Guidance on purchasing a computer for photo editing

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Ben Lockwood

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Hi, I am interested in getting a new desktop that can easily cope with photo editing on software such as Lightroom. Are there any websites that provide any guidance as I have had a look and found very little as it seems to be all about video editing?
Any tips or suggestions would be very helpful.

Thanks, Ben
 
Would you be able to give me a link, I'm sturggling to find any.. Thanks
 
You'll need a fast processor and loads of RAM. Get the fastest and most you can afford. A fancy video card isn't needed, put the money saved towards more speed and RAM.
 
^ as above really, also take note of the RAM speed, as their are quite a few different types, the faster the better.

Also SSD drives give you much quicker read/write speeds, which may or may not help

Its been a few years since i was really into comps, so i may be a bit behind.
 
Thanks for the replies. The RAM is the main aspect I have been looking at, what size would you recommend..8gb,16gb,32gb?

And in terms of SSD drives, i've had a look and there expensive.. so would you recommed getting a large hardrive and then adding a 128gb or 256 gb SSD hard drive as well in a expansion bay? Would this even work?
 
Interestings thread...Im in the same boat
 
Have a look for the intel 2500k CPU - very good bang-for-buck at the moment, look for the 'k' at the end, it means you can overclock it if that takes your fancy.

An SSD will make the computer faster at startup and loading programs, worth it if you've the cash but it won't speed up image calculations in LR, nice to have. You can run a separate bigger data disk and store Operating System and programs on the SSD.
 
It's probably something you already know, but Windows 32 bit operating systems will only address a maximum of 4GB of RAM. If you want to go above that you'll need a 64 bit OS.
 
Have you got a budget in mind?

(overclocking is a nice option, but if you're not the type to fiddle under the bonnet of the pc all that much it might not be for you - then again, installing your own SSD and increasing the memory yourself is a much cheaper way of doing things, so fiddling under the bonnet could be a good skill to develop)
 
i cant say i do a lot of editing (as im a bit rubbish lol ) but i have done a bit of video editing.

i had my comp built about 8ish months ago, and i have never managed to really make it burp.

Its using a 120gb sata 3 ssd and then a 1tb hard drive for storage, so programs run from the ssd like windows and such but all files/photo's/music get stored on the hard drive

Im using the inter i5 2.8ghz,(think its the 2500 sandybridge which comes clocked to 3.2) and then running 16gb ddr3 1600mhz RAM, never really used anything of the ram, at most it hits about 55%, so i would say 8-12 would be fine unless you going to go silly and expect it to render 2-3 hd pics/vids at the same time.

As for the processor once i seen it using 42% so really its more than enough for my basic stuff.

where are you planning on getting the comp, as you dont have to have all this from start, ram is really simple to add, but you will need to check the motherboard type that it can handle more, and also that their are spare slots available.

have a look here, will explain things more for you, prices are very good as well, if you fancy building your own.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/
 
You can distil all the advice down to :

i5 2500 or i7 depending on budget
8-32GB of RAM depending on budget
1x SATA3 SSD for system drive + scratch
1x big HDD for primary storage

Plus backup and 64-bit windows of course. I was in the computer market today and picked up a 120GB OCZ Agility 3 for about 75 GBP, you'd be crazy not to get a SSD with any modern system.
 
I don't know Wintel machine speeds - I doubt there's a slow one out there from new these days - but deffo go for as much RAM as you can afford on top. Personally, i wouldn't worry about SSD drives, a decent normal drive with enough space will be fine, although if you intend to shoot a lot of images then linking to a fast external drive is just as effective and frees up your machine's own hard drive. I run a combination of FW800 and USB3.0 one terabyte drives that LR3 links through to via its catalogue. Works fine for me and I'm using LR3 a lot through work...
 
to be honest I think a lot of top end computers come about as a result of the computer version of shiny kit syndrome.

since my main computer died i'm doing most of my editing on a toshiba laptop with a dual core chip and 2Gb of Ram (running windows vista) -that runs PSE and lightroom without a problem. IMO you'd only really need the high end computers if you were doing a lot of editing huge files for some reason,or if you wanted to do a lot of bulk procesing in the background.

that said when you are buying it makes sense to go for the highest spec you can afford as computer development moves so quick that a high spec machine bought now will be barely adequate in a couple of years.
 
^I agree with the above. If you want to future proof yourself for a while then fair enough, otherwise you might find a lot of the components are overkill for the files a Canon 40D. Things like an i7 processor and anything north of 8GB of Ram probably won't be of use - I'd even guess that 8GB of Ram would be excessive for 10 megapixel files in Lightroom. I'd look at getting the nicest monitor I could first, as this would be of the most benefit with editing photos and showing them off.
 
photoshop (64 bit versions) will use as much memory as you can throw at it before it hits the scratch disk and bogs down. likewise lightroom can be quite processor intensive, certainly my old core2 quad started struggling with 1dmk3 and 5dmk2 RAW. so it really boils down to how long you want to wait for your processing to complete.

if youre building a machine now its a no brainer to give it a reasonable spec (i5-2500k, 8gb, SSD if you can stretch) if you have the budget.
 
I have:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 - Quadcore at 3.4 Ghz (OC able to 4.2Ghz)
8Gb of 1333 Mhz DDR RAM
120Gb Agility3 SSD (The more IOPS - Input Outputs Per Second the better, most are 50k this one is 85k and most normal HDD's are 10 to 20k)
1Tb Samsung Spinpoint HDD
ATi Radeon 6790
Windows 7 64 Bit
Mobo and all system components with SATA 3.0 System bus (6Gb/s transfer) (this is important, there is no point buying expensive components to have a cheap motherboard supporting it all)
800W PSU

I haven't used lightroom or Photoshop but it works like a dream for everything, including very high end games. I've never been past 50% CPU usage or 45% RAM.

The most important thing is to get a 64 bit version of Windows and what ever software you are using, as 32 bit versions will only use a single core, I see it all the time in GIMP, when the processor maxes at 25%, or full use of 1 core.

My full system cost £700, inc Copy of Win 7 64, case, PSU, Mobo. So you could probably get similar for about £600 now.

I have the OS solely on the SSD and everything else on the HDD. You could put your graphical software on the SSD too. They are really great peices of kit, so really don't be put off by their price. The biggest bottleneck in any PC is the HDD, according to windows the weakest point in the system above is the processor and achieves a rating of 7.4 on the user experaince rating.

One last word, don't buy a Mac.
 
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Thanks for all the very helpful replies.

I think SSD from the sounds of it is a good idea purely for the speed aspect it brings.

My budget is between £1000-£1500 (without screens)

In terms of image file sizes, I’m looking to upgrade to a 5D MkII, so that would be 21 megapixels.

How much RAM does Lightroom actually use? Or does it just use as much as necessary? On my current PC, albeit is isn’t very good, but each picture on Lightroom takes a couple of seconds to load, so would more RAM eradicate this problem on a new PC?

Finally would you recommend the Intel Sandy bride processers over any of the AMD ones?

Thanks again for your replies, Ben
 
I run LR3 on a 2.4ghz i7 and with 16GB of RAM, it's pretty much instant - importing is lightning, as is flipping between library and develop tabs. Making adjustments is super fast and exporting is a doddle. This is all running through a 5,400rpm 500GB drive. I'd say the only area where there's any minuscule waiting time is waiting for the catalogue to fully load when I connect drives - it takes a few seconds for 100,000 thumbnails to load. That's it. The RAM ultimately made the difference in making everything smooth, especially with programs like PS and Illustrator running at the same time.

Do you have a budget for a monitor? I'd pump as much money into a good display s you can, even if it means going for a standard HDD over an SSD..... a good monitor that's calibrated is key if you're building your own photographic editing system.
 
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Ben Lockwood said:
each picture on Lightroom takes a couple of seconds to load, so would more RAM eradicate this problem on a new PC?

Finally would you recommend the Intel Sandy bride processers over any of the AMD ones?
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No, not really. Faster read times from your HDD will. Having faster access RAM (1600 mhz +) will. HDD read time will be main problem.


Intel SB are good CPU's and have the edge over AMD right now but are a lot more expensive. Also the new AMD processors (Bulldozer cores) are experiencing problems atm but the older Phenom II series are still good and probably quite cheap now as well I would think. I'm an AMD fanboy, so hate Intel, perhaps not the best person to ask on that one.


I'd definatly recommend putting an SSD in and running it in tandem with a HDD.

Here is the one I have:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120g...orce-2281-read-525mb-s-write-500mb-s-85k-iops

I will warn you now, the controller DOES cause it to crash, which will lead to a blue screen about once a month. Power off and on to recover it fine, they may have fixed this since I bought mine in August.
I know that sounds bad, but its still a really good SSD for now £80 and you won't need more than 120Gb I don' think.

Tb your budget is fairly huge, so you could easily afford bigger.


Oh and specialman, yeah, I did. What you gonna do? :D
 
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My OCZ Vertex3 was a bit problematic at first, had a few crashes....but it's been fine since I updated the firmware. Worth doing if you are having problems.

HDDs have been the bottleneck in system performance for a good few years now. If you don't put some primary storage in that can keep up with modern CPUs you might as well not bother upgrading tbh.
 
Ben Lockwood said:
Thanks for all the very helpful replies.

I think SSD from the sounds of it is a good idea purely for the speed aspect it brings.

My budget is between £1000-£1500 (without screens)

In terms of image file sizes, I’m looking to upgrade to a 5D MkII, so that would be 21 megapixels.

How much RAM does Lightroom actually use? Or does it just use as much as necessary? On my current PC, albeit is isn’t very good, but each picture on Lightroom takes a couple of seconds to load, so would more RAM eradicate this problem on a new PC?

Finally would you recommend the Intel Sandy bride processers over any of the AMD ones?

Thanks again for your replies, Ben
Click to expand...

Any machine that can cope with HD video editing will be fine for photo editing.

That's a pretty healthy budget. I'd look at XPS or Alienware machines from Dell. Or you could look at iMac, the 27" versions are nice machines, we have some at work. It's supposed to be easy to install Windows 7 on them.
 
Ben Lockwood said:
Thanks for all the very helpful replies.

I think SSD from the sounds of it is a good idea purely for the speed aspect it brings.

My budget is between £1000-£1500 (without screens)

In terms of image file sizes, I’m looking to upgrade to a 5D MkII, so that would be 21 megapixels.

How much RAM does Lightroom actually use? Or does it just use as much as necessary? On my current PC, albeit is isn’t very good, but each picture on Lightroom takes a couple of seconds to load, so would more RAM eradicate this problem on a new PC?

Finally would you recommend the Intel Sandy bride processers over any of the AMD ones?

Thanks again for your replies, Ben
Click to expand...

lightroom doesnt use as much memory, i found when upgrading to a 5dmk2 it was the processor that struggled.

where are you storing your photos? on an internal disk, external disk, nas?
 
Pegasus2 said:
The most important thing is to get a 64 bit version of Windows and what ever software you are using, as 32 bit versions will only use a single core, I see it all the time in GIMP, when the processor maxes at 25%, or full use of 1 core.
Click to expand...

I agree with getting 64bit W7, but it's really for addressing more than 4gb ram. Multi-core support in W7 is native. 32bit can use 32 cores, 64bit can use upto 256 cores.

It depends on the program being used as to how many cores it will use.

As for SSD's, I've avoided any of the OCZ v3's as they had issues when they were released. I believe it was the sata controller. Crucial M4's, corsairs pro series and the Intels seem to be the current flavour of the month. I currently have an 128gb M4 to install alongside a 120gb OCZ Vertex 2E and have another M4 being delivered on Tuesday.
 
not saying it is best on the market..... but for a decent spec at a reasonable price... I bought one of these last week with 10% off.

I dare say if you know what you are doing, you can build yourself for less, but I don't!
 
Hi,

I'm looking at the Dell Ultrasharp series for screens, and in terms of storing photos.. would storing photos on a portable hardrive increase the speed of the computer?

Ben
 
Ben Lockwood said:
Hi,

I'm looking at the Dell Ultrasharp series for screens, and in terms of storing photos.. would storing photos on a portable hardrive increase the speed of the computer?

Ben
Click to expand...
Hi Ben, unless your hard drive's close to 100% full, moving photos off it won't help you speed up the machine.
 
Ben Lockwood said:
Hi,

I'm looking at the Dell Ultrasharp series for screens, and in terms of storing photos.. would storing photos on a portable hardrive increase the speed of the computer?

Ben
Click to expand...
Dell Ultrasharps are nice monitors at a good price, I've got a 2412M I've very happy with.

A portable harddrive is usually slower than a SATA harddrive directly connected. Good for backup though.
 
Thanks for the information, I will probably keep my photos on my harddrive then.

Ben
 
Sorry to hijack this thread but it's something I'm looking into too.

Is it worth budgeting for a graphics card too in a new system? I don't play games but I use Silver Efex Pro 2 and it has an option to make use of a graphics card and on my current system I had to deactivate it.

If so, what's a decent one? Or should I just buy a system with space to add one and get it separately later on?
 
Oooh... a what computer thread on it's second page and I haven't posted in it yet!

Best bang for buck at the moment is an i5-2500k with something like a Z77 mobo and an aftermarket cooler. You can easily o/c (i.e. 2 or 3 clicks in the BIOS) to 4+GHz and have a machine that will last for ages. I don't rate AMD processors at the moment: they are slower than Intel and use more power at the same time.

I'd agree with avoiding the OCZ SSDs - the way the controllers work mean performance is variable. Last SSD I bought for performance was a Corsair Performance Pro primarily due to this thread: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18368624 where you can see it's streaks ahead of other drives. Be aware that performance of SSD drives increases with storage - generally small SSD drives are much less performant than their larger brethren as they write to less "lanes" of flash memory at once.

Memory: 8G or higher.

Do you need add on graphics: no. If you get a current gen i5-2500K and a mobo that supports onboard graphics you'll be fine. PS/other programs only accelerate 2D drawing through the graphics card - they don't actually use it to do any processing - that's all down to the CPU.

And for those that say "I'm running on a 300 year old machine with 600kBytes of memory and it's perfectly fine" have vastly different expectations of what "perfectly fine" means to me (and many others I suspect...) ;) :D.
 
Pardon my ignorance, Andy but what does "accelerate 2D drawing" mean? in your post above?
 
What Neil said. Basically, when you do rotations etc.. the card is used to accelerate the drawing. It isn't used to do any of the image processing on the image (e.g. increasing the exposure). That's done by the CPU.
 
Just purchased a nice system from Chillblast, good spec and great reviews. Should keep me for a few years with good upgrade potential.
 
Thanks, Neil & Andy.

Actually, a lot of that takes a while at present on Silver Efex Pro so maybe I'd be best with getting a new PC with at least the option to install one later on when I get the money.....as I'm sure they'll either bring out better ones, or else the already-good-enough ones should get cheaper...right? :)
 
tiler65 said:
Just purchased a nice system from Chillblast, good spec and great reviews. Should keep me for a few years with good upgrade potential.
Click to expand...
Hi Tom,just looked at Chillblast site,some lovely kit there,just wondered if you dont mind me asking ;) which machine did you choose?..
 
STARRIDER said:
Hi Tom,just looked at Chillblast site,some lovely kit there,just wondered if you dont mind me asking ;) which machine did you choose?..
Click to expand...

I got a Fusion Elixir but with a few mods on it.


Chillblast Fusion Elixir 1
Standard Chillblast Cable Management 1
Onboard High Definition Audio 1
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit 1
Xigmatek Premium Grade 500W PSU 1
Sony 24x DVD-RW Drive 1
Chillblast AMD Radeon HD 6670 1024MB Graphics Card 1
2000GB 7200RPM Hard Disk - 6Gbps 1
8GB Corsair PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 Memory (2 x 4GB sticks) 1
Asus P8Z77-V LX Motherboard 1
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste 1
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler 1
Cooler Master Elite 334U Case 1
Intel Core i5 3570K Processor Overclocked to up to 4.5GHz 1
 
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