Building a new PC

[Carlos eljuanka]

I'm building a new PC, without a dedicated GPU board.

I'm thinking of getting a CPU for around $200 or $300 at most.
Which of the CPUs below is recommended for Lightroom?
- Rizen 7 8600G
- Ryzen 7 9700X

[Conrad_C]

I am not an expert in Windows PCs, but from quick Internet searches it looks like the 8600G might be more suitable for Lightroom Classic, at least at the casual level. People seem to say that the 9700X works best if paired with a discrete GPU, which you said you don’t want. Not sure how well either CPU works for professional workflows.

However, it must be said that, more than ever, Lightroom Classic is taking advantage of the power of today‘s best GPUs. For example, in the last update, Adobe added GPU acceleration of preview generation, because people wanted that to be faster. Now it is faster, if you have a good GPU. Also, if features like AI Denoise and Adaptive Profiles are important to you, especially if you often apply them in bulk or to images with a high megapixel count, then GPU performance is critical.

With recent Lightroom Classic feature updates in mind, a high performance GPU is now one of the top priorities for the next computer I buy.

[AxelMatt]

The new functions in Lightroom are heavily using the GPU acceleration. So I think the best solution is to use a dedicated graphic card. CPU internal graphic units can caused several issues in Lightroom (and also Photoshop).  The best choice are NVidia's RTX30 or RTX40 series.

[dj_paige]

I'm building a new PC, without a dedicated GPU board.

I'm thinking of getting a CPU for around $200 or $300 at most.
Which of the CPUs below is recommended for Lightroom?
- Rizen 7 8600G
- Ryzen 7 9700X

By @Carlos eljuanka

Are you talking about Lightroom (Lr icon) or Lightroom Classic (LrC icon)?

I don't think there is a recommendation about CPU for LrC. https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/system-requirements.html

I'm pretty sure that a computer without a dedicated GPU will be very slow in the Develop Module and probably in other areas as well. Some features of LrC will not work at all without a dedicated GPU.