# Help needed lightroom and photoshop machine for editing 5d mkiii raw



## jpjeff (Mar 12, 2013)

Hi all,

I keenly read the imac post and would love to get your thoughts on the route to go for a mainly lightroom machine, with a little photoshop and home video editing.

Currently i have asus ux31 laptop that i have been using for the above but lightroom is so slow the specs are:-

1.7GHz Core i5-2557M processor, 4GB of RAM 256gb solid-state drive.

I have read that i need more 16gb+ ram and two harddrives 1) os 2) cache.

The wife likes the idea of a imac 3.4ghz as less wires and looks cool. This will be expensive to spec up and only has one hard drive although could have a 2nd via thunderbold port. I would have to run windows as cant get my head round mac os so all up looking at about $4000.

I am leaning to spend less on a pc machine. However i would like it to be near silent (probably water cooled) and with a nice looking high res monitor 27" to satisfy the wife that it looks nice.

I don't mind spending the money if i will see a dramatic improvement in lightroom, but the last thing i want to do is spend the money on either system and have similar speeds i am experiencing,

Would love to get your thoughts and many thanks in advance.


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## ecka (Mar 12, 2013)

What made a dramatic improvement in lightroom, for me, is RAM Disk. I have 32GB of RAM in my machine and the bigger part of it (25GB) is used for RAM Disk. It is like 20 times faster than SSD (~9GB/sec). However, for video editing you may need more RAM (?64GB).


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## verysimplejason (Mar 12, 2013)

ecka said:


> What made a dramatic improvement in lightroom, for me, is RAM Disk. I have 32GB of RAM in my machine and the bigger part of it (25GB) is used for RAM Disk. It is like 20 times faster than SSD (~9GB/sec). However, for video editing you may need more RAM (?64GB).



+1. You need more RAM and you have to make it your priority. Other specs are secondary.


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## jpjeff (Mar 12, 2013)

Wow that is a huge difference thanks for your help


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## iKenndac (Mar 12, 2013)

More RAM is certainly a good idea - 4Gb isn't enough. However! A poster above said he'd reserved 25Gb for a RAM disk, which only leaves 7Gb for the OS and other applications. Lightroom uses a ton of RAM, and if it runs out it'll start using the pagefile, which means hitting the hard drive, which gives a big slowdown. With 32Gb of RAM there's no reason _not_ to use a RAM disk, but personally I'd leave a little more available for applications to use and have a smaller RAM disk. However, this is one of those things where experimentation will find the best sweet spot.



> 1.7GHz Core i5-2557M processor



This is going to be your second bottleneck after RAM. Lightroom is very CPU heavy (more so than Apple's Aperture, which offloads a lot more work to the graphics card than Lightroom) and I'm noticing my computer (which has a 3.2GHz i5 CPU) bogging down sometimes with 18MP pictures from my 60D when I'm doing batch edits and such.

Also, I looked up the spec sheet of that CPU (here) and it says the CPU only supports up to 8Gb of RAM. I'm not sure if that's true, but you may wish to double-check before throwing RAM at it.


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## lolo0476 (Mar 12, 2013)

+1 for Ram. You have only 4Go of ram, this is enough if you use your windows and smalls applications. If you want to win a little bit of time, increase your ram, 16Go can be enough if you don't work all the time with photoshop or editing video. The more you will do the more time you will loose if your system is not enough.
Another thing is your OS. You need a windows OS working with 64Bit. If not you won't be able to use so much memory and so you won't win anything putting more RAM.
So first : OS system in 64Bit
Second : put more memory. look how much you can put on your motherboard. More is better, but you will really feel a difference between 4 and 16 Go. If you can more it will be easier as well.
Later you can change processor I7 is faster and will increase the power of your computer (but needs memory too).
Hope that will help you.


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## jacomaree (Mar 12, 2013)

i'm currently running the Mid 2011 27" iMac - specced up: Core i7 3.4GHz, 16GB Ram, 2GB ATI Graphics, 256GB SSD(OS & Apps) & 1TB SATA HDD (storage). i have a HP 24" IPS monitor as a 2nd display.

i'm using Lightroom 4 with Adobe CS6 Master collection. i do most of my editing in Lightroom and will use Photoshop to do my HDRs and Panoramas. this machine will run through stitching 10+ photos into a Panorama in a couple of minutes with no trouble... 

if you go for an iMac, it's worth speccing it up to a faster CPU and definitely upgrade the RAM to the MAX (my iMac above can "unofficially" support 32GB now, need to upgrade...). SSD is very nice indeed and makes the loading of OS and your apps VERY fast...


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## yablonsky (Mar 12, 2013)

I use a DELL xps desktop pc with a i5-750 cpu. 4 cores. Win7 64Bit. Photoshop CS6 64 Bit. 8GB Memory.
That works great with my 5D mark II RAW files. Parallel processing is the key.


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## lolo0476 (Mar 12, 2013)

other thing, you will probably change your processor. Intel specs shows that it doesn't manage more than 8Go (have a look on intel's website).
I7 will be perfect and manage 32Go (I5 3rd generation manage 32Go of ram as well). Depends on how much you want to spend. 
Ram disk will be necessary if you want to work on very large film. As videos.


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## ecka (Mar 12, 2013)

iKenndac said:


> More RAM is certainly a good idea - 4Gb isn't enough. However! A poster above said he'd reserved 25Gb for a RAM disk, which only leaves 7Gb for the OS and other applications. Lightroom uses a ton of RAM, and if it runs out it'll start using the pagefile, which means hitting the hard drive, which gives a big slowdown. With 32Gb of RAM there's no reason _not_ to use a RAM disk, but personally I'd leave a little more available for applications to use and have a smaller RAM disk. However, this is one of those things where experimentation will find the best sweet spot.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I forgot to mention that my 3GB paging file is located on the RAM Disk as well


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## jpjeff (Mar 12, 2013)

Thanks everyone for the advice  ;D

Unfortunately this laptop looks nice does not allow upgrade of ram (similar to mac book air). So appears i will have to bit the bullet and go for new system.

Seems to me the key for lightroom system

1) Ram as much as possible
2) processor i7 best that can support lots of ram

Did not know anything about ram disk so have read up. seems interesting if have lots of ram. also came accross this has anyone had any experience with supercache? Seems to be similar to ram disk but mirrors rather than load everything.

http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/supercache.php

Again thanks everyone for your help


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## axtstern (Mar 12, 2013)

There are a few more aspects to consider:

Fan noise:
The perfect Light room PC (as I tried to build one by myself) is usually also used as an Internet PC, as a gaming PC etc.. depending on the demand in your family. Working though a pile of let us say 100 pieces of 60d Raws turned out to be a pain as the cooling settings I had foreseen did not fit to working quietly on a blog and the noise onslaught the PC presented when the processor load was multiplied by Light room. Especially the fact that the different cooling fans (CPU + Graphics card +Chassis) shifted their RPMs quiet often was annoying. So if you can influence it go for a chassis with fans as huge and slow turning as possible (250 mm). While there are plenty of Software/Bios/UEFI solutions to control the fans inside your computer it makes life a little complicated to find the right balance. In my PC I have all internal coolers on auto mode bound to a temperature threshold but the 250mm main chassis cooler has from factory a 3 stop manual cooler. I use this cooler on low for all my standard non heat intensive sessions and switch it to medium for Light room/Panorama/HDR sessions. Higher noise level but now the PC needs almost an hour of heavy load before the internal heat sources heat the inside of the PC so far that they start to influence each other. The fan noise in this configuration does not change pitch and is less of a distraction.

Disk Space:
Consider add-ons and plug-ins in regard to disk space. I once was careless enough to batch the NIK noise reduction software out of Light room to denoise 200 Gig of 60d Rows. That is 1 Terra of additional Gifs you add to your system and todays green HDs are behaving not so green anymore once they have a constant write access for hours (Hot hard disks heat up a small chassis quiet remarkably). If you system is designed to hold a mix of HDs (mine has a 256 Gig SMD for Windows and Light room + 2x2 Terra conventional HDs for Photos and Backup) you should pay attention to the RPMs. High-end fast spinning and reliable HDs are usually server HDs (not optimized to be silent). They whine at a high frequency and if there is more than one you might discover that their nuances in RPM deliver a resonating combined frequency. Talking about Terras of disk space might sound fast fetched but with canons new models waiting to be announced and 4K ante portas....

Graphic Card:
AMD and NVidia have different models to offer their calculating power to light room. Some Plug-ins for Light room crash when they do not like your card. This can be circumvented by not allowing the Plug-in to use graphic card resources but that leaves you with a slow system and requires some knowledge to be applied if the plug -in is not even starting.

Backup:
In the IT world there is the law: all non backuped Data is by definition unimportant Data. I'm a little paranoid with that. I backup one HD in my PC onto another. If a thief steals my camera, that is a loss of money. If a thief steals my PC that is a lifetime of memory gone. So I backup onto an external drive. This drive has to be as far away from your PC as risks connect to it. Consider what network speeds, connectors like E-sata etc... your Workstation should have. If you decide for a NAS: verify if your mainboard can keep up the magic 3x3 formula that is running SATA3 (Disks) PCIX3 (Graphics) and Gigabit Ethernet at the same time without putting load on the CPU. I have seen powerful multicore systems being rendered useless for hours because the backup process supposed to run in the background used up 70% of CPU resources due to the mainboard not being able to handle the Datastreams.


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## ecka (Mar 12, 2013)

jpjeff said:


> Thanks everyone for the advice  ;D
> 
> Unfortunately this laptop looks nice does not allow upgrade of ram (similar to mac book air). So appears i will have to bit the bullet and go for new system.
> 
> ...



I think that supercache is very similar to SSD caching, only using a RAM Disk instead of SSD. This way you are letting the system itself to decide which data needs to be cached. I don't trust the machine , so I prefer to manage it myself. I tried 5-6 different RAM Disk softwares and decided to go with Primo Ramdisk, because it seems to be the most stable and simple to use (and one of the faster ones). My system is running 24/7 without reboot for many months and I would lose all the data on RAM Disk if the system crashes. It never happened, but I'm using copies nonetheless.
My system:
i7-3770K - because I'm running it 24/7 and it is more power efficient (google Virtu MVP)
GTX 670 - CUDA cores + I like games too
Sabertooth Z77 - just because 
32GB 1600MHz (4x8GB) RAM
Vertex 4 SSD
10TB external storage


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## jpjeff (Mar 12, 2013)

axtstern said:


> There are a few more aspects to consider:
> 
> Fan noise:
> The perfect Light room PC (as I tried to build one by myself) is usually also used as an Internet PC, as a gaming PC etc.. depending on the demand in your family. Working though a pile of let us say 100 pieces of 60d Raws turned out to be a pain as the cooling settings I had foreseen did not fit to working quietly on a blog and the noise onslaught the PC presented when the processor load was multiplied by Light room. Especially the fact that the different cooling fans (CPU + Graphics card +Chassis) shifted their RPMs quiet often was annoying. So if you can influence it go for a chassis with fans as huge and slow turning as possible (250 mm). While there are plenty of Software/Bios/UEFI solutions to control the fans inside your computer it makes life a little complicated to find the right balance. In my PC I have all internal coolers on auto mode bound to a temperature threshold but the 250mm main chassis cooler has from factory a 3 stop manual cooler. I use this cooler on low for all my standard non heat intensive sessions and switch it to medium for Light room/Panorama/HDR sessions. Higher noise level but now the PC needs almost an hour of heavy load before the internal heat sources heat the inside of the PC so far that they start to influence each other. The fan noise in this configuration does not change pitch and is less of a distraction.
> ...



Thanks for the conphensive post really helpful

Fan noise is some to consider particularly if i go self build vs. imac. I was thinking with watercooling cheaper now and easier to install that this may be the way to go. For the hard disks i was thinking two ssd drives one OS and one for pictures. This should also reduce heat and noise. Now I have been introduced to Ram disk i think i will investigate this option aswell. 

In terms of disk space my workflow is i pull pictures into lightroom then achive out via gigabit ethernet to 6 bay Nas that is in raid 5, key photos i sync to cloud. This is covers my disk space needs.

I will read up on graphics cards and plugin with lightroom any recomendations of preference? I have previously prefered nivida for video encoding.

Thanks for the watch out on backin up i will check this ou,

Again thanks for the post


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## jpjeff (Mar 12, 2013)

ecka said:


> jpjeff said:
> 
> 
> > Thanks everyone for the advice  ;D
> ...



Thanks for the tip my machine currently runs 24/7 so will follow your recomendations, i will also check primo ramdisk


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## ecka (Mar 12, 2013)

jpjeff said:


> ecka said:
> 
> 
> > jpjeff said:
> ...



Just remember that Z77/LGA1155 system can only have 32GB of RAM maximum. If you decide to have more, then you need X79/LGA2011 system, which suggests i7-3930K CPU.

P.S. Watercooling isn't really any quieter. I'm using Zalman CNPS12X cooler, which is pretty silent and gives me nice temps from 26C idle to around 40something'C on load.


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## ECRoyce (Mar 12, 2013)

The system I built for myself is an i5-based quad core. It does everything I need it to do in Lightroom 4.3 and Photoshop/Premiere Elements 11. I have done a few basic video edits, but mostly stills. Not doing too many complicated things, but I have noticed most PSE processes, with a few exceptions are single threaded.

CPU) 3570k overclocked on air to 4.3Ghz. aftermarket air cooler, but it isn't anything spectacular (used CPU didn't come with heatsink), although probably is slightly beefier and fan is slightly more robust than the stock unit. I run the fan at 35% under normal conditions, which is just barely audible if you really try, and target temp at 70-deg C. Fan rarely kicks up, usually only when I am making sharpening/NR or other real-time slider adjustments. The chasis is semi open-air (gaming case) and I probably hear the GPU fan more often.

Disks) my boot/OS/app drive is a newer SanDisk Extreme, which gets close to 500MB/sec r/w speeds (real word speeds). Apps are here, LR catalog is here, scratch is here (probably shouldn't be since it may be decreasing the life of the drive, will probably move to a striped HDD RAID-0 config). Original pic files (jpg mostly/ some raw) are on mirrored (RAID-1) slow-speed drive pair (75MB/sec), but seems to not hold me back too badly. I may change this to a RAID-5 at some point, but so far don't have the need.

RAM) considered going 32GB originally, but only bought 16GB (2x8GB) of PC3-1600 and it seems to be enough. if I have EVERYTHING I possibly can open (LR, PSE with 5 open projects, dozens of browser tabs with flash and java apps, XP-Mode VPC, video capture app, etc, etc) I get to 70% used.

Power consuption) idle, the system (using integrated video and single drive config), draws 25-30w. another 20w for the add-on GPU. a few watts per platter-based hard drive. No real heat comes off it anywhere, but may be largely because of the already good airflow the gaming case provides.

Like I said, it is handling everything I need to do very nicely. Big upgrade from my 4yr-old Core2Duo system. All-in cost, for the case, CPU, RAM, SSD, INCLUDING reused GPU/PSU, but NOT counting reused extra HDDs, was right around $550. 

You can spend the extra $100-125 on a 3770k, but I'd recommend only maybe if you are doing a lot of video encoding that can take advantage of the 4 extra threads. Also, I know a lot of people like to spend oodles of extras on the latest and greatest fan/water coolers and other gadgets, but when the equipment is rated to run hotter, why not let it, and keep your $$$/performance lower?


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## jpjeff (Mar 12, 2013)

ECRoyce said:


> The system I built for myself is an i5-based quad core. It does everything I need it to do in Lightroom 4.3 and Photoshop/Premiere Elements 11. I have done a few basic video edits, but mostly stills. Not doing too many complicated things, but I have noticed most PSE processes, with a few exceptions are single threaded.
> 
> CPU) 3570k overclocked on air to 4.3Ghz. aftermarket air cooler, but it isn't anything spectacular (used CPU didn't come with heatsink), although probably is slightly beefier and fan is slightly more robust than the stock unit. I run the fan at 35% under normal conditions, which is just barely audible if you really try, and target temp at 70-deg C. Fan rarely kicks up, usually only when I am making sharpening/NR or other real-time slider adjustments. The chasis is semi open-air (gaming case) and I probably hear the GPU fan more often.
> 
> ...



Thanks really practical advice and glad to hear your system run lightroom smoothly...so frustrated at the the moment.  

Lots to think about


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## iKenndac (Mar 12, 2013)

ecka said:


> I forgot to mention that my 3GB paging file is located on the RAM Disk as well



Paging incurs some (but not much) overhead, so if you made your RAM disk 3Gb smaller and allowed the system to directly address that RAM rather than going through a pagefile you'd get better performance. Your method is still faster than hitting a spinning disk, but it does seem a tad… silly.


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## ecka (Mar 12, 2013)

iKenndac said:


> ecka said:
> 
> 
> > I forgot to mention that my 3GB paging file is located on the RAM Disk as well
> ...



The thing is that some programs (like older ones, 32bit) require a paging file to operate, so I'm simply cheating . Otherwise I would just turn it off. I agree, it does seem a tad silly, however, I rarely use more than 7GB of RAM. Normally it is only 5-6GB, which includes ~1GB for web browser, ~1.5GB OS and background services and ~3-4GB for LR and stuff...


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## RendrLab (Mar 12, 2013)

I was in your same shoes almost two years ago and decided and building my PC rather than stuff more $ into Steve Jobs pockets. I never really have been a “Mac” kind of person and their prices are laughable to say the least.

Generally, two years is a LONG time in PC parts market and what you bought then can’t match what is out today, but with the introduction of the Intel Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge CPU’s, Moore’s Law and the processors reaching the market have slowed.

I bought an Intel i7 2600k CPU, and a real nice Asus Motherboard. Since I didn't have a ton of cash to throw at the build at that time, I bought the other components as I could based on what I wanted my Dream PC to be eventually. Fast forward two years and my PC is a Beast. I have 32GB of Corsair Memory which I bought 8GB at a time (on sale), a 60GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (which was my Primary Drive for a bit, now turned to my scratch disk), a Corsair Neutron GTX 120GB SSD (All reviews of this drive say it is the fastest to date, plus has 5 year warranty), x2 WD Green 2TB SATA-3 HDD in RAID 1 (with the WD Idle Timer turned way up), and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660. The only parts I’ve bought in last 2 years was the Corsair SSD and I bought a PNY Quadro video card as I do a lot of 3D work. The original GeForce is still in the PC as well as I do play World of Tanks from time-to-time and Quadro cards are not meant for gaming.

My point is, building a PC is by far a better option than dropping $3,000 on a Mac with half the specs and limited upgradability choices. Plus, if you buy name brand parts for your build, each component should have its own warranty which is generally no shorter than 1-2 years.

As for noise, I didn’t go water cooled or the big fan route. I bought a bunch of 90mm Scythe case fans which are low RPM/low noise (even at full speed) and move massive amounts of air. They were not cheap ($15-$20/per fan) but I’m still whisper quiet and under the cost of water cooling my PC. Also consider getting an aftermarket CPU cooler as the OEM generally sucks and is not that quiet. I spent like $25 on a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 CPU cooler and my system idles at 26° overclocked to 4.5GHz. My PC hasn’t been shutoff more than a handful of times and I have never had a single problem.

Using Green drives for data backup might get some moans and groans from some on here, but if you change the Spindown time on the drives they are absolutely great, especially for the price. Besides, if you are exporting from LR it’s doing so in the background anyway so you can keep on plugging along on other things.


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## RLPhoto (Mar 20, 2013)

With 4000$, you could build a ludicrous win7 machine. Far, far more powerful than any apple machine for that price. 

I'm still running an e6600 c2D machine I built in 2006! It runs great.


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