Spec me a machine for image editing

[skuzgib]

Hi all,

Need some help speccing a machine for my dad - he's an illustrator who uses a lot of photoshop, illustrator, corel painter etc (no gaming graphics card needed!), and he often has to work with very large files. Can anyone outline a rough spec for around £1600? No monitor, software or peripherals needed - just the base unit.

Cheers!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hi all,

Need some help speccing a machine for my dad - he's an illustrator who uses a lot of photoshop, illustrator, corel painter etc (no gaming graphics card needed!), and he often has to work with very large files. Can anyone outline a rough spec for around £1600? No monitor, software or peripherals needed - just the base unit.

Cheers!

AMD Bulldozer is being released next month so it might be worth waiting until then to see how it performs.

However,most image editing applications ATM tend to scale well beyond 4 cores AFAIK.This is why a six core socket 1366 Core i7 would be OTT.

I would get a Core i7 2600. The Core i5 2500 has slightly slower cores as it has less L3 cache.

Also,I expect that your father already has a colour accurate monitor. Does it require dual link??

AFAIK,Photoshop is accelerated by GPUs too and some plug-ins do use CUDA too.

I came up with the following build using parts from Scan:



I have concentrated on higher reliability parts for the build. The Crucial M4 is relatively reliable although the Intel ones are even better in this regard. However,the Intel 510 SSD is very expensive:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/250gb...plus-free-game

I also chose an Enterprise grade hard drive too. You could a standard 2TB for less than half the price although they tend not to be 7200RPM AFAIK.

I would explore more carefully what sort of disc arrangement you should opt for too. For instance you might want to have a dedicated hard drive as a scratch disc. Also,perhaps having a RAID 1 or RAID 5 arrangement might be useful for securely storing the finished work and raw data.

I have also not added an optical drive as it might be worth considering using Blu-Ray for backup purposes too. OTH,DVD might suffice too.

The PSU is also very efficient at low loads too and is fully modular. At low loads it runs passively. The case is also relatively compact but can take 7 hard drives and an optical drive too.

Scan does special offers which you should check every day:

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/inde..._icmp=AkaIX3H4

http://www.scan.co.uk/shops/homepage..._icmp=7Uz238zS

You can also get free postage from Scan:

http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...tup-guide.html

[skuzgib]

Thanks very much

[Pob255]

Personally I'd look at a cheaper but still good case and maybe a cheaper but good psu

Say a Fractal Design Define Mini http://www.scan.co.uk/products/fract...e-case-w-o-psu
or Silverstone TJ08B-E http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...usb-30-w-o-psu (the layout looks odd but it does make total sense http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOOZArCV3qI )

Also probably add in a cpu cooler and a 2nd hard drive for raid and some fail safe, infact an enterprize drive might well be a bit ott, say three or four Samsung F3 1tb drives in raid5 to give some redundancy instead
and remember some form of backup, that would be a big on to me.