tcthome Loc: NJ

I believe your i7 is 8 cores which should be pretty good. Get the most cpu you can afford. I imagine the motherboard matters too to avoid bottle necks slowing down your system. I have Dell i7(only 4 core) cpu gaming computer. Upgraded to 64gb ram & a 8gb Nvidea 1070 graphics card, Doesn't do squatt when it comes ton heavy processing eg. , a a lot of brush work in LR or Affinity photo & it bogs rite down. Read the articles from the link that gene51 provided. If you can affford it get 10 or more cores in your cpu & a quadro graphics card. If I replace my PC it will be a custom from Puget.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I watch Linus Tech Tips occasionally, and he's built computers costing in the $10,000 range.

pecohen Loc: Central Maine

In my experience, the major problem is likely to be the graphics support; Topaz gets very slow when there is inadequate graphics support. My advice, particularly for a laptop, would be to contact Topaz support and get their input before ordering a new system.

Lagoonguy Loc: New Smyrna Beach, FL

My wife just purchased this computer but with 2T memory, RTX Super 8GB & Blue Ray direct from Dell for $1710. She said please note the expansion slots are for one 3.5 & dual 2.5. She uses it for video & stills editing for YouTube
record of our travels. She loves the system and says it is blazing fast and networks with an XPS 8700 which was comparable to the best she could find seven years ago. This is all way above my pay grade but she seems to be very happy with the package and that is all I need to know. Good luck!

Dave H2

Make sure it qualifies for Windows 11. Must have Trusted computer module on mother board.
D

Joexx

Depending upon your budget, (that CPU is ok, but...) you may want to get a faster cpu. check out this site to try different configurations.
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/1450761/11th-Gen-IntelR-CoreTM-i7-11700---250GHz#Prices
Also, I see someone recommended Puget Systems. Those guys are really good.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/
Take a look at some of their videos for some good advice.

Here is some additional advice (mine.... I have lots of experience).
32 gb may be OK depending upon what you do & also how "piggish" Photoshop gets. I had been using 32gb and almost never had an issue until last month. I found all of a sudden I was using over 32 gb & paging like crazy (not good). I added another 32gb & problem solved. I did not really change my work flow, so perhaps Adobe had an "upgrade" that did that was poorly written, not sure.
Anyway, the important takeaway from this is to MAKE SURE you have extra slots and you can upgrade to 64gb. The Dell you have seems to take up ALL 4 slots with 4gb cards. I would try for 2 x 8gb RAM, so 2 slots are open for upgrades.
As for your storage, if you want to save money, 2 SSDs (or larger than 1Tb) are faster but not necessary, but make sure they are NVMe (that is what you listed).
If you put the O/S on the SSD (always done) and make sure the programs & all the cache & paging files are on the SSD, storing all of your pictures on the HD will not really slow you down. picture load time will be a little longer (a few seconds?) but once it is loaded into LR or PS, you will not see much (if any difference).

I think your Dell has only one M2 slot, so you cannot add a 2nd NVMe SSD.

I think the Dell has 4 bays for HD. I have a very important suggestion. If you get a 1Tb HD, also get a 2nd HD of 4Tb or so to use for BACKUP. You always want to have a backup on a separate physical HD. HDs are not that expensive and always make sure to backup your data.

One last thought. Liquid cooling may sound exotic, but it isn't really & works much better than most air coolers. With computers one of the most important things is temperature. You may be able to upgrade to water, but I am not sure if just makes more sense to get a computer that initially has water cooling. Here is a comment I saw (I did not read it completely, but I thought it may be helpful.)
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8940-Liquid-Cooling-suggestions/td-p/8017454

wapiti Loc: round rock, texas

I had a desktop made to Gene51's specs and it is dynamite.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Sounds like a powerful computer to me. All the specs are way better than my Dell which is probably 5-6 years old now. Mine still works fine for editing stills but some videos it is lacking power. You should be fine will all aspects of editing including video.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You might want to watch this video. https://youtu.be/aVsy1yrG2e8

Know that Max (guy in the video) gave up a $15,000 computer to use a Mini at less than one tenth the cost. It's that good.

bobfitz Loc: Kendall-Miami, Florida

That sounds like more than enough power. I would highly recommend an ASUS ProArt monitor.

barrytex

I always like to read the reviews for a product I am considering buying. This one does not look good. Here is an example:
I took home an XPS 8940 thinking its specs would be more than enough for my relatively modest needs. At first it performed beautifully, but within a day or two it was suddenly freezing, crashing and spontaneously rebooting while performing the simplest tasks. Watching YouTube? Crash. Streaming on Discord? Crash. Copying files to an external HD? Crash, crash, crash. No error messages and no warning. I tried running the diagnostic tool on Dell's website and it BSOD'd in the middle of the test, and then said it couldn't boot.
Figuring I'd gotten a lemon, I took it back to the store and swapped it out for another of the same model... which quickly began doing the exact same things. The two reviews below mine seem to have experienced the same problems. There's something wrong with this model; stay away!
(I learned my lesson after two bad Dells and switched to another manufacturer for my third try, which so far has been running like a dream. Fortunately Micro Center made both exchanges painless.)
No, I do not recommend this product.

chemsaf Loc: San Diego

I did exactly what you plan last year. Go to Puget Systems look at their selection and then call them to get a custom build. Great service and equipment. The price is consistent with the quality. I love my machine. It is handling the AI apps for both still and video.

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

Even if you don’t buy from them read the material on their site. They do a ridiculous amount of testing and freely share it.

One of the most attractive part of their systems is the load a clean copy of Windows without the ubiquitous crapware! And they appear to actually support their systems. I say appear bc I have never tested that feature. If you add up the cost of the parts you will find they do profit. That is a good thing.

FredDerf

Dave. Suffice to say, you need CPU Speed, fast Memory and better than Good Video.

I "configured" my order from DELL Online. Avoid Brick & Mortar stores unless you KNOW what you want, they sell canned systems and that'd not be my first shopping path.

Attached are several URLs to bring you up to speed.

DELL XPS 8940 PC

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/serviceselection/xd8940ms01s?cartitemid=bfc8b31e-7ef7-4b07-aa8b-b91d3ed4fceb&configurationid=f4215190-8e5e-43db-add7-ecc6d03995c6

Graphics Card recommended for Lightroom

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Lightroom-Classic-141/Hardware-Recommendations

CPU Engines recommended for Lightroom

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Lightroom-Classic-141/Hardware-Recommendations#GPU

I chose the DELL XPS 8940 and upgraded the heck out of their base offering. Try "configuring" your dream LR Desktop and compare to Microcenter

My specs are sufficient for me, for many years to come ... on my LR PC, it will only run LR Suite and Topaz, maybe MS Office for communication but nothing else

2TB M.2 PCIe NVME SSD (Boot) + 1TB SATA 72000RPM HHD (Storage)

500W Mineral White Bezel Chassis including optical drive

11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900 processor (8-Core, 16M Cache, 2.5GHz to 5.2GHz)

32GB, 16Gx2, DDR4, 2933MHz

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6

Jimmy T Loc: Virginia

Amazing Video and to me, the uninitiated in the mystic ways of the computer, the next video was just as convincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW-vIe6Iy9M
Smile,
JimmyT Sends