Budget: £350 or so Main uses of intended build: Mostly (80%) editing photos using Lightroom 3.5 (will upgrade to v4 once build is finished). Some capture of digital video (from mini dv camera, not hi def), Some Autocad 2011, web browsing, DVD ripping and converting to AVI. Some sound editing (Cool edit Pro)/Sonar. Some games playing but mostly very old stuff (witcher 1 current game, most stuff I play on XBOX) Parts required: CPU/MBoard/Memory/SSD/OS Previous build information (list details of parts): Intel 5200 Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L Corsair DDR2 2x2GB Samsung 2TB Spinpoint SATAII Samsung 1TB Spinpoin SATAII ATI Radeon HD4770 (Pass Mark 1,070) Cooler Master Case Cooler Master 460 PSU (400w) Samsung Syncmaster 2333T monitor Monitor resolution: 1920 x 1080 Storage requirements: An SSD for OS and Lightroom Catalogue file will you be overclocking: NO Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): Not really, I need quite a few USB ports and a firewire port but I have a PCI card currently with a firewire port and 6 usb in addition to the 6usb on the MB Extra information about desired system: Current OS: XP SP3 Hi, my PC is in 3 and a half years old now and in need of an upgrade. Really only looking in the area of running Lightroom faster, anything else should be just fine. I see now that most (all?) intel and some AMD chips have onboard GPUs now but from what I can tell my aging HD4770 would still be a lot faster so I am ignoring any onboard video capabilities (If this is wrong then please let me know!) - In any case, I believe LR doesn't really need any video hardware at all to run I definitely want a SSD and was looking at CRUCIAL M4 64GB (£55) Need OS as well so assume Win 7 HPremium (£66) Will reuse all parts listed above including HDD for music/video etc. storage Memory will be 8GB of corsair DDR3 (seem to be so many different ones but basic will do I think) 2x 4GB CMV8GX3M2A1333C9 - (£35) Leaves £200 for CPU and MB. I was sold on intel and either a i3 3220/3210 (about £90 Passmark 4,263) or an i5 3470 (£140, Passmark 6,651) so nearly 50% faster?! Or, the favourite atm, 3570K (£164, passmark 7,022) but that is getting expensive for slightly better and I don't feel the need to overclock Any of these and a Gigabyte MB GA-Z77-DS3H (£72 and I assume similar to the MB I have atm) BUT! Looking at Passmark Benchlabs it would seem like the AMD chips offer better VFM - The AMD FX-8350 is £146 (passmark 9,178 - 30% faster than a 3570K?) Or FX-6300 (£97 and passmark 6,601 better than all i3) So, I don't know how much to read into the benchmarks (I know its all to do with cores and hyperthreading etc. but does any of that matter to running Lightroom on Win7? Comments and help gratefully received, sorry if I've missed anything important out but would love your input (Its been a while since the last build!) Cheers, Liam.
Windows 8 is cheaper than 7, get that will save you money. Might even have downgrade rights? (check this though)
AMD chips have more cores than Intel chips, but the cores are slower, so an unrealistically multithreaded benchmark may be in AMD's favor despite Intel being faster in most real world applications. The i5 3470 or 3450 are good choices. The extra cores over the dual core i3 chips should give better performance in your applications. It's all up to your budget though. No need for a Z77 motherboard if you're not overclocking. You can save some money by going with an H77 or B75 board. Make sure to get 1.5V memory. Crucial M4 is fine. Which model is your power supply specifically? Cooler Master makes some nasty ones and some decent ones.
Thanks for the reply. First thing, my psu is this: 1 x Coolermaster 460W eXtreme Power Plus PSU - 20+4pin 4+4 ATX12v 4x SATA 6pin PCI-E Thanks for tip re MBoards, what's the difference between H77 and B75? Why is it 1.5v memory out of interest and is there any point paying for more than the cheapest? Again re running Lightroom, is it worth getting a slower CPU (3320) and another 8Gb RAM instead? Cheers, Liam.
Thanks, checked out the other MB chipsets etc. The ASRock H77 MB looks good but is £2 MORE than the Gigabyte Z77-DS3H. (Which does have the PCI slot I need, apparently not all Z77 boards do) All H77/Z77 boards seem to specify 1.5v memory so I'll just check that. Liam.
The OEM of your PSU is apparently called Chicony... I'd swap it for something that sounds a little more reliable. Corsair CX430 or XFX Core 450W maybe? The difference between Z77 and H77 is that the latter doesn't support overclocking. B75 has less features than the two, for example only one SATA 6Gbit/s port. Get the cheapest board that has all the features you need. 1.5V is the maximum memory voltage recommended by Intel for Ivy Bridge. If the difference between the memory voltage and the memory controller voltage is too large, the CPU can get damaged. 1.65V memory apparently works fine, but I'd rather be inside the specification. There's practically no difference between memory modules except for frequency, timings and voltage. The performance difference between 1333MHz and 1600MHz is small but existent, so check the prices. Not sure how much Lightroom likes multiple cores. I guess you could add another 4GB of memory later on though.
Thanks again, some research seems to indicate that LR uses multiple cores but would rarely need more than 8Gb Ram. I know what you are saying about the PSU but the current one I have has done me well for three years and I also have a spare one due to another build that didn't get made so I'm going to stick with mine unless there's a VERY good reason no to! Like I said the Z77 board is only 50p more than an H77 one so this is definite: GA-Z77 DS3H (£67, ebuyer) CORSAIR 2 x 4Gb DDR3 1600 (£39) Just need to decide between 64Gb and 128Gb SSD: Crucial M4 128Gb (£80) OR Crucial M4 64Gb (£55) Not sure the larger drive is essential and I could spend the extra on the big decision maker, CPU: i3 3220 (£84) i5 3470 (£141) i5 3570K (£156) (All Aria) I think the 3470 is discounted as for only £15 more I could get the faster (and overclockable with the Z77 board) 3570K, so 3220 or 3570K? The i3 saves me £72 which is not to be sniffed at and would definitely go to the 128Gb M4. Any more thoughts? Cheers, Liam.
