Recommendations for a new photo editing computer (+ info on system performance)

[roelwillems]

I'm also very happy with the monitor. It became a possibility as the total price of the PC system came in way less than a reasonably fast (but still not nearly as powerful as the PC build) iMac.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I'm also very happy with the monitor. It became a possibility as the total price of the PC system came in way less than a reasonably fast (but still not nearly as powerful as the PC build) iMac.

Yeah, the iMac is a great unit, but AMD is currently offering more net CPU power for the money right now. Apple should consider using Ryzen CPUs so they can push beyond their current offerings. They shouldn’t even be selling quad core desktops anymore, IMO.

 

[roelwillems]

The results are in!

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

The score used in this benchmark is based on the performance relative to a reference system with the following specifications:

• Intel Core i9 9900K 8 Core
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB
• 64GB of RAM
• Samsung 960 Pro 1TB
• Windows 10 (1903)
• Adobe Lighroom Classic CC 2019 (ver. 8.4)
• Overall Score: 1000 (11% faster)
• Active Tasks Score: 100 (3% faster)
• Passive Tasks Score: 100 (20% faster)

Interesting enough it's only a few points (19 to be specific) lower than the results Puget Systems has for their own Ryzen 9 x3900 system (see spoiler for the detailed results. But that's still very decent as that system has 64GB RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB. The RAM seems less of a "bottleneck", LR didn't run out of RAM on my test. Which shows as the "active tasks" score ( is even beter than the Puget test systems). But overall I guess having a +$1000 GPU in the Puget System did help the performance just a bit (vs the mid-range GPU in my system).

Spoiler: Puget System deep-dive test results of AMD Ryzen, Treadripper, Intel i9, i7

The Ryzen 9 x3900 12 core test system specs:

• AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, Noctua NH-U12S cooler
• Gigabyte X570 AORUS ULTRA (more highend version of the motherboard in my system)
• 4x DDR4-2933 16GB (64GB total)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB
• Samsung 960 Pro 1TB SSD

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

LR and PS are strange programs anyway when it comes to leveraging hardware. More CPU threads is really handy on large imports, as each thread can go to work on making a 1:1 preview. The GPU steps in on some of the editing, zooming, and exporting, but even that only shows marginal returns on investment as you go up in hardware. That's why the 12C/24T 3900X is a really good choice for post processing, it just sees more work than the GPU does. The RTX 2080 would be overkill here, but great for games. I'd also be surprised to see either program run out the 16GB of RAM unless you edit really, really large files. Of the 16GB of RAM I have in my system, half of it is currently free--it's not even in a standby state, where frequently used programs are cached. 32GB+ RAM is for the folks who want to run 3 VMs at the same time.

 

[roelwillems]

Agreed, hopefully Adobe will slowly rebuild the software to take advantage of the extra cores when editing. Although it is more than fast enough already, nice to finally see edits appearing real-time on screen. I did prefer the additional cores of the x3900 over the Ryzen 7 mostly to be future proof but the difference right now would be hardly noticeable I guess.

The GPU (RTX 2060) was included in the pre-build system and does speed up " Enhanced details" in LR significantly but from what I read a Geforce GTX 6gb is almost as fast for all other tasks (I had the GTX in my initial parts list but as the pre-build system came with the RTX so I'm not complaining).

 

[Chris5107]

Nice system for sure. I am sure start up times are great. One benefit of the new components.

 

[wjiang]

I'd like to think so, but many algorithms don't lend themselves well to parallel processing. GPU acceleration may be more of a performance gain than parallelization in a lot of cases.

GPUs on the whole are even more parallel than CPUs, with thousands of special compute cores rather than fewer generalised ALUs. They can only speed up very specialised operations.

 

[MonikaO]

Gratz on your new setup @roelwillems , it looks pretty good
I really like the case with the red light.
I myself am big on gaming (WOW- FF14- Guidlwars2 ect) so need a good gaming Pc.
Its doing great for editing too

 

[roelwillems]

@MonikaO after a few day’s I’m already used to the case and light. I like it best with red or orange lights (completely off looks strange).

I’m not a huge gamer myself but did try World of Warships (which I like to play on iPad from time to time) and it’s quite impressive on the highest settings and a 27” screen.

 

[SojiOkita]

I'll may try to upgrade my system soon (it's from 2013).
How is Lightroom Classic on your system? Is it really fast?

I'll probably download the PugetBench to have an idea of how much an upgrade will speed up my system.
(I'm talking about upgrade but I'll keep some drives and my case at best...)

 

[roelwillems]

@SojiOkita Lightroom Classic CC is realy fast on the new system. No lag on any editing tasks, but it's hard to explain how fast "fast" is. Using the PugetBench software will give you a good idea of performance. I would also recommend reading this article.

I do still feel that Lightroom is not well-built software. Running it on the new system the software feels fast but in some places, it gives the impression that it is not at fast as you would expect on a system with this kind of performance. As an example; LR seems to re-render parts of the interface when you switching from the library to develop module, the switching isn't slow but it makes it feel a bit slow(er). Strangely the system is hardly working at all (between 3%-13% CPU load) so it's just the software.
But I digress, it is a bit nitpicking, the editing is flawless.

Regarding drives: I have loaded the original images on the 2 TB spinning drive (7200 rpm) and this sometimes is only slightly slower when scrolling trough the complete library with all images vs all originals on the M.2 SSD. The difference is hardly noticeable and no difference when editing. Where you store your originals has obviously little to do with raw disk speed as the 2T disk has 160MB/s vs 3480 MB/s read speed on the M.2 SSD. So I would definitely recommend reusing your current disks.

 

[SojiOkita]

@SojiOkita Lightroom Classic CC is realy fast on the new system. No lag on any editing tasks, but it's hard to explain how fast "fast" is. Using the PugetBench software will give you a good idea of performance. I would also recommend reading this article.

Thanks for the link.
I'm quite surprised they advise a standard SSD for the system, and a NVMe SSD for the project files.
I'll probably put the catalog and previews on the same SSD as the system, though.

I do still feel that Lightroom is not well-built software.

When I use it during several hours, I sometimes have to close it and restart it in order to restore part of the performance.
It's the only soft for which I have to do this (it's also the only soft I use long hours and that really needs performance).

Regarding drives: I have loaded the original images on the 2 TB spinning drive (7200 rpm) and this sometimes is only slightly slower when scrolling trough the complete library with all images vs all originals on the M.2 SSD. The difference is hardly noticeable and no difference when editing. Where you store your originals has obviously little to do with raw disk speed as the 2T disk has 160MB/s vs 3480 MB/s read speed on the M.2 SSD. So I would definitely recommend reusing your current disks.

I'll probably just buy one M.2 SSD for the system. I already have 2 on my current computer, that I'll keep (at least one of them, the other being is 7 years old and only 240 Gb).
I also have 2 internal HDD (one for pictures & videos, the other ones for automatic backups).
I would have loved a "100% SSD" system, because they are silent, but even if the prices went down, that's still too expensive.

 

[AmritR]

I’m reading people are using harddrive’s in their pc. Which by the way is perfectly fine, just make a backup every now and then.

Two years ago I made a different setup. I only have one m.2 ssd in my pc, and a moved all data to a NAS with raid 1. So two HD’s are an exact copy of each other. The used NAS also supports btfrs scrubbing.
And every few months make a backup of the NAS with an external HD.
( all HD’s from HGST)

This way data storage is disconnected from your pc, no noisy HD’s in a PC under your table, but in a NAS some where else in your house or garage. You’ll be surprised how much noise even fairly quite HD’s still make.
You can easily access your pics from whatever pc, laptop, mac, ipad you are using, and reinstalling a OS or a new pc has little impact.
Also nice if you have a lot of digital music, and are using a music steamer.

I don’t know how this would work out for video. Then you might need more local storage, and move end results to the NAS

 

[SojiOkita]

This way data storage is disconnected from your pc, no noisy HD’s in a PC under your table, but in a NAS some where else in your house or garage. You’ll be surprised how much noise even fairly quite HD’s still make.

Yes. I'll think of that when I'll have a quick network at home (which is not the case yet, I'm on wifi).
However, I think local drives will always be quicker than drives on a NAS, even for accessing my pictures in Lightroom.
The day I have a proper network... I'll probably move away my internal "backup drive" in the NAS (the one I use for incremental backups every day).

 

[roelwillems]

I'll probably just buy one M.2 SSD for the system.

Yes, that's also my current setup, one M.2 SSD for Windows and all programs (including the catalog, cache and previews). Currently my images would still fit this disk but I will need more room in the future, so opted to start using the spinning disk as performance is hardly impacted.

I would have loved a "100% SSD" system, because they are silent, but even if the prices went down, that's still too expensive.

Large SSD's are still quite expensive and the improvement in speed would be hardly noticeable. So for me, the spinning disk for the originals is fine right now. Maybe in the future, when the catalog out grows the HDD I will add an SSD for storing more current work and keep the spinning disk for older photos.

This way data storage is disconnected from your pc, no noisy HD’s in a PC under your table, but in a NAS some where else in your house or garage.

That is a nice solution! It would be nice to quite down the system even more, but due to the glass panels (adds quite a bit of weight) the HDD noise is well contained within the case.
I do have an external disk hooked up to my router which acts as a second backup (third being Backblaze), and that disk is noisy but nicely tucked away in a closet.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I actually don’t use my NVMe drive for Windows, as a standard SATA SSD is more than fast enough for the OS and general programs. I use the NVMe drive to hold my active photo library and my active Steam library.

 

[davidzvi]

I actually don’t use my NVMe drive for Windows, as a standard SATA SSD is more than fast enough for the OS and general programs. I use the NVMe drive to hold my active photo library and my active Steam library.

I don't have one large enough for that yet. But I do have my LR catalog on it.

 

[davidzvi]

Even so the SSD I'm using is a lot faster than the HDD I use for mass storage.

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

 

[roelwillems]

The SSD is certainly faster, but Lightroom doesn't use the original files very much so the performance is not limited by raw disk speed when editing. Although the SSD will be faster on importing large amounts of photos vs regular HDD.

 

[BosseBe]

Even so the SSD I'm using is a lot faster than the HDD I use for mass storage.

View attachment 803075

May I guess that the drives above are:
Upper left M2.SSD PCI-E3
Upper Right SATA SSD
Lower Left HDD 5400 RPM
Lower Right HDD 7200 RPM

The new M2.SSDs with PCI-E4 seems to be twice as fast as PCI-E3, so that could well make an impact on speed in processing as now the speed actually equals the memory speed.
So my take from this is that a M2.SSD PCI-E4 for system/cache and really fast RAM (3200 or above) should be optimal for the processing part.
For culling and loading lots of pictures you might need a M2.SSD PCI-E3 or PCI-E4 to speed it up.
Maybe a solution is to have new pictures on a M2.SSD and then move them to storage after first culling/processing?