Szalajj Loc: Salem, NH

Buy as much as you cam afford! Hardware has it's limits on just what they will recognize, so you really need to do your homework ahead of your purchase! 16GB isn't really enough when you're working on photos, especially if you tend to leave multiple shots open at the same time. Or if you tend to have multiple windows and documents open at the same time! Think about how you use a computer on a regular basis! Do you play any games? P

Updates and new programs are hardware hungry! Make sure that your hard drive is at least double what you'll need to load all of your software to start! Make sure that your processor is strong enough to handle everything that you intend to install. Windows 7 updates over the last 6 months have basically obsoleted most of my computers, and I'm going to have to upgrade in the near future! They ran out of hard drive space, and I had to remove any files that I could without compromising the operating systems!

I would look at 32GB or 64GB of RAM at the very least!

As I read some of the other responses, I have to agree with the 64 Bit OS. And the gaming video card makes sense if you can afford that upgrade!

Dell computers are proprietary, and you will be restricted to purchasing most of your hardware updates or expansions directly from Dell! This is especially true about memory sticks, processors, and mother boards! Not all hardware is expandable or upgradable within the confines of your computer case, especially with Dell products!

Yes they offer a great financing package, but it restricts what you can add to their computers in the future!

Working with Lightroom, you also want to grab the other two pieces of software that come with it at no additional cost, even if you don't intend to use them right now! Bridge and Photo Shop! It's like pulling teeth to get them at a later date. So make sure that your hardware can handle everything that you might plan to do with it!

kevcararts

all the responses have provided you with the answer. Gosh, not that you can use an SD card as memory, but I just bought a 32GB SD card on Amazon for $10. Memory is cheap. Here's why you need as much memory as can be supported on your system. It is very simple and applies to Windows and Mac computers. When you are doing something that requires lots of memory such as editing a big JPG or RAW or whatever, if the computer needs more RAM, it starts to swap out parts of ram not being used (but is supporting some other activity like virus protection), it puts that on your hard disk, frees up that space in memory, now lets Adobe or Corel do some image processing. Now it gets tricky. Does the computer restore the swapped out memory? Who knows and who cares. Here's another part of computer history. One day, your computer seems to be running slow....a memory problem, yes. So you had to do a "disk compression". What's that? Stuff gets written to disk. But the disk gets fragmented from removing files....leaves empty spots. So you are load a huge image file and it seems to be slower than normal. That's because it is putting parts of the image file in different places...takes more time for the head to jump around. So periodically your computer told you the disk is too fragmented and you had to do a defrag. Norton would then display a colored picture of you disk space and you would be entertained watching your disk swap files broken parts of files back into contiguous blocks. Way Fun eh?

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Every computer hardware product is proprietary: mobo, cpu, memory, discs, even power supplies and fans.

Dell is actually very open standards based, and usually with very good design, from laptops to supercomputers.

I'm very surprised by your comments.

Szalajj Loc: Salem, NH

I only have one comment here.

Avoid installing Norton at all costs!

It interferes with your operating system!

There are other options out there.

AVG, or PC CILIN are viable options!

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

16gb minimal, 32 preferable, 64 if you can justify spending the extra $$$.

Using 32 or more pretty much negates the need for a scratch disk in Photoshop.

Also, get a discrete graphics card, so you don't have to share system memory with graphic functions.

For LR, more than 16 is overkill, but having 4 or more cpu cores with hyperthreading and a fast cpu make a difference.

For PS - 4 cores with hyperthreading is all you need, more cores doesn't help.

For vram - it's based on your display resolution. clearly, a dual 4K display setup will need more than a single 1920x1200 display. Currently the worst case of twin 5K displays might need around 6 gb vram.

Fast graphics cards won't necessarily help much. A good midrange card is more than sufficient. Frame buffer (memory) and frame rate in fps is the driving criteria for gaming cards, and unless you see yourself processing video, you don't need a high end gaming card. It's overkill.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Szalajj Loc: Salem, NH

My boyfriend was a computer tech and when he went to work on Dell computers, he had to fight with them every time to get replacement parts shipped to him to install. The way they build their motherboards create a problem when you tried to replace some of their components.

Unless you really know what you are doing when it comes to replacing or adding RAM to a Dell computer, you just can't install any old memory stick in their computers. Granted he was working on older models, I don't know if Dell changed how they selected components for their newer models in recent years or not.

Unfortunately, Jim lost his battle with cancer just over 3 years ago!

His specialty was system restoration and recovery, but he also did a fair bit of hardware upgrades as well.

Revet Loc: Fairview Park, Ohio

I have a 1 year old Dell which came with 16 gigs. This was fine for photo editing but I recently increased it to 24 because Lightroom and Photoshop were running slow. I started checking my task manager and found my RAM was always at 85% or higher. The problem was my wife and I tend to leave programs open. Increasing the RAM made a big difference in speed on both LR and PS.

I then decided to upgrade my Video card to one Adobe recommends so that I could use the processor in the video card to do things in LR and PS. With the stock Dell video card, if I checked that option in the performance settings, it actually slowed things up. With the new Video card (NVIDEO EVGA GEForce GTX 1060 FTW), checking the Use video card in the performance settings speeds somethings up in both programs (especially the develop mode in LR). Also, I can now use some of the advanced settings on the "Use video card processor" setting in PS's performance (advanced drawing mode, Open CL, Accelerate computations). It also helped my wife in gaming.

So I agree, get what you can afford but you can always upgrade later if needed.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

It seems that "What computer...?" always generates lots of comments, so I'll add mine. I've had a few Dell desktops, and I've ordered them with minimal memory and then brought them, up to 16GB after I received them. Looking at comparisons online, there isn't much of a speed difference beyond 16 GB, considering the cost. If you do buy more memory, make sure it's the right kind and the right speed. Photo editing doesn't stress a computer very much. Complicated video editing would benefit from more memory. I recently built a computer and installed 32GB of memory. I have nothing to compare it to, but it works for me.

Another suggestion: add a second hard drive (D) and use that for data, with only the OS and programs on the C drive.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

I'm very sorry for your loss, and I do have empathy about losing loved ones, although computers are a different topic.

Some of the UHH contributors on this thread are very experienced computer professionals, some retired, some active.

Some of us are very well acquainted with the major computer vendors, it's what we do or did do for a living, including having access to their future plans under non disclosure agreements and so on.

In the case of Dell, I've been working with - never for them - for over twenty years. Although I build my own deskside systems, and every vendor has problems, I've never been burned by Dell, but I have been by Lenovo and HP.

I buy technology carefully, but when I buy Dell I do so with confidence.

IcemanKS Loc: RI USA

Greetings.... 16gig might work suberbly NOW but you also need to consider the future. Your next software upgrade might require 32 minimum?. Two years from now you might experience a few software upgrades. If 64 gigs of ram is affordable, jump at it. And the same for the video card. Good luck with your shopping experience and your purchase.
Ice *

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

pahtspix

RAM is really cheap these days..I had 32gb installed on my computer when it was built 3 years ago, along with a solid state boot drive, MUCH less money than it was 3 years ago. I would also get an external drive of at least 4-6 tb set up as RAID 1 for redundancy and safety.

alandg46 Loc: Boerne, Texas

Win 10 Pro will recognize 2 terabytes of RAM, Win 10 Home 1 Terrabyte providing both are 64bit. 32-bit versions,(I can't imagine why anyone would install one) only 3.25 megabytes. Your hardware may not support that much RAM. Mine won't.

I have an AMD R9 380 video card, an AMD FX 8300 8 core processor, a 256gb Sandisk SSD for "C" drive, and 2 Western Digital 6 terabyte drives and 2 Western Digital 3 terabyte drives for data.

I do many panoramas and some video editing. 32 GB ram is very helpful for stitching together 10 photos out of a 32 megapixel Nikon D800E. Years ago I would have to convert 6 megapixel photos to jpg's to stitch 5 or 6 together with Win XP's 32 bit system.

I would suggest a discrete midrange video card, 32 GB ram, and an SSD primary drive. My now small 256 gb SSD has 100 gb open. I have lots of software.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

8MB minimum, 16GB sweet spot for price, 24GB optimal for Photoshop, 32GB if you run lots of apps simultaneously.