mATX Adobe Editing PC?

[dtch]

I've been out of the tech game for a while. Here is a PPP list of my current system. I initially built it for gaming but as time has moved on I stopped gaming and eventually got into photography and cinematography.

 

Budget: $300 USD

Aim: Upgrade current system to more respectable specifications in order to smoothly run Adobe apps alongside Chrome and Spotify.

Monitors: Currently using a 23" Acer 1080p monitor but eventually will be upgrading to a BenQ SW2700PT and running it as my primary with my Acer as a secondary.

Peripherals: I am open to suggestions but currently have a mouse and keyboard that I am comfortable with. 

Why? My computer does run alright but I do notice slow times when I have a few apps open. Example: While listening to Spotify and having Chrome open, I go to retouch a photo in Photoshop and the load times seem a bit slow. During the editing process the Select and Mask functions do take longer than I feel they should. As well, the whole build is nearly 5 years old at this point. I feel it is time to upgrade anything that may be going out of date.

 

Other thoughts

• My Bitfenix case is a bit small. It's nice because I do have limited desk space but I feel that temps would be better and there would be less chance of heat death with a larger case.
• My MB is limited to 1333MHZ(1600OC) RAM. It would be nice to have a faster option as well as upgrade from DDR3 to DDR4.
• The GPU was perfect for games when I initially purchased it. I recall nVidia cards were supposed to be better for Adobe apps due to the CUDA cores. Not sure how true the statement is or was. In either case, the budget won't allow for an upgraded card.

PC Specs:

• CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE
• GPU: EVGA GTX 770 SC ACX
• MB: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3
• RAM: G.SKILL 8GB (2x4) DDR3-1333
• SSD: Kingston 240GB A400
• PSU: Corsair CX850M Modular

Edited August 5, 2018 by dtch
Location: USA

[brob]

More memory would probably help the current system. Given the budget, a new more powerful cpu is going to require reusing most of the existing system.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i3-8100 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($118.70 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: Asus - PRIME B360M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($77.16 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Team - Vulcan 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($140.98 @ Newegg) 
Total: $336.84
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-08-05 17:20 EDT-0400

[dtch]

@brob 

Could you explain what the i3 would achieve over the 965 I currently have? Both are mid-3 GHz Quad-core. In my mind they would be comparable CPUs.

[brob]

The i3-8100 cores have much higher performance. The cpu is roughly twice as powerful as an AMD Phenom II X4 965. I3-8100 cores are able to process almost twice as many instructions per clock (IPC).

 

For very rough comparisons see https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Phenom-II-X4-965-vs-Intel-i3-8100-vs-AMD-Ryzen-3-1300X/370vs3103vs3057 and http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i3-8100-vs-AMD-Phenom-II-X4-965/3942vs606, 

[dtch]

Ah. Thank you. That's a very different animal than I've got. I appreciate the information.