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My 10 year old desktop is finally starting to be more trouble than it’s worth. I use my desktop for phot editing and not too much more. I’d appreciate recommendions on what would be a good replacement. I won’t be gaming, but I will be driving two pretty big monitors.
My 10 year old desktop is finally starting to be more trouble than it’s worth. I use my desktop for phot editing and not too much more. I’d appreciate recommendions on what would be a good replacement. I won’t be gaming, but I will be driving two pretty big monitors.
What software do you plan to use to edit your photos?
I’ll leave it to others to recommend specific models, but make sure you get one with at least 12 GB of RAM or running Lightroom won’t be so much fun.
I’ll leave it to others to recommend specific models, but make sure you get one with at least 12 GB of RAM or running Lightroom won’t be so much fun.
1. 27-inch iMac with 32GB memory (8 from Apple and the rest from a 3rd party).
2. Pixelmator Pro.
Thanks for the suggestion, but as far as I could tell Pixelmator pro isn’t really a Lightroom replacement. And I’m pretty happy with Lightroom. I looked into Macs, but they seemed way too expensive. The monitors are nice, but I’ve already got two nice monitors that cover a more useful color gamut.
Depends on budget and how extensively you're photo editing. Are you applying lots of effects/layers to RAW photos or just doing simple things like adjusting white balance and running prebaked auto correction algorithms? If it's the latter, you don't really need anything fancy. The former can get more intensive.
Budget as well. Get either a Core i5 or i7 depending on budget, or AMD Ryzen 5/7. Skip the enthusiast chips like the i9 or Threadripper and the budget ones like i3 or Ryzen 3 (or lower).
RAM, get 16 GB. It's expensive but get 16 and not 8 if you can. Going up to 32 GB is really beneficial if you're doing heavy usage but otherwise not really worth the cost.
Get two SSDs, one to read from and one to write to. Speeds things up immensely, especially on faster systems. Get the largest ones you can budget for. Older SSDs like an Samsung EVO 850 if the price is right, otherwise 860. NVMe drives have come down in price but still are more expensive. They're generally not worth the extra cost to most people. Unless you just don't have a budget at all, skip Opatane. It's great. It's ludicrously expensive. You'll often find systems with conventional drives using small Optane (16 GB) scratch drives to speed up workflow. HHD + Optane is an option but it's not much faster than SSDs. If you want to spend a lot of time playing with a photo it's a bit faster than SSD, but then you need to write that to the HDD to move on to the next one. If you're spending 20 minutes editing a photo it makes sense. If you're just doing quick corrections not so much.
GPU acceleration helps, especially with heavier loads. Again, it's budget and what are you doing. There's very little benefit for something over a GTX 1060. At the same time, the integrated graphics have gotten better so there's very little benefit to something under GT 1030. If you're going to use multiple monitors, you'll likely need at least a GT 1030 as most motherboards do not support multiple displays. If you're on a tight budget and getting 16 GB of RAM and an i5, don't get a GTX 1060. Get a 1050 or 1050 Ti and put the money elsewhere. If you're using 10-bit monitors, Quadro. If not, Geforce.
That should give you an idea on what to shoot for. But basically LR is a bit all over the place on how it uses your hardware. For the CPU it looks like 4-8 cores is optimal and any more doesn't make that much difference. You should shoot for the highest frequency you can afford since many of the tasks are more cpu speed bound. A SSD for the OS and scratch drive should be a minimum with 16gb RAM and dedicated GPU being highly recommended.
I know you said you don't need a gaming machine. But if you're seriously into Lightroom and use it a lot you would be well served to get one.
I don’t I’d realistically spend more than $1500. I just don’t want to spend up to that budget if the difference is marginal.
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