New PC for freelance graphic designer

[Daniel Capri]

Hello there! greetings from Mexico..

I've been working as a graphic designer/photographer freelancer for 2 years now, and I survived with a 2008 iMac (with 2.8ghz and 4GB of RAM). Now I invested some money in my equipment and bought a new camera, intended to do more videos. But obviously I need something more powerful than my iMac, so after an advanced search I came with this offer:

- i7 3770 processor, - HD: SATA 3 1TB, -NVIDIA GTX 660, - Cooler Master 334 NVIDIA Edition, - Cooler Master extreme power II 725w, -DVD-RW 24x, -Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H, -32gb RAM. -Monitor: ASUS 24" LED.

My plan is to run Davinci Resolve on it, and some editing software (recommendations?)

Could it work?? All that package will cost me $1'700dls..what do you say?

 

[St1ckM4n]

Get the 3770K CPU. Also maybe spend a bit more on a professional monitor, perhaps from Dell?

 

[TorturedChaos]

This is the build I just finished for doing setup and design work for signs and posters and such:

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB
Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB
Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W
ASRock Z77 Pro4 LGA 1155 Intel Z77
COOLER MASTER HAF 912 RC-912-KKN1
Intel Core i7-3770 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz
Win7 64bit Pro.
Grand Total for everything was about $900

I already had a (older) but nice Envision Professional Series monitor.

I didn't bother with any larger storage drives because all our files are kept on our file server. If I'm working on a large file I will copy to the SSD and work on it, then copy it back. Saves and loads a lot faster that way.
So if you don't have another place to store files I would recommend a 1TB (or larger) WD Black hdd.

I have just been using the graphics card off the i7 and its been doing great @ 1600x1200. But as far as I know my software doesn't offload any work to the graphics card.

I do most of my design work in Illustrator and Photoshop CS2. I have been working on touching up some full color maps that are about 24x36 @ 600dpi for a local artist and once I moved the file to the SSD everything has been lightning fast. Even when it does take a while to save the HUGE Photoshop files with several filters and layers I can alt+tab over to my email or Illustrator and work on other orders.

 

[baN893]

I'm not a graphic designer, but you don't need a 725w power supply to run your computer Use this calculator to calculate your needs: http://images10.newegg.com/BizIntell/tool/psucalc/index.html?name=Power-Supply-Wattage-Calculator

From a rough calculation you would be served well with a 500w PSU

 

[St1ckM4n]

If you over-spec the PSU slightly, you'll have better efficiency.

 

[Ritwik7]

Extreme Power PSUs from Cooler Master are not that great in terms of efficiency and actual output. The Antec Neo Eco 620 would be ideal for the system you've mentioned.