Regular desktop (photography) upgrade. Budget(€800-900) Considering a Custom build??

FireByrner

Got a Dell 530s Intel Core 2(TM) Duo, 3GB ram, Graphics card; ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT. 300GB HD. Considering an upgrade with the poor performance in recent months. Defraging & deleting junk with no joy.

After reading this forum for the 1st time yesterday (& a component novice), I’m very interested to hear what ‘the Regulars’ could advise for a custom built Reliable high speed Desktop (€800-900)? Do I need to spend that much?

Other PC Uses:
Web-surfing
No gaming
Big into Photography- Photoshop, Proshow Producer etc
Video Editing for the future
2TB of HD space
Internal Memory card rearders.
DVD reader burner
blu-ray dvd player burner

deconduo

This has all your requirements:

Total build cost: €842.30 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i7-2600K Box, LGA1155 €255.77
Samsung SH-B123L bulk €51.44
2 x 8GB-Kit G.Skill RipJaws-X PC3-10667U CL9 €42.80
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX €83.63
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit (SB-Version) €73.47
Club3D GeForce GTX 550Ti, 1024MB DDR5 €108.64
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ) €44.09
Samsung EcoGreen F4 2000GB, SATA II (HD204UI) 8,9cm (3,5") €58.89
Wintech int.Card Reader 8,9cm (3,5") USB 2.0 inkl. drei Blenden in schwarz, beige, silber €7.22
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W €40.92
Xigmatek Asgard III Midi Tower - black, ohne Netzteil €32.63

I'm not too sure about the GPU, there's probably better cards specifically for dev stuff. The rest should be good though. The 2600k might be overkill, if you wanted to save money you could drop down to an i5-2500k.

FireByrner

Thanks Deconduo for your v.quick reply. Much appreciated. This is definitely the place to get answers. I’m very very tempted but


I’ve absolutely no experience of Custom building & I never seriously considered a Custom build until yesterday (accidentally came across this forum). This German Co. that is regularly mentioned for parts & construction is it easy to deal with? This will be the household PC and reliability is key.

I’m sure this has been asked before but, what happens if something were to go wrong?

deconduo

FireByrner wrote: »

Thanks Deconduo for your v.quick reply. Much appreciated. This is definitely the place to get answers. I’m very very tempted but


I’ve absolutely no experience of Custom building & I never seriously considered a Custom build until yesterday (accidentally came across this forum). This German Co. that is regularly mentioned for parts & construction is it easy to deal with? This will be the household PC and reliability is key.

I’m sure this has been asked before but, what happens if something were to go wrong?

That site is great, most people here use either it or scan.co.uk Each part you order will have warranty on it, so in fact you'll have a longer warranty than a standard dell or anything. If something breaks you can simply send it back and they'll replace it.

If you are worried about building it yourself, there's an option where they will build it for you for €20. Or if you are in Dublin I'll be happy to do it for you for free.

frozenfrozen

deconduo wrote: »

This has all your requirements:

Total build cost: €842.30 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i7-2600K Box, LGA1155 €255.77
Samsung SH-B123L bulk €51.44
2 x 8GB-Kit G.Skill RipJaws-X PC3-10667U CL9 €42.80
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX €83.63
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit (SB-Version) €73.47
Club3D GeForce GTX 550Ti, 1024MB DDR5 €108.64
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ) €44.09
Samsung EcoGreen F4 2000GB, SATA II (HD204UI) 8,9cm (3,5") €58.89
Wintech int.Card Reader 8,9cm (3,5") USB 2.0 inkl. drei Blenden in schwarz, beige, silber €7.22
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W €40.92
Xigmatek Asgard III Midi Tower - black, ohne Netzteil €32.63

I'm not too sure about the GPU, there's probably better cards specifically for dev stuff. The rest should be good though. The 2600k might be overkill, if you wanted to save money you could drop down to an i5-2500k.

With the idea of video editing in the future; the 2600k would probably be a better choice.

I would suggest that you may have too much ram for your needs, if you were to maybe get 8gb of ram and put the saved money towards an SSD (OCZ Agility 3 60GB 6,4cm (2,5") SATA3 €95.38 or something similar) which you could have your OS and adobe suite etc. on.

Redisle

OP you might benefit from a slightly different mainboard like a Z68 or H67 for QuickSync to speed up any future video transcoding. Perhaps you would never use it but google QuickSync and take a look at some benchmarks anyway. Essentially the 2600K and 2500K have a built in GPU that can be used to transcode video much faster compared to software transcoding.