PC advice for photoshop

[Fuzzy400]

I'm looking to buy a desktop computer that will be suitable for photoshop lightroom 5. I've got a budget of £1000 which will also include a monitor and keyboard in that. Does anyone have any recommendations.
Thanks in advance, Dave

[The_Jackal]

You do not need a super computer. Your minimum should be an i5 CPU, 8Gb RAM.
What ever other people tell you, this spec will handle Lightroom and Photoshop, anything more is purely up to you and your preferences.
£600 will get you this http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/desktops/387943/chi...
This will also play games at 1080p, but if you want to impress the PC willy wavers, throw sense out of the window and ready your credit card.

[boyse7en]

Depends how big the files are that you are planning to manipulate.

If you start doing multi-layered files based on a 50Mb RAW file for instance, you can soon run into files of several hundred Meg in size.

i5, no fancy graphics card (built in graphics will work just fine) as much RAM as you can get for your budget

[rottie102]

Make sure not to skimp on monitor though! Don't spend £850 on a PC and £150 on Pc World's special

[RobDickinson]

I find lightroom quite resource hungry, 6 is supposed to be better.

Ram, fast disk and CPU. A grand should be plenty

[budfox]

If you have the desk space, NOTHING beats multiple monitors for pretty much any kind of computer work.

Such a setup works very well in Lightroom and the second monitor doesn't necessarily have to be an expensive one.

[JohnS]

Only a couple of features of Photoshop (and nothing in Lightroom I think) take advantage of multi-threading, so my advice is to go for a fast i5 processor, minimum of 8Gb of RAM, an SSD disk for operating system and lightroom/photoshop cache files and scratch disk area, and something like a 2TB (or bigger) HD for longer term storage. On my old PC, I played around with varying amounts of RAM, and to be honest for most types of work, there was no noticeable difference above 8GB unless I had dozens of files open at the same time and even then it was very marginal. A fast SSD disk (Samsung 850 or 850 model) made the biggest difference when I added one to the system.

Don't forget a backup solution in your budget as well. Something like a 4TB external hard drive can be bought for under £100.

[_dobbo_]

JohnS said:

an SSD disk for operating system and lightroom/photoshop cache files and scratch disk area

I've performed countless upgrades on computers over the years, and an SSD for the OS and with some decent storage for your "working" area is by far the best bang for buck I have ever seen.

My machine takes less than 10 seconds to cold boot to desktop, when with a traditional spinning disk it was taking over a minute. Get an SSD.

[Fuzzy400]

Thanks for your advice guys. Where is the best place to buy a PC, as after reading lots of reviews, I think I'll stay away from PC World. I would really like to talk to someone to explain what I'm after with the additional information that has been provided here. I'm based in the Portsmouth area and willing to travel to a good shop or purchase online as long as i can chat with someone.

[Simpo Two]

Fuzzy400 said:

Thanks for your advice guys. Where is the best place to buy a PC, as after reading lots of reviews, I think I'll stay away from PC World. I would really like to talk to someone to explain what I'm after with the additional information that has been provided here. I'm based in the Portsmouth area and willing to travel to a good shop or purchase online as long as i can chat with someone.

Novatech are in Portsmouth - and I have one, 7 years old and going well.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/

[Malx]

I just upgraded my PC from Overclockers.co.uk and I'm impressed. I didn't call them but did contact their customer services team via their forums and the response was quick. I hear their phone support is very good for people looking for advice on systems.
No idea how they compare on price as I'm not looking at any PC selling site for the next few months.

I went for an i5 setup and lightroom is insanely quick compared to my old setup.

[mrdemon]

I can build you one if you like, it's what I do as a living.

Use the fastest i5, 16gb ram, samsung 850pro SSD and a quardo k620 graphic card.

You don't want graphics eating your RAM, with a nice Ips pannel vdu.