New Desktop

stapo49 · Jun 29, 2019

I recently purchased a new desktop replacing my older laptop. The reason I went to desktop was that my laptop never moved from my desk and as I have a monitor I didn't need a screen that got in my way.

The speed in editing in lightroom when compared to the laptop is amazing. I didn't previously use Photoshop much due to the frustrating lag time. But I will definitely be making greater use of it now.

I am not sure if it is the SSD or the newer processor or both that's making the difference? The newer video card may also be helping?

These are the specs; i59400F, 8 gig ram, 240 gig SSD, 1 TB hardrive, GTX1050Ti 4gig video card.

I thought I would share my experience in case there are forum users out there considering upgrading.

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JonFZ300 · Jun 29, 2019

I did the same thing for the same reasons. I never took the laptop anywhere after I got a decent phone. I had the laptop hooked up to a monitor and when it died, I got a desktop. The laptop was 4 gigs of ram, the desktop came with 8 and I added 8 more for 16.

The rest of the specs are stock and pretty middle-of-the-road, but it only lags if I have multiple windows open and try to do multiple powerful commands at the same time. For imaging editing it chews through anything pretty quickly.

CherylL · Jun 29, 2019

I had my desktop built several years ago by a tech friend. He builds gaming computers and I think he was more excited than me. At the time it was the fastest he has built. I needed mine for video and After Effects. If you have your cache set up to your SSD then it is faster than setting it up to the hard drive. The downside is that the cache builds up fast! At least with Premiere Pro and After Effects I was running out of room fast. I did switch my cache files to the hard drive and didn't see speed slow down that much. I do empty my cache files once a year. Which you could do more often. When you open an old project then the program will rebuild the files needed. I do have 32 gig of ram. My only regret is not getting a bigger SSD. I was told by fellow video editors to not do a disc defrag on the SSD. I did the first year and haven't since.

dxqcanada · Jun 29, 2019

stapo49 said:
I am not sure if it is the SSD or the newer processor or both that's making the difference? The newer video card may also be helping?

All of the above.

Alhazred · Jul 22, 2019

CPU and RAM did help for sure to increase the performaces.
While editing a photo, to use an SSD or an HDD doesn't make a difference, in that phase you are working with the RAM, Lightroom just save a really small amount of data on the drive while editing, only those info to put inside its database which are really not relevant at all.
GPU (the graphic card) can help if you enabled the GPU Acceleration in Lightroom, which should be disabled by default.
The problem is that Lightroom is not good to take advantage of multicore/multi cpu and such.
If I were you, I did put more RAM, nowadays it is really cheap and 8GB is the basic (even smartphones now have 8GB of RAM), specially if you have a camera which generates big raw files. If I had to buy a new PC now, I wouldn't put less than 16GB.

smoke665 · Jul 22, 2019

The SSD and the graphics card with onboard ram make the most significant difference in speed. 8gb of ram is really to little. Adobe recommends 12gb as the min. I'm running 16gb ram, and 6gb on a GTX1060.

It's easy to fill up a 240gb SSD, but not impossible to work with. Just make sure all non-speed essential programs are installed on the HD, and dump all the bloatware that came with the computer.

Put your Lr catalog and preview cache on your SSD, and your images on your HD. Lr doesn't care where your images are, as long as it knows where they are stored. The editing information is all in the catalog.

Lr gives you three choices of previews on import, Standard, embedded, and minimal. When editing in the Develop mode, Lr, requires the Standard, but building those takes time, and eats up space in your cache. If you use the minimal or embedded initially you can speed up things, and save space by only building the 1:1 (standard) on the images you need to edit. Also limiting your preview size by choosing the amount that is closest to the longest edge of your screen resolution, but not shorter than it, saves time and space. The 1:1 previews can quickly eat up a lot of space, by having a plan in place to discard them on a regular basis you can prevent the waste of space on your SSD (Lr can always rebuild the preview if needed later).

By default Lr, has Autowrite XMP turned on. I leave it on because I don't have to remember to save my changes, but it can slow down processing.

Lr Cache is where you'll find some issues with only 8gb of ram. By default Lr sets 1gb as cache, but Adobe recommends much more. Having 10gb or more will dramatically improve performance.

If you have a USB 3.1 or higher port, you can install an external SSD drive and use it as a scratch disk for Ps, which will reduce the demand on you internal SSD, but not hamper you. I haven't tried it yet, because I haven't had space issues on the internal SSD, but supposedly my Thunderbolt 3 port with transfer speeds of 40gb would allow me to put Lr's catalog and preview cache on the external SSD, without significant performance issue.

Lastly, I don't use Lr mobile and have Lr Synch disabled. It's a huge processor drain. If you have to have it, set it it up to run overnight, or when you're away from the computer. Also make sure you are optimizing your catalog on a regular basis.

Scott Whaley · Jul 22, 2019

I have both a laptop and a desktop computer. I much prefer the desktop over the laptop for photo and music editing. My desktop computer is actually a gaming computer and I have 3 monitors connected to it. My main monitor is a 36" Samsung TV connected via HDMI cable. The other two monitors are 27" monitors: One on each side of the 36" monitor. You need a lot of power when working with photos and music. A gaming computer does the trick for me.

smoke665 · Jul 22, 2019

Scott Whaley said:
A gaming computer does the trick for me.

Agree, only I have a gaming laptop, for ease of travel. I found that most of the requirements for gaming were also good things to have for photo editing.

Original katomi · Jul 22, 2019

I have pse9 I use 32g ram i5 processer I store all my pics on external hdd even then I am pushing it, but I push the limits all the time in photography the photo on the wall is 72 inches by 12 made up from 12 shots and when saved as a tiff is over 1gig. If you can get more ram it may help,