Upgrade/New PC advice please

Porker · 15 Sep 2022 at 18:56

I recently upgraded my camera which now produce 45MB images. When opening a load in LR and PS for editing, my PC tends to grind to a halt. Plus if I try anything else at the same time, the old egg timer regularly appears and an age seems to go by before my PC becomes responsive again. Current PC bought from OC in 2015 - 16GB RAM, i7-6700, 1080 Nvidia card card, 500GB SSD, Win 10 (doesn't pass 11 test) and a BenQ 32" 4k monitor. I don't really game that much anymore, but do use VR occasionally (an old Oculus Rift from 2017). I'd like to do some video editing in the future as have tons of family videos to digitise.

I use it a lot for work, so multiple documents, spreadsheets and powerpoints open all the time!

Am I best putting in another 16Gb of RAM or biting the bullet and getting a new system and moving to Windows 11 (not the monitor of course)

If the latter, can you please suggest a spec that's powerful enough to handle my needs and see me through for another 7 years or so. I'm getting on, so no longer follow all the latest hardware news and specs.

Many thanks

MissChief · 15 Sep 2022 at 19:15

Do we have a budget? Are you sure your editing software of choice supports GPU acceleration? Is your Windows on the SSD and how much space do you have free? What speed is the RAM?

Tetras · 15 Sep 2022 at 19:25

Do you transfer the images from your camera to your computer before loading them in LR/PS?

If you run task manager while you're loading them, what is it that's running at 100%?

Porker · 15 Sep 2022 at 19:56

MissChief said:
Do we have a budget? Are you sure your editing software of choice supports GPU acceleration? Is your Windows on the SSD and how much space do you have free? What speed is the RAM?

I spent £1,400 in 2015, so I'm guessing that and a little more this time. I think it LR and PSP do. Yes it is, always keep some 50GB free. memory speed is 2133MHz

Porker · 15 Sep 2022 at 19:59

Tetras said:
Do you transfer the images from your camera to your computer before loading them in LR/PS?

If you run task manager while you're loading them, what is it that's running at 100%?

I do, I just copy them over to a 4TB HDD en mass and then edit them afterwards. I usually have plenty of other apps open at the time. I should probably shut things down more often (I do, but probably not as much as i should). They copy across OK, its just the PC grinds when I ask too much of it

Tetras · 15 Sep 2022 at 20:07

Porker said:
I do, I just copy them over to a 4TB HDD en mass and then edit them afterwards. I usually have plenty of other apps open at the time. I should probably shut things down more often (I do, but probably not as much as i should). They copy across OK, its just the PC grinds when I ask too much of it

I see, the reason I ask is because with this kind of thing, sometimes the bottleneck isn't where you might imagine and a huge upgrade might hit the spot, but it might also... not, e.g. if your bottleneck is actually I/O due to the hard disk (which task manager would probably tell you), then sticking a large NVME/M.2 drive could make much more difference to performance and responsiveness than a new CPU, or more RAM. If it's a really old version of the program then sometimes the program itself is the bottleneck

Porker · 15 Sep 2022 at 21:40

Tetras said:
I see, the reason I ask is because with this kind of thing, sometimes the bottleneck isn't where you might imagine and a huge upgrade might hit the spot, but it might also... not, e.g. if your bottleneck is actually I/O due to the hard disk (which task manager would probably tell you), then sticking a large NVME/M.2 drive could make much more difference to performance and responsiveness than a new CPU, or more RAM. If it's a really old version of the program then sometimes the program itself is the bottleneck

I understand. the PC runs fine with not too much running! The office suite and Adobe LR, PSP etc are the latest versions as on the monthly plans.