help with a major upgrade please

[Tim_UK]

My first post here so please bear with me.

Haven't upgraded my pc for many a year - used to be well into modding and pc's - so am well over due for a complete upgrade and grateful of some advice.

I'm currently running two pc's (one as a server but sameish spec) Pentium 4 3.20, 2GB ram, supermicro P4SPE mainboard. When these systems were put together I made one a server due to storage needs at the time (films etc) am now just planning on having one machine.

The only bits I am planning on keeping are:

various sata hard drives

supermicro case (SC-750A - quite a monster! - has been modded to have a 120mm outlet fan on side as well). Being a newbie I can't post a direct link so add a couple of ww's to the addys

w.arstechnica.com/reviews/1298/sc750a.html

Enermax Liberty ELT500AWT psu

w.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817194003

I am thinking of an Intel i7 cpu (have always had intel since 8086's so want to stay).
SSD for o/s and progs (maybe 30gb enough??)
windows 7 64 bit
over to you experts for the rest !!

I am completely lost as regards graphics card - my system runs two monitors in independent mode (via DVI connectors). I would like to keep this set-up - at the time dual monitors was unusual and I used a matrox card for them. Do all reasonable cards give me dual DVI in independent mode now ? I see some are very fancy prices but I assume these are for the more hardcore gamers only ??

Do people think my existing case and psu will be ok ?

I do a lot of photography and since moving to a better camera with much larger image files I have really noticed the slow speed. So main application will be photo editing (photoshop) and sorting (lightroom). I do some video converstions too. Obviously the normal office and browsing stuff too, machine will also act as movie storage for downstairs media player.

[Pob255]

Holy heck in a hand basket that's more than a monster that's a behemoth
http://www.bluesmoke.net/review3.html

CPU
ether i5 2500k or i7 2600k there's a big price jump and the main difference between them is the i7 has HyperThreading
Motherboard look at a Z68 chipset
SSD two options, one is Intel SSD cacheing 30-40gb is ideal for this, this is a feature of the Z68 chipset it lets you use an SSD as a hard drive cache instead of a drive to greatly speed up thing you use often.
personally I'd look at ~90gb or ~120gb for a system SSD

Without games or 3d work graphics card is far less an issue and yes most cards can do dual output without too great an issue.
3 is where it generally gets tricky.

Ram 8gb of ddr3 1600mhz, 1.5volt ram is best. Gskill ripjaws and corsair vengeance come well recommended.

PSU, it's a good one but for the age it might have issues.

[Blackmage]

Whats the budget?

[kingpotnoodle]

I pretty much recommend what's in my signature, I settled on that after a fair amount of research.

The graphics card I picked is a sort of stop-over though (expecting new cards Q1/Q2 next year I would guess), I'll probably upgrade that more regularly. I'm not interested in SLI/Crossfire etc, too much noise/hassle/power - I make my PCs within power and noise budgets as well as coinage!

Ivy Bridge ready for next year as well.

Corsair stuff seems to be a consistent winner for me, the RAM I picked is Vengeance Jet Black, CL8 1600MHz, I'd recommend that as a baseline minimum unless your budget is tight.

Steer clear of Thermalright Venomous X heatsinks, crappy mounting mechanism caused me huge problems.

[Tim_UK]

thanks for all the suggestions so far - as regards budget there isn't one but like everyone we don't have much dosh so am looking to spend as little as poss that will give good performance now and for a reasonably long time.

[ShavedApe]

As far as processor etc is concerned have you considered a bundle from scan I havent bought one myself but they come well recommended I guess it would depend on if your looking to put it all together yourself http://3xs.scan.co.uk/Category.asp?S...rCategoryID=38