A new PC for DT, RT and GIMP

Yes, of course. I had a brain cramp

…as well as trade-offs within a budget. The additional $200 for a faster PC might go further on a better monitor, for example

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My five cents regarding the laptop solution… I’ve got ThinkPad T590 equipped with recent mobile Intel Core i7 and 24 gigs of RAM, 4k 15" display, fast SSD, Windows 10 and no dedicated GPU of course. And I’m biting my fingernails waiting for most of DT operations. Exporting a week long holiday stuff can easily take about 2 hours.

No doubt you’d need a gaming laptop with a decent GPU to run DT. Rawtherapee doesn’t use the GPU, have you tried that on your Thinkpad?

Make sure you setup DT to use most of those 24gb via the host memory limit.

I have but I didn’t really like the UI and also being used to DT I suddenly felt like I lost control over the development process. :slightly_smiling_face:

Yes, I get that. The DT workflow is becoming second nature to me, so I have to re-learn the process on another editor.

So I pulled the trigger and bought my new rig. The PC is the PowerSpec G511 with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7GHz Processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GDDR6, 16GB DDR4-2666 RAM and a 500GB Solid State Drive, plus I added a 1TB SSD drive for good measure:

PowerSpec G511

The monitor is an ASUS ProArt PA278QV 27" QHD:

The system is as fast as I could imagine, and more. The monitor comes pre-calibrated but cannot be changed within the unit, so I’ll need to recalibrate through the PC with DisplayCal in the future. My only foible is that the NVIDIA Control Panel won’t come up. I suppose that’s one reason why that app has so many poor reviews :grimacing:

Thank you @Soupy , @priort, @heckflosse, @kofa and @Newerth for the advice. Its a lot of $$ to spend and it’s great to have a community to consult and crosscheck. All you in the community are terrific!

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Congratulations to your choice! I hope the new machine will serve you well. :slight_smile:

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Wow.

Yeah, it’s like I went from a VW Beetle to a Ferrari.

Make sure you uninstall the OpenCL compatibility stuff from windows store. It is installed by default and it can cause problems with darktable. Check the log file with darktable -d OpenCL.

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I think those case lights are out of gamut :slight_smile: Enjoy your new toy…I am still on the fence…Almost bought a Dell…it had a 3060TI with is pretty good bang for the buck normally …It had an 11th gen i7 which was not my preference but it was around 1600 CAD which is not too bad… had NV drive and 2 TB drive as well …ram was only 16GB but DDR4 is not too expensive so I could upgrade…really woudl like to get a 12th gen kit but can’t get my hands on a CPU at a decent price…

Now I am jealous…

Thanks. Not trying to make anyone jealous, but I hope these sort of threads help people who don’t buy computers on a regular basis to understand what they should look for in an upgrade. It’s pretty bad when you shell out a lot of $$ and to find the system doesn’t meet the need or creates new headaches.

Speaking of which, those out of gamut case lights are starting to lose their appeal… I’ll probably turn them off in a week or so.

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Did you get this accessory to go with the lights… :slight_smile:

That brings back baaaad memories. I worked at a movie theater when we played Saturday Night Fever. I must have watched that show about 75 times.

I’m definitely turning off those lights.

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Congrats on the purchase. I was also lucky enough to get the last remaining all black case in store, so I won’t be distracted by those noxious rgb lights! But not the end of the world, you can turn them off in bios.

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