Build Advice Budget build for 2D graphics work

Hi guys, been a while since I built my sig rig so I'm out of touch, especially so when it comes to buying low to mid range.

But my sister is looking for a PC that'll run Photoshop and Illustrator and be able to handle some decent size files.

She'll be looking for everything from case to keyboard and monitor etc. And is hoping for under £500

So if anyone fancies offering some advice, that'd be grand. What kind of graphics card are we looking at, best going for an i3?

Whats a decent but cheap mobo that could slot into this build but leave plenty budget for a decent monitor etc, and will she notice a significant difference if I was to go for 1333 ram rather than 1600

Thanks in advance

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/GIGABYTE-GA...1390997155&sr=8-1&keywords=gigabyte+am3+micro

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-FX6300-...e=UTF8&qid=1390997174&sr=8-1&keywords=fx+6300

Ram speed - no it would be hard to notice any difference unless you were benchmarking.

GPU go for something like the 270x or GTX 660.

 

Dont really need a graphics card, Onboard does the trick.

Photoshop and illustrator like Memory the more you have the more you can run.

Sticking in a 270x or a 660 is not really worth the cash as you would see better returns from a faster cpu and more memory. Also dout it falls into budget.

Assuming you have windows. If you do not have windows under £500 with monitor and windows is tight budget for the record. ( you can basically forget any discrete gpu if this was a requirement)

Once updated to know if you need windows ill try and make you a build for photoshop and illustrator.

 

Thanks very much for your replies guys,

If you can be bothered could you do one tweaked with and without windows.

I don't currently have it but might be able to get it from a work install disk that's kicking about.

Thanks Again

 

Something like the below ( assuming you have a usb copy of windows, If you do not then you will need a dvd drive to install it with)


430W Corsair Builder Series CMPSU-430CXV2UK, 80%+ BRONZE Eff' Quiet Fan, ATX v2.3, PSU
£35.32

1TB Seagate ST1000DM003 Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 6Gb/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache 8ms NCQ OEM £43.98

16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Low Profile Jet Black, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 10-10-10-27, XMP, 1.5V
£123.79

Sharkoon VS3-S Black/Chrome ATX Mid Tower Case w/o PSU, USB 2.0, 120mm Fan
£23.98

Intel Core i3 4130, S 1150, Haswell, Dual Core, 3.4GHz, 1150MHz GPU, 34x Ratio, 54W, Retail
£83.94

Gigabyte GA-H81M-S2PV, Intel H81, S 1150, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, PCIe 2.0 (x16), D-Sub/DVI-D, Micro ATX
£39.37

23" iiyama Prolite X2380HS Black LED, IPS, HDMI
£127.21

£497.

Getting it to include windows means using a cheaper screen ( would not recommend it ) or using less memory. keyboard and mouse can both be obtained cheap in the likes of asda which would suffice till the cash became avail for better.

Windows 8.1 oem is £71 on scan.

You could head the AMD route but its not a big saving if any for slower performance in photoshop and illustrator.

 

Outstanding, thanks very much for the effort, much appreciated

 

I would also suggest more or less the same thing as rollo... but if you can swing it I would add 2x ssd, one for the OS/apps and a cheaper (maybe smaller one, depending on if the saving is enough) as a dedicated scratch disk if they are using it (semi)professional level work. If not I would at least try to get a 80-120GB SSD in there for boot/apps.

 

if the budget can be increased, imho it'd be better to concentrate the money on a single, fast as possible, 250/256GB SSD to use for both, as it'd provide much better performance than having two smaller drives.


That said, i wholeheartedly agree that a smaller SSD would be very useful for most things - though it'd be far better to save space on it (along with the OS & whatnot) for a scratch disk than putting PS/illustrator on it.

Well, you only load the s/w once - & if it takes XX seconds, then so be it - but the scratch disk folder will be accessed repeatedly & so impact on the actual work speed.


Completely separately, the suggested build has no backup drive - so there's obviously the risk of losing all of the data (so hours/days/weeks/... of work) if something untoward happens.