yes RAM is faster, but he's on a budget and if he needs to trim it then some sacrifices need to be made
RAM is cheap... SSDs are not. Having sufficient RAM will negate the need for high scratch disk performance, and he'll save a lot more money. 16GB of DDR3 is around £50. IF he still wants a SSD he'd see far more gains by using it as his boot drive ( C: ) to keep overall system response perky.. and windows' swap file usage nice and fast.
how fast does he need it to run anyway- he's not under any apparant time contraints, he can just make a cup of tea while he's waiting for the filter to render, and you can always add more ram in the future (although you're right RAM is pretty cheap these days, but chosing between an i5 with 16gb and an i7 with 8gb, I think i'd take the i7, it's easier to add more ram than it is to change out a cpu)
I think he should make as many savings as humanly possible with the computer and put as much as he can into his monitor and calibration.. this is, after all a machine purely for his photography if the thread title is true. As you said, you can upgrade CPUs and RAM later, but you can't really upgrade a monitor... you have to replace it. Also, it's the one and only think in the system that affects the quality of your images... did I say that already?
The i5 will still work admirably. I'd say get the i7 if video editing comes into the equation, but for still image work an i5 will be more than enough so long as it has a decent amount of memory (16GB or more). He'll never see any major scratch disk usage on most still images with 16GB or more.
but as everyone has said invest in the monitor, as a cheap monitor will give bad colour for the entire of it's existence- but then how important is colour to you, I think people over estimate the importance of colour accuracy, it's not like yellow will look pink, it's only like the difference between royal mail red and manchester united red- how important is that to you?
It's being confident that what you see is CORRECT. Calibration isn't just about colour anyway, just as important is a screen's gamma response so you can accurately judge how dark shadow detail is for example. I find it odd that you are questioning whether being totally accurate is necessary. Even if your chosen style of imagery is far from neutral in it's colour grading, you still need to have an accurate screen to know how far you are pushing things. If he has a screen that's warm to begin with, and then makes an image cool/blue, he'll be pushing it too far because his screen is warm. View that on a well calibrated screen and everyone's first reaction is "He's gone a bit too far with the whole blue thing".
Another reason calibration is important, is because unless you go the whole hog and have Pantone measured neutral grey walls, window blackouts and D55 lighting installed, your colour acuity will change throughout the day. My screen is calibrated, but because the light through my window right now is very warm (it's 08:24 and the sun is just rising) my screen looks a very cool cyan colour on greys. It's NOT of course.. it's just my eyes/brain being influenced by the heavy yellow bias to the ambient. Knowing that my screen is accurate, I can move closer, remove the daylight from my peripheral vision, and let my eyes adjust and be confident that what's on the screen is accurate.
I don't run cs6 so maybe it's a hog compared to cs5, but I get by (but it's not pretty) with 4gb and I work with some massive multi layer files and panoramas- and 8gb would be enough to contain those
my work is skill dependent rather than time dependent,
I agree, but 16GB is only £50. He can make some bigger savings there, and free up some cash for a better display.
you could probably trim some off the case and PSU too- you're not driving the system to the limit with overclocking, and £100 for a mb is pretty top end, and unless you're gaming then you can cut back on the GPU, you can run with anything as long as it's Nvidia and supports CUDA (which is probably everything these days)
Agreed.. except the PSU thing... having a decent PSU is very important for stability. Cheap PSUs are one of the biggest reasons for system instability. Unless a PSU can supply rock stead voltages on all rails under all loads, it can cause all manner of issues. Cheap cases usually have crap cooling, and that causes issues too, especially with mechanical hard drives. One of the biggest reasons for HDD failure is consistently high temps. I agree though.. his choice of case is ridiculous.
This is what I would do actually, given a little thought.
Rationale:
i5 3470 - Ivybridge, so uses latest Intel HD graphics negating the need for a separate GPU (unless you want to game of course). The Intel HD2500 graphics on board the ivybridge i5 is good for any 2D work, and good for 2560x1600 (only over a digital output, not a D-Sub analogue) should you want to upgrade to a 27 or 30" screen later.
Motherboard - B75 chipset is more than adequate for you, but still part of the latest 1155 ivybridge chipset range so you have a good upgrade path.
Case - Cheap, but tool less install, and good ventilation, but fans are optional hence the 3x 120 fans in the list (one rear, one top and one front to pull air over the drives).
SSD - if you DO insist on a SSD this is every bit as fast as the Vertex4, but is a totally in-house design with Samsung designed controller, NAND and PCB. It uses toggle NAND and has better garbage collection than the Vertex, and in every day use, will probably be slightly faster as a result of better TRIM and GC.
You still have a fairly beefy PSU, but as it's only partly modular, it's much cheaper, but Corsair PSUs are renowned for quality and reliability.
Although the same price as your system I've also included a monitor I forgot all about, which is an interesting one. It's the Asus PA248QJ which is a decent IPS screen but comes bundled with a Spyder 4 express and hood. It's only sRGB gamut, but unless you print a great deal that's not a problem. In fact, it MAY have advantages if what you mainly do is for screen.
This will work very well with Photoshop, and your also getting a calibrated screen.
I've not added the OS however, so budget for that... nor have I included an optical drive, which you'll probably need as it makes OS installation much easier, and you will no doubt need to burn discs at some point. You can get a DVD writer for around £13 though.
You'll have a decent Intel quad core CPU, fast SSD and 2TB of storage. A decent motherboard that offers a good upgrade path. A decent screen and calibration solution. A decent looking case. Ultra reliable PSU. 16GB of DDR3 1600.
