BBurns Loc: South Bay, California

I do not know your location but consider these 2 from Costco.
I have been running the Predator for almost 2 years with no problems.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

You don't really need an i7 for photo editing. That can save you a few dollars. That is unless you are also planning on doing a lot of gaming on the same system. An i5 is more than adequate for editing photos. It's also less expensive.
--Bob

John Geyer

Funny how doing panoramas the i7 uses all eight cores near 100%. Get an it and wait or an i7 and get more thru put. i7 also much faster if you edit any video.

John Geyer

i5

Papa Joe Loc: Midwest U.S.

John, you'll find some excellent buys from TigerDirect.com both new and reburbished. I've had excellent results over the years with each item I've bought, and the prices are more than fair.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I have something similar, Dell XPS. But mine is with 32GB and RAM Intel i7 4core 3.4GHz hyperthreading. For the time being I have a pretty nice but small 22" Monitor. I eventually want a 26" to 32" one. And I did get it from COSTCO.

It was suggested to me to get a Alienware gaming PC (Dell) and just down grade the sound card. But the price was still a bit steep for me.

CocoBee

Don’t overlook the gaming computers. I’m using a gaming laptop with incredible power and graphics. (And it’s still good for gaming when all the work is said and done-PC Master Race!). Razer brand has some great refurbished or “last year’s model” computers for sale. I’m in love with mine.

therwol Loc: USA

Just bought a computer with two memory slots, both with 8 gigs of RAM, instead of using only one with 16 gigs to allow for a cheaper upgrade to 32 gigs. I could have saved $175 if I only had to buy one more 16 gig memory stick. I don't know if I would have chosen a different computer, but I'm annoyed. Based on past purchases, this is a common practice.

John Geyer

Also they put memory in pairs for faster response. If you want 32gb you should buy it that way. To get best times memory should be from same manufacturer, same speed and even same manufacturing batch to get all response possible.

lbuhle Loc: Media, PA

If you are comfortable with a screwdriver and can follow instructions, building your own is a great way to go. You can continuously upgrade over the years to keep your system running quickly and efficiently. What I've learned...some of the pre-built systems (e.g. Dell) use proprietary power supplies that need to replaced when they die by yet another proprietary power supply (eBay becomes your friend). Another limitation is the total amount of RAM memory the system can take....get the most number of slots possible as adding memory is often the least expensive way of keeping your system running fast....especially for handling large images and video. High end graphics card...only if your software supports it.

Laptops are handy...but for workhorses, not the greatest. They are also difficult to service (compared to a tower or desktop) and almost always require proprietary parts (eBay friendship!) that end up costing a significant amount of money (e.g. fans will die, disk storage will die or seem slow).

Using a virtual computer such as your entire Windows system running on AWS....since we work with pictures, only if your Internet access it very good and you need alot of compute power and have little time to wait.

mjgoulet

How much do you want to spend?
I would get the fastest processor, the most RAM (64Gb if you can afford it) and the largest hard drive (1TB for the main) that you can afford. Computer components change frequently so you might as well get the best - it will last you longer. And don't forget about the graphics card. Something in the $200+ range.
Just for comparisons, I have an intel i7 7800, 64GB RAM, 4 ea 1TB hard drives and a GEForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card. Get the best man.

wteffey Loc: Ocala, FL USA

Whoa, people. The last thing people on this forum should do is discourage "newbies", and one way to risk that is to give the impression that photography as a hobby requires, demands, a lot of money to produce good photos. While money always helps, photography as a hobby does not necessarily demand a lot of it. One can buy a decent bridge camera that offers RAW, and an off the shelf PC with monitor for under $1,000. Use the software that came with the camera and away you go. If the newbie has talent a lot of his or her photos will be very, very good.

I would request that before anyone responds to a newbie question they carefully tailor their response so as not to throw a wet blanket on a budding photographic spark.

Charlie'smom

therwol Loc: USA

Depends on how much you're willing to spend. There are some very capable laptops on the market, but they're very expensive and have to be special ordered. 3-4 grand for a high end Dell 17 inch workstation or top of the line Alienware, for example. You can get the same performance out of a desktop for about half that.

One other thing about laptops is that they're harder to clean. All computers accumulate dust and lint inside. My son has had two laptops whose vents were eventually blocked by huge wads of lint that required the bottoms be removed to pull them out. The fans were just screaming until they were cleaned.

therwol Loc: USA

I agree as well. Someone just starting out doesn't need to hear about state of the art computers when something you can buy in Costo will work just fine for most purposes. I think that it would be useful to hear opinions on some minimum requirements for decent photo editing, not esoteric machines.