Best value PC for the amateur photographer
Updated 03/11/24.
When choosing components for a photography PC, there’s always a trade off between price and performance. When designing our best value photography PC we wanted to choose all the components that sit in that sweet spot of ultimate price / performance. At this price level, small amounts of extra cash spent on component upgrades can yield considerable performance gains.
Years of research and customer feedback are used to determine the sweet spot in terms of value and performance and here we’ve put all our knowledge and experience to put all these components together to produce the Punch Best Value Photography PC.
This system is capable of running Adobe Photoshop CC and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC applications with higher image file sizes due to the 32GB of system memory.
Firstly we’ve included a higher performance CPU, the Intel Core i5-14400F is a 10 core CPU which performs very well in photography based applications. There is an RTX 3060 6GB graphic card included which hugely out performs the integrated Radeon graphics in the entry level models. The memory has been increased from 16GB to 32GB which greatly improves performance for more complex editing.
We include the excellent Gigabyte H610M Gaming Wifi motherboard which offers ample connectivity and is ideal for high data throughput requirements and offers upgrade potential. The SSD drive remains a high performance 1TB NVMe M.2 model.
Modern commercial image processing software requires a minimum of 16GB of memory, and you will need plenty of fast storage to hold your image catalogue. This system has 32GB of memory.
Read our blog articles to find out more about customising your PC spec to benefit Photoshop and Lightroom.
Six Core 14th Gen Processor
2TB Storage Drive
Gigabyte H610M Gaming Wifi
High performance SSD
Specifications:
Processor
- Intel Core i5-14400F 2.5Ghz 10 Core CPU
- 16 Processor Threads
- Max Turbo Frequency 4.7GHz
- Cache: 20MB
- Intel Air Cooler Installed
Memory
- 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz RAM
- Dual Channel – 2 x 16GB
- Supports up to 64GB
- 2 x DIMM sockets (2 Used)
Hard Drive
- 1TB NVME M.2 SSD (3500MB/R, 2100MB/W)
- 2 x M.2 sockets, 1 free (1 used for the SSD Drive)
- 2TB Seagate BarraCuda 3.5″ Hard drive
- 4 SATA Ports, 3 free (1 Used for 2TB HDD)
Optical Drive
- None
- 1 x Optical Bays, 1 free
Software
- Windows 11 Home 64-bit
- Clean install, no additional software
Chipset
- Intel H610 Chipset
Display Outputs
- 3 x DisplayPort 1.4a
- 1 x HDMI 2.1
- Supports up to 4 monitors at once
- Supports HDCP
Graphics
- NVidia RTX 3050 6GB
Audio
- High Definition Audio, 5.1 or 7.1 channel
- Audio provided by Realtek ALC892 Audio Chip on the motherboard
Input Devices
- No Keyboard or Mouse Included
Wired Networking
- Realtek® 1GbE LAN chip (1 Gbps/100 Mbps)
Wireless Networking
- Intel Wi-Fi 5
- Speeds up to 1733 mbps
- Bluetooth 5.1
Power Supply
- 500 watts
Dimensions
- Height: 408mm
- Width: 210mm
- Depth: 418mm
Interfaces
- 1 x PS/2 Keyboard Port
- 1 x PS/2 Mouse Port
- 6 x USB 2.0 Port (2 front, 4 rear)
- 4 x USB 3.2 Port (2 front, 2 rear)
- 1 x RJ-45 Ethernet Port
- 3 x Audio Jacks at the rear
- 2 x Audio Jacks at the front
- 3 x DisplayPort 1.4a on GPU
- 1 x HDMI 2.1 on GPU
Note the display outputs from the motherboard are disabled when a graphics card is installed
Expansion
- 1 x PCI-e x 16 Slots, 0 free (1 x Used for GPU)
- 1 x PCI-e x 1 Slots, 2 free
Case
- Contour LP-2001 Black Case
- 1 x 80mm black fan installed at the front
- Space for 1 additional 92mm fan at the rear
Warranty
- 3 Year Return to Base parts and labour
- 1st 30 days collect and return at our expense
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