfs/PhotoshopCS5_performance.pdf

Pick any case that appeals to you.
Most will do the job just fine, and looks count. You will be looking at it for some time.
I like smaller quiet cases with washable intake air filters.

A and a quality psu of about 500w.
My short list of quality psu's would include Seasonic, Corsair, Antec, XFX, and PC P&C.

 

[g-unit1111]

Pick any case that appeals to you.
Most will do the job just fine, and looks count. You will be looking at it for some time.
I like smaller quiet cases with washable intake air filters.

I have an incredibly difficult time giving that advice to people. Most people come here looking for specifics, not generalizing. The bad thing is if you tell people to pick any case they like that's when junk brands like Raidmax and Apevia get purchased. I never advise anyone to buy those brands no matter how good they look - you don't want to trust your new components to something that's going to cheap out or short on you, do you?

 

[geofelt]

Pick any case that appeals to you.
Most will do the job just fine, and looks count. You will be looking at it for some time.
I like smaller quiet cases with washable intake air filters.

I have an incredibly difficult time giving that advice to people. Most people come here looking for specifics, not generalizing. The bad thing is if you tell people to pick any case they like that's when junk brands like Raidmax and Apevia get purchased. I never advise anyone to buy those brands no matter how good they look - you don't want to trust your new components to something that's going to cheap out or short on you, do you?

If there is one place to economize, it is the case. Even a cheap case will work.
That is not like a psu, where a cheap psu can actually cause damage.

I like nice cases, and am always looking for justification for a new one.
In giving advice to buy a case you love, I expect the OP will do some looking and propose one.
If it is unsuitable, for whatever reason, then there will be many opportunities to correct to something better, and explain why the choice was not good.
Individuals have different tastes, and I can only say what I like, but it is no reason to foist my pick on someone else without some idea of their likes and dislikes.

 

[g-unit1111]

If there is one place to economize, it is the case. Even a cheap case will work.
That is not like a psu, where a cheap psu can actually cause damage.

I like nice cases, and am always looking for justification for a new one.
In giving advice to buy a case you love, I expect the OP will do some looking and propose one.
If it is unsuitable, for whatever reason, then there will be many opportunities to correct to something better, and explain why the choice was not good.
Individuals have different tastes, and I can only say what I like, but it is no reason to foist my pick on someone else without some idea of their likes and dislikes.

I will disagree here. There's plenty of good cases in the $50 - $75 range, but for every Corsair 300R or Antec 100, there's 1,000 Apevia X-Plorers and Raidmax Smilodons. That's the stuff I never advise people to purchase. I know tastes are important but you also want to take measures to protect your new components so that's where quality absolutely matters. You don't want to get a cheap junk case that's likely to fall apart on you, and then you have to buy a new one every year or so. I've been there and done that, I'd rather have one solid case that lasts for years than skimp in that area and get a junk one.

 

[flyoverfred]

hi all,

thanks for the replies so far

I want a case that will fit and look after my parts, couldn't care less what it looks like !!!

Have any of you guys come across the issue of overheating with the I7 ?

 

[TheBigTroll]

they overheat when you put more than 1.3v on the chip

 

[flyoverfred]

ok, so knowing not alot about much (!!) what is the performance difference i will get between a sandy and ivy bridge then please if there is only so far you can push the Ivy ?

 

[TheBigTroll]

you see a 5-8% increase in speed with ivy bridge, pci-e 3.0 support, usb 3.0 native support and much better intergrated graphics for video encoding

you can probably push it to around 4.5ghz on air

 

[Smeg45]

I'd get a CM Storm Enforcer and a 670. Cherry on the cake, so to speak. A case is just as important as every other part. Would you like to live in a cramped rattly dump? No? Your parts don't like it either. Not to mention a good case never really dies. It lasts and lasts.

 

[flyoverfred]

case looks cool, whats a 670 ?

 

[Smeg45]

GTX 670, doesn't have the crippled memory bus of the GTX 660 Ti.

 

[cin19]

Go to microcenter get the I7-3770k and Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155 Z77 for $375+Tax.
http://cart.microcenter.com/cart.aspx?RedirectUrl=http://www.microcenter.com

Good deal.

 

[naf]

The GTX 660Ti will be more than enough GPU power. I'd say don't spend more than $300 on the video card. (Assuming you don't have a crazy monitor setup)

An i7 3770 will pay off, probably. Don't skimp on the CPU.

32GB of RAM is a great idea.

The Samsung 830 is an awesome SSD, you can't go wrong with it. I've also used a Crucial m4 and sandforce drives - the Samsung is the best.

You might want to get 2 SSDs, one for OS/applications and another to work from. I frequently edit large folders of RAW images (25MB each, hundreds at a time), and the loading time difference in Bridge between my HD and my SSD is amazing. I actually used to load images from my memory card straight to a 16GB ramdisk for preliminary editing/sorting. That was the fastest workflow by far, but it wasn't totally stable. Anyway, think about it.

 

[g-unit1111]

The GTX 660Ti will be more than enough GPU power. I'd say don't spend more than $300 on the video card. (Assuming you don't have a crazy monitor setup)

An i7 3770 will pay off, probably. Don't skimp on the CPU.

32GB of RAM is a great idea.

The Samsung 830 is an awesome SSD, you can't go wrong with it. I've also used a Crucial m4 and sandforce drives - the Samsung is the best.

You might want to get 2 SSDs, one for OS/applications and another to work from. I frequently edit large folders of RAW images (25MB each, hundreds at a time), and the loading time difference in Bridge between my HD and my SSD is amazing. I actually used to load images from my memory card straight to a 16GB ramdisk for preliminary editing/sorting. That was the fastest workflow by far, but it wasn't totally stable. Anyway, think about it.

I definitely agree about the CPU and GPU. I'm not sure I agree about 32GB of RAM - even the most demanding Photoshop jobs won't make full use of it.

The Samsung 830 is a great drive, I have one on my primary PC and it is blazing fast and very reliable.

 

[flyoverfred]

yeah i'm going to stick at 16gb ram for the moment.

Just reading and learning atm, whilst looking at one of the motherboards one of you recommended I noticed 4 X SATA3 and 4 X SATA6 - is this the best the motherboards do ie is there one that is just SATA6 ? If i'm asking a dumb question I apologize !!

 

[azeem40]

A 7950 for $10-20 more will be better than the 660ti. I suggest you read this:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-660-ti-memory-bandwidth-anti-aliasing,review-32522.html

 

[geofelt]

yeah i'm going to stick at 16gb ram for the moment.

Just reading and learning atm, whilst looking at one of the motherboards one of you recommended I noticed 4 X SATA3 and 4 X SATA6 - is this the best the motherboards do ie is there one that is just SATA6 ? If i'm asking a dumb question I apologize !!

There are no dumb questions. Well.. The only dumb question is the one you never asked.
Sata2/3 refers to how fast the sata interface can go(3gb/6gb).
No hard drive saturates even sata 2, so it does not matter for hard drives .
A good SSD can exceed the bandwidth of sata 2, so you want them attached to sata3(6gb) ports.
And, even then, it does not matter much except for benchmarks. The big valus of a ssd is the random i/o response times, and that does not get hurt by sata 2.

In summary, it is best if you have enough 6gb sata ports for the number of ssd's that you plan to attach.

And, remember, larger ssd's perform better so one large ssd is probably preferable to two smaller ones.

 

[flyoverfred]

There are no dumb questions. Well.. The only dumb question is the one you never asked.
Sata2/3 refers to how fast the sata interface can go(3gb/6gb).
No hard drive saturates even sata 2, so it does not matter for hard drives .
A good SSD can exceed the bandwidth of sata 2, so you want them attached to sata3(6gb) ports.
And, even then, it does not matter much except for benchmarks. The big valus of a ssd is the random i/o response times, and that does not get hurt by sata 2.

In summary, it is best if you have enough 6gb sata ports for the number of ssd's that you plan to attach.

And, remember, larger ssd's perform better so one large ssd is probably preferable to two smaller ones.

so standard hard drives just fit on the sata 3 ??

Would it be advisable to have one SSD with progs and boot and then a couple of the standard hard drives to store the info on - can't see my budget running to numerous SSD especially when the photos would soon fill them up !

 

[geofelt]

so standard hard drives just fit on the sata 3 ??

Would it be advisable to have one SSD with progs and boot and then a couple of the standard hard drives to store the info on - can't see my budget running to numerous SSD especially when the photos would soon fill them up !

Correct. Hard drives attach to any port, it makes no difference.
There are some hard drives that advertise 6gb interface, but that is only for buffer to sata transfer, and the mechanical motion is 99% of the performance.

Yes, a ssd for programs and apps combined with a larger hard drive is a usual recommendation.
If the storage is for video's, that is particularly true.

But, Photos take up very little room each..
For example, on my 180gb SSD(167gb useable), I am using100gb. That includes 7gb for 2800 photos.

 

[flyoverfred]

oh how i wish 2800 photos = only 7gb ! at 20mb per shot in Raw I soon fill HD's !!

Can you recommend some RAM - the link above didn't work

 

[TheBigTroll]

check my build

 

[flyoverfred]

I did, i'm after 16gb without filling all the slots so I need 2 x8 in a perfect world, please recommend 2 x 8 please :O)