need to help my sister get a new desktop.

needs to use photoshop as mainusage and she does a LOT of downloading, films/music etc

also need to have a soundcard with lots of outputs to use her existing set up, which is/was a top spec dell.

budget is around £500-700, desktop only no monitor or anything.

current monitor is not DVI i believe.

are we better off with a custom PC or off the shelf?

any links would be good

 

If she isnt going to be gaming then id just buy one off the shelf, a 600-700 quid pc from Dell for example would be more than enough, for that price you can get a decent one aswell

 

looking at the dell ones but they seem quite expensive for the spec, she is replacing a dell one that she has for around 4 years.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CORE2QUAD-Q660...QQcmdZViewItem

looking on ebay there are some high spec ones for the same money as the dell lower pec ones, what are peoples opinions on this one?

 

Looks a good pc for the dough.....although i'd be a bit concerned about the graphics card not running on an AGP por and using a pci slot....especially if it's going to be used as a photoshop pc on the main.

Cheers
Dan

 

what graphics would be good for that sort of money?

 

AGP port has been dead for years now! THe PCI express port is superior to the AGP port in every way. That PC is good spec on paper but I wouldnt be sure on the quality of components used.

If I was building a PC for use on photoshop then I would go for.

An intel quad core 6600 as photoshop can utilise the extra cores and it means you can be downloading-listening to music while working on photshop. Memory is also important in photoshop as when the images are uncompressed they can use up to high 100's MB, so I would go for 4GB(2x2gb) of 800mhz ddr2 ram. Hard drive space is down to how much you want really but I think 2x 400GB sata 2 drives. One HD can be used for OS and photoshop and the like and the other for the scatch file photoshop uses. Having the scratch file on a seperate disc speeds it up. Graphic card is not really important in a non gaming system so I would go for an Ati 2600xt as it has built in HD file decoding. It may usefull if importing film strips into photoshop though photoshop is really CPU intensive.

 

My bad, shows the last time I built a pc from parts....PCI express...I didnt twig it was different to normal pci bus graphics cards which used to be shit.

Sorry for the confusion...my mistake.

Cheers
Dan

 

No worries mate, it all moves so quickly!

 

thanks for the advice, where would you recommend shopping for a off the shelf PC as the ones ive seen are not that great, also would need to have a very quite fan/PSU.

 

Swerv,

For a quiet PSU, Fan then it will most likely have to be either a self build or buy an off the shelf PC and replace the PSU and CPU fans. I have a intel q6600 and std fan and its ok. Im sure you can get silent ones, but unless they are passive cooling(massive heatsinks) then they all make noise.

GTI-ITG or a guy similar in name posted a link to a sight that lets you customise a PC exactly how you want it. IF your PC is 4 years old then any off the shelf quad core will show it up especially in photoshop. I would sopec the system yourself and have somebody build it for you as you will get a far higher spec for your money. As an example Dell want £100 to add an extra 2GB of ram, this costs £30-£40 from most retailers!.

 

GTi_iTG here, changed my username
Honestly she would be more than happy with a 500-600 tower from Dell.
You dont need a Q6600 either, yes it will help but you dont need all that power just for photoshop, you cant count web surfing/downloading really, most newish pc's can do that with their eyes closed.
A higher end core 2 duo like the E6750- or 6850 would be fine with 2GBs of ram, again more would help but really it will be fast as anything with what i just suggested.

Another reason i suggest somewhere like Dell is because what happens if you put it together and something doesn't work? do you know how to make it work? if it breaks can you fix it again? if you build it yourself you have to think of these things aswell.

If the answer to all above is yes then by all means build a Q6600 pc and save some cash.

 

Tonyk im not saying your wrong by the way, you are right in what you say but the above is just my 2cents

 

wont be building it myself, if i choose a custom pc i will get it built by a company.

 

Swerv, what sort of stuff does she do on photoshop? I appreciate you may-may not know what I am on about If its just editing the average digital camera photo then an off the shelf dell should be ok. But if she uses a digital slr camera or scans in large files such as a4 photos at a high quality(1200dpi) then they can come in at a minimum of 400mb uncompressed. My quad core takes time when applying filters to images of this size.

It all depends on how serious she is with photoshop as that determines how well the system will perform in the roles it will do. I used to work with photoshop quite a lot in my old job and know how it can really bring a system to its knees when you have more than one image open at high resolutions.


GTI-ITG, I would agree an off the shelf system will be fine for the average photoshop user that edits 3 and 4 mega pixel camera photos. If anybody is a proper photoshop user and im not talking about the change the colour of my wheels-car stuff then an off the shelf system can struggle.

Just to add: I have just done a test, I loaded a BMW e90 M3 1920x1200 jpeg Photo into photoshop and it took 6.71mb ram after it was uncompressed. This is a typical digital camera image and loads quicky due to the camera compressing the image when its taken. II then scanned in a letter at 1200dpi and it took 403MB uncompressed! At this point its worth pointing out that I had used 72% of 2GB of Ram and flipping the image horizontal took 30 seconds. I imported the 1080p BMW image into the letter and my ram usage went to 87% of 2GB! When i saved to a Jpeg using medium compression the final file was 82MB in size.

I hope this essay gives a little understanding how complex photoshop is and the requirements it can take. Its a program for professionals and through p2p downloads has found its way into family homes when they should really use something less complex such as paint shop pro. I hope you this has given a little insight into photoshop..

 

yeh im not too sure what she does on a regular basis, she does use it for design stuff rather than editing camera photos.

paint shop would too basic for her.

looking at the dells it would be about £750 for a system when its customised.

are there any recommended companys that build good quality PC's?

 

Tonyk fair enough, i guess what i do in photoshop isnt much because my x2 4200 amd 2GB's ram runs it fine, for what i do.
I think the site that was mentioned above(posted by me apparently) was this one http://www.dinopc.com/shop/pc/home.asp

if thats not it i cant remember but that site is pretty good, you can spec it how you like and its cheaper than Dell

 

GTI-VW08

Thats the site I was talking about, cheers. Its only when you start to use photoshop on a serious or professional level that you can understand how much it takes to run. The main difference is a normal digital camera takes and store photos in a jpeg format which as you know uses compression and looses detail, many high end cameras take photos in a raw format without compression, which is essential when editing or designing.

Swerv,

If you go onto the site posted above then, I would spec the system as follows:

Pick intel multimedia hd02 base spec and then customize to:

Change Ram to 4GB in 2x2GB modules
Change primary HD to 250GB
Add secondary HD 500GB
Change Graphic card to the ATi 2600 pro
Change soundcard to X-Fi 7.1 audio (you mentioned good sound was required)
Change PSu to 600w
Pick either Vista 32bit or 64bit. You need to check 64bit drivers are available for your exisiting hardware such as broadband modem, printer etc..

The final price came out at £622.40 which is cheaper than the dell but obviously not as big a brand. Either system will do the job very well.