Time to build a new pc???

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I have a May 2011 iMac is slowly dying and I'm contemplating buying a new one or going back to building my own pc. I haven't built one in 7-8 years so I'm pretty much not up to date with what I'd need. I didn't buy the iMac new, but got it from work when they decommissioned it. I have my old pc case which is still in good condition, I'd just need to replace the internal parts to get it to todays standards. I recently tried to upgrade it to Windows 8 but the MB won't support it. It's a full ATX tower. I have a 450 w/s power supply. I use my computer for Photoshop as I'm a photographer...no video. I have about $1000-$1500...anything beyond that and I'll probably just buy a refurb iMac. I don't do any gaming or anything else on this, just Photoshop. Can someone please give me a run down of what I'd need? SSD drive? 32GB of RAM minimum, i7? I'm not sure.
 
Good budget, but depending on what PSU that is, id scrap it and just get a new efficient and reliable one.

Below is what youll need:
Motherboard (ASUS,GB or MSI)
Cpu (I5 or I7 depending on your CPU choice you may need a cpu cooler)
Memory (DDR3 or DDR4 depending ln socket type for mobo 16GB is plenty)
Power Supply (id replace yours depending on what you have 550w minimum)
SSD or regular Hard drive
Video card (unless you want to use on board GPU if your setup provides it, however for your uses I recommend a dedicated graphics card NVIDIA 970GTX or higher)

You have alot of options depending on going I5 or I7. If you want to overclock or not is also something you need to know as that can change your build quite a bit. Below is just a quick pick of parts but they can be changed up quite a bit.

I5-6500 ($200+)
gSkill DDR4-2400 16gb (90$)
Asus z170 mobo (160$)
Samsung 850 Evo SSD 250gb (89$)
EVGA supernova 550w (70$)
ASUS Strix 970 (320$)

You can get the above, nice midrange build for less than $1000 -/+

 
I disagree with the first one.

You should prioritize processor power at its maximum. If I do recall properlly Adobe photoshop and others photo programs are much more optimized for multiple core setups.

a good i7 should be your target
aswell as more than average amount of fast ram
you will need a sh***t load of Hardrive space for storage and a very very fast hardrive for fast rendering and system apps.
for the graphic card you wouldnt need a consumer one but a professional quadro oriented type.

Here is more a build I think would suit you : http://pcpartpicker.com/p/8Gg6kL , off course is only a "Beta" and there is some changes to do, specially on the graphic card level, if you really only going to edit photos you wont be really using a graphic card, although Adobe was using some kind of GPU acceleration tool but its not even used aanymore (almost). taking any cheap graphic card should suit you (IF you dont want to play some games).

You maybe aswell wondering why I choose the 5820k, well even if the 6th generation is out this processor has actually more cores than the I7 6700k and because photo programs can use multiple cores much more efficiently than games the 5820k becomes a good choice. the brand new i7 wouldnt perform better on photo editing and costs more.

If you actually still need a screen it wouldnt be hard to cut the cost of this machine and you would be abble to buy a good quality one (if you dont have. and aswell depending on the screen maybe you will need a better graphic card.
 
No, photoshop is not heavily optimized for heavy threading. Most actions within photoshop rely on a few strong cores so an i5 would work well. A gtx 970 is overkill.

Granted this is for cs6 but things haven't changed that much in photoshop. What's important to see here is the little difference between gpu's. Only a few actions are gpgpu accelerated.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CS6-GPU-Acceleration-161/

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-625/

The 4690k and 4770 are the same speed, hyper threading being the difference yet they perform within 2-3 seconds of each other. Meaning the hyperthreading of an i7 doesn't have much impact here other than higher cost.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2015/-29-Adobe-Photoshop-CC,3720.html

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H170-D3HP ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($108.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($74.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Patriot Blaze 60GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($36.98 @ Mac Mall)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($87.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 950 2GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0 Video Card ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($55.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $743.80
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-21 15:49 EST-0500

Something like this build offers budget to add additional ram though 16gb is a decent amount for photoshop. When 16gb begins to fill up a bit is when using photoshop and illustrator side by side with bridge open, for that 32gb may be slightly better. It offers a strong cpu, plenty of gpu horsepower for the few things that use it, an ssd for the os and programs, smaller ssd for use as a scratch disk, 1tb hdd for bulk file storage. No real need for an additional cpu cooler, the stock cooler should work fine.
 


If he is really a professional photograph he probably uses more than photoshop, I still stick to the i7 5 generation, the i5 its a good processor but more game oriented.

your storage makes no sense. whats the point of buying a trash 60gb ssd and a second 250gb ?

I think still he should take a super fast m2 ssd and buy a second high storage disk.
my guess if he is about to trow 1500$ at a machine he want enthusiast level.
 
Thanks for the replies so far. I am leaning towards a larger SSD drive for the OS and Photoshop app. I have 2 1TB drives already that I could reuse as well as 1 external NAS boxes, each with roughly 3TB of storage. 2 dual 5TB internal drives does sound appealing as I'd free up some disk space with not needing the NAS devices. I'd just want to either setup a Mirror between them or schedule a nightly replication job to get everything off a single point of failure. Like I said, this is strictly for my photography...that does include Lightroom as well as some plugins I use for editing. Some of the plugins are rather large and CPU/Mem intensive. Would an i7 vs i5 help out any there or does that go back to the SSD drive? I'm not looking to save $100 bucks if I'll notice a difference going with a more expensive product. I'd rather get it right, spend the extra money, and allow for future versions of Photoshop that may require more resources...so would an i7 be better than an i5?
 


The build I posted before is exactly oriented on your usage, if you can afford an i7 would be recomended.the i7 5820k has more threads cores than the brand new skylake i7 6700k meaning it suits you better. The i7 6700k has less but very strong core's, the i7 5820k have more but weaker cores.

Edit: Here is a video froom the I7 benchmarks, its in german but if you skip to the benchmarks you can see that the i7 5820k wins on all the photos or video features, and the i7 6700k does win on games, this would be the same wit the i5 the i7 would naturally win.

the samsung 950 pro ssd is a really good choice, you wont find any other ssd with 2gb/s reading speeds now you seems to know about the hard drives so I guess you more curious about which cpu motherboard etc.. that fits you.

cheeer
 


My suggestion does make sense and if you used photoshop you'd know what a scratch disk is. Recommend things all you like, where is your proof that an i7 offers better performance for the cost difference? I haven't seen any. To say i5's are gaming only is highly naive. There's no such thing as a 'gaming' cpu, cpu's are what they are and many including the i5 are highly capable at a variety of tasks. The benchmarks highlight that fact.

The reason for the inexpensive ssd and smaller size is, a scratch disk doesn't need gobs of space. It's faster than a mechanical drive and it's meant for temporary storage. While a single ssd may work fine, what's a few dollars well within the user's budget? This is straight from adobe:

The following guidelines can help you assign and manage your scratch disks:

For best performance, scratch disks should be on a different drive than any large files you are editing.
Scratch disks should be on a different drive than the one your operating system uses for virtual memory.
RAID disks/disk arrays are good choices for dedicated scratch disk volumes.
Drives with scratch disks should be defragmented regularly.
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

One of the biggest factors in performance, especially if working in multiple programs while working with photographs and workflow won't be an i5 vs i7, it will be how much ram the user has.

Update: Here is another photoshop test done by Tom's, for photoshop (not premiere, not video encoding), the 5820k came in 4th and lost to the 4790k. The 4790k has fewer faster cores which reiterates my point. The higher core count isn't winning, nor is the lower clock speed.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-5960x-haswell-e-cpu,3918-5.html
 


Thanks for the parts list. If I wanted to keep my iMAC as a 2nd monitor, would the MB on this parts list work for that?
 
I'm getting ready to start ordering parts for this new build, but I see so many different CPU's mentioned I'm not sure which way I should go. 4690k vs 4770, 5820k, 6500, 6700k, etc. Can someone please shed some light on which is the best bang for the buck. I'm not looking for the cheapest, but using Photoshop, Lightroom, and some plug-ins for both, which is my best option?
 


Concretely thinking you can get an i5 6600k for around 244$ at Newegg and an i7 6700k for 105$ extra. You need to think that the difference will be only noticed when you´re rendering something (Image or video) and the difference would be actually so minimal (I guess 5-20 secs) that it doesn't really mater from the i5 to the i7, using the app itself won´t be noticeable if you click crop, apply some filters or save, your brain won´t capture the 0,001 seconds difference from the 2 processors.

For future proof I personally find you should stick to the Skylake 6th gen processor ( it supports more technologies it heats less). Buying a i7 5820k would be like buying an already "Obsolete" machine the performance would be extreme similar to the i7 6700k.

I bought an i5 6600k some months ago, and so far its blowing my mind. Its so easily overclockable, i personally know nothing about overclock, but on my Motherboard I have an option to Auto overclock and it propose to "clone" cpu to an i7 6700k. it automatically mimic the i7 6700 frequency. the temperatures 40 in game and 25 normal usage (Celsius) at 4.6 ghz.

Its than up to you if you mind the extra "10secs" rendering. Having bought an i5 6600k I can say Hands down this CPU is the best bang for the buck and I totally recomend it to you, with those extra 100$ you could get an samsung nvme 950 pro 250GB. You would really notice a difference, I can copy 10gb of file in les than 10 seconds
 
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