new PC for RawTherapee and darktable

I bought a new system a while back (Insights or advise about: […] and based on that I might be able to give you some pointers.

  • I initially thought that 16 Gb RAM would suffice, but it took all but 3 months before I ordered an extra set of memory sticks to get to 32 Gb. This makes working with images/projects a much better experience. Side note: The memory increase is nice in general but I especially noticed/needed it when using GIMP or Krita.

  • If you do go for 16Gb: Make sure that your motherboard has enough unused slots to add future memory sticks.

  • At the time I bought my machine I was a 100% darktable user and the choice between a less powerful CPU+powerful GPU versus powerful CPU+less powerful GPU was based on that. I switched to RawTherapee (which also seems to be your preferred RAW editor) and now I notice that I made the “wrong” or lesser choice (hindsight and all that :unamused:.
    RawTherapee is not geared towards utilizing opencl usage so a more powerful CPU instead of a more powerful GPU would benefit you if you have to make a choice between those. This also depends on what else you do on that box-to-be (Krita does make use of opencl for example).

If I look at the two options you posted I would go for the Captiva G12AG 21V1, Ryzen 7 5800X. Maybe change the 1TB SSD into a 512MB SSD (to lower the costs if needed) and upgrade the graphics card (to a RTX 2080 or RTX2060 super for example).

Both machines are in the lower range of what you mentioned wanting to spend. As said earlier: the most powerful CPU you can afford would benefit you/RawTherapee. So maybe look into that.

BTW: I haven’t had any problems with my machine in a dual monitor, Linux driven setup.

Anyway, hope this helps.

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