Quote Originally Posted by Missismiggins View Post
I basically have the machine on 24/7, loading torrents, but I want something that can run programs like FSX, Photoshop at maximum speed.
Torrents will not care about the speed of your PC, they only care about the speed of your DSL connection.

Flight Simulator will care more about the quality of your video card, how much capacity it has, and how fast the bus connecting it to your motherboard is -- usually, anything PCIe will do fine, in that case, with a decent amount of video RAM (512mb), and a decent graphix processor (nVidia).

Photoshop - again, it matters what you are trying to do. Just retouching and the usual cropping of pictures or turning them into JPEGs, your existing setup will work just fine.

Honestly, a Mac would work best for all the above (27" iMac, most likely), but you won't consider that, or think you can't afford it, and all your buddies will have a cow over it -- so, go for something with a Core 2 Duo, and a RAM speed of 1066MHz or better, along with the above specs. MSI or Gigabyte make decent motherboards that support this.

i5 or i7 are overkill for what you are trying to do - possibly the i5 (if you want to go that way), as it's the successor to the Core 2 Duo (or Core 2 Quad) line.

Apart from that, it sounds by your qualifications and specifications, that you don't need anything top of the line.