New PC required - help needed

pete s

pete s

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Pete
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Hi guys....

First of all, I'm not very clued up on computer tech talk and jargon and have no experience of self-builds or speccing components. My previous pc's have all been shop bought jobbies and the limit of my upgrading/repairs has been replacing a knackered PSU.

Anyway, my current HP pc is on its last legs and I want to buy a replacement. The trouble is I don't know where to start. I don't do gaming and my use is mainly photo editing (currently PS Elements, but want to move on to full PS and maybe other stuff too), plus web surfing, streaming a few vids and a load of MS Office work.

What sort of processor should I be looking at? How much memory should I go for (presuming best I can afford)?

Can anyone suggest where I might start looking for a good spec pc that will easliy cope with my requirements, be fairly futureproof and robust and maybe with good manufacturer/supplier tech support?

I also want a good quality 22-24" monitor, suitable for image editing (ie good detail and colour accuracy, etc), as my current one is awful.

Budget wise, well I'm not too sure - could go to about £1k for all in (inc some software - Win7 etc).
 
Dont know if its of any use to you but my wife has just bought a sony touchscreen 21" running win 7 ( about £800) 2.4ghz ,4gig ram ,1tb hdd, WiFi and wireless keyboard and mouse.
Looks a bit like a mac but its dream mc to use, if I had not just bought a new monitor I would have one
 
This: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/264502 plus a decent monitor (Dell U2410 perhaps - I run two of these and they are lovely) and possibly a decent PSU upgrade will be all you need and come in around your £1k....

I run an i7-2600K (and overclock it which you can't on that machine as it is frequency locked, but that won't worry you ;)) and it is as fast as all the Apple machines bar the top end Xeon multicpu workstations (£5k+)
 
pete s said:
What sort of processor should I be looking at? How much memory should I go for (presuming best I can afford)?
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Processor any i3/i5/i7 with the 4 digit serial number starting with a 2 (e.g. i7-2600). i3 < i5 < i7 and the higher the 2xxx the faster they run. i7-2600 is the best they do at the moment....

As to memory: 8Gbytes for photo editing (4G at a MINIMUM).
 
Try to get one of the new i5/i7 procs from intel they are seriously fast. You will see them called sandbridge and are named using 4digit numbers. Memory you can push 8gb on your budget I'd also get a discreet mid level graphics card in as well. If you can afford it stick a 64 or 128gb SSD for the OS/applications and a traditional hd for files.

Not so sure of prebuilts as I build my own coms so have a look around.

If you can find a 24" IPS type of monitor like the ultrasharp range from Dell go for it, might eat a bit into your budget but it is worth it.
 
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Get an SSD drive for your system and programs.

That's important. Your computer will perform MUCH better that way.

Keep small files on that drive, but also get another large drive, e.g. 2 TB HDD, for basic storage of files, e.g. pictures, etc.

SSD drives are very fast. HDDs are slow. If you have your system and programs on your SSD, your system will scream much faster.

Access times for HDDs are low in comparison, but HDDs are cheap. So use an HDD for storing pictures and the like.

If you're doing editing, copy pictures over to the SSD, do your work there, then move your final project back to the SSD when you're done.

You can search for more information about SSDs. They're very good.
 
Super Simple said:
SSD drives are very fast. HDDs are slow. If you have your system and programs on your SSD, your system will scream much faster.
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Whilst I agree on the advice of SSD & separate HDD for data (I have done that here), the only thing putting your programs on an SSD will do is make the programs load faster. They will only run at the max speed the processor will run at, so for general photo usage, more processing power is more important than slower processor plus SSD....
 
I agree with all the above - was looking to replace aging HP - again just photo editing.

If it's any help I just bought new PC from CyberSystems - i5-2500k, 64Gb SSD, BenQ24" LED. Starting with 4Gb but may go to 8Gb RAM - see how it goes.

SSD for op system and HDD for data.
 
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RE: SSD - id agree with what andy said, its your processor and memory that is going to be important for photo editing. also if youve already come from a fast primary HD the difference isnt that mind blowing.

windows doesnt load much if any faster, but as above programs will load much snappier.
 
arad85 said:
Whilst I agree on the advice of SSD & separate HDD for data (I have done that here), the only thing putting your programs on an SSD will do is make the programs load faster. They will only run at the max speed the processor will run at, so for general photo usage, more processing power is more important than slower processor plus SSD....
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IO tends to be a nasty limiter at times.

A lot of programs use temporary files on disk, and that's one area where SSDs will help out. e.g. Photoshop, web browsers, a lot of utility software, etc.

For some programs, IO can be limiting to the degree that a faster CPU won't make a difference. It's a common problem.

Now, I don't know if/how that applies to Photoshop. There are usually a few sites around that have benchmarks for that kind of stuff. Tom's Hardware is a good site. It might be worth checking.



However, if you get a truckload of RAM, you can shift the temp file location to memory with software that creates a virtual drive out of RAM. That can speed up things more than an SSD.

It's all about trade offs and working inside your budget.
 
Super Simple said:
IO tends to be a nasty limiter at times.

A lot of programs use temporary files on disk, and that's one area where SSDs will help out. e.g. Photoshop, web browsers, a lot of utility software, etc.

For some programs, IO can be limiting to the degree that a faster CPU won't make a difference. It's a common problem.

Now, I don't know if/how that applies to Photoshop. There are usually a few sites around that have benchmarks for that kind of stuff. Tom's Hardware is a good site. It might be worth checking.



However, if you get a truckload of RAM, you can shift the temp file location to memory with software that creates a virtual drive out of RAM. That can speed up things more than an SSD.

It's all about trade offs and working inside your budget.
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Yes, I/O is important, but when you have 8G+ local, it's less important. Let me give you an example. My Win7 machine has 16G in and has been up 3 weeks. It is on 24/7 and I run and use photoshop/lightroom daily. Currently, I have 113 processes running and I'm using 5G of memory. My page file is not in use (actually resource monitor says 0.477% is in use) and is on a secondary HDD (not SSD). All I/O is done to the secondary disk (reading/writing of images) and the lightroom cache is actually on a third drive. The second and third drive are both Samsung current gen drives that peak at 100Mby/sec. Win 7 uses as much spare RAM as you have available as an intelligent disk cache (I may only be using 5G, but another 10G is in "standby")

The SSD ONLY affects program boot speed in my system and is only a marginal improvement (as Neil said) over a standard disk (albeit one I thought worth taking). The important thing is to spread the I/Os across all the disks you have in an intelligent way :)
 
if you got a computer fair near you go there, theres one always on every saturday local to me, ive been buying my stuff from there for over 10 years, i built a machine just before xmas

8gig ddr3 1600mhz ram (upgraded to 10now)
120gig vertex ssd
lg blu-ray writer
ati 5550 1gig graphics card
gigabyte usb3 motherboard (cant rememeber the exact model)
i7 950 processor
giga 750w power supply

this came to at the time about £950 i put it together my self but for £50 they would do it too.

ive got all this housed in my coolermaster haf 932 case ive got 1tb had in there for storage and 3x300gig velocity raptor hard drives.

Sonny
 
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Sorry to jump in on this, I'm looking to get a new machine soon, either built or bought but as most people mention processor speeds but does a good gfx card help much in photo editing?

I know normally you get a decent spec card with a higher end machine but I have no care for gaming just photo editing only so do I need to be picky with the gfx card?
 
PDub said:
Sorry to jump in on this, I'm looking to get a new machine soon, either built or bought but as most people mention processor speeds but does a good gfx card help much in photo editing?

I know normally you get a decent spec card with a higher end machine but I have no care for gaming just photo editing only so do I need to be picky with the gfx card?
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not really, CS5 does use some graphics acceleration but only on supported cards. and its only for image rendering so will not speed up the processing of photos.

obviously with a dedicated card you dont have memory and processor overheads so theyre a good idea, just dont go mad unless youre into gaming :)
 
PDub said:
Sorry to jump in on this, I'm looking to get a new machine soon, either built or bought but as most people mention processor speeds but does a good gfx card help much in photo editing?
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As Neil says, no. PS just accelerates 2D on the GFX card - things like rotation and zooming. Almost any (or is that all) current gen cards will do this. Certainly, my lowly Nvidia 8400 which was bottom of the pile from 2-3 years ago did fine....
 
arad85 said:
Almost any (or is that all) current gen cards will do this. Certainly, my lowly Nvidia 8400 which was bottom of the pile from 2-3 years ago did fine....
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true. while Adobe do (or did last i read) published a supported gfx card list i suspect as andy said most/all will have some benefit on rendering.
 
neil_g said:
true. while Adobe do (or did last i read) published a supported gfx card list i suspect as andy said most/all will have some benefit on rendering.
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This is what Adobe say is necessary:

  • supports OpenGL, a software and hardware standard that accelerates video processing when working with large or complex images, including 3D.
  • has at least 256 MB of RAM.
  • has a display driver that supports OpenGL 2.0 and Shader Model 3.0, which the GPU uses to perform rendering effects.

That's most of todays cards ;)
 
PDub said:
Thanks for the info. So I don't need to spend massive amounts on a card, could my older 256mb 8600 GTS be used to help keep costs down or should I just upgrade anyway?
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Should work. IIRC, my 256M 8400 worked fine. If it doesn't (and it's easy to tell if it is - just look in the FAQ section of this page: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404898.html) you can always upgrade then (but support goes back to the 6800 series, so yours should be fine).
 
New apple imacs are out today, there's a 21.5" one with specs more than suitable for what you need for £999. The screens are very good quailty (IPS display).

Only thing is you would have to get used to Mac OS but it wouldn't take more than an afternoon of fiddling about.
 
salmoally said:
Only thing is you would have to get used to Mac OS but it wouldn't take more than an afternoon of fiddling about.
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Plus buying new editing software to go on the Mac? I like Macs, but most companies offer OS specific licenses, so you can't easily transfer your programs to Mac versions.
 
someguy201 said:
Plus buying new editing software to go on the Mac? I like Macs, but most companies offer OS specific licenses, so you can't easily transfer your programs to Mac versions.
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Ah yeah that too but he said in his original post he was planning to move up from PSE to the full version and other software so now might be the time to jump ship if he wanted to I guess.
 
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