Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

As much as you can afford

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

16gb is fine, but 24 or 32 is better if you have the $. I have 32gb.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

With 1gb and a SSD you should be running fine. Perhaps the bottle neck is the CPU. Most laptops are not up to a tower anyway.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

The size of the catalog is most likely not an issue as it is a SQL database, so it is not loaded into memory, but the records are read and updated as needed. When Lightroom is opened, it opens the catalog file, locks it for single use and reads and writes records to the file as needed.

An SSD definately makes a speed difference. It helps to keep your catalog on a fast drive, as well as images being edited on a fast drive.

I keep my apps & catalog on an SSD for fast loading and access, my raw images are kept on an external spinning drive, but I keep a working folder of current images ( three years worth) on another SSD it helps. As times marches on, I will move a years worth of images off working storage (SSD) to main storage (Spinning external) Images on main storage are kept but not accessed often for editing.


FWIW - My Lightroom catalog is 1.01 GB in size and points to 63,083 images in total. 90% of the time I am concerned only with images on the working "Lightroom SSD" drive, and only go back to edit old images on the spinning WD Duo external every now and then. Right now my spinning drive folder contains 1.32 TB of raw & JPG images.... as SSD prices continue to decline I will look to use an external SSD connected either over USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt to replace my spinning storage for all my images.

Faster, even by a millisecond, is better....

John O.

Be sure to buy a laptop with a separate video card!

lschiz Loc: Elgin, IL

Ram is so cotten-picken cheap these days, to not get the max the PC can use is to cut ourselves short on performance for a few bucks.
I just bought 16 gig, two 8 gig cards for $84 ($42 ea) for my Dell.
My be more cost effective to buy after you get the unit and install your self.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

16GB for playing. 32+GB if you're serious!

bwa

Ekeeton

pego101

16-20 but more cant hurt

Siemienczuk

I was running LR with 4, on an old laptop. Got a deal on a Dell PC that had been reformatted after "catching a virus." 16 has been wonderful. I can't comment on PS (yet). I suspect more than 16 for LR alone is like putting premium gas in a car designed for regular. But, as has been said here over and over, it's cheap...

marty wild Loc: England

To support your RAM make sure you get a hi-quality ssd drive. A minimum 500 gig use it only for your operating system. You can install programs on others drives if you are running close too exhaust on Ram, windows will start to use C drive to dump. However photoshop and light room will have to be installed on your C drive. Also remember keep a dedicated folder on another drive to dump unfinished projects and not on your desktop. As you know your desktop is for short cuts

rkaminer Loc: New York, NY

RAM is like old age memory, we never have enough of it. get as much as the laptop (and your budget) can handle

hrblaine

[quote=tramsey]

>Get as much ram as you can afford - There is no such thing as too much ram.

My philosophy too! I wouldn't even think about less than 64! Harry

Ron Dial Loc: Cuenca, Ecuador

As much as you can afford.

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

As much as you can afford...I use 64GB

Cheers!