frejus

Are PS CC, LR CC with other plugins and apps; a good pairing with a $1200-$1500 range gaming pc?

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I've been using a Lenovo Legion gaming laptop for about a year. I got it from Costco for $1100. (i7, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GPU and 1TB SSD) Before this I used an ASUS ROG laptop that I broke. I'm not sure it matters much, but Nvidia offers a "studio" driver to replace the "gaming" driver.

Gaming laptops seem to never have more than 16GB of RAM. 32GB is supposed to be better. I can still have both Lightroom Classic and Photoshop open at the same time. Maybe when I break this one, the gamers will have 32GB.

Performance is good. I use my Lenovo for all the Adobe apps. The new AI noise reduction in LR Classic runs fine. A bigger test is video editing. It works well with both Premiere Pro and Premiere Elements using 4K footage. The Topaz apps work well too.

Some may suggest that monitor calibration is not always work like with graphics work stations.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

As much CPU, GPU, RAM and SSD as you can afford is a good combo for PS/LR (and video processing).

bwa

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

It's not cost, it's capability. The GPU is turning into the determining factor of late.

Drbobcameraguy Loc: Eaton Ohio

Yes it will work well. Also the studio driver from Nvidia is well worth installing instead of the gaming driver. Nvidia is a very good company in art and gaming

Revet Loc: Fairview Park, Ohio

In addition to photography, I enjoy MS Flight Simulator 2020 in VR which requires a pretty beefy system which I built 2 years ago with the best components at the time. A very nice side effect was how fast PS and Lightroom now run. Even Topaz edits an image in a few secs. Go for it!!! BTW, a $1500 gaming PC today will be equivalent or maybe faster than what I put together 2 years ago at twice the price.

frejus

I stated the $1200-$1500 price range to reference the listed components - gpu, cpu, ram, etc -such desktop pcs may have. I understand that the more expensive desktop pcs have a lot more powerful everything and was/am wondering if: in this case, if an ALIENWARE AURORA R16 GAMING DESKTOP, with 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-13700F (54MB, 16 cores, 24 threads, up to 5.20 GHz P-Core Turbo Max 3.0)


Windows 11 Home, English, French, Spanish

videocard
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060, 8 GB GDDR6

memory
32 GB: 2 x 16 GB, DDR5, 5600 MT/s

harddrive
1 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD

fallbackcolor
500W Platinum Rated PSU, Air-Cooled CPU & Solid Side Panel, a good desktop deal?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

OP: Consider the corresponding Dell XPS versions vs the Dell Alienware. I've been running an XPS desktop and laptop since August 2016, with zero problems, the desktop up and running 24x7 the entire time.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

From my point of view, it is a good deal. You get a current i7, a strong GPU, plenty of RAM and a large, fast SSD.

But, you are taking a risk that for some unknown reason, "gaming" and "creative" computers are different. My theory is that there are two differences. With a "gamer", the case will be flashier and the Nvidia GPU has a "gaming" driver.

Gaming drivers are kept current with games. That means they may be updated more often and with less testing. In my use of gaming laptops, it has not been an issue. Occasionally I will see driver issues on Adobe Premiere Pro and Elements forums where something is odd and it is fixed with updating the Nvidia driver. In that case, the suggestion is usually to update with a "studio" driver.

In short, you are taking advantage of marketing. Gaming computers are aimed at and priced for the larger "gaming" market. Workstation computers are priced for professionals that make money! To eliminate the risk, buy from someone who will take it back if it does not work well and test it thoroughly with the software you want to use.

frejus

CHG_CANON:

Thank you for your imput.
It appears almost all being the same, the XPS wouls cost about $300.00 more that the Alienware desktop.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I haven't looked at the specs in detail. I know you're trying to future-proof this purchase. You might sniff around the middle-tier of these two Dell selections and see if there's a cost saving option without going with the max processor speed and memory, if cost is the issue.