Laptop for Photoshop and Lightroom

[Hectorhector1970]

I'm not an expert in building laptops.

I want to get one for Lightroom and Photoshop that I can get a few years out of.

A few questions
I5 or I7?

RAM I am looking for 16GB or 32GB

I want them to run on a fast SSD with plenty of space on it.
From past experience 128GB is way too small.
I need storage too.
I was thinking of 1TB SSD with a storage 1T SSD too

Experimenting I ended up with this one
Chassis & Display Lafité Series: Aluminium Chassis:
15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED (1920 x 1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor i7-8565U (1.80GHz, 4.6GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 32GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card INTEL® HD GRAPHICS (CPU Dependant) - 1.7GB Max DDR4 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Storage Drive 960GB ADATA SU630 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 450MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive 1TB INTEL® 760p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (upto 3230MB/sR | 1625MB/sW)

Any advice as to what might be more suitable. I don't know whether to start with a gaming machine.

 

[Hectorhector1970]

Anyone able to advise here?

 

[Hectorhector1970]

Any suggestions at all?

 

[ubuysa]

I'm not the hardware expert on here but I'll let you know what I think....

If you're not gaming and your only uses are Lightroom and Photoshop you should be fine with an i5.

I seriously doubt you'll be able to fully use 32GB of RAM, 16GB will almost certainly be fine.

Your storage configuration is strange however. Whilst it's true that high-res photos benefit from being on an SSD (one of the only user data types that does) they don't need to be on a fast NVMe SSD, that's frankly a waste. I would look at an M.2 NVMe SSD just for Windows and programs, 256GB will probably be ample (Windows 10, Lightroom and Photoshop won't use more than about 50GB) and 512GB will be masses of space. For your user data (inc photos) the SATA NAND SSD you have selected will be fine - photos don't need to be on anything faster.

 

[Hectorhector1970]

I'm not the hardware expert on here but I'll let you know what I think....

If you're not gaming and your only uses are Lightroom and Photoshop you should be fine with an i5.

I seriously doubt you'll be able to fully use 32GB of RAM, 16GB will almost certainly be fine.

Your storage configuration is strange however. Whilst it's true that high-res photos benefit from being on an SSD (one of the only user data types that does) they don't need to be on a fast NVMe SSD, that's frankly a waste. I would look at an M.2 NVMe SSD just for Windows and programs, 256GB will probably be ample (Windows 10, Lightroom and Photoshop won't use more than about 50GB) and 512GB will be masses of space. For your user data (inc photos) the SATA NAND SSD you have selected will be fine - photos don't need to be on anything faster.

Thanks Ubuysa.
From personal experience 128GB has been way too little for Windows 10, Lightroom and Photoshop. It's a constant problem cleaning down the C drive to have enough space to deal with Photoshop files.
Thanks for your advice.
I'm not sure about RAM both Lightroom and Photoshop can be quite inefficient and take up large amounts of RAM at times. You might be right that 16GB would be sufficient. 8GB seemingly isn't.

 

[ubuysa]

Thanks Ubuysa.
From personal experience 128GB has been way too little for Windows 10, Lightroom and Photoshop. It's a constant problem cleaning down the C drive to have enough space to deal with Photoshop files.

That sounds like you store data or work files on your C: drive? There is just no way that Windows 10 plus Lightroom and Photoshop will get anywhere close to 128GB. Whatever drive you go for ensure that your applications are configured to place their work files etc. on the data drive, unless there are good performance reasons for having them on the faster system drive.

One thing you WILL need to do is to tell Windows to move the contents of the C:\Users folder to the data drive (Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc.) otherwise you will pollute your system drive with user data and work files....

I'm not sure about RAM both Lightroom and Photoshop can be quite inefficient and take up large amounts of RAM at times. You might be right that 16GB would be sufficient. 8GB seemingly isn't.

The way Windows and applications manage RAM is counter-intuitive at times....

ALL data has to be in RAM in order for the CPU to be able to operate on it, and it takes time (a long time in CPU terms) to move data from disk (or SSD) into RAM. Thus Windows and applications try to keep as much data (and program code) in RAM as they can, even if that data isn't actually being used right now.

The most efficient way to use RAM is to fill it up as much as you can with data and programs that you are likely to need soon - but this makes RAM appear to be full. However, Windows is very (and I mean very) smart in the way it manages RAM usage, especially in Windows 10. Data (and program code) that is in RAM but not actually being used right now is known as Standby Memory, this is RAM that can be immediately freed and reused if some other more important process requires it.

Thus, although your RAM looks to be fully utilised there is still tons of RAM that can be made immediately available should another process need it. In this way Windows actually manages RAM in the most efficient manner, but this means that a lot of RAM 'in use' is not a cause for concern, it's actually a good thing.

The only way you know that you are short of RAM is if the system is paging, that you will see in a continuously non-zero Hard Page Fault Rate. You might find this interesting reading: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/threads/understanding-ram-management-and-use.60067/

By all means buy 32GB of RAM, but if you do that I'll bet that more than half of it will always show as 'Free'. That is RAM that is never used at all, ever, and that's just a waste of money and resources. You don't want free RAM, you want all of your (expensive) RAM to be used - as long as every process that wants RAM can get it, and that's the goal of Windows 10 memory management.

 

[Hectorhector1970]

Thanks for the great advice. I’ve cleaned down my C: Drive a number of times. Nvidia drivers (not easily removable by a non expert) see to take up a lot of space. Old versions of software seem to carry a lot of baggage with it. Photoshop has a temp space /cache required to do its processing. Old versions don’t always delete fully on updates. My c drive is a bit of a mess with about 10GB free. When windows uploads updates in advance it also eats up space. I’d almost better to wipe everything and reinstall.

 

[SpecialDonkey]

That sounds like you store data or work files on your C: drive? There is just no way that Windows 10 plus Lightroom and Photoshop will get anywhere close to 128GB. Whatever drive you go for ensure that your applications are configured to place their work files etc. on the data drive, unless there are good performance reasons for having them on the faster system drive.

One thing you WILL need to do is to tell Windows to move the contents of the C:\Users folder to the data drive (Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc.) otherwise you will pollute your system drive with user data and work files....


The way Windows and applications manage RAM is counter-intuitive at times....

ALL data has to be in RAM in order for the CPU to be able to operate on it, and it takes time (a long time in CPU terms) to move data from disk (or SSD) into RAM. Thus Windows and applications try to keep as much data (and program code) in RAM as they can, even if that data isn't actually being used right now.

The most efficient way to use RAM is to fill it up as much as you can with data and programs that you are likely to need soon - but this makes RAM appear to be full. However, Windows is very (and I mean very) smart in the way it manages RAM usage, especially in Windows 10. Data (and program code) that is in RAM but not actually being used right now is known as Standby Memory, this is RAM that can be immediately freed and reused if some other more important process requires it.

Thus, although your RAM looks to be fully utilised there is still tons of RAM that can be made immediately available should another process need it. In this way Windows actually manages RAM in the most efficient manner, but this means that a lot of RAM 'in use' is not a cause for concern, it's actually a good thing.

The only way you know that you are short of RAM is if the system is paging, that you will see in a continuously non-zero Hard Page Fault Rate. You might find this interesting reading: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/threads/understanding-ram-management-and-use.60067/

By all means buy 32GB of RAM, but if you do that I'll bet that more than half of it will always show as 'Free'. That is RAM that is never used at all, ever, and that's just a waste of money and resources. You don't want free RAM, you want all of your (expensive) RAM to be used - as long as every process that wants RAM can get it, and that's the goal of Windows 10 memory management.

That is a great explanation! Why isn't this information about ram usage on more sites. I always assumed that the ram usage was actually data in use.

Be great if PC Specialist had an learning link on each selection, where they could summarise to people how each component works and how much improvement it will give them roughly. Too often I see options for different spec, and then have to do a ton of research to compare them.

See having learnt about ram and how it's used, I probably would have gone for a 8gb stick. I had a 16gb pc, never went above 7gb on average despite all the tabs and applications I had open.

 

[ubuysa]

That is a great explanation! Why isn't this information about ram usage on more sites. I always assumed that the ram usage was actually data in use.

Be great if PC Specialist had an learning link on each selection, where they could summarise to people how each component works and how much improvement it will give them roughly. Too often I see options for different spec, and then have to do a ton of research to compare them.

See having learnt about ram and how it's used, I probably would have gone for a 8gb stick. I had a 16gb pc, never went above 7gb on average despite all the tabs and applications I had open.

See https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/threads/understanding-ram-management-and-use.60067/