PC Upgrade

Mister Man

I'm thinking of throwing a few upgrades into my current PC. It's by no means a beast, but it does the job.
I basically use it for design work, and website work. The odd time, I'll play a game or two on it, which it hasn't had trouble with thus far. So I reckon the graphics card can be left alone. I have an xbox for games anyway.

I've noticed Photoshop tends to be quite slow from time to time, and it drives me insane! I'm not sure if that's down to the hard drive I'm using (It seems to stall the system for a good 20 seconds, while it spins and reads, quite odd) or if it's the RAM.

Here is my current spec:
Radeon HD 6850 - 1GB
AMD Phenom II X4 840 - 3.2GHz
Cooler Master Hyper TX3
Corsair XMS3 - 2 x 2GB
MSI 870U-G55
Advance MPT-6500 PC Power Unit - 600Watt
AEROCOOL Strike X PC Tower Case
Samsung SpinPoint F3 - 1TB
Seagate Barracuda - 80GB (OS only)

As I said, nothing amazing. I was thinking of going up to 12GB of ram, and a nice sized SSD (120gb maybe?)
I guess I'm also in the market for another monitor. I currently run 2 19inch monitors. One runs off HDMi, and the other DVI. Both are 1366x768
I was originally thinking of getting a 30inch HDMi screen, but what does everyone else think?

I'm open to suggestions on everything. I'll most likely be ordering in 2 weeks. Suggestions for websites would be good too. I ordered from Hardwareversand.de & Pixmania.ie in the past. Both were ok. Pixmania were much faster then Hardwareversand, which isn't a big deal. I heard Memoryc was good for RAM & SSD's. Anyone know much about that?

IMC042

Are you working with very large files in Photoshop? I think that would definitely eat RAM. Maybe start by upgrading that. You'll need 64-bit Windows though as you probably know already.

komplett.ie are another place you can try for stuff. I've never bought off them but I heard they were better than pixmania in their customer service and their site is easy to use.

Your current system would put mine to shame btw!

areyawell

ASUS M5A78L LE, Sockel AM3+, ATX 49.94
AMD FX-6300 Six-Core 123.44
2*8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9 34.90*2= 69.80
Samsung SSD 840 120GB SATA 6Gb/s 89.99
Depends on your budget really.

Mister Man

areyawell wrote: »

ASUS M5A78L LE, Sockel AM3+, ATX 49.94
AMD FX-6300 Six-Core 123.44
2*8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9 34.90*2= 69.80
Samsung SSD 840 120GB SATA 6Gb/s 89.99
Depends on your budget really.

Have to say, that motherboard looks like a step down in my eyes. Granted I would need a new socket motherboard for a new CPU, but I haven't noticed my current CPU holding me back at all. Nothing I do would really warrant a new CPU, or at least in my eyes. The odds game might make use of it, but I couldn't really justify 170€ on a game here and there.

RAM & SSD look good to me. I have heard the Samsung SSD's are quite good. Could anyone recommend a really quite case? I don't want to go overboard price wise, so 100 or less would be ok with me. As long as it's extremely quite.

I should also mention that I don't overclock. So heat is not and issue. If anything, I could change out the CPU cooler for something that's quieter. I currently set the fan to 20% and the temps stay really low all the time. It's not overly loud or anything, but maybe a passive option? or maybe watercooling?

I don't have a budget. Basically, I just want a bit of a speed increase on Photoshop/InDesign/Illustrator/etc. After that, I'd like to make it as quite as possible.

Mister Man

IMC042 wrote: »

Are you working with very large files in Photoshop? I think that would definitely eat RAM. Maybe start by upgrading that. You'll need 64-bit Windows though as you probably know already.

komplett.ie are another place you can try for stuff. I've never bought off them but I heard they were better than pixmania in their customer service and their site is easy to use.

Your current system would put mine to shame btw!

Missed this reply.
I depends on the project what size files I'm working with. Somethings it can be as small as 250x100, others it can be huge! What is a little strange, is Photoshop can even slow down on the smaller files from time to time. Which really annoys me. I've often seen the RAM maxed out on my system, which isn't hard, seeing as it's only 4 right now.
I currently run Windows 7 64bit, so I know any RAM upgrade won't go to fast.
Back when I built my current system, Komplett.ie had a really bad rep with everyone. Has all that changed?

areyawell

An ssd would see great improvements and 8gb of ram would be grand, don't need 16gb, put photoshop on ssd and any file your using over to it and then transfer finished file to normal hard drive.
cpu is still grand for photoshop but is starting to get outdated

marco_polo

If it wasn't for their massively uncompetitive prices nowadays, I wouldn't have any problems ordering off Komplett now personally, they have long sorted out the technical issues from the changeover a few years ago.

Gumbi

marco_polo wrote: »

If it wasn't for their massively uncompetitive prices nowadays, I wouldn't have any problems ordering off Komplett now personally, they have long sorted out the technical issues from the changeover a few years ago.

Completely agree. I would even accept a few extra quid. Heck, free shipping sweetens the deal, and it's Irish. But that the f*ck, I bought the Asrock z77 for 77 quid on mindfactory, 100 euro on Komplett.ie...