Need a new 'Photoshop Machine'

[B3N]

My current PC was never spec'd out for Photoshopping 3/4 years ago and now with a camera upgrade, which in turn means bigger images, my PC is really starting to suffer and PS'ing is more than frustrating now more than ever.

Looking at a number of options from an iMac to building it myself. The purse strings are tight as me and the gf are doing some aggresive saving for a house, but this is something that is stopping me from my favourite hobby so I'm going to find a way.

Since an iMac + software is going to be > £1000 I'm counting it out for the moment. I'm now going down the route of hand build with a budget of £400-£500 for hardware.

So what is the best spec/option for a 'decent' Photoshop PC? Discuss

Some options:
CPU: Dual Core vs Quad Core
Memory: 2GB RAM enough? Is 4GB greedy?
HDD: Can of worms -> RAID? Mirror? Separate OS disk? Separate scratch disk?
Graphics: do the half decent Intel on-board graphics have enough stout? Are separate graphics cards for gamers? (I don't do games)
OS: What flavour of Vista (contraversial)

What's your setup/opinion?

[S. Gonzales Esq.]

Can't help with PC-specific stuff, but I'm running 4GB and a seperate scratch disk. It has to be a second disk - a partition of the main drive won't help.

With memory relatively cheap, that's probably the most cost-effective way to improve performance.

[L4MBOLUV3R]

cpu - an intel dual core will be enough
memory - get as much as you can!
HDD - go with about 250 gb sata with a external. i find the bigger the drive the slower it loads.
graphics and sound - you want to get hold of a mid range nvidia graphics card like an 8800 gts? and a standard sound blaster card. the less strain you put on the mobo the faster it will run.
OS - i would still run XP - personally i think vista is a bag of st :P

atm i have a custom build (by me? with a asus mobo, amd dual core, 2gb (which use to be 4) of memory, 7600 gt 256mb nvida Vga, sound blaster audio card and a 250gb sata HDD and it runs perfectly and ive had that for going on 3years now with minor upgrades and even with the RAM slowly dying off i can still do photo shop, 3D and video and run it off to two monitors. 24 and 26 with out any real trouble

[4hero]

Running a quad core pentium here with 4gb ram, 500gb sata hd (only used for running software), 512MB ATI Radeon graphics, and 2.5tb of external storage. I use photoshop/lightroom every day, and have to say it's the dogs dangly bits. Just got the machine a few days ago, but so far vista home premium is running nice (coming from a vista hater).

I got this machine for £780 (not including external storage, monitor and the likes), but I'm sure a similar machine could be build/had for a lot less.

Edited by 4hero on Monday 1st December 15:46

[Ren-Raku]

Well, if you're after a laptop, I suggest the Toshiba TruBrite 17" screen laptops, I use one and imo, I can't beat it for the price :3