Do I need high spec computer?

georgiac

Hi

I'm after a decent computer, but not sure how decent I need.

I'm a photographer, using Photoshop, Illustrator and eventually Premiere.

I also use Quark and Office, often all at the same time.

I surf the web (too much!!!) but don't play any games.

I need a new computer, with a decent hard drive for storing images and videos, I would like it to be fast enough to open plenty of document similtaneously, and batch process.

I need a very good 19" monitor, dvd burner and firewire.

I'm considering Evesham ( my old pc is one ) Mesh ( good value/poor service ) and Dell ( not sure ) but I'm open to suggestions.

I've got around £1200 to spend but obviously I'd be happier with some left over.

I would appreciate any ideas, thanks.

mr_fishbulb

Main priorities for you would be:

Lots of storage - at least 200 gig. Aim for a second hard drive to back up your photos.
Lots of ram for photoshop - at least 2gig.
A lovely monitor. An ultra sharp from dell would be great.

Considerations:
Fast-ish processor - but don't blow all your money on a top end one. If you can afford a dual core one then go for it, but it's not as important as hard drive or ram.
Graphics card doesn't really matter as you won't be playing games.

wolfman

I'd build one, or get one built for that money.

For a tft, look at the newer P-MVA panels. They give the best general use as they have good response times (for video work) but also a huge viewing angle (without the colour changing). The Belinea 10 19 20 is very good at around £240-260ish. If not maybe the Samsung 970P at around £315ish.

Get a nice mouse and keyboard, I find them important when adding to the use and feel of the system, always worth spending on in my opinion. I use the Logitech MX1000 which is an excellent cordless laser mouse (£36) and an Apple Pro Keyboard (£22).

I would then spend the bulk of my budget on an AMD64 processor (possibly one of the dual core ones) and around 1-2gb of RAM. You won't need a full on graphics card, something more entry level like a GeForce 6600 or 6600GT will do fine.

Also get a nice case and psu. For £80 the Antec Sonata II provides great value. The case looks good, is well built, and runs near silently. It also includes a solid 450W power supply.

nickmack

As you probably know, Photoshop can be very memory hungry. If you are running it along with other applications open at the same time, even more need for RAM.

With your budget, you should be looking at 2Gb of RAM.

Slightly less important. CPU wise, Photoshop and Premiere both benefit from having a fast processor when applying filters, effects etc. A dual core 3GHz should do the trick.

A quick look on the Dell site indicates that you can pick up the above with a 250Gb drive, DVD-RW, Firewire and Office Basic for your budget.

If you buy Dell, with the monitor, you might be better off factoring in £250-£300 for a decent 19" and buy it seperately, rather than acccept the standard Dell offering.

If you wanted to swap the 3GHz CPU for a 2.8GHz, you can adjust the spec for a larger Hard Disk if you think you need it.

I'm not recommending Dell particularly, it just gives a quick indication of specs and prices. Shop around, but the above RAM and CPU should be affordable with your budget.
If you can get the spec for £900 or less then buy a seperate monitor. The Acer AL1951Bs is in the price range I specified and although marketed at gamers is good all round for what you need. Other people may have other TFTs they can recommend as well.

T4i

yup, i'd go for a meaty cpu, fast ram (1-2gig), large cap drives.

TFT is abit harder as they all produce variations for colours,brightness,contrast. I'd try visit a store and see the results for yourself.

thewizard

nickmack wrote:

As you probably know, Photoshop can be very memory hungry. If you are running it along with other applications open at the same time, even more need for RAM.

With your budget, you should be looking at 2Gb of RAM.

Slightly less important. CPU wise, Photoshop and Premiere both benefit from having a fast processor when applying filters, effects etc. A dual core 3GHz should do the trick.

A quick look on the Dell site indicates that you can pick up the above with a 250Gb drive, DVD-RW, Firewire and Office Basic for your budget.

If you buy Dell, with the monitor, you might be better off factoring in £250-£300 for a decent 19" and buy it seperately, rather than acccept the standard Dell offering.

If you wanted to swap the 3GHz CPU for a 2.8GHz, you can adjust the spec for a larger Hard Disk if you think you need it.

I'm not recommending Dell particularly, it just gives a quick indication of specs and prices. Shop around, but the above RAM and CPU should be affordable with your budget.
If you can get the spec for £900 or less then buy a seperate monitor. The Acer AL1951Bs is in the price range I specified and although marketed at gamers is good all round for what you need. Other people may have other TFTs they can recommend as well.

I would reccomend Dell, I ordered my laptop on a Monday and recieved it on the Wednesday :j ! And I havent had a problem with my laptop at all. Great value for money and quite a high spec for a laptop.
Dell Inspirion 6000
1.4Ghz Processor
512MB RAM (2 x 256MB RAM)
60GB HDD
Windows XP Home
Less than £500 pretty cheap at the time I bought it. Still runs fast to!

GreenNotM

georgiac wrote:

Hi

I'm after a decent computer, but not sure how decent I need.

I'm a photographer, using Photoshop, Illustrator and eventually Premiere.

I also use Quark and Office, often all at the same time.

I need a very good 19" monitor, dvd burner and firewire.

I've got around £1200 to spend but obviously I'd be happier with some left over.

I would appreciate any ideas, thanks.

More Ideas
Are you already using a tablet - You may find that easier to use with photoshop budget £ 33 - 314

For the monitor look for a very high contrast ratio 600:1 - high end monitors are hitting 1000:1 ( High contrast helps you see more colours -www.tomshardware.com does good colour reviews of monitors)

A wide screen will enable you to have 2 full A4 pages open such as Belinea 20" Wide TFT (10 20 35W) 800:1 contrast, 1600x1200 but £390.

wolfman

For the £1200 or so, try and get someone you known, or recommended to you to build it, you'll get much better quality than a Dell or equivalent system. The kind of spec I'd draw up would be:

CPU: AMD Athlon64 3800 Dual Core - £215
Motherboard: Not sure, but budget around £80
Memory: 2x 1gb PC3200 Geil - £124

Case: Antec Sonata II - £80

Graphics Card: Gigabyte GeForce 6600 HeatPipe Version - £70
Hard Drive: 250gb Hitachi T7K250 - £75
DVD-Writer: LG GSA4167 - £28

Mouse: Logitech MX1000 - £37
Keyboard: Apple USB Pro - £21
Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 970P - £330

The monitor mentioned is excellent, the best 19" tft all rounder about at the moment. Shame this wasn't earlier, a friend of mine got one for £200 (misprice)!

The parts picked are all highly reviewed/rated and it'll also run near silently. The total comes to £1,120 but that could easily be cut down. Instead of the £330 monitor you could go for something like the Belinea 10 19 20 at about £270. You could also go for a cheaper CPU, such as the AMD Athlon 3500+ for £150 (AMD are generally preferable to Intel at the moment).

2gb memory is perfect, you could probably get away with less, but it's worth spending the extra money. I wouldn't bother with anything more than 2gb though as it's not properly supported or won't be beneficial.

You'd also have a decent mouse/keyboard instead of the usual ones they bundle with package deals. It's just a nice touch often appreciated by designers.

If anything just use the above spec as a guide or to help with looking around at packages.

albertross_2

you don't need to spend anywhere near £1200 to get a decent system to do what you need, have a look at the Dell website..

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/dt_advanced?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

This is £682 !

http://www.dmxdimension.com/blogcategory/dell_uk_dimension_9150.html

it will leave you plenty of money to spare, to add bits, upgrade at a later date, buy another one in a few years time.. £1200 is OTT..

http://www.dmxdimension.com/blogcategory/dell_uk_dimension_5150.html

rogerramjet

Don't forget the cost of a *legal* operating system (win XP which most use) in the overall cost which can be around £60.00 for the home version

hendersonb

Itake it you already have all the software that you will be using as this alone would cost somewhere in the region of £1200. It sounds as if whatever your doing is more for business use with the applications mentioned so in this case you really should be using legal software