Build suggestions for Photoshop Elements

salvage-this

Active Member
I am looking to build a system to replace a 10 year old Dell that just bit the dust. As of right now I have a good idea of what would work well, I just want to hear from those of you who have experience with photo builds.

This is not for super high end photo editing. He is really just editing photos that he took on trips, ball games etc... Maybe sell a few prints if he gets interest from others. As of right now he is looking at using Adobe Photoshop Elements, Lightroom and possibly Gimp. He isn't into the editing enough to spend the money on full Photoshop.

Here is what I have so far.

GPU- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121639
SSD - http://www.microcenter.com/product/...tate_Drive_Upgrade_Kit_(SSD)?rf=Add-Ons>SSDs>
Main HDD- http://www.microcenter.com/product/...60Gb-s_35_Internal_Hard_Drive_ST3100005N1A1AS
Backup HDD - http://www.microcenter.com/product/...ATA_60Gb-s_35_Internal_Hard_Drive_STBD2000101
PSU - http://www.microcenter.com/product/406086/CX_Series_CX430M_430_Watt_ATX_Modular_Power_Supply
Card Reader http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820176021
Case (as long as it stays $40 off)- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112316

The system will run 8.1 and will have 16gb of RAM. I will just wait till I but it to pick a brand. Tons of decent specials with the holidays on the way.

There will be no gaming or overclocking at all on the system. He is kind of hoping not to have to build again for another 4/5 years or so.

I need help figuring out the CPU motherboard combo. 4770/4570/8350/8320/6300

So far I am leaning towards the 4570 just for better single threaded performance and 4 cores. I can get it from microcenter for $160


I am pretty open to suggestions, but I want to keep the system under $850 if possible. We are hoping to find a good deal on a nicer IPS panel for him so I am budgeting around $400 for that.

Thanks for the help guys.
 
If it's light editing he'll be fine with an i5 or an FX-8320. Even an FX-6300 would probably suffice. I wouldn't bother with an i7 for Elements.

Rest looks good but why not get two 1TB drives or two 2TB drives and stick them in RAID-1? That'd make sense for a photo editing build. I store all my photos on the 2x 2TB RAID-1 configuration and it's nice having piece of mind that your work is mirrored.

Why not just get the Corsair 200R case since it's cheaper? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139018
 
200R is fine. I was thinking about microATX since he doesn't need all of the extra expansion slots but 200R is not that big of a case.

I did think about RAID 1 but I am looking at doing the backups of specific folders to the 2tb drive using free file sync or sync toy managed by Windows services. It will be a bit more overhead for me setting it up but then he will have extra space to backup other things from his Wife's PC as well.

So then what do you think about the 6300 vs the 4570? i5 would be about $50 higher.

thanks for the input
 
To save some money I'd just get the AMD probably. Should be fine.

And OK re the storage but if it was me I'd get two drives in RAID-1.
 
Yeah give it some thought. He'll like the fact that his work is 'automatically backed up' (ie, mirrored as soon as it's saved to the array).
 
When a disk in a RAID-1 array fails, you should just be able to install a new disk which is the same size and tell the array to re-build itself. The data should be fine since it is mirrored and not striped - so the data on both disks is usable data.
 
Why is that card reader so expensive?

If you go AMD, I suggest you go for standard ATX, as I can't manage to find a decent micro-ATX mobo for AMD FX.
 
I needed a card reader that fits in a 5.25" bay. If you see anything that looks better for less I would switch it out. All he needs is CF, Micro SD and USB 3

Post #7 has the new motherboard that I was looking at. It is a bit overbuilt but I saw a lot of other motherboards that had problems with the VRMs getting too hot when the CPU was under a lot of stress.
 
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