PC spec - is this going to ok for photo editing?

[PlanetPenwith]

Camera: Nikon D800 (14bit RAW shooting)
Photo editor: Photoshop CS5/6
Monitor: Acer S271HLABID 27 Inch full HD LED - Resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels.


Hi

I'm new to PC specs and how to put them together. I had a look at a "build your own" site and had a go at speccing a PC for my photo editing needs. As I'm new to this PC speccing malarky, I was wondering if your good selves could run your expertise over it and let me know if this is a good spec, good enough for my needs and if you think it can be done with a less specced PC. Could you let me, I would really appreciate your help with this. This is what I came up with:


Processor (CPU)
AMD A10-5700 Quad Core APU (3.4GHz) & Radeon™ HD 7660D Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® F2A85-M: (M-ATX, DDR3, USB 3.0, 6Gb/s)
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1GB AMD RADEON™ HD6450 - DVI,HDMI,VGA - DX® 11
Hard Disk
2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD (£16)
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Price: £564.00 including VAT and delivery.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What is your total budget??

Do you have a colour accurate monitor??

[Saracen]

It's a well-capable spec and I'm sure a lot of people manage on much lower specs .... me included.

If I were to make a suvgestion, it would be to consider :-

- an SSD, maybe 128GB, for a boot dri e and for Photoshop tobe installed on, and/or
- a dedicated additional hard drive (or may e SSD) configured as a swap disk for Photoshop.

Oh, and make sure that video card complies with Adobe's spec for hardware acceleration as it can speed up some filters, mainly creative ones, a lot.

[PlanetPenwith]

What is your total budget??

Do you have a colour accurate monitor??

The monitor I have is an Acer S271HLABID 27 Inch full HD LED - Resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels. My budget is between £500 and £600...more towards the £550 mark or there about...does that help? Thanks for taking the time to help, much appreciated

[PlanetPenwith]

It's a well-capable spec and I'm sure a lot of people manage on much lower specs .... me included.

If I were to make a suvgestion, it would be to consider :-

- an SSD, maybe 128GB, for a boot dri e and for Photoshop tobe installed on, and/or
- a dedicated additional hard drive (or may e SSD) configured as a swap disk for Photoshop.

Oh, and make sure that video card complies with Adobe's spec for hardware acceleration as it can speed up some filters, mainly creative ones, a lot.

What would you suggest changing in the specs above? SSD is quite expensive and would eat into my budget, but I can see what you mean though. I wish I could be more helpful to you but I am a total newb where it comes to self speccing a PC. You help is most appreciated, thanks

[PlanetPenwith]

If I could get a less specced PC for cheaper that would handle intensive photo editing I maybe able to fit in an SSD. Apologies again for my lack of knowledge regarding the hardware acceleration spec in photoshop CS5 or 6. What would you recommend as per my limited budget? Thanks

[PlanetPenwith]

What about this spec?

Case
STYLISH PIANO BLACK ENIGMA MICRO-ATX CASE + 2 FRONT USB
Processor (CPU)
AMD A10-5800K Quad Core APU (3.8GHz) & Radeon™ HD 7660D Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® F2A85-M: (M-ATX, DDR3, USB 3.0, 6Gb/s)
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1GB AMD RADEON™ HD6570 - DVI,HDMI,VGA - DX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
90GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling
Super Quiet 22dBA Triple Copper Heatpipe AMD CPU Cooler (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD (£16)
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Price: £667.00 including VAT and delivery.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Have you bought the monitor?? I would consider getting a smaller display which is more suited for image editing.

If you have bought it,have you at least calibrated the display?? You really need to consider that if you are using a D800,and using 14 bit files(greater colour information),that a decent enough monitor is essential.

[PlanetPenwith]

Have you bought the monitor?? I would consider getting a smaller display which is more suited for image editing.

If you have bought it,have you at least calibrated the display?? You really need to consider that if you are using a D800,and using 14 bit files(greater colour information),that a decent enough monitor is essential.

Yeah I already have the Monitor. I have calibrated it. Thanks for your feedback and help Do you think the PC specs in my last post will be able to be reduced and still be ok for editing the 14bit Raw files? If so, what would you say would be a good enough spec? Thanks

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would still consider changing over to a better monitor though at some point as a 6 bit TN panel still has limitations even with FRC.

Once you get 20 relevant posts you can free postage from Scan:

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

Scan does special offers each weekday too:

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx





The first set of components is from Scan and the second set is from Amazon.

The total should come to around £600 to £610 with free postage included. The B75 motherboard should do the job although it lacks RAID ability so you would need to spend a bit more on a H77 or Z77 based motherboard instead if you want that.

Regarding the OS you can either get Windows 7 or take advantage of the Windows 8 upgrade offer. This is only £24.99 but you will need to install the Release Preview first and upgrade from that. The offer ends at the end of the month IIRC.

[PlanetPenwith]

I would still consider changing over to a better monitor though at some point as a 6 bit TN panel still has limitations even with FRC.

Once you get 20 relevant posts you can free postage from Scan:

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

Scan does special offers each weekday too:

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx





The first set of components is from Scan and the second set is from Amazon.

The total should come to around £600 to £610 with free postage included. The B75 motherboard should do the job although it lacks RAID ability so you would need to spend a bit more on a H77 or Z77 based motherboard instead if you want that.

Regarding the OS you can either get Windows 7 or take advantage of the Windows 8 upgrade offer. This is only £24.99 but you will need to install the Release Preview first and upgrade from that. The offer ends at the end of the month IIRC.

Thank you for your help here I see you have given me a list of components, which is brilliant. Trouble is, I'm not at all converse in building PC's from components. I do appreciate you trying to help me, thanks a lot. I took in what you said regarding the monitor and will try and get maybe a IPS one and smaller (ie 24").

Does the ASUS® F2A85-M: (M-ATX, DDR3, USB 3.0, 6Gb/s) motherboard support SSD caching? Thanks again for your invaluable help

[kalniel]

Unless it comes free, I would not bother with an internal card reader, especially not a USB2.0 one. A good external card reader (still only £20) will be faster, and USB3.0 versions will help for the future now that cards are hitting (and maybe exceeding) USB2.0 speeds.

Power supply is a critical component in terms of reliability, 450W is more than enough, but it's important to get a make/model that is known to have good quality output and components.

I'm not convinced it's worth getting another dedicated graphics card given that you have an OK one built into the CPU. Photoshop doesn't require a beefy GPU to be able to accelerate processing, CPU speed is far more important. Worse is that the dedicated card you have chosen is only a little bit faster, so it's not really worth it IMHO. (see http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/gra...raphics_6.html)

What company are you using to create the builds? We might be able to play with the configurations for you.

[PlanetPenwith]

Thank you for your help here I see you have given me a list of components, which is brilliant. Trouble is, I'm not at all converse in building PC's from components. I do appreciate you trying to help me, thanks a lot. I took in what you said regarding the monitor and will try and get maybe a IPS one and smaller (ie 24").

Does the ASUS® F2A85-M: (M-ATX, DDR3, USB 3.0, 6Gb/s) motherboard support SSD caching? Thanks again for your invaluable help

Have now placed order for PC build. They (the company) answered my query regarding motherboard and ssd caching support. I would like to say a big thank you to the people who have taken their time to help me with my my questions. It is much appreciated, very best wishes

[PlanetPenwith]

Unless it comes free, I would not bother with an internal card reader, especially not a USB2.0 one. A good external card reader (still only £20) will be faster, and USB3.0 versions will help for the future now that cards are hitting (and maybe exceeding) USB2.0 speeds.

Power supply is a critical component in terms of reliability, 450W is more than enough, but it's important to get a make/model that is known to have good quality output and components.

I'm not convinced it's worth getting another dedicated graphics card given that you have an OK one built into the CPU. Photoshop doesn't require a beefy GPU to be able to accelerate processing, CPU speed is far more important. Worse is that the dedicated card you have chosen is only a little bit faster, so it's not really worth it IMHO. (see http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/gra...raphics_6.html)

What company are you using to create the builds? We might be able to play with the configurations for you.

Ah, thanks for that. Im using PCSpecialist.co.uk for the build. Do you know if the graphics coming with the CPU have hdmi support? Here is my final build spec for you to have a look at:

Case
STYLISH PIANO BLACK ENIGMA MICRO-ATX CASE + 2 FRONT USB
Processor (CPU)
AMD A10-5800K Quad Core APU (3.8GHz) & Radeon™ HD 7660D Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® F2A85-M: (M-ATX, DDR3, USB 3.0, 6Gb/s)
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1GB AMD RADEON™ HD6570 - DVI,HDMI,VGA - DX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
90GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling
Super Quiet 22dBA Triple Copper Heatpipe AMD CPU Cooler (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD (£16)
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Price: £659.00 including VAT and delivery.

I've taken onboard what you said about Graphics card and will amend that to what you said. That will be ok yes? Thanks again for having a look and helping me, it's invaluable

[PlanetPenwith]

Order placed can be amended on website, so alls not lost. Minus the card the price is £626 and the card reader is free, so no probs there...will get an external USB 3.0 reader. Thanks again

[kalniel]

Ah, thanks for that. Im using PCSpecialist.co.uk for the build. Do you know if the graphics coming with the CPU have hdmi support? Here is my final build spec for you to have a look at:

Yes, it does http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_FM2/F2A85M/

Integrated AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series Graphics in A-series APU
Multi-VGA output support : HDMI/DVI/RGB ports
- Supports HDMI with max. resolution 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz