Dell XPS Desktop for Photoshop
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Hi, I'm reaching out again for advice on purchasing a new computer. Previously I was looking at laptops but think it would be best to go with a desktop.
For my price range I'm considering the below, ideally I would go for 32GB DDR5 but it takes me over budget.
I'll be using Photoshop the majority of the time with files 1-2GB in size for my artwork - original watercolour paintings then worked in photoshop.
Do you think it would be ok? Any feedback would be very much appreciated. Thanks
Dell XPS Desktop
14th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 14700 (33 MB cache, 20 Cores, 28 threads, up to 5.4 GHz)
Windows 11 Home,
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060, 8 GB GDDR6
16GB DDR5, 2x8GB, 5600MT/s
1 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD
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I suppose it was me who discouraged you... 😉
Sorry about that, and I probably gave the incorrect impression that all laptops will cause problems. They obviously don't, or we'd be flooded here. Still, there's no getting around the hard fact that 95% of all problems we see here are on laptops.
If you really need the portability, you obviously have no choice. So what I really mean is, optimize the odds if you can. Research as much as possible, look for people who actually have used Photoshop on a certain model.
Anyway. The specs.
I'd go for 32 GB RAM. This isn't really critical as long as you have enough disk space, but 16 is borderline these days.
Which brings me to the second point. Photoshop uses huge amounts of memory, much more than any RAM you may have. So while working, temporary working data are written to disk. This is what's known as the scratch disk. Think of the scratch disk as Photoshop's main memory, with RAM as a cache holding the most current data. You should normally have 150 - 500 GB free space for the scratch disk, depending on file sizes, how many files are open, and number of history states.
This means you should also consider a bigger NVMe. 2 TB is more comfortable.
Nvidia RTX 4060 is rock solid. But again, while 8 GB VRAM will work, 12 is safer.
The CPU is fine.
The specs you listed will work, but a little more goes a long way here 🙂
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Thanks again for your advice. It was partly your comment, aswell as others I've spoken to.
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Hi, do you know if it matters if you get windows 11 pro or home for photoshop? Thank you
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The most practical advantage of the pro edition is that you have much more control over update schedules. This is my main reason. You can decide when to do the updates, and postpone them for quite a long time if you're in the middle of something critical.
With the home edition, the machine can suddenly decide to reboot out of the blue. I have a laptop that does that. I don't use that for Adobe apps, but it still infuriates me every time...
I'm sure there are many other differences, but that's enough for me.
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