Computer recommendations? Artist / photoshop style.

Chop Logic

FRIENDS. I am in great need of your wisdom.

My computer recently died unexpectedly. I must obtain a new one. However, I am relatively out of the loop technologically. I basically was wondering, what would be the best bang for my buck in my situation. I won't be playing any games on it, but I will be doing a lot of photoshop / very low key animation stuff. Trying to spend as little as possible while still getting something dependable.

Any recommendations? Something someone has had for a while that is still up and running well?

In exchange I heartily wish you an excellent evening.

MagicToaster

Macs have the best screen you'll ever see on a laptop. If color fidelity is important to you... Like, if you deal with prints and such, I cant recommend this enough.

Spending "little" on a computer is a bit relative. How much do you have?

Chop Logic

I can spend a pretty solid amount actually, my birthday is coming up and a family member is willing to "hook it up", so to speak.

I know you're super into the technical side of art, any machines I should look into? I could definitely, with one or two family members helping me out, get together at least like $2000. I'm sure you understand the importance of having a dependable machine (I'm getting commissions finally, etc.) so I'm just wondering what you or someone else would recommend.

Jasconius

you can spend way less than 2000 and get a good computer

in fact you can spend way less than 1000 nowadays

For photoshop you need 8 gigs of RAM and ideally an SSD

Pretty sure you can could a PC all-in-one with both of these things right around the $1000 mark

shit, you can almost get a laptop now with those specs for that price

If you can get someone to build it for you, you can get even cheaper than that

for someone on a budget who is factoring in birthday money, a Mac is a colossal waste of money for minimal performance gain, if any

Chop Logic

Yeah I don't think I'm going to go for a mac, around a grand is really where I'm looking to fall. Or less would be great, I mean.

see317

First and most important question: have you ever built a PC before? If not, go to the second question.
Second and slightly less important question: are you good at following instructions and/or asking for help following instructions?

If the answer to either of those is "Yes", go to the Computer Build Thread in Moe's Tech Forum. They'll point you in the right direction to get the most bang for your buck.

You'll want to get your budget socked down so you know how much you can spend. If you've never built a PC before, keep in mind you'll need a bit of cash set aside for the operating system install, chances are pretty good that that'll be the most expensive single component of the build.

Sentry

I have a Surface Pro and it runs the entire Adobe Creative Cloud like a champ. No issues, and seriously I will never mask without a pen again.

Chop Logic

With my luck with computers, I'm not going to build a PC. I did it once before and it was awesome, but it didn't play out too great in the long term. I'm rather not go into it, but thanks for the recommendation.

Chop Logic

Honestly I'm really just looking for something with a big screen and an standard state hard drive. Found a few things, mostly ASUS, but they are all ~1000.

It's looking like if I was the SSD and a large screen (for art), a grand is going to be pretty hard to go under. Seems reasonable though. I'm scoping some ASUS stuff now.

Wassermelone

Do you ever do anything at print sizes in photoshop? 8 gb of RAM I would say is a minimum spec, and more is always better.

Derrick

You're getting excellent advice in this thread. The only thing that somewhat worries me is your comment about animation. Rendering (depending on what you're doing) can be very taxing on a machine from what I remember (haven't done any 3D rendering in quite a while).

What kind of animation were you thinking?

Jasconius

i think animation = flash.

flash = similar specs to Photoshop

bowen

Assuming you have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, you could probably build a PC with nearly the best of the best for about $1200.