jimbo19 said:
My daughter has a really old macbook pro and is a budding photographer
She wants to get a new setup and was considering a mac pro - I looked at the price and almost had a heart attack !!
I am considering building her a mini itx system on an sg07 case with an zotac H67 and i5 750 - will this be good enough for serious photoshop ??
Also what would be the best Vid card for this ? was contemplating a HD5570
And last question will this combo work ??
Thanks
Wouldn't recommend an ITX built necessarily unless saving space is high on the list of factors and concerns. ITX boards usually have reduced number of SATA sockets (4 only, 5 if you count the eSATA and manage to get it to work). But since your daughter were asking for a Mac Pro in the first place, I am guessing space shouldn't be a concern.
It is a very good idea to be able to hook up to more storage because it is the workflow that needs to be developed and hone-in. You are going to spend one SATA for system disk, one for scratch, the remaining one to two on archive. It probably wouldn't be long until you'd be looking for external storage solutions. Go for a mATX if not an ATX.
Onto the CPU + motherboard solution, The i5-750 (Socket 1156) will not work in a H67 motherboard (Socket 1155). You will have to look at a 5-series chipset motherboard instead of the 6-series motherboard.
Any graphic card will do, preferably a discrete one to preserve system memory of your daughter's preferred photo application. If your daughter is deeply involved in Photoshop, then you may consider picking an nVidia card over the AMD-ATi for some CUDA acceleration.
But perhaps a very important thing and so often overlooked thing in my opinion would be investing in a decent monitor and a color calibrator. I just found it tremendously difficult to deliver proper output without these.
So to answer you question in all, No it won't work. CPU and motherboard does not match.
Hope this helps & Good Luck!
