New pc key components needed

krisuk2008 · 30 Dec 2013

Hope some of you can help I've got £350-£400 to upgrade my old pc I'm looking at buying chip, motherboard, ram, case. It will be mainly be used for editing in Lightroom and photoshop and some gaming I have hard drives already it's been a long time since I've bought pc stuff and don't know where to start with these components I'm guessing more ram the better photoshop will run.

RinSewand · 30 Dec 2013

I'd be looking at 16Gb plus of RAM, maybe an I5 CPU, and whatever board you need. If you've got a case already, save your money and use that, put more towards the chip.

droj · 30 Dec 2013

Look at barebones desktops (without drives or operating system). Think about an oem version of W8 64 bit (about £75). If you have a re-usable case, look at mainboard bundles with processor and memory, but up the memory quota. Check if your drive(s) are pata or sata and that they'll connect to the new board. A new board and sata drives may well suggest a new psu as well. Check out what software that you already have will migrate to a later os.

Uxon · 30 Dec 2013

I'd also consider looking at 2nd hand options as the last couple of Intel generations haven't been huge steps forward and you always get more for your money if you don't mind buying used.

arad85 · 30 Dec 2013

What PSU do you currently have? Also what CPU and operating system?

This also might be better moved to the computer section....

neil_g · 30 Dec 2013

What andy said, what's the current system spec? With component model numbers.

But otherwise usual spec applies - i5 quad, at least 8gb ram, ssd if possible.

Also make sure your psu is a) compatible with the new board and b) its capable of powering the new parts.

mejinks · 31 Dec 2013

I would keep an eye out for bundles on scan (http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx) as they often have good deals. If you can reuse your case, then do so. Look at the psu though, will it be powerful enough for a new system or do you have to spec one as well? Above ALL else, buy a decent PSU as system problems mainly start here.

boliston · 31 Dec 2013

The i5 range seems good value for general photo editing - I recently got a PC with an i5-4670 CPU (£160) and ASRock H87 Pro4 Motherboard (£55) & 2x8GB DDR3-1333 ram (£110) & Coolermaster Elite 334U case (£35). Pretty happy with it so far.