Advice needed about commisioning a custom PC

oldtoolie

You don't sound like the type that wants to put you own computer together so forget barebones kits. (sorry, boys). For Photoshop you need the fastest processor you can get and 4gb RAM memory. Photoshop loves memory so 4gb should be on your list.

The ALDI Medion pc's are said to be good value -- if they are in stock.

However check out www.dmxdimension.com which lists all of the best buys from Dell. Right now you can get a Dell Inspiron 570 with
AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8GHz CPU, Windows 7 Home Premium, 4096MB RAM, 320GB hard disk, ATI Radeon HD4200 graphics card, DVD Writer, card reader for £399 delivered. Dell stock number is D005718.

Lil306

turbobob wrote: »

Judging by what you are asking I think you are going to struggle for £400. £400 is basic PC money, not a professional graphics workstation.

You could build/spec a no frills quad core PC with 4gb memory for £400. That would be a Intel Core 2 Quad or an AMD Athlon/Phenom II X4. There would be some economies to get it to that price, such as low end graphics card, and a cheap generic chassis and power supply. Aldi were selling one of this spec on a special offer recently..

If you were looking to get something with significantly more CPU power and memory you are going to have to spend a lot more.

I have to disagree here but that's not true. Technology prices are crashing fast and it's easily possible to build a PC capable of doing the work that is mentioned in this post for £400.

Power supplies 700-800w are £30, Decent Graphics Card £100. That leaves you £270 for a case and internals.

You don't need a mega good graphics card for this, but it needs to have a decent enough specification. Obvioisly with £400 you make comprimises, but for a small business I doubt they would need to go overkill in terms of specification.

For example, £220 gets you a a barebones PC on Novatech website, without monitor with 4GB Ram and a Quad Core CPU. Upgrade the PSU for £30 and you have a graphics capable workstation for just a bit under £400

BTW, with regards to the graphics card. That includes a card I quickly pulled from their website capable of working with CS4, may not be the best, not the worst, but I believe the work that will be done won't be intensive enough to be worth spending £400+ on a higher spec machine.

They are making do with a Core 2 Duo at the moment. If they wanted to be really cheap they could just swap out the original parts and keep the PC. That would give a bigger budget

oldtoolie wrote: »

You don't sound like the type that wants to put you own computer together so forget barebones kits. (sorry, boys). For Photoshop you need the fastest processor you can get and 4gb RAM memory. Photoshop loves memory so 4gb should be on your list.

The ALDI Medion pc's are said to be good value -- if they are in stock.

However check out www.dmxdimension.com which lists all of the best buys from Dell. Right now you can get a Dell Inspiron 570 with
AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8GHz CPU, Windows 7 Home Premium, 4096MB RAM, 320GB hard disk, ATI Radeon HD4200 graphics card, DVD Writer, card reader for £399 delivered. Dell stock number is D005718.

No offense taken, just offering a few suggestions that's all.

I believe it would be good for original poster to hunt around, there are several options. Two best would be a barebones option or a full system like above (minus monitor)

[Deleted User]

You don't really need that high spec a machine to do that.. i have an 18 month old Dell studio 17 laptop with built in card reader, 4gb of ram, core 2 duo cpu... it cost £400 back then.

It happily runs Adobe lightroom, Photoshop...

For £433, on the dell outlet (business) store you can currently buy a Intel® Core 2 Quad-core - 2660, 3gb ram, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT220, Windows 7, 320GB hard disk, No monitor. Add a memory card reader (About £5 from play.com) and you're good to go.

missimaxo

LOL - when I started out this morning I thought it would be easy! Thank you to everyone for your posts and advice. I know more from this post (and understand what all those figures and numbers mean!) than I gained from ages searching the web.

[Deleted User]

You should also factor in the cost of a decent graphics card as Photoshop CS4 was designed to use the GPU to give an increase in overall performance. The only requirements are the card has to be compatible with Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0, which most midrange cards are.

You'll have to put some serious consideration into using a 64 bit version of Windows as Photoshop CS4 on Windows is a native 64 bit application, not to mention you'll find Photoshop is limited to how much physical RAM it can actually access without starting to use the hard drive for swapping, which will create a bottleneck in performance if you opt to stay with a 32 bit Operating System.

beetledriver

I just bought a quad core 3.4gz AMD black with 4ghz of ram from novatech for £350. It's rapid fast. All I had to do was put my old harddrive in it and graphics card and jobs done. Awsome fast machine will be more than good enough for your needs. I use it to edit Video and I think thats more processor heavy than what you need.

turbobob

Lil306 wrote: »

For example, £220 gets you a a barebones PC on Novatech website, without monitor with 4GB Ram and a Quad Core CPU. Upgrade the PSU for £30 and you have a graphics capable workstation for just a bit under £400

BTW, with regards to the graphics card. That includes a card I quickly pulled from their website capable of working with CS4, may not be the best, not the worst, but I believe the work that will be done won't be intensive enough to be worth spending £400+ on a higher spec machine.

They are making do with a Core 2 Duo at the moment. If they wanted to be really cheap they could just swap out the original parts and keep the PC. That would give a bigger budget

Add the cost of an optical drive, hard drive, and a legit copy of Windows 7 64bit to your barebones system as well. Anyway I agree you can get a basic quad core PC with 4gb for £400. Really my point was if the OP needed significantly more power than this sort of range then they are going to have to spend more. E.g. something like a Core i7 based machine or even a dual Nehalem Xeon workstation. I don't know enough about batch processing on Photoshop to make a call on what is needed exactly.

Dilfred

have you considered MAC's? my understanding is that they are superiour for photo manipulation etc.

Lil306

Out of the price range so MACs not really applicable. Plus MACs are a bit more specialised to use.