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bendjosh
Participant
October 31, 2018
Question

Looking for new computer advice

  • October 31, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 220 views

Like many I was hoping to pick up an updated iMac today. Now looking at a couple options and would appreciate some advice. I'm not nearly as savvy with this stuff as most of you seem to be.

I use my computer almost exclusively for photo editing in Lightroom and Photoshop... that's really about it but I sometimes will have a youtube video or Netflix going on one of the monitors if I'm not working too hard. I currently have the following:

  • Macbook Pro 15 inch Late 2013
  • 2 external 27" monitors. NOT 4k or 5k but the monitors have been solid for photo editing and proofing for print. One SRGB and one full RGB. The screen on the MacBook is busted but it still outputs to the externals fine.
  • 512 SSD
  • 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
  • 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB
    Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

The two options I am considering:

  • 27" Imac - $2099
    • 3.4GZ - Quad Core - 7th Gen i5
    • 8GB (I will increase RAM on my own)
    • 512 SSD
    • Radeon Pro 570
  • Mac Mini - $1299
    • 3.0 GHZ 6 core - 8th Gen i5
    • 8GB (I will increase RAM on my own)
    • 512 SSD

Will I notice a substantial increase in performance with either of the two new options or should I just keep running what I have? I think i'm limited by the 16GB Ram in my current laptop as I work with some huge stitched RAW files sometimes and often am working on multiple images from a shoot all at once. Nothing I can do about the RAM in the laptop... and the screen is busted on the laptop so I can't take it anywhere these days. Is there a better option I should consider?

Thanks!

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    2 replies

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 31, 2018

    Just to add a Photoshop perspective. RAM isn't as important as most perople think. It's much more critical to have an efficient scratch disk setup. If you work with large files you never have enough RAM anyway, and most of the activity happens in the scratch disk. That's the bottleneck.

    Traditionally you wanted a lot of RAM to speed things up. That was with spinning scratch disks. Today, with the new PCI-e M.2 SSDs, speed isn't really a concern - the scratch disk is for all practical purposes as fast as RAM. Just make sure you have enough space, and Photoshop can handle virtually anything.

    dj_paige
    Legend
    October 31, 2018

    For LR, RAM above 16GB isn't really needed unless you are going to do HUGE panoramas or HUGE HDRs.

    dj_paige
    Legend
    October 31, 2018

    The funny thing is, sometimes you can't tell what performance you will get from different computers. But, you haven't stated what is slow currently, we need specifics, we need details, exactly what actions are slow now in LR.

    You also haven't stated the screen sizes (in pixels, not inches) that you have now and are considering getting. 4K and larger monitors can be a serious source of slowdowns, especially if you do a lot of brushing and/or a lot of spot healing.

    In general, you want the fastest CPU you can afford, and these i5 processors don't strike me as being in that category. Also, in general, when manufacturer's pre-configure computers, it is because it has the hardware they want to sell, and while this hardware may be good for 99% of applications, Lightroom has its own requirements that manufacturer's really don't meet with their pre-configured computers. So, configure your own computer, get the fastest CPU you can afford, get a 1920x1080 monitor and then you don't need to spend on a high end GPU (or get a larger monitor and a high end GPU). You don't need an SSD for your photos, you might want an SSD for your catalog file (but not the photos), although I have never felt speed issues with my catalog on a standard non-SSD hard disk.