Help me build a new PC!

[Johnny]

It's been a long time since I've been in the loop about what hardware is good and stuff, and I'm looking to build a PC for work. I mainly just use Photoshop at work, however I'd like this thing to be pretty powerful.

So, what's worth buying these days?

[Sentura]

core i7 with a single gfx card and 4gb ddr3 ram?

[Section_Ei8ht]

core i7 with a single gfx card and 4gb ddr3 ram?

I can vouch for this setup. Make that single gfx a 280 GTX and it can handle everything that's thrown at it (so far...)

[cyberjunkie]

Not sure about you guys but an i7 system works out to around twice as much as a decent Core 2 Quad setup (CPU+mobo+ram) in India. If it's a lot cheaper than it is here, then by all means, go for it!

[dux]

Go for an AMD core, they're cheaper and far better. Also get an Ati card instead of a 280. For motherboards look for an MSI and ram wise I'd recommend kingston, crucial or corsair.

[madgernader]

I've got a Core2Quad, 4gigs of OCZ ram and an 8800GTX, I have yet to hit any performance killer, (except crysis but even that I play at high specs) Id say go for the core2quads, with the i7 out they are dropping in price, and really it isnt that big of difference, except you don't get tri-channel ram, but I haven't hit the limit of my 4 gigs yet (xp 32bit) I'd also suggest an Nvidia card, I've had way to many issues with ATI to ever recommend them.

[BaRRaKID]

NVidia is a bad choice the way things are at the moment. ATI is really catching up, and their cards are getting insanely cheap.

I recommend the Sapphire HD 4770:

- 512mb GDDR5 @ 3200 mhz

- Core @ 850 mhz

- First 40nm GPU (consumes less energy)

- Costs around 100€ (might be less now)

Since it's so cheap, you can buy two of them to make a crossfire setup that will give you almost the same performance as the GForce GTX 280 (that costs around 300€), see the tests here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-4770-crossfire,2288.html

I know many people are skeptical regarding ATI since many of their older models had lots of problems, and didn't lasted more than a couple of months, but thats all in the past now.

And like the others said, a i7 with tri-channel DDR3 is also a good choice

[Jetsetlemming]

Crossfire's worthless. Total waste of money.

Link for this topic: http://techreport.com/articles.x/16721/1

That $500 build is nice. That $700 build is about the most I'd ever want from a current PC.