Should I buy new stuff later?
Should I buy new stuff later?
You have about a thousand to five hundred pounds to spend, and you can build something pretty good for that price. Like me, you probably like Blu-ray drives too, so be careful picking a case because some modern ones have glass sides and lots of little fans inside (up to thirteen!). They look fancy but sometimes don't fit an old optical drive size. I'm writing this on my old i7-4770K in a black Fractal Design system with sixteen gigabytes of RAM running Windows 10. The case has just one slot for that DVD/RW drive. I have other Fractal cases like the R5, which I prefer because some versions let me fit eight hard drives inside for server builds. If you pick an R-series case, read carefully before buying. There are many choices and some don't even include front panel slots. https://www.fractal-design.com/products/...define-r5/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fractal-Design-...B00Q2Z11QE I also have a bunch of old Lian-Li aluminum cases that I bought on eBay. The V2000 has seven big 5.25-inch slots on the front panel. They are useful if you like swapping drives often, but you can always buy an illuminated glass fish tank instead. If you want an mATX build, these might be too big for your liking, so look at other cases online. Cases in the USA might not have deals in the UK. I've used different sites to do my builds over the years including: https://www.ebuyer.com/ https://www.scan.co.uk/ https://box.co.uk/ https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/ What Adobe apps should you use? You can get away with a "medium" spec for Photoshop, but video editors like Premiere Pro need fast CPUs and powerful graphics cards. I'm running Photoshop and Topaz Video AI on my 2022 rig built with an i7-4770K that has a 4070 GPU. Your budget of up to £1500 should be enough for a good video setup. Photoshop isn't super heavy, but plugins like Topaz Photo AI still crush the graphics card if you work on big RAW images. For editing videos, I'd pick an Intel i7 or i9 CPU, or an AMD Ryzen 7 or 9. A 9-series CPU might be too expensive for your budget, but I would hesitate to suggest a standard i5 or Ryzen 5 for Premiere Pro, DaVinci, etc. For inspiration when picking out a CPU and GPU for Adobe software, check the Puget Systems site: https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/a...endations/ https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/v...miere-pro/ Most of their pre-built systems are aimed at pros and cost a lot, but it's worth checking the comparison charts to see what different CPUs and GPUs actually do. If you can't find an affordable CPU or GPU in Puget's current builds (they usually recommend Threadripper and Xeon for professionals), check out their 2022/3 Adobe reviews for more modest (affordable) hardware. If you work with 4K video, aim for sixty-four gigabytes of system RAM and a graphics card with twelve gigabytes of VRAM. If you only do 1080p editing, thirty-two gigabytes of RAM and an eight-gigabyte GPU are fine, but "more is better" (like more cores and more RAM) in video apps. I haven't run four monitors off one single graphics card yet. I think I can probably use three monitors with one of my GPUs, even though the card has four outputs. Check the specs of any graphic card before you buy it and find a card that fits all your monitor inputs. I'm using a mix of HDMI and Display port on an old thirty-inch 16:9 Dell monitor from a 3800X and 7950K via a KVM switch. Other PCs use DVI and even VGA on twenty-four-inch monitors.
With this amount of money, you can buy a really good computer that will last for many years. Since you probably run long-term gaming rigs, it makes sense to get as high-end as the budget allows. But first, we need to know which specific Adobe software you use. If your Adobe programs rely on your graphics card (GPU), then here is what we recommend: CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X running at 4.3 GHz with 16 cores (£516.83) CPU Cooler: Thermalright Royal Pretor 130 cooling fan with 81.88 CFM airflow (£39.00) Motherboard: Gigabyte B850 AORUS ELITE WIFI7 for the AM5 platform at £210.00 Memory: Patriot Venom DDR5-6000 CL30 64 GB (two sticks of 32 GB) storage (£154.99) Hard Drive: SK Hynix Platinum P41 M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD for 2 TB capacity (£119.99) Graphics Card: Gigabyte WINDFORCE OC GeForce RTX 3060 with 12 GB of video memory (£248.99) Case: Fractal Design Pop Air ATX Mid Tower case (£69.00) Power Supply: Corsair RM750e fully modular power supply rated for 2025 at £91.30 Total cost comes to about £1,450.10 Shipping, taxes, and discounts are included in these prices. This list was created by PCPartPicker on June 6th, 2025.
I mostly use Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acrobat. On top of that, I make eBooks and User Guides using MS Office. When it comes to video work, I handle converting from VHS to digital or ripping DVDs/BluRays with subtitles in many languages. That sounds like a lot of things at once, but sometimes 10 programs run behind my back.
I found two different computer parts lists here. The first one picks an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor and a cooling fan, along with other stuff like RAM and storage for about $1,148.51 total. The second list uses AMD chips instead of Intel, but the rest of the items stay pretty much the same cost-wise around $1,145.26. Both lists came from PCPartPicker and picked the cheapest options available based on their own rules.