some shit intel cpu
16gb of ram
gtx 960 / r9 nano
patriot blast SSD

MONITOR:
well if he is in image editing you need a screen that conveys the close to best colors, so be sure to check what your monitor will support at least adobeRGB. ...having a 10bit color monitor won't be wrong aswell.

RAM:
8gb is the bare minium, but i would recommand 16gb.

GPU:
Also there is an option for GPU support in illustrator:
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/gpu-pe...ments.html (somewhat comparable in improvement principle like SSD to HDD)

CPU:
Something with alot of L1 and L2 cache, having a quad core will help.

and yes SSD is a must ... for storage i would prefer SSD cuz the read and especialy the writes will be a lot faster. Making a 2x5m pictures and saving it into a tiff or a pdf file will take long on a HDD.

i have no idea how you are gonna get that into a 800$ budget, but please do inform us... i to am looking for a new rig, but i have no idea what actual parts to pick... i just know the theory of it. :)

by having pci-e 3.0 and all the extra bits to read bigger chunks of physical ram alot faster then pci-e 2.0

small files, the extra bits might not make no different, intel will destroy AMD with HD games that have bigger textures

what about those SSD that you can hook up to pcie? are those expensive as fuck and work?

m2 ssd`s are faster then sata 3, pcie SSD will cost £$500+ for a good size drive, or £43k for 5Tb

well at 100€ its seems a nice time saver as a temporary storage, before moving stuff into "archive" after project finish. Well as a boot drive it would also be quite an improvement.

Having large work files with a lot of other files attached you would save time when moving files around opening and saving.

Any1 knows what is the reliability on PCI-E SSD?

pcie SSD`s are for enterprise

no, i would like my system to be even faster and i don't like to wait when i am saving 1gb file.

So i don't see the reason why this would be only for the enterprises, the prices aren't that exensive. If only, i would buy 1x 100gb and 1x 250gb for work files, but i MB only have 1x of those tiny slots, or is there for any pci-e?

pcie drives are made for enterprise :

http://www.njkeycare.com/media/pagemast/data-warehouse.jpg

they are more reliable, faster, and run alot cooler, corporations will pay the extra money, which is why they are enterprise drives instead of retail or oem

8 cores 16 threads xeon e5 2670 from ebay for 70$ + mobo x79 chip 180$
thats will be faster in video/rendering than 6700k@4.8GHz

P.S. if u need more performance ---> 2x 2670 and ASRock LGA2011 mobo with two cpu slots ~300$

talking about shit loads of cache memory lol. :) i never thought about xeon CPUs, nice.

Know anything about the supermicro brand mobo? They can seem to beat the asus/asrock price by a hair.

Pretty much what these guys said.

Illustrator does not need serious cpu/gpu power to operate, it is nice though to use if you've got some nice specs.

Photoshop is a different story if you're doing a lot of post processing in it, tonnes of layers and obviously working in stupidly high resolutions as soon as your .psd files start to hit 1gb plus it starts to act a little sluggish.

There's just something about windows and photoshop that makes me rage a shit load. I've found raiding two 250gb SSD's together though really good for opening and managing psd files from about 1-5 gig in size.

When they start to get to that size you need to ask yourself if you're actually working smart with your layers. (smart layers lololol.) Remove a lot of shit you're not working on in the master .PSD file and just add/remove as you go. I often bring in renders from cinema 4d as well and those are the ones that destroy loading times and psd file size.

Good luck though, my £600 rig works pretty well for the scales I work on.

q:D

Thanks for all the tips everyone.

sTPHN, Are the adobe programs and such capable of multi-core use? I like the idea of what slm is talking about with the xeons a LOT, but would I get the performance out of the cores I need, or would all that cache be wasted?

What people don't understand is Photoshop will use a shit load of cores however only certain features in it will use the capability, like Filters and the 3D options, I'd say going Xeon is a bit over kill but it won't hurt, if your rig is primarily going to be used design/editing then throw as much shit into it as you can!