Boid
All-Pro
- Location
- Bangalore, India
- Name
- Rajiv
I've been toying around with the idea of getting a Nikon D800E, the downside to which would be that I would need to change my desktop at home. I also have a MBP which isn't as good at handling large files that the Nikon spits out, plus I don't like editing on a laptop (even though it has a largish 17" screen).
While browsing around trying to see how I would put this together, I came across this website - Logical Increments - PC Buying Guide a "build a pc" website dedicated to helping gamers put together rigs at various price points. Not quite what I wanted. So I wrote in to the site admins who most graciously decided to help me put together a rig on a 1200$ budget. Thanks Orion Bukantis!
As a side note, they also said that they would try and work on a similar website that helps photographers with building a PC system, because their requirements differ from what a gamer would be looking for.
This is the setup that Orion recommended to me, I hope it is of use to someone else as well -
CPU:
$324
Intel i7-3770K
This is the fastest CPU for a reasonable price. Photoshop and most other lightly threaded applications perform better on Intel CPUs for the money. You can see benchmarks here: AnandTech | Bench - CPU
This comes with a heatsink, which will work fine for you since you're not overclocking.
Motherboard:
$135
ASRock Z77 Extreme 4
Or any of the quality Z77 motherboards from our guide will do very nicely. The advantage to getting a fancier one, beyond any of the additional features you (may) want is that they are built with higher quality components, and will be more reliable. Motherboards are one of the most common components to fail, so it's worth paying a little more for quality.
RAM:
$80
16GB DDR3-1600
You probably won't need 16GB, but it will allow you to have lots of things open at once, including many photos in photoshop.
Graphics Card:
$0
Integrated HD 4000
I would start out with no graphics card. The i7-3770K has integrated graphics that work just as well as expensive discrete graphics cards for non-gamers, and will even work with most of the GPU-acceleration of the Mercury Graphics Engine in CS6. If you decide the you want something more powerful, you can add something like a GTX 660 any time you want.
Storage:
$230
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
$120 x 2
2 x 3TB HDD in RAID-1
This is probably the most important part for you, and the biggest difference from a gaming PC. You want a fast SSD for your primary drive.
In the past, it would be a good idea to have multiple drives for different things (OS drive, photoshop drive, scratch drive) but good modern SATA 6.0Gbps SSDs are fast enough to make this unnecessary. Use the SSD for Windows, Photoshop, other programs, and the files you're working on now, and the large HDDs for storing everything else. Windows, photoshop, and other apps, will probably take ~ 60 GB on their own, so perhaps you could get away with a 128GB SSD, or maybe you want even more super fast storage and want a 512GB SSD.
If you want more than 3TB of storage space, you can get 4TB HDDs.
Setting the large HDDs up in RAID-1 mode will give you redundancy - all data is automatically copied to both drives. So you only get the storage space of a single drive, but all your data is there if one of the drives dies a horrible death. You'll still want external backups (ideally offsite) to protect against things like accidental deletion or something that destroys your whole computer though.
Power Supply:
Seasonic S12II 430W
$60
You definitely want a high quality power supply, but since you won't be stressing a heavy duty graphics card (even if you decide to add one later), you won't really need more than 350W. Without a graphics card, your PC will probably use 150W under full load. With a graphics card like the GTX660, that would go up to 250W. That said, getting a bigger power supply wouldn't hurt anything if you want the extra margin of safety.
Case:
Fractal Define R4
$80 - 140
This is pretty subjective. The Define R4 is one of my favorite current cases. It's very quiet, cools well, can hold 8 HDDs + 2 SSDs, and I like how it looks in both black and silver.
All of the cases we recommend on Logical Increments are blends of thermal performance, acoustic performance (silence), aesthetics, and price. You can go with any that you like, the parts I've recommended will fit in any of them.
The Corsair 550D is another of my favorites.
Other things you might need:
DVD / Blu-ray drive
Keyboard
Mouse
Speakers
Headphones
We're working on recommendations for those, but we haven't done enough research yet. They're inexpensive and subjective enough that you should be fine reading a few reviews and finding ones you like. Or the stuff you have now will work fine.
That's a total of around $1200, and honestly that's the right amount to spend. You're going to get close to the maximum available performance, but still for a reasonable price. The case, power supply, and hard drives will be useable for years of future upgrades too.
Another website that seems very popular (also has a uk version) is Pick Parts, Build Your PC, Compare and Share - PCPartPicker
While browsing around trying to see how I would put this together, I came across this website - Logical Increments - PC Buying Guide a "build a pc" website dedicated to helping gamers put together rigs at various price points. Not quite what I wanted. So I wrote in to the site admins who most graciously decided to help me put together a rig on a 1200$ budget. Thanks Orion Bukantis!
As a side note, they also said that they would try and work on a similar website that helps photographers with building a PC system, because their requirements differ from what a gamer would be looking for.
This is the setup that Orion recommended to me, I hope it is of use to someone else as well -
CPU:
$324
Intel i7-3770K
This is the fastest CPU for a reasonable price. Photoshop and most other lightly threaded applications perform better on Intel CPUs for the money. You can see benchmarks here: AnandTech | Bench - CPU
This comes with a heatsink, which will work fine for you since you're not overclocking.
Motherboard:
$135
ASRock Z77 Extreme 4
Or any of the quality Z77 motherboards from our guide will do very nicely. The advantage to getting a fancier one, beyond any of the additional features you (may) want is that they are built with higher quality components, and will be more reliable. Motherboards are one of the most common components to fail, so it's worth paying a little more for quality.
RAM:
$80
16GB DDR3-1600
You probably won't need 16GB, but it will allow you to have lots of things open at once, including many photos in photoshop.
Graphics Card:
$0
Integrated HD 4000
I would start out with no graphics card. The i7-3770K has integrated graphics that work just as well as expensive discrete graphics cards for non-gamers, and will even work with most of the GPU-acceleration of the Mercury Graphics Engine in CS6. If you decide the you want something more powerful, you can add something like a GTX 660 any time you want.
Storage:
$230
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
$120 x 2
2 x 3TB HDD in RAID-1
This is probably the most important part for you, and the biggest difference from a gaming PC. You want a fast SSD for your primary drive.
In the past, it would be a good idea to have multiple drives for different things (OS drive, photoshop drive, scratch drive) but good modern SATA 6.0Gbps SSDs are fast enough to make this unnecessary. Use the SSD for Windows, Photoshop, other programs, and the files you're working on now, and the large HDDs for storing everything else. Windows, photoshop, and other apps, will probably take ~ 60 GB on their own, so perhaps you could get away with a 128GB SSD, or maybe you want even more super fast storage and want a 512GB SSD.
If you want more than 3TB of storage space, you can get 4TB HDDs.
Setting the large HDDs up in RAID-1 mode will give you redundancy - all data is automatically copied to both drives. So you only get the storage space of a single drive, but all your data is there if one of the drives dies a horrible death. You'll still want external backups (ideally offsite) to protect against things like accidental deletion or something that destroys your whole computer though.
Power Supply:
Seasonic S12II 430W
$60
You definitely want a high quality power supply, but since you won't be stressing a heavy duty graphics card (even if you decide to add one later), you won't really need more than 350W. Without a graphics card, your PC will probably use 150W under full load. With a graphics card like the GTX660, that would go up to 250W. That said, getting a bigger power supply wouldn't hurt anything if you want the extra margin of safety.
Case:
Fractal Define R4
$80 - 140
This is pretty subjective. The Define R4 is one of my favorite current cases. It's very quiet, cools well, can hold 8 HDDs + 2 SSDs, and I like how it looks in both black and silver.
All of the cases we recommend on Logical Increments are blends of thermal performance, acoustic performance (silence), aesthetics, and price. You can go with any that you like, the parts I've recommended will fit in any of them.
The Corsair 550D is another of my favorites.
Other things you might need:
DVD / Blu-ray drive
Keyboard
Mouse
Speakers
Headphones
We're working on recommendations for those, but we haven't done enough research yet. They're inexpensive and subjective enough that you should be fine reading a few reviews and finding ones you like. Or the stuff you have now will work fine.
That's a total of around $1200, and honestly that's the right amount to spend. You're going to get close to the maximum available performance, but still for a reasonable price. The case, power supply, and hard drives will be useable for years of future upgrades too.
Another website that seems very popular (also has a uk version) is Pick Parts, Build Your PC, Compare and Share - PCPartPicker