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Please Help Me Piece Together a Photo Editing Machine

C

civilicious

Senior member
I need to build a system for my assistant to retouch fairly large (100+ MB) image files in Adobe Photoshop as well as organize a database of images in Lightroom. This will be a strictly work machine at my studio so 90% Adobe CS5 products (mainly Photoshop) and 10% office/internet/music. It would be nice if i could use Premiere and After Effects to edit HD footage as well.

Budget is $800 - plan to buy parts in the US

No brand preference

No current parts for use other than spare DVD drive, mouse, keyboard, monitors laying around.

I do not plan to overclock.

I do not plan on gaming with it.

I plan to build within the next month or two.

Posts i've read so far:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2140071&
 
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Will you be doing high end work? (300MB+ OPENEXR photos?) Or is this basic photoshoping with some light video editing?
 
Some of my retouched files surpassed 500MB so yes, a little bit of high end work. The RAW files from my camera @ 16bit is a bit hefty. But i would say 75% of the time, its basic photoshopping with light video editing.
 
Okay, here is MY suggested build. If you need a monitor, keyboard, and mouse then let me know but i dont think you will be able to fit monitor, keyboard, mouse and such in this budget and still get the performance you want.

Antec 300
ASRock 870 Extreme3
Antec NEO ECO 400c
G.Skill Value Series 8GB (2x4GB)
Windows 7/Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB combo
Radeon HD 6870/AMD Phenom II X4 955 combo


Total: $784.88
Note, because your GPU requires two 6 pin PCI power connectors but your PSU only comes with one you will need to use the included PCI 6pin-Molex adapter to supply the needed power.
 
great! thanks for your suggestion.

Since I wouldn't use this rig to do any kind of gaming, do you think the graphics card is overkill? Do you think money is better maxing out the RAM? Is it possible to do 16GB with this setup?
 
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civilicious said:
great! thanks for your suggestion.

Since I wouldn't use this rig to do any kind of gaming, do you think the graphics card is overkill?

8GB of RAM would be minimum. Do you think money is better maxing out the RAM? Is it possible to do 16GB with this setup?
Click to expand...

Yes you can buy another 2x4GB kit for $80, If you are going to do video work and such i would get a decent GPU for something a little cheaper consider, this. That will allow you to pick up the 2nd 8GB kit for $80 making your total: 844.87, however the GTX 460 GPU has a rebate right now for $40 making your total after the rebate 804.87.
 
For this build the 6870 really is overkill. OP could probably get away with something much cheaper like the GTS 450.
 
You can get a cheaper gpu, however a more powerful gpu will allow you to do more things with the same machine. But yes a gts450 would work.
 
If the work is 90% CS5, with little to no video encoding and only a few things supporting CUDA (some 3rd party plugins for the most part), isn't there essentially no benefit to having a beefy GPU? Also going by the "I wouldn't use this rig to do any kind of gaming" seems like any modern video card could drive 2 monitors at 2560x1600 for only 2d work.
 
Your budget is a bit low for what you want to do to be honest, especially since it seems that this machine will be used in a business setting. I'd recommend getting the best machine that you can from one of the usual suspects (Dell, HP, Lenovo) so that you'll have a single-source for warranty repairs and minimize downtime at critical junctures.

That being said, if you insist on building it yourself, your time horizon suggests that you can wait for Sandy Bridge. That'll allow you to get a quad with a good IGP that can drive two monitors.
 
mfenn said:
Your budget is a bit low for what you want to do to be honest, especially since it seems that this machine will be used in a business setting. I'd recommend getting the best machine that you can from one of the usual suspects (Dell, HP, Lenovo) so that you'll have a single-source for warranty repairs and minimize downtime at critical junctures.

That being said, if you insist on building it yourself, your time horizon suggests that you can wait for Sandy Bridge. That'll allow you to get a quad with a good IGP that can drive two monitors.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. I'm looking for the best machine that i can build within my $800 budget. I understand that it wont compare to my main editing station (Mac Pro). I'm not expecting it to. I'm looking for a secondary pc that I can build for my assistants to use whenever they're in the studio (1-3 days a week, for 3-5 hours/day). It wont be the main workstation, but it will be there whenever its needed.

I want to stay away from the usual suspects (Dell, HP, etc) as much as possible. Yeah, i might find a better deal that way, but I'm actually looking forward to piecing together a custom system. There's some fun in that, don't you think? Troubleshooting on the other hand......maybe i'm just naive? 🙂
 
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