New computer build.

Tight Knot

No longer a newbie, moving up!
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Boca Raton, FL
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www.lensphotoworld.com
Can others edit my Photos
Photos OK to edit
Hello everyone,

I guess the inevitable happened and my computer is on its last legs.
I am looking at buying a new computer that is not top of the line, but also not bottom of the line. I typically work on photographs of one-and-a-half to two gigabytes per image, sometimes with up to 15 or 20 layers. I also create gif's and work with video.
I am looking for something that will allow me to do my work properly, without being too laggy, and spending a lot of time waiting for the computer to do its job.
I have up to a maximum of $1,000 to spend, preferrably less.
What specs do you feel are essential in CPU, graphics card and RAM. again I'm not looking for the top-of-the-line system, but something that will do the job for me well. One last thing to note is that I do also work on 4K video, but it's not essential.

Any advice anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated, as I need a computer to carry on with my work right away.

Thanks so much and have a wonderful day everyone.

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
 
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I'm far from a computer expert so take my advice with a pinch of salt. Here is what I think though:

A fast processor and lots of fast ram will be the main things to consider. So at least an i5-6500 and an i7 would be better. At least 16gb of 1600mhz or faster ram, but I'd cram it with as much as I vould afford. Photo editing is more cpu intensive so you'd probably get awa with an Nvidia 750ti. Another thing to consider would be an SSD, you can import to the SSD, edit then move them to an HDD for long term storage (which will mean you can save some cash by buying a smaller SSD).
 
I just bought and built my son a gaming system. More specifically a system with a Radeon 460 GPU (Graphics Processor).

Though not photography, it is built also for photography such as Lightroom and Photoshop. I just got LR running on it yesterday and it flys.

I spent $950 excluding monitor and keyboard/mouse. But I've built computers in the past so it wasn't much of a problem to put together. But there are prebuilt computers GPU systems out there.
 
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The two most critical hardware components for photo editing is processor and RAM. I found a 4.0 ghz quad processor with at least 16GB of RAM works sufficiently fast for most editing in Lightroom and Photoshop Elements with acceptably short wait times for each edit action. Slower processors and/or less RAM will noticably slow things down. Having work 'in process' photos/shoot as well as the computer operating system on a solid state drive (SSD) will greatly help as well.

Graphics card speed is completely irrelevant in my opinion, and I use a $25 no fan needed graphics card. The difference of 0.3 seconds to display a screen vs 0.1 seconds won't be noticed, unless you're doing movie editing or gaming. I only edit still photographs.

I'm also a speed freak that builds his own computers. Right now, I'm on a liquid cooled, over-clocked to 4.65ghz 8-processor 16GB RAM computer with SSD for Windows and 'in process' projects. Everything else is on a slow, low cost 'green' 3TB hard drive.
 

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