New PC or Upgrade

mal robb

mal robb

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Edit My Images
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Hi All,

I currently use my work's laptop for photo editing which is a 2013 Dell XPS 12 and I have Lightroom installed(Subscription). I have the photographs and LR catalogue on an external hard Drive to save some space on my laptop. It works quite well but now thinking of having a "dedicated" photography and video editing computer. I have an old i3 PC with 6GB RAM running W7 that I used as a media centre PC but see after running a tool on www.crucial.com that I can upgrade to 16GB RAM and I would also upgrade the OS to W10 as I get a free upgrade. The PC also has a small 70GB SSD as well as a 1TB HDD. I would probably get a new case just to feel that I have a new PC but will the RAM upgrade give me good performance in Lightroom? Anything else I should be considering or am I chasing my tail and perhaps should look at investing in an i5 or i7 desktop? I would also be keen to edit 1080p footage from a GoPro Hero 3+. The RAM would cost 65 quid and a new case about the same whereas some new i5 or i7 PCs you can pick up for around 5-600 pounds.

Motherboard is a MSI (Micro Star) H61MU-E35
Chipset is Intel H61
Graphics card: PCI Express x16

Grateful for any advice.

Thanks

Mal
 
Hi Mal,

LR will work fine with that PC unless you have a camera like the Nikon D800.
 
If you are planning to edit go pro videos then your i3 will make it a painful experience and really struggle.

The norm on here as a suggestion is -

"Photo editing"
i5
8/16gb RAM
SSD drive

"Video editing"
i7
16gb RAM
SSD drive

The above isnt an exact but more of good starting point
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank you all for your input. I think I am going to buy some more RAM to take it upto 16GB and the video editing, which I do less of, I can carry on using my work laptop if the desktop struggles. I use GoPro Studio to edit the footage in case this changes anything.

Thanks again all

Mal
 
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