Cheap basic pc for basic home Photoshop use only $750/£500 budget. Help!

Hi all.

I need some advice please. I have built my own mid-range rigs for occasional gaming for about 10 years. But a friend at work has asked me to build him a cheap pc purely for basic Photoshop work only. He only has a £500 budget which is about $750 and only needs a base unit. He has peripherals, OS and monitor etc already.

I have a DVD drive that he wants I can donate, have advised will be best with an SSD and an HDD for storage, 16GB memory preferably 32GB memory. But I suspect his budget won't stretch to 32GB, maybe not even 16GB. He's happy with a cheap and cheerful case.

My main query is will I be better off building with a dedicated GPU and basic CPU. Or is a good CPU more important or is an APU a better route? I have never had anyone ask me to do a build for this purpose and have never used Photoshop myself so I have no idea what is more important. I can use eBay etc for second hand parts if need be. It's general help as to what's best I need. But if anyone has the time and urge to do a list of recommended parts I would be truly grateful.

I would value any advice anyone can offer.

Thanks

does he need an OS, Monitor...etc?

No, I did mention that. He says he has OS, monitor, mouse and keyboard etc. Budget is just for the base unit alone.

okay here is a skylake build PS is rather CPU intensive using GPU for hardware acceleration from what I have read. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/7rFVNG

This build uses a lower ended skylake, but should be good for years to come, is uses DDR4 and I have put in a SSD but Omitted an HDD. This will be easier than getting a large HDD and then later having to move OS to SSD, so He will have to find a storage drive, but for what this build is, I feel that it is worth it with most of everything you asked, even the 16gb of DDR4

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Thats a pretty good budget for a photoshop build for base unit only

go with strong cpu and an entry level gpu (almost all non 3d tasks in photoshop arent gpu accelerated), practically anyone two gens ago amd or nvidia second hand will do.

if its a ddr3 build you might be able to stretch to 32gb as avoiding the scratch disk is the biggest time saver of all in photoshop work.

Thank you. Yep plenty of scope for adding on extras later like another stick of memory, another drive etc. As you say should be good for years on Skylake. Your time and help is appreciated.

no prob, bob

May i present to you, 8 core CPU for 130$... 8320...
Comes with cheaper DDR3, that can fit about 16 of them, and any GPU, even 230, 730 or whatever will do the job... And the core count and huge amount of ram (not sure about the ram though) will outperform the single channel ram and 4 cores of the i5... Hell, 6350 outperforms i5 in photoshop...

That 380 wasn't available in the uk, might have to drop the SSD for now

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/W4z3xr
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/W4z3xr/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£144.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H170M-ITX/DL Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard (£78.13 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£36.92 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£34.98 @ Dabs)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£20.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 380 2GB Video Card (£151.00 @ Aria PC)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£34.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£47.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £548.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-05 19:40 GMT+0000

This is what I was wondering about. So image manipulation, previews etc is primarily CPU based? That is why I was thinking an AMD build might be better for him.

If this is a pure photoshop build dont spend more than 80 to 100 on the gpu (you are practically only using it for 2d acceleration), use that money on a better cpu or more ram instead

Well a computer does not need all that much muscle for basic photo editing.

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/xHX6wP
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/xHX6wP/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£144.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H170M-ITX/DL Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard (£78.13 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£72.98 @ Dabs)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB mSATA Solid State Drive (£141.96 @ More Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 110 Mini ITX Tower Case (£34.98 @ Novatech)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£39.22 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £512.25
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-05 20:07 GMT+0000

This is what I would do.

Its small powerful and will last him a long time.

If nothing else I would tell him to save up a bit more cash and get a mac mini or an intel nuc.

Including the insane option with a 1TB SSD on an APU based build, also would have more RAM than the i5, but naturally the i5 is going to be faster if he's doing really heavy tasks, the APU should be find overall though

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/XKwBK8
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/XKwBK8/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD A8-7670K 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor (£72.95 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI A88XI AC V2 Mini ITX FM2+ Motherboard (£70.68 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Red 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£58.07 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: OCZ Trion 100 960GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£230.20 @ More Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 110 Mini ITX Tower Case (£34.98 @ Novatech)
Power Supply: SeaSonic ECO 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£39.34 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £506.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-05 19:45 GMT+0000

Yes this ONLY for Photoshop. He is a console gamer "cough". No gaming requirements for this build.


http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/sPZMhM

Unless he will be doing large batch edits, that kind of a system is not worth it.

I mean hell my mom does simple photo edits in CS6 on a god damn phenom x2 cpu from the stone age.

I was planning basic CPU, second hand GPU and spending the money mainly on drives and memory.

so, basically the APU build I listed? It's case is also super tiny

good

go as much on the memory as possible as avoiding the scratch disk saves you tonnes of time and annoyance

if you are working on an a3 file at 300dpi then it can easily chew up ram (especially if you dont limit your undo's)

Yes Streetguru. The APU route was what I suspected was best with plenty of good memory. Thanks