Greetings to all LYN, I have a budget of RM2K plan to invest on motherboard, processor, ram and graphic card for upgrade my old AMD Athlon XP 1800 system.

This new system I going to build mainly and strictly for post processing purposes. I will run software like DxO Optic, Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, Elements 6, Capture One Pro and Canon DPP.

Gimme some suggestion on the rig? I targeted at least 4GB of RAM to run Photoshop.

4gb ram sounds good. haha but i think 2gb ram sufficient already. but i guess u can do more stuff at the same time.

anyways, your budget doesnt include a monitor i hope?

what graphic card would u want?

that usually is the pricer stuff if u want those expensive and latest ones.

my suggestion is use windows vista 64-bit

core 2 duo e8400 - rm 650
Sapphire 3650 256MB DDR3 - rm 260
motherboard(depends on wat brand u prefer.. i prefer gigabyte or asus) - price range around rm500...
2 x 2gb DDR2 RAM - rm 140 x 2

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2gb is not enuf for me to run photoshop... i guess 4gb should be nice.. at least above 2gb...
so u able to use more than 2 adobe product application at the same time

intel 8200 also can, should be slightly cheaper. its the entry level for the 8series processors. and i'm using it.

should be fine for your work unless u wanna spend more money on the processor.

i got it because it has 3mb level2 cache. haha i think that will help in your graphics processing.


since u not gonna play game, a decent rm300 bucks card should be sufficient for your purposes.

i'm using the gigabyte GA-EP DS3 and i bought it coz it saves energy. lol duno real or not.

i bought it about rm400 bucks.


actually your rig seems pretty much like mine

yeah .. ur rig is not bad too.. nowaday with tat budget u only can get these spec..
i will still insist on e8400 bcuz of the speed... and onli cost extra rm70 compare to e8200...

tat board is not bad...

duno where is TS. but well mine is just a decent entry level pc ler.

compared to some psychos here, mine seems so shy

anyway, i bought all my PC components for 3k.

then 1k for me 22inch wide LCD hahaha my sweet baby!!


i'll list down the specs for u and the price i bought it for. (roughly 3months ago)

- intel e8200 core2duo [600]

- gigabyte ga-ep ds3 [400]

- team elite 1gbx2 dual channel 800mhz ddr2 ram [210]

- silverstone st56f 560w powersupply [330]

- zotac 8600 gt amp version vidcard [330]

- coolermaster e330 casing [120]

- pioneer dvd combo writer [120]

- seagate 320gb 16mb cache 7200 rpm hdd [230]

- altec lansing vs4121 speakers [220]

- microsoft basic mouse and keyboard set [50]

- dlink 4port adsl ethernet router modem [220]

- belkin surgemaster gold series surge protector [180]

- dell 22" lcd monitor [950]


basically thats it for my humble rig (unless i forgot something). 3months old already. i'm quite happy with it because last time my old comp can die wan

so for the cpu altogether its about 3k and then 1k more for the monitor lor.

maybe u can judge for yourself what u need for your rig

happy hunting!

When using your PC for a photo processor and all, do not stinge on a LCD monitor and budget in a monitor calibrator. For LCD monitors, get the S-PVA or the S-IPS type and not the TN type.

yeah i heard that they say lcd monitors are not that suitable for graphical design and image processing. its true right?

in cases like this we should go back to the CRT monitors?

Nah there are already pro grade LCD monitors for these sort of tasks, brands like Eizo and Lacie have great ones but they are expensive. Good monitor also requires a good calibrator as well

i dunno why but my friends pc with 4gb ram(detect 3.5gb) with a 1.8ghz does faster than my 2.6ghz +2gb ram...i think its because of the softwares inside the computer...mine is hogged up with everything so if you wanna do heavy PPing and wan flawless worflow then you should not install any unnecessary programs...keep it as few as possible...

No matter what your other components are... your RAM must be more than 4gb. Im suffering from having a 2gb ram system. Once my layers are more than 15.. it has already reached 90% of ram usage. i was like.. OMG!!! Secondly, a mid end graphic card will be sufficient. No need high end graphic card. Or you may choose a workstation GC. up to you..

Second that, good monitor, good calibrator is a must have..

Q6600 (maybe old but still good and cheap) and yes 4GB ram. You'll need 64bit OS to use it fully though. Without it it'll only use 3.2GB. Monitor yeah if possible avoid TN panel. I'm using one though lol.

er.. not really have to use 64bit OS. coz i have a friend.. who is extremely crazy about computer hardwares... dun wanna mention his other parts.. not really important to know, the most important thing is, He has 8gb of Ram, and still using XP, XP says it's 3.5gb.. but it's 8gb when u really use it.. so no worries about which OS u are using..

Windows 32 bit can only use 3.2GB of ram because of the 32 bit addressing limit. Perhaps your friend is using XP 64 bit. Or found a way for his XP 32 bit to use all the ram which i don't know of.

yea... i know about XP is using 32bit. i confirm my friend is using 32bit XP. Yeah.. i guess he found a way to utilise all of that 8gb.. but still.. XP doesnt show 8gb. from what i remember, it shows 3.5.. dunno la... i also want to find out.. coz im thinking of upgrading my pc to 8gb... sell my current 4 x 512mb. LoL... dunno who wants it... see ler... haha... it's a high performance chip though... can clocked up to 1000mhz+ sorry a bit OT..

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Added on May 15, 2008, 11:49 pmFound out dy...

My friend used physical address extension for his XP.

Which means, a programme can only use up to 2.5~3.5gb of ram If you have 8gb of ram and using physical address extension...

In order to make a programme use up to 8gb of ram, u'll need to use 64bit OS.

Hope this clears our confusion.

I think googling clears things up a bit about this.

Things to note: kernel space vs memory space. And what the 4G limit actually means.

What is S-PVA or S-IPS?

My budget tentatively for the processing only. I already have Spyder 2 Pro calibrator. Thinking of getting 2 unit of 22 inch wide monitor as well ( I will come out another budget for monitor).

I have think about using 64bit OS, but think about it, can Photoshop suppoer 64 bit operation? Another thing that get into my concern is antivirus software? I notice most antivirus software unable to support 64 bit operation.

S-PVA, S-IPS, TN are the LCD panel type. 22 inch tends to have TN panel. But nowadays there are 24 inch TN panels as well. TN panels are fast, good for fast paced games but not so good in color reproduction as opposed to the S-PVA or S-IPS panels. Also, TN panels viewing angle is pretty bad.

I'm also hesitating to upgrade to 64 bit.

how to know if that particular LCD is S-PVA or S-IPS type?

I find the most important specs in a photochopping and archival rig to be the

- The processor. Speed doesn't matter, the amount of parallelism does. Thus getting a cheap quad core would give you the best bang for your buck. If you need extra speed for other apps, just OC the thing lightly.

- RAM. Large pictures when moved into a editing space and thus memory can take up many gigabytes of data, especially if you're working in RAW and extended colorspace. The more the merrier. If you're planning on a 64bit OS, 8gb is great value for the performance you get.

- HDD Space. Neglect at your own risk, but mark my words, after you've done a few shooting sessions your hard disk will become very full, very fast. Having a few more HDDs is always a good idea.

The product spec doesn't show what panel but you can recognize by the viewing angle and the price. Those panels are more expensive. But you can always google if you want to know what panel your target LCD is using.

HDD space is definitely important especially if you're shooting RAW.

low-end is sufficient. like the HD3450 which I just reviewed recently. used it to edit a bunch of RAWs, no issue.

about the layers part, your post is misleading. it lags the system not because of # of layers but what you have on each layer. i have plenty of files that come to around 100 layers, no problem with it. dimension is 600x400 only. on the other hand when i do buntings and stuff, less than 20 layers but 6ft x 2ft @ 150dpi or higher, then yes - it's laggy already.

so if you're putting your FULL image size on soooooooo many layers, it's no wonder you're suffering. you need to do it smarter.

btw i work as a web designer and i also post process photos. I've done them on 2GB system and never found it to be an issue, even when opening mass RAW files. i donno, maybe it depends on what you're expecting la.

so far only 1 person mention HDD space (base on what i read) - seriously, HDD space is really great for applications like photoshop. notice how it slows down when lacking HDD space. I'd say, get an RM 400 - 600 processor would be fine, more than powerful enough for PPing purpose. 2GB RAM also enough, put 4GB if you want cos heck, RAM nowadays so cheap. (I'm on 4GB now, i don't find it any much diff from 2GB........ of course it shows 3.25GB la) . i think most of your $$$ should be on HDD. 2x 320GB perhaps?



easy for us to say. I like S-IPS LCD, i'm using one and loving it.

I also have TN panel LCD and i think it's really fine to post-process on that one, it's not that crappy as how many has described it - just that it's not S-IPS quality.

it really depends on the person and how picky they are. not everyone can afford to get high-grade LCDs. ask our photographers, here, how many of them actually have S-IPS panel LCD?

Thanks for the info.

In my situation, 2GB is barely enough for me cause i using my intel Core 2 Duo T5500 processor laptop to do all my post processing but still hang especially running on lightroom. I am not sure if upgraded to 4GB as goldfries mentioned will be the same. I wanted to upgrade to 64bit XP, my issue is I am not sure if Photoshop CS, Lightroom, Capture One Pro, Element will be able to support this and it is hard to find any antivirus that can support 64bit OS.

I am full time RAW shooter. Hard disk space is not an issue for me cause I have several 500GB external HDD. My primary mostly allocated for photoshop as Scratch Disk

Regarding LCD, I am hunting for two 22inch S-IPS or S-PVA as you all mention. Do you guys have any recommendation on which model and brand?