Budget Photo Editing Rig

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ea216363

Weaksauce
Joined
May 19, 2009
Messages
80
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Photoshop/Lightroom and Office (Word/Excel)
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
3-400
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.

US, CA
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
CPU*, RAM*, Case, Wifi card, Monitor, SSD
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Phenom X3 710 or G6950 (either useable still?)
HD5450
Patriot RAM 8gb (2x4gb) PC3-10600
Keyboard/Mouse
6) Will you be overclocking?
No
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
1080
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
ASAP
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
HDMI out, onboard video (if feasible for needs in question 1)
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Windows 7 64bit



So basically I have a couple CPU and other odd end spare parts around and am looking to help build a cheap photo editing pc. User needs it for lightroom work and does excel documents as well.

Just checking in with you guys if you think either CPUs are useable at all along with the ram listed above. Had no issues with either CPU for Lightroom work or any basic pc task so I’m assuming that’s why the budget will be able to suffice.

In terms of monitor, preference would be to take the extra hit on budget if it happens to go above a tad for an IPS one (saw an Asus model on Amazon for 150 I believe).

I’ve been recommended going the route of just forgetting about the x3 710 and G6950 CPUs (I believe theyre like 2009-2010 builds haha) and going towards AMD such as a 5400-6400k. I don’t even know if that 5450 is even worth using (if to help offset recommended CPU, they’ve asked to at least have a budget GPU in there).

I’m assuming one or none of these parts will be useable, but as much as possible the more I can salvage and put to good use the better. Preference would be to order directly through Amazon or if need be via Newegg.
Thanks!
 
Lightroom loves CPU. If you're dealing with large amounts of photos, you'll want something faster. I use Lightroom 5.5 and I'm not aware of it ever touching my GPU (GTX 780). The A6-6400K would be faster than either CPU you already have, but the Pentium G3258 is even faster still and you can overclock the shit out of it with relatively no work. It's also the same price as the A6-6400K.
 
I have a few more questions:

11) Do you live near the Tustin Micro Center store?

12) Do you have a power supply on hand? If so, what is it (brand, model, age)?

13) If push comes to shove, could you increase the budget?
 
11) yes

12) sfx 350 silverstone... don't know how old but I believe still useable

13) trying to stick to budget at moment...

I'm thinking cheaper route would be a case psu combo and get an amd socket and mono
 
How long is the drive to the Microcenter for you?

I generally don't recommend case + PSU combos since the vast majority of them are....crap. Basically meant for throwaway/useless/shitty systems.

Can you find out the model number of your PSU? If that PSU is a good quality PSU, that'll save you $40.
 
Dangman said:
How long is the drive to the Microcenter for you?

I generally don't recommend case + PSU combos since the vast majority of them are....crap. Basically meant for throwaway/useless/shitty systems.

Can you find out the model number of your PSU? If that PSU is a good quality PSU, that'll save you $40.
Click to expand...

It's the SFX PSU that comes with the Silverstone SG05

Microcenter and Fry's is probably 30-40 min drive not too bad
 
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ea216363 said:
It's the SFX PSU that comes with the Silverstone SG05
Click to expand...
Do you have a SFX to ATX adapter? Or the SG05? If not, unless you want to do some sort of ghetto way of mounting the PSU, that looks like $40 is going to be needed for a new PSU. Or you could always buy another SG05 case:
$40 - Silverstone SG05BB-LITE mITX Case

ea216363 said:
Microcenter and Fry's is probably 30-40 min drive not too bad
Click to expand...
At 40 minutes I would say don't bother but gas is cheaper now. Do note that you still have to pay tax at MC so the savings may not be worth it.

EDIT: Do you already have the motherboards for the two CPUs you have now?

And yes, just go ahead and reuse that HD 5450 so that every bit of RAM can be used towards PS/Lightroom.
 
Last edited:
Dangman said:
Do you have a SFX to ATX adapter? Or the SG05? If not, unless you want to do some sort of ghetto way of mounting the PSU, that looks like $40 is going to be needed for a new PSU. Or you could always buy another SG05 case:
$40 - Silverstone SG05BB-LITE mITX Case


At 40 minutes I would say don't bother but gas is cheaper now. Do note that you still have to pay tax at MC so the savings may not be worth it.

EDIT: Do you already have the motherboards for the two CPUs you have now?

And yes, just go ahead and reuse that HD 5450 so that every bit of RAM can be used towards PS/Lightroom.
Click to expand...


Motherboards fried for both. For the AMD it was an asus motherboard (can't think of what exact model but it was matx) and for the G6950 it was what use to be in my SG05 using Zotac mini itx wifi
 
So mITX or no? Either route is going to cost a bit more money but the mITX route means the user is limited to 8GB of RAM.
 
jedimasterben said:
Lightroom loves CPU. If you're dealing with large amounts of photos, you'll want something faster. I use Lightroom 5.5 and I'm not aware of it ever touching my GPU (GTX 780). The A6-6400K would be faster than either CPU you already have, but the Pentium G3258 is even faster still and you can overclock the shit out of it with relatively no work. It's also the same price as the A6-6400K.
Click to expand...

Agreed on this. Lightroom loves to eat up my i7. If he works in there a lot with many large megapixel photos, if he can spring a great cpu, he will be very pleased.
 
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/k7tGt6
So this is what I came up with. Parts just came in and just my luck, bent pins on the processor socket and the box looked used! :mad:

The G6950 was useable from what I remember doing very minimal lightroom work. Waiting on reply so I can reorder a new board and see if that'll work out.

As a backup plan what would be a cheap AMD route I could go? Mini itx will be premium costing... so I was thinking mATX maybe A8-6600k for the CPU. Haven't been around AMD chips for awhile so I dont know how decent are they for this type of work.
And then as far as a case, anything cheap even one with a PSU just to get the ball rolling. Person I'm building for is aware for future upgrades and is ok with these items as a backup plan.

Any input would be appreciated.
 
Lightroom is still relatively single-threaded heavy. That means Intel is the way to go here. Since you already have the case + PSU already, it doesn't make sense to get a regular mATX or ATX case + PSU setup since it'll end costing about the same in the end.

With that said, just in case, the cheapest case + PSU setup that I can recommend right now would be:
$55 - Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-03 ATX Case
$42 - Corsair 430CX V2 430W PSU
---
Total: $97 shipped

Any lower than quality that case + PSU and you might as well scrap the whole build and buy a cheap Dell.
 
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