Best Graphic Design Desktop Setup?

Question

Hey guys, I am interested in building a desktop in the near future and am looking for some input as to what I should get...

Currently, I am studying Graphic Design and Illustration and also do a lot of Photography. I use Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign frequently. However, my current 2010 Macbook Pro 13" is not powerful enough to run all these programs well (usually at the same time). This is especially true when editing RAW photos. Along with a lot of Graphic Design, I intend on using the desktop for graphically demanding games. Whatever will allow me to run games at the highest settings would be great.

Mac Pro's are too overpriced IMO, so I am looking into building a powerful desktop PC that can dual boot OSX for my Graphic Design/general use and Windows 7 for my video games. My budget is roughly $1500 MAX for all the components. If you guys could recommend the best components/setup for what I explained that would be great. Thanks!

Answer 1

Check out the best builds over at tonymacx86 if you want to dual boot OS X. These are groups of components that are proven to work together.



http://www.tonymacx86.com/golden-builds/



For your budget you want a 4-core Ivy Bridge processor and any build using a i5 or i7 3000 series processor can have one of these substituted in without issue as they are all the same with just different specifications. Pretty much you just need a board and graphics card combination that work with OS X, the rest is interchangeable.



i5-3330 - if you aren't overclocking and want the cheapest 4-core that's worth getting.

i5-3570K - if you are overclocking

Xeon E3-1230V2 - if you aren't overclocking and want hyper-threading (gives 15-35% performance on pro applications that can use the extra cores/threads), unless you can get to a Microcenter because they may have i7s cheap.



GTX 570 is one of the best cards for OS X, gaming and pro apps because it is a fair bit cheaper than a 670 and doesn't lose much pro-app performance, but get a GTX 670 if you are well in to gaming, your budget allows it.

Answer 2

You can build a PC for much less than a Mac with more power. The iMac's run for around 1200 for the lowest model, which isn't a terrible price because it includes the monitor.



The best investment will be a Solid State Hard Drive, they are expensive but loading your applications and files will double in speed no matter how fancy your CPU is. So you could get an AMD AM3 Chip (4 cores is enough) and DDR3 Dual/Triple channel is pretty cheap these days. You can get video card for around $59 that has 1GB GDDR2, spend more if you need it.



You should checkout Newegg or Amazon for the best prices -- building a computer is extremely fun.

Answer 3

Best Graphic Design Computers

Answer 4

if you have never built one before, go with one of the kits from new egg.

of buy a prebuilt and add a(or extra) video card.

the deal usually beats getting the part individually(unless there are deals on the specific hardware).

you'll just need to add an operating system.



Go with the ultimate version and stay away from the others.



TO be honest don't worry about dual booting.

The main reason is that dual booting with any mac os limits you to only certain mother boards and cpus, as well as video cards. other wise the os won't boot at all.



I haven't set up any mac dual boots, mainly because of this problem.

you may want to do some research on the limits of hardware compatible with mac o.s. first.

IF you are set on a dual boot.

Answer 5

Since your doing graphics design, i reccomending building a custom pc. You will benefit from using an i7 for rendering. A 120gb or 240gb solid state hard drive will greatly increase program opening and overall pc performance. 8-16 gb of ram is reccomended, you can start with 8 and upgrade to 16 if you need to.



Building a pc is quite easy with a little research, its like grown up legos, all the parts fit together. Here is a guideline system for you to look at, i recommend newegg.com for buying parts. There are videos on how to assemble it or get a friend to.



i7 3770k

socket 1155 motherboard, chipset z77

2x4gb ram kit, buy the same kit to upgrade to 16gb

video card(gtx 660ti or gtx 670)

power supply(650-750W)

mid tower case