Build Advice: $1k Photoshop PC

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DistributedBen

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 26, 2004
Messages
227
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing?
Processing photos with Photoshop (CS3, for now. CS4 or maybe Lightroom down the road). I plan to upgrade my camera early next year, so I’ll need something that will be able to handle working with files from 20MP cameras and resulting multi-layered PSDs without issue. I don’t think my P4 2.4GHz and 2GB of RAM are up to the task. :)

I play the occasional game (FPS), but I don’t need the latest and greatest on this front. I’ve always gone with the best card I could find under $200. In the past I’ve had better luck with NVidia, but I haven’t bought a new card in about 5 years.

Something quiet would be nice too.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
I’d like to stay around $1,000, including tax.

3) Where do you live?
Texas

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Everything except KB, mouse and monitor.

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
None

6) Will you be overclocking?
No

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Have a Dell 20” Ultrasharp I plan to keep for the foreseeable future. Would like a card with 2x DVI in case I want to add a monitor down the road.

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Next 30 days

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
None of the above.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
No, I will get a copy of Windows 7 Business with the parts.


It has been a long time since I’ve built my own system, so I’m trying to get back up to speed on the current hardware out there. I was initially looking at going with an i7 920 system since I could get triple channel RAM, allowing for 12GB of RAM relatively cheap. I figured I could dedicate a few GBs to a RAM disk for Photoshop scratch. But it looks like an I7 920 system would cost me about $1,500 which is more than I’d like to spend, especially if the performance difference is marginal over something like an I7 860 / I7 750 system with 8GB of RAM.

Thanks in advance :)
 
Hmm... $1,000 with Windows 7 O/S

Intel Core i5-750 + Coolermaster RC-690 both for $249.98 ($25 MIR on CASE) w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.281799

Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 1600 + ASUS P7P55D LE LGA 1156 both for $213.98 w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.287041

Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 for $93.99 w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145260

XFX Radeon HD 4870 1GB + Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit both for $244.98 w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.282080

Seagate Barracuda 500GB Sata Drive for $54.99 w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148395

Lite-On 24X Sata DVD Burner for $31.99 w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106334

Antec Earthwatts EA650 for $79.99 ($30 MIR) w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371015

Total: $969.90 w/free shipping
 
That's a very tall order for your budget I'm afraid.

The previous poster has a decent system laid out. You could skip the 4870 and find the best card you can for under $200 based on your previous comments. Tom's Hardware does a good job breaking down cards in each price range.

You won't be able to fit tri-channel ram into your budget. If you go i5/i7 you'll be need to go P55, which means dual channel.

For your budget, you may want to consider a Core2Quad CPU.

Also, my understanding of Photoshop is limited, but I'd bet you'd really benefit from a SSD if you can find a way to afford it.
 
The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is a deal considering the fact that it's in the combo with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. This would price the Radeon HD 4870 1GB at $140 which is a killer price. This will be light years ahead of what he is running on his 2.4ghz computer with an AGP video card. Also, the 4870 1GB will handle most games at 1600 x 1200 res with his Dell 2007FP 20" Ultrasharp display. You could spend $30 more on an ATI Radeon HD 5770 video card that has DX 11 support. As far as considering a Core2 Quad build right now, not a good idea when his budget allows him to get a Core i5- 750 cpu.
 
My bad, I missed where it said it included Win7 - that is a good deal. But the 5770 could also be a good choice if the OP won't be upgrading any time soon.

The only reason I threw out the Core2Quad was because I thought Photoshop was heavily dependent on RAM and hard disk performance. So the OP could consider spending less on CPU/mobo and throwing the cash into RAM and a SSD. But my knowledge of Photoshop is limited.
 
dmw16 said:
My bad, I missed where it said it included Win7 - that is a good deal. But the 5770 could also be a good choice if the OP won't be upgrading any time soon.

The only reason I threw out the Core2Quad was because I thought Photoshop was heavily dependent on RAM and hard disk performance. So the OP could consider spending less on CPU/mobo and throwing the cash into RAM and a SSD. But my knowledge of Photoshop is limited.
Click to expand...

Yea I haven't messed with photoshop as of late but when we had a client like 2 years ago that ended up putting a second hard drive in a few systems for a photoshop scratch drive to speed it up. Might be something to look into(not sure if this is really needed anymore).
 
HG's build is nearly perfect for your budget and needs. If you're shooting RAW, you'll most likely need more HDD space, so you might want to consider the 1TB version of the Samsung F3 he listed.

Don't bother putting the scratch disk on another HDD, get RAMDisk instead. More info here:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=442160&postcount=5

... and a popular quote for ps builds...

Joe Average said:
... I built a RAID 0 box for a small image studio..., a new startup here in Vegas that is making waves. They wanted a "demo" workstation to see what's possible for processing as they don't want to create a massive server-type situation in the office, but 3-4 workstations that are equal in performance and then just using simple file sharing as required. Very simple setup in terms of the network, but the workstation I built used 2 300GB Velociraptors (tried to sell 'em on SSD but the amount of data they're dealing with wouldn't be practical - again, a price-to-performance and ROI issue).

The hard part was getting them to spring for 16GB of RAM because of the cost, but a few weeks ago I saw that sale for 4 4GB sticks of RAM for about $450 and made a few phone calls and snagged a similar deal.

I set up Photoshop CS3 for 'em (their legit retail copy) on Vista Business x64. They started messing around with it, loading some rather large TIFF files in excess of 150MB a pop, several at a time, performing some basic scripted actions on 'em, blurs, filters, etc. Using the Velociraptors in RAID 0 meant very snappy and consistent performance, as well as having 16GB of RAM too. Also, it's a Q6600 based machine running rock solid at 3 GHz.

They were very pleased with the performance at that point, but I had a surprise for 'em. ;)

I asked if I could have 20 mins 'alone' with the workstation to "rewire it" as Tim Allen might say. That consisted of grabbing a trial version of SuperSpeed Software's RamDisk Plus 9 and installing it, doing the simple configuration, and then creating a 10GB RAMdisk and told Photoshop "Ok, you want a scratch disk? Here, try this on for size."

After I did some tests of my own using the same scripts they'd done earlier, boy... I tell ya. You haven't lived till you see 225MB TIFF files literally snap onscreen in the blink of an eye, multiple huge TIFFs with resolutions like 5000x5000 and even higher. That's what's possible with RAMdisks, because even Velociraptors in RAID 0 pumping out something like 280MB/s sustained pales to the close to 5GB a second in bandwidth of that RAMdisk.

I told 'em to come back in and rerun their test scripts.

Jaws hit the floor, folks. Well, not quite but figuratively speaking, at least.

They asked what I'd done, I told them I put the scratch disk in RAM where it should be if you have the RAM to make it happen, and they bought 4 licenses of RamDisk Plus 10 mins later, and I got a signed contract to construct 3 more workstations identical to that one top to bottom and also be their "geek" if any issues come up.

It was a very good week... ;)
Click to expand...

ATI currently has the best bang for buck across their entire product lineup. NVIDIA has CUDA, and ATI has STREAM... both of which are supported by PS, IIRC.
 
Thanks everyone.This looks like a good fit.

Since my budget is flexible (+$200) I'll have room to get a 1TB drive with whatever I buy. I forgot that I have a 500GB SATA drive that I can put in the new machine for some additional storage as well.

I doubt I will be using all 8GB most of the time, so I figure I could try giving 2GB to a RAM disk for the Photoshop scratch.
 
I doubt you'd be using 6GB either, so try 4GB, if your RAW files are large and you're working with many. ;)
 
i'm building pretty much the same build that HG has posted above.

the owner of the computer is requesting 8 gigs of ram. is it ok just to get 2 sets of 2x2gb corsair xms3's. i see there are 4 ram slots on the motherboard. but will filling them hurt overclocking as in past motherboards?
 
I meant to ask how much noise the Radeon 4870 or 5770 make. Since this will sit on the desk next to my monitor I would prefer something that doesn't sound like a jet taking off. I've been spoiled by my 6600GT's fan and working with mostly retail systems.

And ff there is a better case in the sub-$100 range with good sound control I'd like to hear about it.

Thanks!
 
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