Quiet Photoshop PC

[adz08]

Hi All

Been asked to spec up a quiet PC primarily for photoshop. Budget's £500 but doesn't need HDD's as he want's to keep his current ones.

My initial spec:

i5 2500k
Asus P8Z68-V LX
8GB Corsair XMS3
H80 cooler (thought this was help keep noise down?)

I'm still looking for a quiet mid sized case and PSU.

GPU wise he's currently running an old HD2600, he doesn't game, so thinking a low end 6570 or similar would do?

Any help would be appreciated!

[edp]

This article is interesting:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/27...ing/index.html

No moving parts PC by using a massive heatsink with no fan, SSD hard drive and fanless PSU.
Silent PC if you can put the time and effort in to sourcing the parts.
mATX motherboards with on board graphics should be more than sufficient.
Some quick searching shows that the following spec could be had for under £500:

Case - Silverstone SG03 - MicroATX
PSU - 12V 150W PicoPSU-150-XT
Motherboard - MSI 890gxm-g65
CPU - Athlon II X2 250e - socket AM3
Heatsink - Scythe Orochi
RAM - 4GB DIMM 1.5 Volt DDR3 1333 4gb dram - KVR1333D3N9/4G
Hard drive - OCZ Vertex 3 60GB - VTX3-25SAT3-60G

[adz08]

Thanks edp

Have just found out the person I'm building this for also uses Adobe premier and After Effects. So thinking a dedicated GPU might be needed?

The PC needs to last for 5 years or so (similar to his current one), hence going for an i5.

Any ideas on quiet cases and PSU's?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is the PC going to be overclocked??

Overclocking makes quiet cooling a tad harder.

[adz08]

Probably not. Not straight away anyway. But he does know that comes at the price of noise.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I came up with the following parts from Scan.



Scan do special offers on these web-pages:

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

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

If you have 20+ posts on Hexus you get free postage on orders over £24.

Anyway,do shop around to get the best deals.

The Fractal case comes in many colours and has sound proofing as do almost all the other cases they make.

Regarding the PSU this is one of the quietest currently available:

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/pro...600/nx-5000-r3

Here is a review:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1012-page7.html

However,530W is OTT for the system and 400W would be fine.

The same company makes this PSU:

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/pro...0/nx-value-430

It also gets great reviews but is less efficient than the 530W PSU.

The HD3000 IGP would do the job with a suitable Z68 motherboard but the GT430 supports CUDA and had dedicated VRAM.

Also,another factor you need to consider is the speed of the hard drives and their arrangement. This can affect Photoshop performance as much as the rest of the PC.

Edit!!

The EVGA GT430 might be not quiet as it has a small fan. I would probably look at a passively cooled card.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here are a couple of passively cooled cards you might want to look at:

http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-ati...ml?q=hd%205670

http://www.dabs.com/products/kfa2-ge...tml?q=GT%20430

http://www.dabs.com/products/gainwar...tml?q=GT%20430

http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-ge...tml?q=GT%20430

http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-ati...ml?q=hd%205670

[adz08]

Awesome, thanks Cat. Pretty much what I was looking at.

Would a 400 watt psu still allow for potential oc'ing in the future?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Awesome, thanks Cat. Pretty much what I was looking at.

Would a 400 watt psu still allow for potential oc'ing in the future?

A decent one should be fine as you are intending to have a very low powered graphics card. However,I suppose one advantage of the a higher wattage PSU is that the PSU will be hardly under any stress and the fan will run at lower speeds. OTH,this has to be balanced with the PSU efficiency at lower loads too.