Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

I run sophisticated CAD programs, rendering programs, animation programs etc. on a laptop with 8Gb of RAM. Are you sure this is not your storage capacity?

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

AircraftGuru

I am not doing 3D rendering or gaming ..... I don't know what kind of graphics card it has either .... I was happy with the performance of the old laptop ..... but was concerned about reliability of the mechanical drive after 6 years of use. What I bought is a current version of what I had .... with state of the art technology and a 1 TB SSD .... I would suggest you get that Intel drive installed into whatever computer system you want. That drive is excellent. Good luck to you. I used to fly airplanes a long time ago and also flew with engineering test pilots in experimental aircraft too .... and have had 6 partial or complete engine failures .... either with me flying or flying with test pilots .... and other things failing too ..... thus long term reliability has had major meaning to me.

Papa Joe Loc: Midwest U.S.

I have only 16gb in an i7 and it delivers all the power and speed needed for ANY use, especially video and still images. With 24gb, possibly you might consider putting wings on your computer:o)

BatManPete Loc: Way Up North!

Hi,,,, first thing U want to do is check the "font folder." New machines can have 400 or more fonts loaded each time U turn the machine on.... GET REAL.... Nobody uses more that 20 fonts in one project. Create urself a second "sub" folder attached to the "primary folder".... ie: "Fonts"..... "second font folder attached to " = "01 Fonts".

Fonts
01 Fonts
- - - - -
Another way to manage fonts.... \/ \/ \/ Have fun!
https://www.google.com/search?q=specific+font+folder+for+each+project%3F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
enc.....end...end

trek6500mt

It also depends on what type of ram and it's rated speed. Do they tell you that? If you have a fast CPU, but your memory is bargain bin, you will have an ok system, but just ok. It could operate faster with faster ram. You say you never play games? as of right now I run a Nvidia GTX 980ti 8gb video card. I see absolutely no speed increase in LR when I enable it's use. Now maybe it would be used more in PS. I don't use Ps that as much as I am new to it. Get the fastest CPU, if you're looking to future proof then get the ram. As long as it isn't slow. I'd put the 300 towards a M.2 drive

(https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01LYFKJR7/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1480945734&sr=8-6&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=samsung+ssd&dpPl=1&dpID=41tJx52AHjL&ref=plSrch#).

These are faster than SSDs. But you still will want a regular mechanical HDD for storage. Unless you've got money to burn, then add a few ssds.. hehehe. You could purchase a 8gb graphics card, but a 6gb would do fine for some time to come. Will you be replacing your monitor? If you're editing pictures and are using a monitor that's color gamut is low or has a resolution of 1024 x 768 then all that video card horse power is for nothing. It would be like riding a super motorcycle with the throttle limitter all the way on.
I've built many PCs in my 50 years on this planet. It can be very aggravating! But it can be a lot of fun! Goggle and YouTube are your friend!!
I'm going on and on. Sorry.
Just look to match your components capabilities to each other. A lot of ram means nothing if its slow. A big capacity hard drive means nothing if it's slow. Good luck! I envy you! I love to build PC's?

Dan De Lion Loc: Montana

I'd go with both a great graphics card and the 64GB of ram. Such a computer could be used for probably five years. If you spend an additional $500 now, that works out to about 25 cents a day of additional costs.

My experience is that Dell makes great computers. I'd go with them over HP any day.

Jay Pat Loc: Round Rock, Texas, USA

For me in my room, a non glare moniter works very,very well.
Pat

lsimpkins Loc: SE Pennsylvania

Actually M.2 drives are SSDs that are a different form factor and use a different computer interface than the SATA SSDs that commonly replace HDDs. They are indeed faster, but mostly due to the interface.

jeryh Loc: Oxfordshire UK

Get as much ram as you can afford- its ALWAYS worth it !

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

You may need to check your information. My HP desktop from Costco came standard with an i7 processor, 24 gigs of RAM, 128gig SSD C drive and 2 terabyte D drive, and a midrange Nvidia card and a DVD writer. On sale I think it was $999 with no monitor.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Right! There are 400 fonts, but most of them like each other.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I just read three pages of very well-intentioned responses to your question, but none have asked the most important question - what software do you use?

You need to know how the software engineers have written their software before you can decide on a configuration. I think you'd want a machine that you can use today, and still provide some expansion capability for the future. Without knowing the specifics, you are using a D800. These generate 45mb raw files, and if you edit a file in Photoshop, in 16 bit, you will end up with an image that is typically 500mb, or more if you make extensive use of layers. If you use content aware features, gaussian blur, stitch together panoramas, do focus stacking and HDR, etc - 16 gb ram is not going to be enough. With 32 gb ram, you will be able to edit .psb files, which are 2 gb or bigger. I do it all the time with 32 gb. If you use Photoshop, b\uying a computer with 32 would be the right move for your needs today, and in the near future. Having the capability to expand to 64gb would give you a degree of future proofing. As we have all experienced, ram is constantly getting denser and cheaper. Buying more than you need today may not be the best use of your $$$. If you wait until you actually need it, you may end up paying a lot less. Just make sure your motherboard has enough slots, and that your current configuration leaves enough room for adding memory without tossing lower density chips. When the time comes, you want to be able to buy just 32 gb ram, and not 65 gb, tossing out your 8gb sticks and replacing them with 16 gb ones.

Lightroom, if you use that, is a horse of a different color. It does not improve appreciably with more than 16 gb. When I went from 16 to 32 gb, I really didn't notice any improvement in performance. But LR did not have HDR or pano stitching. What LR does utilitize is mutliple CPU cores - 4 is considered minimum, and it will use up to 6 or 8 if you have them. There are 6 and 8 core i7 cpus (68XXa series) that really fly with LR.

Graphics are even easier. There is no real benefit to having more than 4 gb vram unless your use includes driving a pair of 5k displays with a 4k video editing application. The extra ram is used for frame buffering for video at high frame rates - mostly for a smooth gaming experience or for 4k video editing.

Howeveri f you have a 10 bit capable display and you want to be able to turn on the 10 bit graphics capability in Photoshop, you will need a 10 bit card - your choices are either NVidia Quadro, or ATI Fire Pro cards. The card needs to support the Open GL and Open CL libraries. That's it. The newer non-10 bit cards are slightly faster when used with LR or PS, but just barely. A 5 yr old NVidia GT550 with 2 gb ram will easily drive a pair of 1920x1200 displays with decent performance. I went from that card to an NVidia K2200 with 4 gb, and the performance improvement was modest at best. I have one student that has is a gamer and uses Photoshop. He did not see any difference upgrading to a GTX1080 with 8 gb from a GTX 960 with 2 gb as far as PH was concerned. He did see a substantial improvement with his gaming apps though. Fast hard drives are considerably better than fast graphics cards loaded with lots of vram for Photoshop. And LR is even less dependent on GPU speed and vram.

Here are some guidelines from Adobe on graphics cards:

https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/system-requirements.html#General
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html#CardRequirements

camp154

Don't forget to check the number of open expansion slots on the motherboard. I purchased an HP envy without verifying slots and found that on addition of a good graphics card no expansion left. Also check the power supply since an upgrade to a graphic card may require a larger power supply

trek6500mt

Yes, it utilizes the PCIE bus. I didn't want to get to deep and sound like a know it all. But thanks for pointing that out. Depending on the motherboard it may have a separate riser specifically for an M.2 SSD drive.

Here's a good read explaining SATA SSDs compared to M.2(PCIE SSDs). http://www.trustedreviews.com/best-ssds_round