Advice on a new PC & Graphics Card

There are mobos out there with USB 3 ports on the back....but standardized headers for cabling to from case ports or card readers? The only AM3 one I know about is from Asrock. Have yet to see one from ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte..etc. That should change by mid year.

For photography purposes, I do not see a need for the hotest Intel or AMD CPU or hotest video board. It is definitely not needed to run LR, PS, or Elements. So if you want a hot CPU to run games or other applications....great. Everyone knows their own budget.

Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 1366 Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 Express 1366 Motherboard

Both have 2x USB3 ports on the back.

That Gigabyte UD3R also has 2 USB2 headers intern on the board that can be connected to a front panel.

As for Sandy Bridge, it will take a 1155 socket and the H67 chipset. Don't know if it is going to change down the road, but it looks like the 1155 boards now developed don't have as many features, 8-16 GB RAM, etc. As for onboard graphics, looks like it will only support one monitor.

I'm also just about to upgrade, looking at the GA-X58A-UD7 or 9, i7 980 CPU, 24 GB RAM, maybe an SSD boot drive and a couple or four more TB HDD. May seem like an overkill, but my last overkill 3-4 years ago is only now beginning to look a bit slow. Before making the jump, thanks for the tip, guess I'd better look a bit deeper into Sandy Bridge, but not going to wait around forever on further developed boards, delivery 'n whatnot.

I have the Asus P6X58D-E and this is also cabled out to front panel connections for 2 x USB2, eSata and a SATA multi-card reader via standard on-board headers.

If the OP went down the Sandy Bridge path, would the onboard GPU be good enough for photo processing in terms of accurately replicating colours etc? I'm looking at a i5 2500-based system.

Also, what are the other key components relating to photo processing?

I've built up heaps of pcs in the past, but they were mostly general use/gaming orientated.

I'm relatively new to photography and am in the process of building up a new pc, but unsure of which components will be put under the pump.

I mainly use Lightroom for my post-processing.

Sandy Bridge's onboard GPU will be more than sufficient for lightroom, either version.

Most important part of a photo-editing machine is the monitor -- make sure it's IPS.

Here's a rough build I sketched out for a ~1300$ budget. https://photography-on-the.net …p?p=11600418&po​stcount=50

Thanks SP. I'll start researching monitors.

Noticed a lot of people are going with 8gb memory.

Looking at my cpu and memory monitors while using Lightroom on my current pc, my CPU seems to be the limiting factor, whereas I'm not maxing out my 2gb of ram.

Windows will flip-out paging files to make sure you never actually use all of your installed ram. Even opening lightroom with one raw file I use ~1.5GB. An average import for 300 photos will bring that up to 5 (and that's just Lightroom, not windows).

Part of the reason everyone's using 8GB is that they'll use more than 4. The other part is that it's a solid number for use for the next 2-3 years without having to upgrade, and DDR3 is at a massive price bottom right now.

Great, thanks for the responses. Hope I didn't hijack this thread too much!

Strattos wrote in post #11606218
Thanks SP. I'll start researching monitors.

Noticed a lot of people are going with 8gb memory.

Looking at my cpu and memory monitors while using Lightroom on my current pc, my CPU seems to be the limiting factor, whereas I'm not maxing out my 2gb of ram.

With 2gb Dimms selling for $20-25 each getting 8gb in a machine (by adding 2 Dimms to a typical pre-built system that comes with 4gb) is cheap...4gb Dimms installed in pairs starts getting expensive...6gb seems the sweetspot (2gb for the OS, 4gb for running programs) is plenty for the average/casual photoshop user...