Help with PC Components to buy

[cam1986]

I am thinking of building my self a decent PC that i will be using for Photoshop work / rendering. Now, budget is no more than £450 and the PC needs to be small in size so tall cases out of the question as space is a premium.

Looking around there seems to ba lot to choose from and i don't have a clue what to go for. Intel / AMD? Graphics that are on the motherboard will suffice as i dont play games on my pc as i use it for work etc.

Any pointers would be great. Thanks

[Pob255]

Hard to say we'd need more details
How small a pc?
Do you need OS?
Monitor?
What level of photoshop are we talking? just editing the family photos? or professional image editing?
Rendering? be more specific software? what exactly do you mean by "rendering"? rendering could cover a heck of a lot.

Some rough ideas, but really need more info before I could tell you if these are good or bad ideas.

You could go for a mini-ITX build
case http://www.scan.co.uk/products/lian-...tx-case-no-psu
motherboard http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...board-mini-itx
cpu http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...29x-95w-retail
psu http://www.scan.co.uk/products/430w-...t-fan-atx-v231
ram http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-%...9-9-24-xmp-15v
DVDr/w http://www.scan.co.uk/products/lg-gh...sata-black-oem
total 365.45
Still need a hard drive but they are very expensive atm.

No OS, monitor, keyboard, mouse (do you need these?)

If a micro ATX is fine and you need all the extra parts including hard drive then a prebuilt pc and a monitor would be a better option.
http://www.ebuyer.com/282573-zoostor...s-pc-7873-0287 £395
+ 21" IPS panel monitor £122 http://www.ebuyer.com/284104-lg-ips2...tor-ips225v-bn A bit over budget but probably the best you'll get at this time due to hard drive prices being silly. (you're looking at £125 for a hard drive atm.)

You could drop down to an i3 and 6gb of ram to get closer to budget http://www.ebuyer.com/282543-zoostor...p-pc-7873-0284 £345+122 for monitor £467 would be fine for photoshop not as good for 3d rendering.
You could also go for a cheap TN panel monitor http://www.ebuyer.com/280625-lg-e221...itor-e2211s-bn £87 A TN is really not quite as good for viewing angles and colour reproduction. Again depends on the level you're looking to take this too.

[cam1986]

The ram you linked wont go with that mobo or there wouldnt be any point in using it as itx uses lower ram

Got TFT, OS, Keyboard and Mouse.

Case looks fine. Again, not sure that PSU would fit.

[Pob255]

Yes the psu will fit, one of the nice things about the lian-li is that it fits a standard atx psu in a small case, yes space is tight in that case but it will fit.

The ram will fit, yes it'll only ram at 1333mhz not the full 1600mhz but that's not a problem.
you could drop down to 1333mhz ram http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-%...s-9-9-9-24-15v but there's no real cost difference.

You still need to answer the other questions though.

eg if you plan to use 3ds max and do renders with Vray then you will want an nvidia graphics card with at least 2gb of ram on it. vray is one of the few things that uses a graphics card for rendering and it requires a lot of vram

Actually changing the PSU for this one http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500w-...iet-fan-atx-v2 and getting the short cable kit http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...su-100-modular would be good in the lian-li PC-Q07

[cam1986]

140mm depth is pushing it without adding on the cables.