What Components Does Photoshop Love?

[Random Guy Esq.]

Howdy folks,

I'm not looking for an actual spec here, as a) I haven't decided on a budget, b) I already have parts I can use from another planned build that didn't go ahead and c) it might be a month or two before I can buy... However, I'm interested in knowing what kind of components Photoshop will make best use of?

I'm guessing for example that RAM is far more important than GPU?

What about CPU? Would an i7 see worthwhile gains over an i5? Or is raw clock speed more important than number of threads?

And storage! Long term would be cloud based or NAS or whatever. But for the actual editing machine itself, would a single SSD be sufficient or are there gains to be has from using a scratch disk. PS, what's a scratch disk?

Thanks!

 

[stulid]

RAM and CPU power.

i7+16GB is perfect.

It may also get acceleration from a GFX card either using CUDA for Nvidia or OpenGL for AMD.

A good SSD with write and read speeds will be important too.

 

[ShivP]

Well an i5 or i7 is nice, however when you overclock this does reduce times for rendering by quite a lot - from i5 to i7 isn't particularly worth it on a tighter budget

8GB RAM is usable, 16GB if you are on quite large files (what size photos are you using)?

A scratch disk is basically what you put the photos you are working onto, generally this should be quite fast so you can load and save them quickly (photoshop can set this up for you)

 

[Random Guy Esq.]

Thanks guys.

The largest file size my camera (a second hand entry-level model) can do is aboout 17MB I think.

So, whatever SSD for my OS and other software, and then a smaller SSD as a scratch disk (with mass storage in a NAS or online)?

 

[stulid]

YOUR BASKET
1 x SK Hynix 256GB SSD SH910A SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (HFS256G32MNB-2201A) £84.98
1 x SK Hynix 128GB SSD SH910A SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (HFS128G32MNB-2201A) £44.99
Total : £138.67 (includes shipping : £7.25).



The problem with the 128Gb drives is they never seem to have decent write speeds (compared to the same model but of a higher density) unless you cough up around £60-70 for a better SSD such as a 850Evo.

Still kicks a regular HDD into touch tho

 

[joeyjojo]

The appropriate kit for photoshop is anything from a dual core with 4 GB of RAM to an X99 system with 32 GB of RAM. All depends what you're doing.

For general tinkering you don't need anything special. A regular gaming system would be plenty (quad core + 8 GB memory say). The times when you'd notice the difference between that and say an i7 with 16 GB of RAM are few and far between (think a batch operation of hundreds of files each with many expensive filters e.g. blurs).

Lots of SSD space is good in all cases so that's the only essential IMO.

 

[Admetos]

You definitely need a lot of memory, especially if working with multiple open RAW files. 16 GB is absolute minimum for this situation.

SSD for Photoshop scratch file, also faster page file usage. Would choose one of the Samsung PRO's for endurance.

Would choose i7 over i5 as Photoshop will use the threads.

 

[cats_five]

The one things that makes Photoshop slow on my PC is producing a panorama from a number of files. Otherwise, maybe because of what I do and don't do, it's fast enough. This is a 2-yo AMD A85X/A8 system.

 

[Danny75]

IPS monitor with resolution/real estate desired and the best colour gamut you can afford.

 

[Random Guy Esq.]

Thanks everyone. I'll be back with a budget when I know how much I have to play around with.