Upgrading my computer system - help please

ShoeQueen

ShoeQueen

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Lynn
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I'm currently doing everything on an old laptop (100GB hard drive, 1GB RAM) which is creaking at the seams and getting to be unworkable. (I do have a 1TB external hard drive with everything backed up and which I've had to use as storage for some stuff as hard drive is too full).

I was thinking of going the iMac route (if new models had been announced) but now am thinking a laptop and separate screen may be the best option. I like the idea of bringing a laptop to weddings and backing up on site and I'm starting to do some event work and if I do more I'd need a laptop for that too.

I want a decent spec machine to run LR and prob Photoshop on and a good screen.

But I simply have no idea where to start, what I should be looking for, or where I should go to get it.

Help please?
 
Not meaning to commence a PC vs Mac discussion but you'll get more bang for buck if you go down the PC route. Would suggest looking at least a 2Ghz machine, 4gb ram, big as you can get HD amongst anything else. If you have a budget for an i something machine then go for it!
 
Rather than mention the Mac vs PC route, I will comment on the desktop vs laptop route. Bear in mind that you will get a much more powerful desktop machine, chances are with a much larger screen, than a laptop at the same budget.

Also, even with the same spec on paper, a desktop will be faster than a laptop.
 
look at the screen resolutions, they are sometimes quite small - even if output on external screen

staples often have some bargins - i purchased an i5 6gb memory just recently (few weeks back, for £400)

also HD can be 720 pixels -so a screen of 1366x768 on a 15.6" screen is quite common

not sure of location NI = Northern ireland ? or US
 
Thanks. Budget is flexible - I don't mind spending to get something that will be powerful enough and have a good screen.

So a desktop is still better? (Then maybe a cheaper laptop for taking out and about?) I didn't know that about laptops not being as good on an external screen. There is so much I just don't know which is why I haven't bought anything but I can't put it off any longer, I need to make a purchase very soon.

I want a large (eg 27") good quality screen for editing.

Yes, I'm in Northern Ireland and the only place I know of to look at computers is PC World...
 
I want a large (eg 27") good quality screen for editing.
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any idea what the default screen resolution would be - do you have one in mind

I would start at the screen and see how to work back from that ... and i'm very out of date on screens - so will wait for someone else to suggest a screen - although I have seen dell referenced for image work often

IPS is often mentioned as preferred

heres a dell
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/816853-REG/Dell_469_0054_U2711_Ultra_Sharp_27_.html

note the resolution is 2560 x 1440 @ 60 Hz so you need a laptop that will output at that resolution to get the most from it

heres a link for monitors for photography
http://mansurovs.com/best-monitor-for-photography
 
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Let's work backwards. I use 2x24" for editing. I prefer 2 monitors over one as it allows you to split your workspace easier. If you want decent monitors, that means IPS. Dell U2410 (I have these) or the Dell U27. Either will set you back around £800 (2x24 or 1x27).

A decent computer to drive this will be about £600 (i5-2xxx, 8G memory and HDD).

A decent laptop with a good screen is going to set you back £800ish (I'd always recommend a full HD screen which pushes you towards Dell XPS). You will be able to hook it up to the external monitor if you want. The desktop will be more performant though not by too much.

Give us an idea of which way you want to go and we can advise...
 
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etaf said:
any idea what the default screen resolution would be - do you have one in mind

I would start at the screen and see how to work back from that ... and i'm very out of date on screens - so will wait for someone else to suggest a screen - although I have seen dell referenced for image work often

IPS is often mentioned as preferred

heres a dell
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/816853-REG/Dell_469_0054_U2711_Ultra_Sharp_27_.html

note the resolution is 2560 x 1440 @ 60 Hz so you need a laptop that will output at that resolution to get the most from it

heres a link for monitors for photography
http://mansurovs.com/best-monitor-for-photography
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Thanks Wayne - that gives me something to start to try to understand about monitors.
 
IPS screens will also calibrate better than none IPS, assuming you buy a calibrator.
 
arad85 said:
Let's work backwards. I use 2x24" for editing. I prefer 2 monitors over one as it allows you to split your workspace easier. If you want decent monitors, that means IPS. Dell U2410 (I have these) or the Dell U27. Either will set you back around £800 (2x24 or 1x27).

A decent computer to drive this will be about £600 (i5-2xxx, 8G memory and HDD).

A decent laptop with a good screen is going to set you back £800ish (I'd always recommend a full HD screen which pushes you towards Dell XPS). You will be able to hook it up to the external monitor if you want. The desktop will be more performant though not by too much.

Give us an idea of which way you want to go and we can advise...
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Thanks Andy. So a desktop with screen combination would be about £1400 (similar to iMac pricing) and laptop with screen combination £1600? Is that the sort of budget I need to be looking at?

HDD? Not sure what that is? And would 8GB be enough? (If going iMac I was aiming for 16GB).
 
1400 might be similar to the mac but the PC is with 2 monitors the imac isn't.
 
I found a real bargain on the Dell Outlet website. Precision M4600 laptop with i7 processor, 16GB RAM, 256Gb SSD and 2Gb graphics for £1150 (reduced from £2550 due to dent in the lid). It's an incredible machine and absolutely flies with Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5. I use it with a Dell U2410 that was mentioned above.
 
OneTen said:
I found a real bargain on the Dell Outlet website. Precision M4600 laptop with i7 processor, 16GB RAM, 256Gb SSD and 2Gb graphics for £1150 (reduced from £2550 due to dent in the lid). It's an incredible machine and absolutely flies with Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5. I use it with a Dell U2410 that was mentioned above.
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I just had a quick look at this page and I see there are two about the same price but with very different specs and this is the problem, I have no idea what specs to look for. What graphics card? What's the difference between a 750GB SATA drive and a 512GB SSD and which is better?
Examples of the sort of questions I have - I know the variation in specs probably are great for people who know exactly what they are looking for but its just making me not sure what to go for... the more I look the more confused I get. :(
 
Crikey Lynn, you're going for it there...

Right... out of the two, I'd pick the one with the SSD, unless you have 700GB of images to store. The compromise with the SSD is the amount of storage for a particular cost. Everything else equal, the SSD will win... It has a faster processor, "enough" memory and a big battery (in fact, a very big battery!). You will get better value though as the screen is a standard low res one. Are you fixed on a laptop (if so, I'd go for a XPS 15z here: http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-15z/pd ) ?
 
If it was me I would go for the SSD (if the other specs where close). Its the biggest thing you can do speedwise in a laptop, and you already have an external drive so the 238Gb of differnce in space should not mean much.

The rest really depends on the other specs. Get the one with the better CPU and graphics card. And this is where I slightly back track on the above statement. SSD prices are rapidly coming down these days, Therefore if it is the SSD that makes a 'lesser' machine the same price as a better machine without a SSD then get the one without. You can put a SSD in later.

I went from a old core2duo machine with a SSD to a machine with an i7 2670QM and a Nvida GT555 graphics card. There is two major differnces for me between the machines. The one with the SSD boots up, and opens programmes so much faster compared to the present machine. But for photo work (Lightroom, PS Elements and Premier Elements) the present machine eats up processer heavy tasks for example panaramas that had the old one having to sit down and chew on.

Sorry missed your link (need to go to bed). Andy has made a god suggestion there. But if want a slightly less mobile laptop then XPS 17 are alright Link

Hope this helps.
 
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arad85 said:
Crikey Lynn, you're going for it there...

Right... out of the two, I'd pick the one with the SSD, unless you have 700GB of images to store. The compromise with the SSD is the amount of storage for a particular cost. Everything else equal, the SSD will win... It has a faster processor, "enough" memory and a big battery (in fact, a very big battery!). You will get better value though as the screen is a standard low res one. Are you fixed on a laptop (if so, I'd go for a XPS 15z here: http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-15z/pd ) ?
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Not saying I'm getting one of those - just that I went and had a look as an example. I understand about memory and RAM, I don't understand enough about the rest of it to know what makes one better than another etc. I'm not looking for the cheapest option that isn't enough for what I need but I don't want to overspend and buy more than I need either!

Thanks Andy, will take a look at that one. I'm still open to getting a desk top as I do have a laptop (albeit quite old) that I could maybe clear everything off, replace the battery etc and use for when I needed one - (eg to take to weddings to do a quick back up on site).

Suomi said:
The rest really depends on the other specs. Get the one with the better CPU and graphics card.
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I don't know which is the better graphics card...
Suomi said:
Sorry missed your link (need to go to bed). Andy has made a god suggestion there. But if want a slightly less mobile laptop then XPS 17 are alright Link
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I'll check that out too.

I've heard Dell are a bit pricier, but a lot of people seem to recommend them. I think I'd like to have a look at their desktop range as well so any suggestions as to a good place to start?

Suomi said:
Hope this helps.
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Thanks Mark. It may not seem it by my many questions - but this is actually all helping a lot. I'm starting to get my head around it. There is so much variety and choice of combinations when it comes to PCs (to be honest the simplicity of choice was part of the attraction of an iMac).
 
borisnikon said:
If you have a lot of money the new mac book pro looks good:
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/
And then buy a dell monitor or the 27" thunderbolt from apple.
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I definitely don't have a lot of money! But neither do I want to just go out and buy a £399 laptop and £100 screen and then find its not enough and I need to upgrade again in 12 months. So I'm prepared to spend a bit more now to get something powerful enough - but I don't want to overspend either.
 
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One point to bear in mind is that with SSD you will not know your drive is failing until one day it just doesn't work.

Worst case scenario, back up all files to laptop whilst out at a shoot,reformat cards and drive just fails.

So I have a spare SSD as a backup of the operating system which can be just swapped in.

I store no work on the SSD whatsoever it all goes on other drives.

I would not buy a laptop that does not take 2 hard drives if I wanted to work on it.
 
PsiFox said:
One point to bear in mind is that with SSD you will not know your drive is failing until one day it just doesn't work.

Worst case scenario, back up all files to laptop whilst out at a shoot,reformat cards and drive just fails.

So I have a spare SSD as a backup of the operating system which can be just swapped in.

I store no work on the SSD whatsoever it all goes on other drives.

I would not buy a laptop that does not take 2 hard drives if I wanted to work on it.
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Thanks yes I'll get a back up system in place when I upgrade. If I use my current laptop on a shoot I wouldn't reformat the cards, it would just be to have an extra back up on site - then everything would be downloaded to main computer (and an external back up) as well.
 
Was looking at the Dell XP8500 eg here - good option? Other models I should consider? Would i5 be enough or should I go for i7?
 
Hi Lynn

Must admit I find laptops a bit strange at time after a lifetime with just a desktop.

On the Dell if you get it from the Dell Oulet store there is a noticeable price difference. You may have to wait a bit if you want a specific spec and then move fast if it turns up. Mine is a return from a cancelled order with an i7 2630 chip and it mullers heavy tasks such as rendering. It was backed up by 8Gb (just dropped in 16Gb) personally I would not want any less than 6GB but ideally the more the better. But for a lot of tasks 16GB is more than enough, and if you are running Windows 7 Home Premium then 16GB is all it recoginses.
This may be helpful http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Mobile/137

On graphic cards in the laptop is a Nvida GT555M with 3GB of memory. This is in part some of the reason why I went with this machine. But most machines seem to have at least 1GB these days and I personally would not go below this. Photoshop will give some some tasks to the GPU rather than the CPU so a better graphic card is useful if you are going to use the extra processing power.

Personally and it is just me I would not start at a Dell desktop, I guess this is because I previously just use to change parts.

If I was to nail my colour to the mast, and say a budget of £880 (which is what my laptop cost me) on a desktop. Then I would be looking at
http://www.ebuyer.com/338540-zoostorm-premium-desktop-pc-7873-0408

This would give some money for a screen, or for a bit more money you could put in an SSD and back up on the HHD.

But me being me I would build my own.

May be of use to say this is the budget, then allow a 10% uplift if something particularly nice comes along.
 
OK.

i5 vs i7. This is a difficult one, but bear with me. The desktop i5 has 4 processors and the desktop i7 has 4 processors with hyperthreading. Without going into boring detail, hyperthreading makes each processor core look like two processors but gives you very little real world performance gain. That is a 4 core with hyperthreading looks like 8 processors, but 8 real processors would be significantly faster than the 4+hyperthreading. What this means is that 4 core i5 vs 4 core i7 - the i5 is the better deal. For a desktop save some money and get a good i5.

For laptops, there is more difference. Most i7's are quad core, ALL laptop i5s are dual core. Alllaptop i5/i7 have hyperthreading. You can tell if they are quad core i7's as they have the form i7-2xxxQM - the Q meaning quad core. The quad core i7s are more powerful than the dual core i5s BUT they run at a lower clock speed (which means things will run slightly slower in general). The tradeoff is more difficult for a laptop, but generally I'd go with a quad core i7 to crunch through image processing.

Graphics card for Lightroom is pretty much immaterial. The graphics in the i5/i7 is good enough to drive the small amount of 2D image manipulation needed. Photoshop up to version CS5 is pretty immaterial too - it only uses the graphics card for the same 2D image manipulation LR uses, so is happy with the onboard graphics.

CS6 is different. It does start to use the graphics hardware, but this may or may not be important. I certainly wiouldn't buy a laptop with big graphics processor unless I really needed it.

Memory: 8G is plenty. I have 16G and run hundreds of processes at a time. I very rarely go over 8G memory usage. Any extra in the system Windows will use as a disk cache, so it isn't wasted if you do have it there, but for 99% of people, 8G is more than they'll need.

Bottom line: desktop: as fast an i5 as you can get, laptop, as fast an i7 as you can get unless you can get an i5 which has a 20-30% faster clock for the same money. Don't worry about graphics unless you plan on CS6 use (even then, the acceleration is limited in what it can speed up). Memory: 8G will be fine.
 
Lynn, have a look at this site, I have just bought one (about a month ago) and it is superb

http://www.chillblast.com/Chillblast-Fusion-Elixir.html

I upgraded some components, better ram, better/bigger HDD,better power supply and it comes with a great warranty that you will find hard to match.

Give them a call and tell them what you need, I tell you you will not be disappointed.
 
arad85 said:
Bottom line: desktop: as fast an i5 as you can get, laptop, as fast an i7 as you can get unless you can get an i5 which has a 20-30% faster clock for the same money. Don't worry about graphics unless you plan on CS6 use (even then, the acceleration is limited in what it can speed up). Memory: 8G will be fine.
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Thank you Andy that is extremely helpful! :) I have more of an idea what I need now and what to look for. That's just the sort of explanation that I needed to help me make some sense of it.
 
tiler65 said:
Lynn, have a look at this site, I have just bought one (about a month ago) and it is superb

http://www.chillblast.com/Chillblast-Fusion-Elixir.html

I upgraded some components, better ram, better/bigger HDD,better power supply and it comes with a great warranty that you will find hard to match.

Give them a call and tell them what you need, I tell you you will not be disappointed.
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Thanks Tom I'll check that out.
 
Just an afterthought. If you're going to be driving 2x 24" monitors or a very large 27/30" monitor, you might be better off with a more performant graphics system than the onboard ones of the i5/i7. Onboard will do, but with larger numbers of pixels, you might get snappier performance with an extra graphics card. A "decent" one (i.e. one that would do for what you want to use it for and not a top of the range gaming card) for a desktop would be ~£50, a decent silent one around £70 (I always go for a silent gfx card as I have 4 PCs in a 10ft x 10ft room and my hearing is important to me!!)
 
I had a look today at something like this - am I heading in the right direction?

i7 - 3510QM
6GB RAM (which I'm guessing could be upgraded easily enough?)
750HD
USB 3

Not sure if the graphics card is good enough? (2GB dedicated).

Feedback welcome - something like this or back to the drawing board?
 
Way overspec'd on the graphics card. You could really do with an Nvidia gfx on a laptop supporting Optimus technology (it should say it in the specs somewhere). Basically, this makes the battery last longer as it switches the graphics on when it is needed and uses the onboard when it doesn't.

The processor is nice in that one you linked to though :)
 
arad85 said:
Way overspec'd on the graphics card. You could really do with an Nvidia gfx on a laptop supporting Optimus technology (it should say it in the specs somewhere). Basically, this makes the battery last longer as it switches the graphics on when it is needed and uses the onboard when it doesn't.
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Umm... back to not understanding... so the graphics card isn't good? I'd prob be using it off the mains most of the time but I'd like the option to run it from battery if needed.

arad85 said:
The processor is nice in that one you linked to though :)
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I think he said it was 3rd gen - the new i7 processors...

How much RAM could I upgrage that to? I'd like more than 6GB but how do I find out how many slots it has and how much it can take?

Its within budget and would allow for purchase of a nice 24" IPS display (was thinking of a Dell) - anything else I should get if I go for that set up? Another external HD?
 
ShoeQueen said:
Umm... back to not understanding... so the graphics card isn't good? I'd prob be using it off the mains most of the time but I'd like the option to run it from battery if needed.
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No... It's good. In fact, it's probably too good.... You will still be able to use it on battery, it just won't last quite as long.

ShoeQueen said:
I think he said it was 3rd gen - the new i7 processors...

How much RAM could I upgrage that to? I'd like more than 6GB but how do I find out how many slots it has and how much it can take?

Its within budget and would allow for purchase of a nice 24" IPS display (was thinking of a Dell) - anything else I should get if I go for that set up? Another external HD?
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Just google the product numbers and this comes up: http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/innovation/product/Satellite-L855-10W/1126028

which should give you some idea of specs. 8G would be the simple upgrade and would be fine.
 
arad85 said:
Just google the product numbers and this comes up: http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/innovation/product/Satellite-L855-10W/1126028

which should give you some idea of specs. 8G would be the simple upgrade and would be fine.
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Thanks Andy, that's really helpful. So I could go up to 16GB if I wanted - but 8GB would be fine.

And I think looking at those specs that I could use a 24" external monitor but not a 27".

I've still loads to learn but I know more than I did a few days ago... starting to get my head round understanding specs.
 
Yup and yup...
 
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