Speed up PC for photo editing? What to upgrade?

MIAMIPHOTO

MIAMIPHOTO

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Name
Otto
Edit My Images
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I would love to make my pc faster for photo and video editing. Adobe is trying to help us with some ionstructions on their website but it is not clear how much processing power I gain via replacing one or two components of my desktop. I have read tons of threads on the issue however but I don't seem to find the right way to do it... I would like Lightroom to respond faster when I switch between two images. I would love Portraiture to finish processing the photo I am working on faster in Photoshop, etc

My PC: Windows 7, CPU: i7 3770K, Memory 16GB

My questions:
- How much speed do I gain by upgrading the memory to 32GB?
- Would an expensive video card help? Which one?
- Should I upgrade my CPU?

Which one do you recommend? Have you done these modifications before? What is your experience? Which upgrade yielded the best results? Thanks so much!
 
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Hi Otto,

Welcome to TP.

I think you PC is should be fast enough as it is a i7, you could try upgrade the ram to 32GB but not sure if that will help. Do you have a SSD if not that might be worth adding to the rig to see if it help.

Kev
 
That's not a bad spec for photo editing, for me it would be 32Gb memory and an SSD.
 
You won't increase speed by increasing the RAM, however, I *DO* get frequent "You're about to run out of memory" warnings when I work in PS on 36MP images, with Lightroom and several other tools open as well when running 16gb. Fortunately that was a temporary situation, as my other 16gb was on RMA :)

Back to 32Gb now, and for the £90 cost of the RAM, I'd say fire and forget.
 
32GB won't make much difference for photos, but it probably will for video. An SSD will make a huge difference.
 
hollis_f said:
32GB won't make much difference for photos, but it probably will for video. An SSD will make a huge difference.
Click to expand...
An SSD drive may not automatically increase the speed of the computer. At the start of the year, I bought a SSD to try and speed up an ageing PC. There didn't seem to be any increase in speed which confused me for many months. It was only when I decided to do an overhaul of the whole thing, with a new processor, motherboard, and RAM and mentioned the slowness of the SSD, that someone mentioned a setting on the motherboard that needed to be set to take advantage of that speed.

There are two settings, IDE and AHCI, and my motherboard was set to the former, and so the SSD was running at the maximum speed that IDE could run at, which was not getting the benefit of the SSD. It is unwise to try and change this setting if the SSD is already installed, so I had to wait for the installation with the new parts. The new motherboard had the setting to AHCI by default, so I didn't have to change anything. The PC seems a lot faster than before, but then with a processor that is supposed to 225% faster than the previous one, the SSD working at its best, and twice the amount of RAM, I would hope it would be quicker. ;) :LOL:

Seriously, before I started putting programs on it, the Windows logo didn't have time to run through the animation at Start up before the computer came on. Some Panoramas I re-tried in Photoshop were completed 4-5 times quicker than the previous PC. Which was nice. :D I haven't really done anything to push it yet though. I'm happy with the upgrade so far.
 
Put the OS and Photoshop on an SSD, anything else can stay on a standard HDD. Not sure that increasing RAM will make any difference at all but if you replace with higher bus speed RAM then you will notice a slight difference.

You could overclock the CPU but again we are talking small gains. Forget a video card unless you want to play games, watch movies or edit videos.
 
MIAMIPHOTO said:
Thanks so much!

I will get an SSD and put windows and Photoshop on it!

I will try this and if it doesn't work out I will build a new system from scratch....

Thanks so much!!!!
Click to expand...

Make sure AHCI is enabled on the motherboard in the BIOS, or you may not see any speed increase. ;)
 
SSD has totally transformed my Dell Core i5 with 16GB memory :)
 
MIAMIPHOTO said:
My PC: Windows 7, CPU: i7 3770K, Memory 16GB

My questions:
- How much speed do I gain by upgrading the memory to 32GB?
- Would an expensive video card help? Which one?
- Should I upgrade my CPU?
Click to expand...

Upgrading RAM is good, you could go for it if you want to, but bear in mind that more memory don't really make the work faster, it may sometimes do, but it's really a case of the more memory you have, the more workload you can do. Most people are likely to be fooled into thinking that more RAM is faster, when it is really because the less RAM you have, the more Windows would have to swap some data in the RAM back to the HDD, and collect some other data from the HDD to the RAM. Therefore less RAM is slowing you down, not more RAM is making your work go faster.

Expensive video card? Well, not always help, sometimes it do, but it's more useful for 3D graphics and design, and very often gaming, or useful for having more than two monitors.

Upgrading the CPU is a messy work, when you've taken off the CPU cooler, you would end up having to clean off the thermal paste. I've used AMD for years, so not very knowledge on Intel, but I think the i7 is a good CPU, so leave it.

It is really a SSD that you want, it's like a HDD but works like a USB memory stick. No need for the HDD to spin up, and the reading head waiting for the right sections to come around on the spinning discs, before it can read the data, and load the software you want. A SSD would just seems to know where the software is, and went to get it right away without waiting for it to come along.

Also there's the need to clean out junk files, do disk scan, and defragment if you haven't done it for years, all those little tidying up the data would help out too.
 
How old is the pc your spec is fine for editing, what are your concerns for editing
 
How much stuff do you have running in the background?

Bring up task manager (Ctrl, Alt, Del) and check the CPU performance usage and memory to make sure you have enough "headroom" especially in the CPU usage.

If it is very high (above 80%) then that could be slowing you down because if it goes to 100% then no further processing can be done until whatever process is causing the usage is finished and the machine can go on.
.
 
MIAMIPHOTO said:
I have changed from Raid to AHCI! I have run Window's performance tool and got the same performance level. Did I miss something?
Click to expand...

Did you do this before a fresh install, or just go in the BIOS and change it on the computer as it is?

I did mention earlier in the thread that it is a setting that should be changed on a clean install.

I'm no expert, but to take advantage of the SSD speed, it needs to be set to AHCI, rather than IDE. I don't know if there is a performance difference between the AHCI and RAID setting. If you don't have a RAID set up, I doubt any settings in the BIOS should be set to anything that says RAID. :thinking:

I don't know what the Windows Performance Tool is, and what it measures. :thinking:
 
Didn't manually change any BIOS settings before fitting my new SSD, can't imagine it being any faster than it is now and certainly don't need it to be :)
 
Given what I read about i7s and the RAM you have, your PC should run well. As Petersmart suggests check what is running in the background and stop anything you don't need. Consider running a selective Startup so you decide what is started when you boot up. Run all the security programs you have and let them get rid of any rubbisch, clean out the temporary stuff with CCleaner. If the hard drive is very full it could slow things. If there are any programs you no longer need, you could uninstall them.

Dave
 
gramps said:
Didn't manually change any BIOS settings before fitting my new SSD, can't imagine it being any faster than it is now and certainly don't need it to be :)
Click to expand...

And I didn't have to change anything with my new motherboard, as the AHCI was enabled by default. :)

If you have added a SSD and not enabled the setting on an older motherboard during the OS install, like I had done previously, then it could be a problem.

And if you have done a new installation with an SSD, and not changed the IDE/AHCI setting to AHCI, then you shouldn't just change the setting in the BiOS without a new OS install. At least that was what it said on the websites I looked at about the subject. ;)
 
redhed17 said:
And I didn't have to change anything with my new motherboard, as the AHCI was enabled by default. :)

If you have added a SSD and not enabled the setting on an older motherboard during the OS install, like I had done previously, then it could be a problem.

And if you have done a new installation with an SSD, and not changed the IDE/AHCI setting to AHCI, then you shouldn't just change the setting in the BiOS without a new OS install. At least that was what it said on the websites I looked at about the subject. ;)
Click to expand...

I'm guessing that this is an 'old' issue, i.e. a problem with older systems ... my (post 2011) Dell laptop automatically set itself up to accept the SSD including the ability to use TRIM etc.
 
MIAMIPHOTO said:
I have changed from Raid to AHCI! I have run Window's performance tool and got the same performance level. Did I miss something?
Click to expand...
No you did not miss anything, the performance boost is so tiny that you will not notice it in real life use.
 
I've just installed an SSD drive, reinstalled windows 7 Ultimate and fired it up, 8.5 seconds to load compared with what seemed a lifetime before.
In my opinion much better performance, tomorrow Photoshop CC is going on the same SSD drive but with the scratch disc pointing to C: instead of the SSD.
 
snapalot said:
I've just installed an SSD drive, reinstalled windows 7 Ultimate and fired it up, 8.5 seconds to load compared with what seemed a lifetime before.
In my opinion much better performance, tomorrow Photoshop CC is going on the same SSD drive but with the scratch disc pointing to C: instead of the SSD.
Click to expand...

Why not have the scratch disk on the SSD? If you've got space it would make everything quicker.
 
snapalot said:
Only 250gb SSD so until I install an extra one C: drive will do for now.
Click to expand...

But if you have re-installed Windows on the SSD then surely the C drive is the SSD since Windows always installs to C:/ ?
.
 
watching this thread with interest Guys, need a new computer myself..can anybody recommend a place to buy a suitable replacement desktop computer at a reasonable price..
regards
 
shannensdaddy said:
watching this thread with interest Guys, need a new computer myself..can anybody recommend a place to buy a suitable replacement desktop computer at a reasonable price..
regards
Click to expand...
Yeah, me too.
Used to build pentium 4 systems 10+ years ago. Tech has certainly moved on.
Used to use Scan and Overclockers....would like also like to know who to go to those days.......
 
shannensdaddy said:
watching this thread with interest Guys, need a new computer myself..can anybody recommend a place to buy a suitable replacement desktop computer at a reasonable price..
regards
Click to expand...
I had a new desktop built at Scan Bolton about 18 months ago its i5 ssd 8 Gb Ram and a good nvidia mother its very good with cc and quick.
 
shannensdaddy said:
watching this thread with interest Guys, need a new computer myself..can anybody recommend a place to buy a suitable replacement desktop computer at a reasonable price..
regards
Click to expand...
Depends what you consider a reasonable price? And of course, what specs you want for the intended use.

Most of the electronic/computer websites will offer good deals, though maybe compromised in various areas depending on intended use.

So;
What do you want to use it to do?
How much do you want to spend?
Do you want to build it any of it yourself?
Do you want to salvage any parts from what you have now?

My first one I built myself, which allowed me to get the most of the (limited) money I had, and learn a bit about how they work. That was about 12 years ago when it was a bit more cost effective to build it yourself. My computers have always had the use of Photoshop, and latterly Lightroom, in mind. If I didn't use those types of programs, I wouldn't need a computer as powerful, or with as much RAM.

The second one I bought of a user here, which was a big improvement on what I had, and had the benefit of having software included, and being a stable system.

The third was a recent buying of parts, motherboard, processor, memory, SSD with the rest, case, HDs, DVD used from the second computer.

I have also had a Laptop built by PCSpecialist where I chose the spec. When that Laptop was stolen, I had to get a replacement quickly for work, and bought an off the shelf one from Ebuyer, which I have been happy with. I would recommend Ebuyer btw for customer service, and they are usually competitive on prices.
 
You do seem to have a high performance system compared to my i5-2500 & 12Gb RAM. PS & LR run fine on mine.

I recently replaced my motherboard which meant removing/re-adding my CPU. It's not a difficult job to replace the CPU but you do need to be careful to apply thermal paste etc. YouTube has some good tutorials.

I'd strongly recommend running a performance monitor to see where your bottleneck is. If your CPU is chugging along at 50% and your memory is capped out, at least you know where to start looking. If you're getting slow responses with low cpu & memory utilisation, it could be disk, cabling or even motherboard issues. My system is definitely bottlenecked by CPU. When LR is running (and being actively used), memory & GPU utilisation are fine (well under 70%). The CPU is getting hammered though - all 4 cores.

Aida64 has a 30 day free trial and it was an absolute godsend when I was trying to discover why my PC was acting up. Went from "I need a new PC" to "I need a £40 motherboard and a blob of thermal paste" overnight.

Edit to add: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ are brill if you're building your own from scratch. There's some good advice and builds there too.
 
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