New tower recomendation

[rswannabe]

Hi guys, the most recent thread i could find was from April. I've been due for a new pc for a while, now it's constantly crashing. Are there any current recomendations? Budget....I guess is whatever it needs to be. I already have a good Dell monitor. 

[Brian]

I still like the Dell XPS series for what it is. I bought my Fiancé one for Christmas 2015 and it's worked really well for what she does.

Here seems to be the latest and greatest Dell XPS 8920 line. The Dell for $949 or $1027.99 (That's on a 24-hr flash sale) would be my choices. 

Recommendations / Specs really haven't changed. 

• Intel i5 or i7 CPU
• 8GB RAM at a Minimum. 16GB or more preferred
• A separate and dedicated video card with its own video memory. 2GB or 4GB is fine. 4GB+ Preferred
• 1TB HD at a Minimum. Hard Drive, you can never have enough capacity.

There isn't THAT much of a performance boost between an i5 and i7 when it comes to Adobe Photoshop. In order for the i7 CPU to really shine and perform at its peak, the software programming needs to be optimized to take advantage of the i7's architecture that makes it so fast. Photoshop and Lightroom are not those programs. In my humble opinion, you are only looking at a 7% performance gain with a i7 over a i5 when it comes to PS. It's better to have more RAM, a super-fast beefy video card with at least 4GB Video Memory and a large HD for the Scratch Disk to stretch out on than worrying about should you get an i5 or a i7. I'd just get an i7 these days just because...I like buying things once and be done with it. I also am thinking on getting into video, in which case a i7 would be a requirement.

[rswannabe]

Thank you Brian! Hey, on the XPS line, they don't seem to be configurable. In fact I just chatted an agent and she confirmed that. The $949 is configured as follows:

7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-7700 ProcessorWindows 10 Pro 64-bit English

8GB, 2400MHz, DDR4; up to 64GB

16GB Intel® Optane™ memory accelerated 1TB 7200 RPM HDD

The i5 processor is configured exactly the same for $799. Any other thoughts?

[Brian]

That's weird. I was able to customize things like upgrade/downgrade the video card, if I wanted MS Office or not. If you are really looking to customize and build your own computer, the Dell XPS Line probably isn't what you are after. 

The hardware recommendations still stand and don't think building a super-rig that will be awesome for games will make PS faster. It won't.  

@Jason - Any recommendations?

[rswannabe]

Thanks again Brian. Thoughts on the i5 $799 build? I could add my own RAM i guess and vid card?

[Brian]

You could add your own RAM, just make sure it matches with the existing RAM. As far as video card, if you get too fancy, you might have to upgrade the power supply. 

The $799 system is fine  it's a base model that the other models are tweaked from. 

 

[rswannabe]

This is what I ended up  going with (upgraged to win 10 pro) http://www.dell.com/en-us/member/shop/productdetails/xps-8920-desktop/fdcwvmxopt411s Thank you for your  help Brian. 

[Brian]

Looks good.