Hi to all,
I am building a new pc and would like to know your thoughts on what specs I should aim for to edit the photos.
Thanks
Brenden
Best video card you can reasonably afford, then build the computer around that…
2 Likes
Reasonably decent multicore processor and a good video card are the keys for Photolab. Recommend Ryzen CPUs and Nvidia RTX 3060/70/80 GPU.
System ram isn’t that important as long as you have at least 16GB. You don’t need more than that for Photolab. If you use other tools more memory may be useful.
4 Likes
Similar questions have been asked and one of the answers was to check out gaming PCs. You’ll not need overclocking though.
2 Likes
Microprocessor: i9 might be overkill; a modern i7 might be all that you need.
Graphics card with enough dedicated RAM is a must for Deep Prime, etc.
If you can afford it 64 GB RAM; For me, 32 GB RAM is my lower limit.
SSD drive: 1 TB Bet you can afford. Something like: SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 Internal Solid State Drive
HDD for image storage: 18 TB. One or two.
Extra cooling fans, silent ones.
Make sure your motherboard has enough fast ports to meet your current and future needs. USB-C; USB 3.1, Thunderbolt?
Look at what Puget Systems recommends for photo desktops: Workstations for Adobe Photoshop | Puget Systems
2 Likes
FWIW
I recently finished my own new build
CPU i5 13600K
GPU nVidia RTX 3060 (Gigabyte brand
32GB of DDR4 Crucial RAM
Motherboard Gigabyte Z790 D DDR
2 off Crucial M2.SSD (one 500GB for the OS & a 1 TB for the programs)
3 off WD HDDs (two off 4TB for images and a 6TB for other data including Windows system backups)
The PC case is a Fractal Design Define 7 and is whisper quiet…when working harder I can hear the GPU fans spin up but that is minimally intrusive.
I might at some time in future double the ram to 64GB
On my old system PL used to take approx 12 seconds to open, now under 6 seconds. My MS Office suite, Word and Excel open so quickly I can not time it.
Boot time is approx 10 seconds 
PS the only pre-built computer in the house is my OH’s laptop.
1 Like
Interesting that you are using an i5, wouldn’t an i7 have been better for very little extra cost?
It will last longer after some amount of microsoft updates 
IIRC the price difference i5 to i7 was around the £100…in the cost of the whole PC that was approx a 10% increase…so not huge but that £100 was a bit too much to add to the whole project.
The i5 13600K does have good benchmarking compared to the i7 13700K 
UserBenchmark: Intel Core i5-13600K vs i7-13700K
Intel Core i5-13600K vs Intel Core i7-13700K [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software
Point taken, I will see how the boot time increases over time
This will provide no improvement in DXO performance. So if that’s why you’re doing it you can save the money. Even 32GB Ram is overkill but you’ll be able to be working on multiple things at once which can be nice sometimes. (DXO and other tools.)
Enjoy. DXO should run decently fast.
2 Likes
There is a US based company that has done all the research for you:
Nvidia is advertising their new GTX 4060 cards for about $300.