System for Animation and Motion Graphics (£500)

Approximate Purchase Date: Within one month

Budget Range: £400 - £500 ($650 - $800)

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Animation and Motion Graphics (After Effects), 3D Animation (Cinema 4D), Photo Manipulation, Gaming

Parts Not Required: HDD, Keyboard and Mouse (both USB) , 2 Monitors (26" HDMI/DVI input) and (19" DVI input), Case

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: UK distributor preferred, but just want an idea of best components and pricing

Country: UK

Parts Preferences: by brand or type: Intel i5/7 Quad Core

Overclocking: No, unless recommended.

SLI or Crossfire: No, I understand that a high-end GPU is not too important

Monitor Resolution: 1920x1200 (also, multiscreen setup planned)

I have been out of the loop hardware-wise for about 5 years or so, but built my own systems until then, please forgive my ignorance for the latest hardware, but I guess that's why I'm here. It's finally time for an upgrade. The requirements for this build will be slightly different to the standard gaming rig so I will do my best to describe my needs.

I use primarily the Adobe CS6 suite, After Effects mostly and a sprinkling of C4D are what I use the most. Both support multicore processing and I know that After Effects launches multiple instances of itself in the background, one for each core (with the option to leave a core free for other processes if multitasking demanding programs). RAM is split between the cores with some needed for background processes so at least 16GB is a must. This is for working at home, my system at work has 4 cores (2 physical) with 12GB RAM, which isn't quite enough to be efficient.

I understand that a good GPU is not necessary for faster renders, which is what I'm mostly concerned about although I would like to be able to play a few games on it. I don't really mind about fancy eye candy, just that they're playable. I have Battlefield 3 in mind.

This is what I'm looking at to buy:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4 LGA1155 Intel Z68 DDR3 ATX
RAM: 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K, 3.30GHz
Corsair A50 High Performance CPU Cooler

I've got my eye on this bundle, which seems to be cheaper than the individual parts I would buy the extra 2 identical sticks of RAM.

PSU: CORSAIR TX 650W V2

So that leaves me with a graphics card. Like I said, it's not too important and I'm running out of money in my budget. Apparently a top end one will increase display performance in my 3D software a bit, but I'm not ready to invest in that yet as I mostly use After Effects right now. It's only requirement is that it supports OpenGL 2.0


This one looks OK to me
Gigabyte GV-N460OC-1GI GeForce GTX 460 1GB HDMI

But if anybody has any different, cheaper option then I'm open to suggestions as this takes me a little over my budget.

My case has pretty standard cooling, just one fan. Will this, along with the others mentioned here be enough?

Do these look like sensible options to you? Like I said I don't know too much about the latest hardware so any advice would be very appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!

Jonny