Advice on PC spec for CS6

[Lemmiwinks]

Hi everyone

Looking for a bit of guidance and I hope you folk may be able to help.

I am about to upgrade my ageing PC and want to try and get the best spec I can afford to run Photoshop CS6 comfortably. I do not undertake massive creative projects that produce massive file sizes. I use it to work on my RAW files (about 30MB) and create a number of layers, sometimes merging two images together.

I am looking to spend between £400-£450 on processor, motherboard, RAM and Gfx card (budget constraints and all that). I know I am not going to get an all singing all dancing machine for this spend. However, I want to try and get the best combination I can afford that will work best for me. I don't use the PC for gaming.

I will be building the PC myself to save a few quid. At present I am considering:

Intel Core i5-4590 @3.3Ghz
16GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM
MSI GTX 750 2GB GDDR5 VGA DVI HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card
Gigabyte GA-Z97M-DS3H Socket LGA 1150 uATX Motherboard

This little lot comes to approx. £420.

The question is, could I be using my money more wisely? Is this spec too much? Or would I be better reducing spec in some areas and boosting it in others?

I would be very grateful for any guidance you can possibly send my way.

Cheers

 

[Hoogle]

Honestly that would be an ideal spec for photoshop with the addition of a 240GB Solid state drive and perhaps a 1tb (or Higher) storage drive.

I am assuming other things are also being added to as I do not see any mention of a PSU, Operating System, Hard drives, Optical Drives, Case, Mouse, Keyboard, Graphics Tablet, Monitors, accessories

 

[Lemmiwinks]

Hi Hoogle

Thank you for your response.

I'm looking to add 2 x HDD, possibly a SSD if I can afford it. I've got the PSU, case etc fathomed. It is essentially getting those 4 main components right that I am trying to fathom out.

The more I read online the baffling it can become. Some shout that an i7 processor is the way to go but it seems a lot of extra expense for not too much reward. I'm trying to balance cost with performance overall.

 

[Hoogle]

i7 will not really be a justifiable expense on a tight budget and can actually be slower on less intensive tasks, where an i7 will come into play is when your really straining a cpu doing 100mbs + psds, 3d aspect of photoshop (honestly not many people bother with 3d beyond basic 3d work as adobe really does not handle it well and stick to a dedicated 3d program) or if your doing large amounts of video editing. I have built many pcs for customers and for the image editing and day to day runnings a nice i5 is perfect.

and the major performance difference in a computer these days are the hard drives used hence the fact ssd are becoming so popular for people that rely on their pc more than the average web browser and facebook viewer.

I will say a priority to any semi professional pc build will be an ssd even if you just get a £50 1 which is 100gb ish but for the £90 mark you can get a 240gb sandisk ultra maybe even cheaper if you shop around.