Suggestions for Modest Build $1300 (£800) PS-CS5 User

[graphicsfantastic]

Hello everyone,

First time post so please bear with me!

Wanna build myself a new pc as my laptop is so slow it's depressing!

Budget $1300 (£800)

Uses - Purely Photoshop, no gaming required (all work, no play )

Purchase date: soon as i can really

Im a patient guy so not overly fussed on having the latest and greatest just a build in my budget to make Photoshop run smooth and effortless with large files (1-2GB each, large resolutions with many layers)

I've liked the sound of the Intel i5 2500k cpu, so feel free to use that as a guide to the build, i would go for the i7 2600k if you reckon it would give me a significant increase in performance.

I also like the idea of fast boot times using an SSD probably 128gb but would definitely need an extra HDD for storage (1TB etc.) I hear of RAID connections between HDD for better performance when acting as a scratch disk for Photoshop but it's just a word to me so feel free to educate me in how exactly it works to be of benefit, with that said i look forward to seeing what you guys come up with!

Many thanks in advanced!

 

[metal orient]

I assume you only need the tower and no peripherals or OS.

As i understand it photoshop requires as many physical cores you can get so it becomes a toss up between going down the LGA 2011 or 1155 route.

Also you want a load of RAM so as much as your images and layers stay there so they don't have to be written to the HDD which is slow.

Using the SSD as a boot drive and scratch disk will also help speed up load times and more crucially the times you're working on the image.

I put in a fairly powerful Nvidia (for CUDA) graphics card but i'm not sure how much you actually need it, so there is potential savings to be had. You will need one though as i went LGA 2011 which has no iGPU.

 

[metal orient]

Bought from Aria.co.uk:https://www.aria.co.uk/

CPU Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz (Sandy Bridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - Retail £215.99
MB GIGABYTE X79-UD3 Intel X79 Socket 2011 DDR3 PCI-Express Motherboard £143.99
RAM 16GB Mushkin Enhanced Blackline Frostbyte #993995 (4x4GB) £84.95
SSD Crucial m4 128GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive w/ Free 3.5" Bracket £91.99
HDD 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 3.5" SATA III Internal Hard Drive [ST500DM002] £50.34
GPU PALIT GeForce GTX 560 Smart Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £95.99
PSU 530W be quiet! Pure Power L7 80PLUS Power Supply £45.59
Case Fractal Design Core 3000 Black Midi Tower Chassis £47.94

I have just noticed however that this does not come with a Heatsink, so i have had to add one:
Arctic Cooling Freezer i30 £29.99

bringing the total cost to £819.01

 

[graphicsfantastic]

Thanks for the reply Metal Orient,

Just the tower yes i'd have the OS Windows 64Bit installed, the system you suggested sounds good but would really apprieciate a system going the other route as you said with the LGA 1155 socket, unless again you think i'd see better performance from your suggested build via the LGA2011 socket

What would you say to this set up?

Intel i7 2600K / i5 2500k

Asus p8z68-V Pro

Corsair Vengence 16GB 1600mhz

An SSD for install OS and Photoshop something in the 128GB range

WD caviar black 7200rpm 1TB

Suitable PSU and Cooler you'd see fitting to this kind of set up, with the intentions of overclocking the CPU.

If it helps i'd like the PC to be more quiet and have it go with a Dell monitor u2312hm.

Do you actually gain from a scratch disk when you've got 16gb of RAM installed?

I noticed you had the i5 2500K do you think that wouldn't run photoshop cs5 smoothly with large files so long as i had the 16gb of ram?

Sorry for all the questions, just wanna make sure the build is all compatible and will be stable as my last build went herendously wrong!

Anthony

 

[azeem40]

i7-2600k will be better for photoshop cuz of HT.

 

[graphicsfantastic]

i7-2600k will be better for photoshop cuz of HT.

I was under the impression it wouldn't give that much gains, more so in Adobe Premiere when it came to video editors.

Adobe Photoshop CS6 apparently utilizes mutlicores, and multi-threading much more efficiently than in CS5 so i7 -2600k is gonna be a better investment come the upgrading of software.

Thanks for the advice azeem40!

 

[metal orient]

Thanks for the reply Metal Orient,

Just the tower yes i'd have the OS Windows 64Bit installed, the system you suggested sounds good but would really apprieciate a system going the other route as you said with the LGA 1155 socket, unless again you think i'd see better performance from your suggested build via the LGA2011 socket

What would you say to this set up?

Intel i7 2600K / i5 2500k

Asus p8z68-V Pro

Corsair Vengence 16GB 1600mhz

An SSD for install OS and Photoshop something in the 128GB range

WD caviar black 7200rpm 1TB

Suitable PSU and Cooler you'd see fitting to this kind of set up, with the intentions of overclocking the CPU.

If it helps i'd like the PC to be more quiet and have it go with a Dell monitor u2312hm.

Do you actually gain from a scratch disk when you've got 16gb of RAM installed?

I noticed you had the i5 2500K do you think that wouldn't run photoshop cs5 smoothly with large files so long as i had the 16gb of ram?

Sorry for all the questions, just wanna make sure the build is all compatible and will be stable as my last build went herendously wrong!

Anthony

I have no idea if you'd get better performance, 2011 has more physical cores than 1155 but then hyperthreading support will probably get better overtime as you found out.

Looks like a pretty solid setup don't go for the 2500K, the extra grunt of the 2600k for you seems like a better move as it outperforms in the productivity tests.
the pro is a bit OTT if you don't intend to SLI
RAM fine but be aware of the heat spreader height.
SSD fine, crucial is the best price/performance and has good reliability.
Drive is fine but any reason for that one in particular?
I'll give my recommendation to these 2 below
Like the monitor, although maybe a full Adobe Gamut would be better?
If you're working on files that get too big for RAM it will show gains otherwise i guess not. Not too sure on this.
I have no idea how well it would work, quite well based off Anandtech results but slower than 2600K

Suggestion2:

Fractal Design Core 3000 Black Midi Tower Chassis
Crucial m4 128GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive w/ Free 3.5" Bracket
1TB Seagate ST1000DM003 Barracuda 7200.12 SATA III 6Gb/s Hard Drive - HDD
16GB Mushkin Enhanced Blackline Frostbyte #993995 (4x4GB) 1600 (PC3-12800) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM CAS 9-9-9-24 1.5V
530W be quiet! Pure Power L8 80PLUS Bronze Modular Power Supply
ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M (Socket 1155/Intel Z77/DDR3/S-ATA 600/Micro ATX)
Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Unlocked Processor - Retail
Arctic Cooling Freezer i30 Quiet CPU Cooler

Total price £691.54

Changes are CPU (2600K), Mobo (Asrock Z77), PSU (modular!), HDD (1TB instead of 0.5TB) and no GPU.

 

[graphicsfantastic]

thanks ever so much again Metal Orient! You've been most helpful, i've searched that parts and they all sound great, though might look around more for the case but that's more personal taste! Would you recommend that website Aria.co.uk for the parts? and finally what Nvidia graphics card would you suggest for this build as i guess it wouldn't hurt to have the extra GPU power in the system since the total is still under my budget

Thanks again for all this help!

Anthony

 

[metal orient]

I would definitely suggest looking around for the best deals, but just be aware of postage costs. The problem with aria is that it's stock is abit limited but i have found it to be cheapest if you buy from one shop (most people moan if you say buy from 4 or so). You can usually buy abit cheaper though if you're prepared to put a bit of work in.

Other sites to look at are:

Scan.co.uk
overclockers.co.uk
CClonline.com
novatech.co.uk
dabs.com
ebuyer.com
quietpc.com (i do like these guys, never ordered anything off them but they have a good selection and decent prices, they do lack in some areas though like memory and GPU)

In terms of graphics as we have about £100 to play with a GTX 560 seems like the best option. Not sure how much you'll need it though. I'd suggest seeing how well you do with the iGPU. If you decide to upgrade from it, and AMD HD 7750 is quite cheap and require no extra 6 pin cables so would make you're build tidier but a 6850 is a better bet if you wanted more performance.

Hope it all goes well for you, just remember when building to go slow and make sure what you're doing is right. Also watch youtube building videos as i found them really useful when doing my build last year.

EDIT

Almost forgot, you may need a DVDRW they're about £14 e.g:
http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/LG+GH22NS70+22x+DVD%C2%B1RW+with+DL+%26+RAM+SATA+Optical+Drive+-+OEM+Black+?productId=46140

 

[graphicsfantastic]

Thanks again for all the information Metal Orient, sorry on my delay my laptop wasn't letting me view this website? I've looked into most the parts and Aria has a good stock of most of them and at good prices.

Just wanted to ask with the graphics card (Nvidia gtx-560 ) is there a particular manufacturer that is better than the other i.e MSI, PALIT?

Also one more question before i forget, the; Crucial m4 128GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Mushkin Chronos 120GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive as it looks like the Mushkin has better performance.....

Mushkin - Maximum Read: 550MB/sec, Maximum Write: 515MB/sec, Random Write 4KB (Aligned): 90,000 IOPS

Crucial - Read Speed: 550MB/Sec, Write Speed: 200MB/Sec (after firmware update)

Thanks again, you've been more than helpful.

 

[graphicsfantastic]

Thanks again for all the information Metal Orient, sorry on my delay my laptop wasn't letting me view this website? I've looked into most the parts and Aria has a good stock of most of them and at good prices.

Just wanted to ask with the graphics card (Nvidia gtx-560 ) is there a particular manufacturer that is better than the other i.e MSI, PALIT?

Also one more question before i forget, the; Crucial m4 128GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State you recommended, for the same price i can get a Mushkin Chronos 120GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive as it looks like the Mushkin has better performance.....

Mushkin - Maximum Read: 550MB/sec, Maximum Write: 515MB/sec, Random Write 4KB (Aligned): 90,000 IOPS

Crucial - Read Speed: 550MB/Sec, Write Speed: 200MB/Sec (after firmware update)

Is there more to these figures as to why the Crucial is a better choice, i've heard that Crucial are the most stable of all SSD's

Thanks again, you've been more than helpful.

 

[metal orient]

In terms of SSD's Toms does a best for the money guide:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-storage-value,review-32431.html

Also they did a round up of 5 GTX 560's:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-560-benchmark-review,review-32362.html

Of the 3 aria offers the cheapest one is the best bet IMO as it £30 cheaper but having done a bit more poking around around i am worried it's had some parts of the GPU disabled ( i thought the price difference was down to clock speeds) so I would change the choice to a 6850 or swallow the extra cost.

For some benchmarks:

GTX 560 LE (the cheapest 560 on aria) vs standard 560
http://www.techpowerup.com/161312/Galaxy-GeForce-GTX-560-SE-Pictured-Benchmarked.html

standard GTX 560 vs Radeon 6850
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/539?vs=543

In terms of manufacturers an artcile on return rates in france:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-5/components-returns-rates-5.html

doesn't include either manufacturer but i would buy from MSI personally.

another option might be this from dabs.com:
http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-ati-radeon-6870-900mhz-1gb-pci-express-hdmi-7QFX.html?refs=460900000&src=3