Help me build a computer for my artwork
 

Alright felow technofiliacs...im' gonna be going to college in the fall, and i'm gonna need to make/purchase a computer that's going to be able to handle mulitple tasks of Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. without bogging down. Any suggestions on a machine to build keeping under a grand if possible?

Just about any PC running at 1.5 Ghz and above with a decent (512 MB PC2100 or more) is gonna be able to run Photoshop/Illustrator or anything like that like a damn dream. I mean, opening times for those Adobe products should NOT exceed 3 seconds unless your computer is running some serious bloatwarez in the background.

I agree, those apps should run fine on a multi-ghz processor...dump more memory in to get better performance.
I'd also plan on adding an extra hard drive, since Photoshop likes to have its scratch file on a separate drive.
I don't know if it makes that much difference, but you might a separate drive to back up your art, anyway.

And get a good tablet thingy!

What is your budget teknotoeknee? My wife does video editing and photoediting (sometimes at the same time!) but the system I built for that can more than handle it.
1GB Ram is a minimum, decent video card (you don't need to spend more than $200 here), Raid 0 drive setup would help also. Let us know a budget and we can offer some specific suggestions. :) I love spending other peoples money!

burner...i was tryin to keep it around a grand or 1500 or so if it's possible...the cheeper the better.

You don't need much :)

Since you are on a budget, we'll go with AMD:

Abit NF7-S Motherboard
Barton 2500+ Processor
1 GB PC2700 RAM
Radeon 9600XT Graphics Card
160 GB Maxtor Hard Drive
Generic Case
Generic Keyboard & Mouse
Lite-On DVD-RW
Lite-On CD-RW



Pick your brands for all of those that don't have one. Should be right around 1000 bucks if you choose www.newegg.com.

Redjake.. Here is my pentium version:
IC7-II Mobo
2.8 Pentium NORTHWOOD HT
1GB Matched Pair Corsair XMS
Radeon 9600XT
2x 120 GB Samsung SATA in RAID 0
Generic Case
Logitech Wireless KB/M
LG Electronics Multi-Format DVD-RAM Burner
Reuse Current CD/CD Burner (if have)
Reuse Floppy if Have

May be a bit over budget ;), but you can get it all from Newegg. That is about the only thing I think the PC Community here at TFP agrees 100% on.. Newegg.com :)

w0rd on newegg.com

If you have the time, scope out slickdeals.net for decent posts about discounted merchandise. It's not for computers, but they have a lot of tech stuff that gets posted. Try to keep costs down a lil bit.

Maybe if you're running Photoshop 4 and Illustrator 6. The new CS versions (especially Illustrator) take a good 5-10 secs to start up on my Athlon XP 2000+ with 512 PC2700.

Damn, I'm running Photoshop 6.0 and it starts up in about 3-4 seconds. It started up that fast on my 400 MHz K6-2 with 256 MB of RAM also. :) I'm running an Athlon XP 2500+ with 768 MB PC2700 right now, and it doesn't open any faster than the K6-2.

-Lasereth

Lasereth.. I increased my load times by about 20-40% by going Raid 0 on my main drives. If I had been smart about it I would have gotten a couple of lower capacity Raptors, but bought some 7200 120GB Samsungs. Still, a Raid 0 setup on your boot disk does help load times out. Just make sure to Flash your Bios if you have an IC7-Max3. The intel Raid Chip ships with a bios that doesn't recognize some drives out of the box. Something to do with the timing of the drive.

Yeah, I was using Photoshop 6 as well, and on a brand-new, non-bloatware infested setup like I was discussing, you can bust out photoshop in about 3 seconds.

Unless you are going to do serious 3D modeling or something... you could get by on a pretty cheap machine.

My mother "learned" illustrator\photoshop on a 200 mhz Pentium Pro.

She is a very patient person though ;)


You don't really need raw processor power for 2D drawing, what you will need is a lot of RAM. Especially if you plan to run multiple instances of Photoshop.

...and a fast and reliable harddrive, (or two for backup purposes) and definitley a CD burner.

The problem is that this is the exact opposite setup that most "cheapie" PC's are now a days. They like to shove the latest procesor into a machine with as little memory and peripherals as they can get away with.

Graphics Tablets are not cheap either. If you get a large one you may find yourself spending nearly as much on that as the PC itself. So keep that in mind if you think you will need one.