PC Build for Illustrator and Photoshop, need advice.

[garrettw8474256]

Hello everyone! I'm helping a friend of mine build a PC for his wife to do graphic design with. She uses mostly Illustrator, but also photoshop, probably a 65/35 split. They are a young family so their budget is super tight, so a quality system under $500 is critical, but less would be even better.The emphasis for this build is price to performance, and getting good enough user experience. As a secondary goal, I would like to leave them good upgrade paths for future hardware.

I've built a few systems before, but I just don't know what kind of workload Illustrator and Photoshop are! So I need your help. I've found a lot of conflicting opinions and need a few things cleared up.  Does Illustrator or photoshop scale well to multiple cores? Are they GPU accelerated, if so how well does this scale with higher quality GPUs? Can a quality integrated GPU like the Vega 8 or Vega 11 on the 2200g and 2400g do GPU acceleration or does it require a discrete GPU? Are the QUADRO GPUs much better for this workload? Is 8gb of RAM enough, or is 16gb necessary? Does running multiple monitors, or higher resolutions put more load on the system?

We already managed to find a 256gb NVMe SSD, so the boot drive and scratch disk are taken care of. I've also got a spare PSU for them to use.

Below are some builds that I've thrown together, let me know what you think of them.

Option 1: $520

CPU: Ryzen R5 2600 (6 core, 12 thread)

RAM: 16 gb DDR4 3000 mhz.

GPU: GTX 970 (there is a used one in my area for less than a 1050 ti)

Motherboard: ASRock AB350 Pro.

SSD: 256gb 960 EVO

Option 2:  $403

CPU/GPU: R5 2400g (4core, 8 thread, VEGA 11 iGPU)

RAM: 16 gb DDR4 3000 mhz.

motherboard: ASRock AB350 Pro.

SSD: 256 gb 960 EVO

Option 3:  $261

CPU/GPU: R5 2200g (4 core, 4 thread, VEGA 8 iGPU)

RAM: 8 gb DDR4 3000 mhz.

motherboard: ASRock AB350 Pro.

SSD: 256 gb 960 EVO

Of these systems would they all deliver a similar experience, or does one stand out as superior?

[Monika Gause]

garrettw8474256  schrieb

Of these systems would they all deliver a similar experience, or does one stand out as superior?

Only people who have the same systems will be able to answer that question.

Do a search in this forum for the graphic cards, if they have been reported with issues. Search http://illustrator.uservoice.com as well.

Illustrator shows some issues with 4K and 5K systems. I'm not quite sure about Windows, but definitely on the Mac.

Personally I wouldn't go for the very latest graphic card model of any brand. Older ones are good enough and support is more stable.

The system requirements are here:

Adobe Illustrator system requirements

They are using Illustrator CC, right?

[garrettw8474256]

Thank you for the reply!

Yes, primarily Illustrator. They'll probably buy a subscription to the whole Creative Cloud as students, considering my friend is still in grad school. Seems like the most cost-effective option.

[Ray Yorkshire]

Bit above my pay grade, but anecdotal evidence suggests a reasonably fast processor and decent amount of ram (16 good) are the most important things.

Article about  illustrator and cores here:

Can batch processing on Adobe Illustrator be made any faster using multiple cores of the CPU or GPU?...

Another here, not sure how representative it is

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests/suggestions/20423296-ma...

[Test Screen Name]

Doubtful that’s enough disk space. Can you supplement it with an inexpensive hard disk perhaps?  Photoshop especially needs huge work space, tens of GB is not unusual, and anyone doing graphics work generates a lot of big files.

[garrettw8474256]

Yes! That is the plan. Like I said their budget is super tight. They'll probably be piecing it together one part at a time. I've suggested they purchase an HDD last, because it isn't necessary to get them up and running. Do you think they could last 2-3 months on that 256 gb drive, until they can save up enough to get a storage drive?

I was thinking a 4TB Western Digital Blue would complement things well.

[Ray Yorkshire]

250 GB sounds like more enough, unless they plan to store 200 GB of media on it .

Just keep a nice chunk of it empty for working space.

HDD? there unreliable  dinosaurs, better use the money towards another SSD. 

[Test Screen Name]

Depends on the size of the files to edit. Photoshop needs tens of gigabytes or more free space, on top of the actual user files.

[KShinabery212]

If you are building a PC for your friend...

And the primary thing is to use Illustrator on it, it should be a simple build.

But I would think more into the future.  How will your friend grow as a creative... will they start to experiment with new software in a year or two? If so they I would give it a hardcore build.  Who knows, maybe your friend will start experimenting with a 3D app in the future like ZBrush or start using new Adobe applications that utilize 3D elements. 

I think when building a computer, always think of what potentially your friend or their family will want to experiment with later on.  Or give them a nice upgrade that will allow for them to experiment with new Adobe software as it become available.  Example... if you friend in into Illustrator they might also want to experiment with Adobe Character Animator in the future... which is brilliant by the way if you have not tried it.

[garrettw8474256]

That's part of what drew me to the AM4 platform. Hopefully, they can upgrade their CPU in 2020, when Zen2+ is out. Zen2 is set to be a good 30% upgrade in single core, with perhaps boosted core count, but it's a year away. Plus, with a full-size ATX board, they should be able to support lots of system expansion, and a good graphics card when the money allows.