It doubles as a TV for me, but works fine as a monitor which surprised me a lot. I bought it primarily to use as a monitor but wasn’t expecting this good of a performance for general computing. Apparently it’s also very color accurate out of the box which is great and there’s nothing like looking at your photos on a large screen with the brightness at max 
1 Like
I use a total of 3 displays regularly, at work and home.
My current favorite is the BenQ PD2705Q, 27", 2560x1440, 60Hz. It also has tiny (2W) speakers which are neat, a bit better than the laptop’s built-in ones. 250 nits, which I find plenty indoors.
I also use a DELL P2725DE, same size and resolution, 1500:1 contrast, 350nits, 100Hz. I am using it at 60Hz and much below its nominal brightness. I like the BenQ better for eye fatigue, but this is also nice.
I have an ancient DELL U2515H which I use when I am at a different desk, which I won’t link or spec in detail, as it is probably older than your current monitor. But it is still decent and I don’t mind using it.
1 Like
I haven’t looked at RAM prices in a while and goodness gracious… the lowest priced 64GB kit on NewEgg is $800 USD.
Back toward the end of last summer when I was planning out a new PC build I was gonna splurge on the $300 or so to get a 64GB RAM kit but then the apocalypse happened and I ended up spending $250 on a 32GB kit.
So I guess if you can afford it go for the 64GB kit but I’ve personally never really NEEDED more than 32 so for me it would be a total luxury splurge.
1 Like
Well a kit with 2x32 costs about 500 euros here.
I do terrible things to computers at work. Last year, we kitted out one of our bigger machines with 2TB of RAM.
But at home, I’ve never had need for more than 32GB.
In terms of displays, I very much like my Asus ProArt PA27UCGE (4K160, 98% DP3, 600cd/m², hardware calibrated). But you can get the same screen for half the price if you skip the hardware calibration.
2 Likes
Me too, but I am more of a CPU person. A while ago I was running an embarrassingly parallel calculation which I programmed in Julia, set to use all available threads. I didn’t think much about it, on the desktop it is something like 12. A day after I started on the HPC, its sysadmin wrote me an email, kindly asking me if I could possibly not use all 128 Xeon cores since others complained of slowdowns (it has fair use scheduling).
For a typical desktop, I would say that 32Gb is plenty. Just to put this in context, a 40Mp photo with 3x32bit channels is around 500 Mb.
3 Likes
Yes, but future AI image models/llms might be really big.
Until now I was perfectly happy with 16 GB. But now I have a GPU with 16 GB of VRAM.
Recently I tried to upscale a 20 megapixels photo to 80 megapixels which ended with a crash, although I have zram + 30 GB of swap.
Possibly, but if you want to run them on your desktop with any practical speed, they will have to fit into the GPU/NPU memory, not the RAM.
GPU with >32Gb VRAM are still prohibitively expensive, so I would not worry about them.
1 Like
What happened actually to the traditional monitor brand Nec?
Here they are:
Now Sharp Multisync not NEC Multisync.
More information:
2 Likes
True for LLMs, which will slow down when spilling into system RAM, but image models are far better at this and can function well with hot swapping constantly from system RAM to VRAM
2 Likes
What do you personally prefer, 4k@27 inch or 4k@32 inch?
1 Like
I’m a 2 x 27" 4K kinda guy. This looks best at an odd 150% scaling.
To get an even 200% scaling, Apple recommends 27" 5K, or 24" 4K. They claim that odd scaling looks worse. But I find that at these “retina” resolutions, scaling artifacts are so minor that I really don’t care.
I prefer two 27" screens to one larger screen, as two screens naturally split into two full-screen or four half-screen windows, and I prefer my head to swivel left-to-right instead of up/down. I tend to use one screen as a “primary” working surface, with the second screen in a supporting role for documentation, communication, etc.
Obviously, screen size preferences also depend on distance. For what it’s worth, my screen is about than 1m from my eyes.
2 Likes
Well scalijg seems to work really well on wayland, especially with a desktop Environment like kde plasma 6.x. Or Hyprland. But sometimes there are problems with xwayland apps, such as darktable. On my 16 inch 4k laptop I use a scaling of 250%.
Darktable is wayland native now, so at least on that front it shouldn’t be a problem.
Apparently there is an issue with the profiles, so it’s best to manually pick your display profile.
Since when is darktable wayland native? I knew it could work natively, but there were some issues so it preferred xwayland for a long time
Someone mentioned hinting at some point. Oh, here it is:
Nothing to add except to say that hinting could be adjusted on the OS display layer. How well, how much and whether it could be done for non-textual content may vary or may not be changeable. This fall under the umbrella of the things we should investigate when I said
No solution is perfect unless one gets those super expensive niche reference monitors. It is about the level of configuration that you are comfortable with accepting and the due diligence in finding out what works for you.
When I got my new monitor (which does not have the quality that you all demand - I cannot afford nice things), I spent so much time configuring the hardware and computer settings before I could be satisfied, especially the hinting which is not an exact science.
1 Like
I tend to disagree on the marketing thing 
I have an old Eizo CG247 with a built-in color probe.
I created some profiles a few years ago, that are embedded in the monitor:
- Generic Photo
- Editing
- Printing
I created them by calibrating the monitor using a MacBook running Color Navigator, and the interesting thing is that every Monday morning at 7 am, my monitor switches itself on and auto-calibrates.
Once you’ve done this, unless you have specific requirements, you’re unlikely to need to recalibrate the monitor.
I’ve never had any issues with colour, and I’ve printed both photographs and photo books with different suppliers.
My view is that, for anyone involved in photography, a colour-accurate monitor is essential.
The colour probe is used to check that the monitor maintains consistent colour reproduction over time.
In any case, if you’re not interested in calibrating, I’d go for a high-quality monitor designed for photography and use the default preset profiles.
2 Likes
I am now gravitating towards the 27inch iiyama and 64 gb of ram, but I still have to wait for my next fee.
Today I went to Cyberport and Mediamarkt. There was only one 32inch 4k on view, and it was placed on a pretty high shelf so I could not examine it properly. I had the impression that i didnt see the pixels, but it seemed to be really big.
On the other hand, I could have a look at several 27 inch screens, none of them was 4k but they kind of seemed to be big enough…
1 Like
I have only gone from 24" to 27". Never 32". So I would not know what 32" feels like. Sometimes 27" already feels too large on a desk. In a way it is good in that it forces me to move my head. For desk jobs, movement is key to good health. 
2 Likes