My new photo editing desktop for $900

Took advantage of all the sales today. Bought a bunch of parts from Newegg and Frys.

Taking out rebates, total was $580:
AMD Phenom II X4 925 quad
ASUS motherboard
ASUS ATI Radeon 5550 w/ 1gb DDR3
2x Seagate 1TB 7200.12 HD
8gb (2x4gb DDR3-1333)
ASUS DVD-RW 24x
Zalman case
Antec 750w power supply
Windows 7 Home Premier OEM

Also bought a new Dell U2311H for $290

Still need a internal UDMA CF memory reader. Probably get a SATA one.

Would this be sufficiently for Lightroom 3.0 and PSE work? Will likely get Premiere 9 later as well. Currently using a HP Core 2 Duo laptop and just feels somewhat slow.

I think you will be just fine, I think once you get it up and running you will be blown away by the performance difference. Only thing I would say it go window ultimate if you can. 8gb of ram is a very good starting point and for the overall price you can't beat it.

For the price that looks like a good deal. Just don't forget to use the 64 bit install of Windows.

Thanks. I did ge the 64bit version.

Made a few adjustment on the system though. Fry's had a sale on a EVGA GTS 450 video board for $60 so I got that instead. Also upgraded the CPUT/motherboard to a better setup for easier overclocking. So now it's now a MSI board with Phenom II X4 955 black edition. Made a few changes in the BIOS and it's now running 4 gig and stable on the stock fan. CPU fan is a bit loud when the CPU is fully load. At 10-20% CPU utilization, I don't even hear the computer.

That all added ~$100. So now it's up to $1k. Just loaded up lightroom 3.0 64bit last night. Pretty snapping operation.

liupublic wrote in post #11387777
Thanks. I did ge the 64bit version.

Made a few adjustment on the system though. Fry's had a sale on a EVGA GTS 450 video board for $60 so I got that instead. Also upgraded the CPUT/motherboard to a better setup for easier overclocking. So now it's now a MSI board with Phenom II X4 955 black edition. Made a few changes in the BIOS and it's now running 4 gig and stable on the stock fan. CPU fan is a bit loud when the CPU is fully load. At 10-20% CPU utilization, I don't even hear the computer.

That all added ~$100. So now it's up to $1k. Just loaded up lightroom 3.0 64bit last night. Pretty snapping operation.

NICE, have you looked at the Noctua NH-D14 cooler? I think it is about $84.00 a mother of all cooling fans, but you need to check the comparability with the mobo and the ram, cause it needs to clear the top of the ran and the north and south bridge on the mobo. A good upgrade for a coolr air fan.

That was the one I was looking at, but I am not sure if it will clear. Need to make some measurement. I was thinking about the cheap H50 liquid cooling solution might be nice too. Rigth now, my desktop is quiter than my laptop during normal operation. Just when the CPU load gets pass 60%, the helicopter fan starts to spin up.

liupublic wrote in post #11392344
That was the one I was looking at, but I am not sure if it will clear. Need to make some measurement. I was thinking about the cheap H50 liquid cooling solution might be nice too. Rigth now, my desktop is quiter than my laptop during normal operation. Just when the CPU load gets pass 60%, the helicopter fan starts to spin up.

Noctua Mobo Compatibility chart

http://www.noctua.at …gen&products_id​=34&lng=en

Ram Compatibility Chart

http://www.noctua.at …gen&products_id​=34&lng=en

Also this

http://www.noctua.at …&products_id=34​&lng=en#13

Sevan