raymondh Loc: Walker, MI

It's time to replace the old XP & I'm wondering if there are any experts that might offer some suggestions for building a new one. I've pretty much decided on Windows 7 & would like a fast machine for photo/video editing. Things like motherboard, graphics card, ports, ram, etc. that will do the trick without having additional capacity where a noticeable difference is negligible. Is 16g of ram sufficient or would 32g make a significant difference? Is a 2g graphics card enough or would more make a big improvement?
I'm leaning toward an ASUS 27" monitor.
Any input would be most appreciated.

RaydancePhoto

I recently got a new computer and went on Ebay and found a 'white box' computer. That is one that is not a brand name and built from quality parts. I opted for 8gb ram and 6 core processor AMD and 1Tb hard drive. The video card has 2 G ram and Win 7. I paid around 300.00 delivered. It is plenty fast at processing images.

traveler90712 Loc: Lake Worth, Fl.

I have always gone on the theory of getting the biggest, fastest that is on the market, because tomorrow it will be outdated.

Storage is a very important feature, I personally suggest at least one external drive of at least 1 TB.

If you can afford it 32 gig of ram would be nice along with the fastest processor you can afford.
Internal hard drive of 1 TB should be sufficient. You may consider a SSD (Solid State Drive) to hold operating system and your programs, to use along with the 1 TB.


The most important thing would be your graphics card, or even dual cards. Two gig of ram should be more the adequate for the graphic card

Investigate a "gaming" computer.

Treepusher Loc: Kingston, Massachusetts

Hi Ray,

I use an i7 chip, 2g video card and 16g of RAM. Plenty fast for me. Sadly, running Windows 8.

raymondh Loc: Walker, MI

That seems pretty reasonable - thanks for the input!

raymondh Loc: Walker, MI

Very informative - thank you!
I already have a 500g & a terabyte back-up drive so I'm not overly concerned about storage. My main concern was in processing speed. My 8 yr old XP had a gig of ram & when I processed a raw file with my 7d it wasn't to bad maybe a minute or so. The 5dIII is a whole different story. I can go out & have a cup of coffee & a smoke, come back & it's still cranking.
I'm an absolute neophyte in processing, limited to Canon's DPP for some cropping, curves , & sharpening adjustments & would like to get into some of the more in depth processing that Adobe & some of the other add on's have. I suspect these use a lot more resources. And I'm tired of waiting.
I understand solid state drives are faster but with enough ram, would that make swapping files a moot point?

raymondh Loc: Walker, MI

Thanks Randy! I'm leaning toward the i7 chip.

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

Cram it full of ram and use an SSD for startup and programs.

warrior Loc: Paso Robles CA

Alien

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

A little over a year ago I replaced a 10 year old XP desktop with an HP Pavillion Desktop. It is the h8-1380t model although that might have been updated to a different model number. I bought it on line direct from HP. I got no software and no monitor. It was $1100. It has an i7-3820 3.6 GHz 64 bit intel core processor, 10 GB of RAM, Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit OS, An AMD Radeon HD 7570 video card with 1.25GB of RAM, and a lit keyboard and optical mouse, and a 2TB hard drive. I use my pocket 500GB SSD usb drive for back ups and video rendering. The monitor I already had was a Viewsonic 11"x17" lcd monitor which I was happy with. I am very pleased with this machine. It works easily with all the Adobe CS6 products (PS, Audition, and Premiere Pro). For the most part it needs 64 bit versions of software. The 10GB of RAM is more than sufficient. RAM is cheap and Win 7 allows up to 16GB, but I saw no need to max out the RAM. I did a lot of research before picking this configuration and I think it was the best bang for the buck. I upgraded (had a $15 coupon to upgrade from HP) to Win 8 - 64 bit and went back to Win 7 64 bit after just two weeks.

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

The reason for as much ram as possible, is that when I do large batches of photos, Lightroom or Photoshop will basically use up all the available ram. I had 8gb, and that wasn't enough, was just upgraded to 16gb, and that works for the most part, but if I'm doing a stacked image (of 50 shots) even the 16 will struggle.

Bob 08701 Loc: Lakewood, NJ

Good Morning - I have to comment W8 sadness. One click will take you past the tiles to the normal desktop where the OS behavior is akin to W7. If you have not updated to W8.1 do so, it is worth the minor effort. This box is W8.1 and I have a HP DV7 laptop I have walked from Vista to W7 to W8.1. W8.1 is a stable OS and Redmond is bringing out an update in early April catering to us 'old desktop' types. http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/compose_reply.jsp?topicnum=194426&postnum=3291269#

Bobbee

Tiger Direct. Where I buy all my equiptment. Been in It for 40 years. I like their offerings and prices. Never had a problem. Get as much memory as possible and procesor speed is a must. I would expect a new machine to support the latest graphics options. You wold eventually add external HD's but a sizeable HD like a 1 gig or above would be good.

johneccles Loc: Leyland UK

Hello Ray, You should receive lots of advice but just I will suggest only three:
1: 500gb hard drive but 1tb would be better.
2: 8gb RAM but 16gb would be better if you mother board supports it.
3: Make certain the monitor you choose has IPS (in plane switching)
This last point is essential for photo editing!
Cheers,
John.

mldavis2

It depends somewhat on which editing program you are using. Photoshop uses multiple core processors well, and also includes some significant speed up if you have a fast graphic card installed. Other products probably do not take advantage of such features, so paying for the fastest computer on the planet would be a waste of money for editing alone. In that case, CPU speed would be the determining factor.

But CPU clock speeds have pretty well flatlined in recent years and you won't find many "out of the box" computers running over 3.0 GHz, so multiple cores won't help much for many other programs. SSHD drives are very fast to boot, but they are expensive. If you buy one and expect lightning speed edits, remember that the HD isn't the only bottleneck in the system. Only when the editor is caching data to the HD during an edit does that matter, which may not be often, and the real bottleneck is in the code itself, not the hardware. Many filters in Photoshop haven't been changed in decades and are still limited to 8-bit images.