Looking for new build recommendations...

[Dhakon]

Planning on building my wife a desktop in the next few months. She's a professional photographer, and does a lot of photo editing. She'll need a pc that's fast/responsive enough for heavy photo editing, with good storage capacity. She doesn't do much gaming, very rarely maybe WoW and the components I'll add to it will take care of that for the most part. Below are the requirements I'd like to stick close to if possible.

Budget: $1000 (as close to it as possible, but would be willing to go over).

What I do need:
CPU
PSU (Enough to run everything below, with room to add more HDD if need be)
Ram
Optical
Media Reader Drive
CPU Cooler? (Would it even be necessary to OC for photo editing?)
HDD (I'd like two 2TB HDD's to start with, at least 7200rpm)
SSD (I'm thinking Crucial M4 128GB for OS and Photoshop, or would a 64 GB be plenty?)
Monitor (1920x1080 res. I suppose)
OS (Windows 7 64bit Home OEM $100)


What I do not need:
Keyboard/Mouse/Speakers
Case
Motherboard (see below)
Graphics (see below)

I'm going to give her my old Motherboard/GPU (linked below) from my current rig, both are less than 3 months old, so parts need to be compatible with them.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 1155 Socket
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128502

GPU: EVGA GTX 560ti "Classified" 448 Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130739

 

[lehtv]

CPU i5-2500K $200 + Hyper 212+ $20 AR
PSU PCP&C 600W $57 AR AP
RAM 2x8GB G.Skill Ares 1600Mhz $98 AP
ODD DVD burner $18
SSD Crucial M4 128GB $125
HDD 2x Samsung F4 2TB $240
OS Win 7 $100
Monitor Dell U2412M IPS 16:10 $300 AP

= $1158 AR AP

If you want to get closer to $1000, you can settle for any of the following:
- 2x4GB RAM (~$40)
- Crucial M4 64GB ($80) (would be enough to install, but 128gb is faster, better $/gb and can be partitioned for use as a cache for the HDD; the 64GB drive as a whole could also be used as a cache
- less HDD space
- slightly less expensive IPS

Would it even be necessary to OC for photo editing?

Not necessary, but it would speed up image processing times. I'd say it's worth it as you already have an overclockable mobo.

Media Reader Drive

Exactly what are you looking for? You mean a card reader? Would this suffice?

 

[DSF]

Since this is a work machine, are you willing to be tech support as needed? Do you have a backup scheme in place?

 

[Dhakon]

Since this is a work machine, are you willing to be tech support as needed? Do you have a backup scheme in place?

By "work" it will be at our house, she's a freelance professional photographer, not a portrait studio photographer, so yes, I'd be doing the tech support, and yes, we have a means of backup as well.

Mainly just looking for recommendations on making it fast with a high capacity for storage for photo editing purposes. I know lots of ram/processor power is good for video editing and the such but didn't know if photo editing would require as much basically. Sorry should have clarified a little more.

Thanks for the recommendations up top!