I am building a new rig for image editing with DXO, Topaz, Photoshop. I don’t use Lightroom. It will be Windows 11 Pro - I am not switching to Mac and don’t need directions for that. I am looking for suggestions about the optimum chipset and video card. Running two 32 inch BenQ monitors and a 3rd smaller NEC. Raw file sizes typically ~ 120-150 mb. Some stacked images or panoramas are several GB in size. If you were building this what would you put in? It will have 64 GB DDR5 RAM.
It sounds like a money no object bit of kit, so I’d use the fastest CPU available in conjunction with highest spec graphics card. I can’t comment on whether those items would be AMD or Intel + Nvidia as I’ve only ever had experience of the latter.
The highest spec stuff might be nice but I am wondering if anyone has insights into which combination of chip and video will work best for Photolab 8 or whatever comes next.
Use two SSDs ( for example RAID configurations ; or allocate SSDs to OS and Apps )
Review GPU performances here :
Thanks. I have always (past 40 years) had C just for software and all work and data on a separate drive. On the current rig it often takes 10-15 secs to export a single file to disk and I see my cpu usage peaking at 90% but it is a 12 year old setup. Hopefully newer chips and a video card with lots of ram will help.
@jd1 GPU start looking at the RTX 4070 (or RTX 50… equivalent) to prevent the GPU throttling the CPU when exporting as is the case with my Ryzen 5900X and an RTX 3060.
You are using Photoshop and I read an article that suggested Abobe software runs better on Intel CPUs and an RTX 4060/4070 or whatever you can afford will also help Topaz.
If possible buy into an “eco-system” that can grow, at least a little., i.e. my 5900X came after a purchase of a 5600G initially, when the price of the 5900X came down.
The 5600G was cheap and actually a better match for the 3060 but now has its own motherboard etc. etc. but the AM4 eco-system they use is a dead-end and the 5900X close to the top of the CPU path on that eco-system.
My systems have SATA SSDs for the C:\ drive and the extension E:\ drive and an NVME for the N:\ drive and HDD drives for storage. Arguably booting off the NVME would be faster but it is easier to clone SATA SSDs!?
Hope that provides a little food for thought, have fun choosing.
Regards
Bryan
Thanks. The new RTX 4070 looks appealing but hard to find right now
I have a 4060 and pl8 is really zippy. Instantaneous tabbing between pics, export deep prime xd2 takes 3 secs per image. The asus dual oc is really quiet too
You might want to review the recommendations and extensive testing results on the Puget Systems website. They regularly update recommendations for LR and PS systems (and they are different) and will respond to email inquiries. They will not recommend the latest and greatest until they have accumulated sufficient performance and reliability data.
Yes, I have been in touch with them. Just checking around for other ideas.
Check TDP and suggested PSU. When choosing GPU, I have capped max TDP to 200W, hence I got RTX 4070. Your conditions might be different.
Newer generations of Intel Core i7 should be enough.
EDIT: Deleted the following, which is wrong, as explained by @Stuck below: Note that Win11 24H2 does not support i7 gen 8-10 IIRC (wrong!).
That’s not true. However, it is an easy mistake to make because Microsoft are not exactly clear on the matter.
Yes, MS do give a list of supported CPUs for Win 11 24H2 and yes that list does not include any 8th or 9th gen chips, e.g here:
However what MS means by that list is that OEMs should not be using those chips any more. The exclusion of 8th & 9th gen chips from that list doesn’t mean that existing machines with such chips cannot be updated to Win 11 24H2.
Win 11 24H2 will install on a machine with an 8th gen CPU, I know this because I did it a few days ago. No, I didn’t have to resort to any hacks / tricks / third party utilities. I simply went to this page:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11
and clicked on the top option.
About an hour and a half later, with no errors or problems, the laptop with its 8th gen CPU that had been running Win 10 was happily running Win 11 24H2.
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Thanks for correcting my mistake – I got confused by MS statement on 24H2 support. The minimum system requirements did not change for 24H2 indeed.