whats important for Photoshop?

[KD28]

Hey there, gonna start looking for parts for a new computer. Mainly photoshop. As title asks, what factors are important specifically for photoshop? Of course faster processor, more ram, faster HDD, better vid card, etc are important but they would be important for any build.

As far as I've read, items specific to photoshop may include:
- having another disk for scratch (esp ssd ... doesnt have to be huge)?
- nvidia gpu over ati as cuda may help w/ rendering?


Also, looking for mid tower cases that would have usb 3.0 in front, hot swap bay. (in terms of looks, i like the corsair 400r but it doesnt have hotswap) So far I've come across:
- Corsair 650D
- NZXT H2 Classic
- Cooler Master 690II Advanced
I also like the HAF XM but its quite wide.
I know there are quite a few, just mention some if you know off top of head.

Thanks.

 

[Dangman]

As far as I've read, items specific to photoshop may include:
- having another disk for scratch (esp ssd ... doesnt have to be huge)?
- nvidia gpu over ati as cuda may help w/ rendering?

Other than the other stuff you've mentioned, thats about it really when it comes Photoshop. However the last item is really only true with CS5 and lower as as CS6 can now take advantage of OpenCL.

Also, looking for mid tower cases that would have usb 3.0 in front, hot swap bay. (in terms of looks, i like the corsair 400r but it doesnt have hotswap) So far I've come across:
- Corsair 650D
- NZXT H2 Classic
- Cooler Master 690II Advanced
I also like the HAF XM but its quite wide.
I know there are quite a few, just mention some if you know off top of head.

Out of the four cases you mentioned, the only one I would recommend would be the 650D. The NZXT H2, while fairly quiet, runs fairly hot compared to other cases. The Coolermaster 690II is a pretty old case design as this point in time. It's only redeeming feature is that hot-swap bay so you'd have to have an extreme need for it to choose it over cases like the Antec 1100 or Corsair 400R. I haven't gotten any hands-on time with the Coolermaster HAF XM so I can't vouch whether its cooling and features justify the price. Though it does look pretty ugly to me.

 

[E4g1e]

First off, which version of Photoshop are you planning to get? Elements? CS5.x? CS6?

In most cases, you will need (relatively speaking) a lot of RAM for any version of Photoshop. Go with 8GB of RAM if you're going to have a separate small, fast disk for the scratch file (16GB or more RAM would be better).

If you're going to use the latest CS6 version of Photoshop, get a relatively fast GPU from either AMD or Nvidia since CS6 uses OpenCL instead of CUDA for GPU acceleration (but please be advised that AMD gaming GPUs significantly outperform otherwise comparable Nvidia GPUs in OpenCL performance due to the relatively weak OpenCL performance of the GeForce GPUs - to the point where a $500 GeForce card might not perform any better than a Radeon card that costs half as much in Photoshop).

If on the other hand you're going to use only Photoshop Elements, any plain old cheapo GPU or even integrated graphics will work just fine since that version does not offer much if any GPU acceleration at all.

CPU wise, go with at least an Intel i5-3470.