Photoshop CS5 System requirements
Windows:
- Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
- Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 3; Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (Service Pack 2 recommended); or Windows 7
- 1GB of RAM
- 1GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash-based storage devices)
- 1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card, 16-bit color, and 256MB of VRAM
- Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0
- DVD-ROM drive
- QuickTime 7.6.2 software required for multimedia features
- Broadband Internet connection required for online services*
You need better than the above.
Also read the
Optimize Photoshop performance | CS3 | XP, Vista guide, and then, based on the above, specify your personal minimum system configuration.
Then start trawling ebay, etc.
My 2p -
Avoid Dell, HP, Compaq, Packard Bell PCs because they have too many bespoke components that are impossibly costly to replace or upgrade.
Ensure that any system you get has expansion for additional hard disks - you can never have too many hard disks!
It is easy to upgrade HDDs, Optical disks, RAM and graphics card, not so easy (but possible if standard form factor) to upgrade motherboard and CPU.
Go for at least a dual-core CPU, even at the expense (initially) of RAM. You can much more easily add RAM later than upgrade the CPU.
Do not buy a server - no matter how tempting the specification or the price - unless you are deaf or want to become so!
SD