What should I upgrade? (For heavy graphics work)

[TCGI]

Hi

I have a question for you regarding getting a faster workflow for heavy graphics work.

I do motion graphics and posters in high resolutions and for the high res poster work, my computer struggles.

A Photoshop file for a high res poster can be around 6 gb in size and saving takes about 10 minutes. Also, while working on it, the harddrive activity is often at 100 %, making even small corrections very slow to perform.
CPU is at about 25% even during heavy operations and often I use nearly all my available memory (16 gb).

What I want to know, is what I should focus on to improve the situation?

I'm thinking a big SSD should help (I have an SSD for Windows and important applications, but it's not big enough for work), but would I also need to upgrade my motherboard (or more) then in that case? The computer is pretty old now, from November 2011, but still performs very well with motion graphics, 3D and other work, even gaming. The specs are:

Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz 8MB S-1155
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO DDR3 ATX S-1155
16GB DDR3 1600MHz Kingston HyperX (4x4GB)
1536MB Gigabyte GTX580 WF GDDR5 PCI-E
2TB WD Caviar GreenPower 64MB SATA3
OCZ Vertex 3 Series 2.5 SSD 120GB SATA3
Fractal Design Define R3 Sølv u/PSU
650W Corsair TX CMPSU-650TXV2EU 140mm
Arctic Cooling Alpine 7 Pro S-775

I hope you can help point me in a direction.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Rhezner]

no you dont need a new motherboard for an SSD.

That CPU is still great and is about equal to a current i5.

Yes a big ssd would be great. Use pcpartpicker to find a good deal. I would recommend an 850 evo, or bx100.

What is your budget for a GPU?

 

[TCGI]

no you dont need a new motherboard for an SSD.

That CPU is still great and is about equal to a current i5.

Yes a big ssd would be great. Use pcpartpicker to find a good deal. I would recommend an 850 evo, or bx100.

What is your budget for a GPU?

Thanks, OK that's good to hear. I've been thinking about a new GPU as a present for myself around the time Ocolus Rift / SteamVR comes out but will that really help much with Photoshop?

Budget-wise, I can deduct the cost from my taxes since it's for work, so the budget is fine. But I usually try to stay away from absolute top-end gfx cards as the prices are so high and fall quickly when new products arrive. So I usually go for "tier 2" GPUs, and usually Nvidia..

 

[Rhezner]

how exactly does it struggle? is it lagging? If the CPU is only 25% usage then i cant imagine that being an issue and the 580 is still a good GPU but you might want to get an r9 390 or a gtx 970.

If you want to have a lot of power get the 980ti.

 

[TCGI]

how exactly does it struggle? is it lagging? If the CPU is only 25% usage then i cant imagine that being an issue and the 580 is still a good GPU but you might want to get an r9 390 or a gtx 970.

If you want to have a lot of power get the 980ti.

Photoshop freezes until the harddrive activity has dropped. And it can go up to 100% not only when saving, but when doing operations too. Do I need to get more RAM too, because the memory usage is also at 100% most of the time? Can the motherboard I have support more than 16 gb? I now have 4x4 gb, so would I have to replace those with 4x8 or something like that?

Here's a picture of how my computer performs right now (I'm working on a poster now):

 

[Rhezner]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/P62t23

yeah, your motherboard supports 32GB and i am surprised your 16 is maxing out. Here is a 500GB ssd but you can get a bigger one.

I doubt it is a CPU or GPU problem but you can upgrade the GPU if you want to play games.

 

[TCGI]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/P62t23

yeah, your motherboard supports 32GB and i am surprised your 16 is maxing out. Here is a 500GB ssd but you can get a bigger one.

I doubt it is a CPU or GPU problem but you can upgrade the GPU if you want to play games.

OK thanks for all the help mate, I think I know what to do, now I just need to find the parts for the right price somewhere close.

The GPU will probably see an upgrade around the Star Wars Battlefront release

 

[Rhezner]

where do you live? Australia? ? (you said mate)

if so here are the parts and where you can buy them
http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/BsvHFT

 

[TCGI]

where do you live? Australia? ? (you said mate)

if so here are the parts and where you can buy them
http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/BsvHFT

Denmark, looks like they're not on that site. I'll just search manually, we have a few good search engines for pc parts Thanks!