Yea basically except optimized highly for parallel math computation. Nvidia does make OEM boards but very few usually 1 or 2 per model those are reference cards that the other OEM’s take and modify for various price points and performance levels.
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GPU = Graphics Processing Unit. GPUs are also in short supply at the moment! Earlier on this year I bought an Nvidia GTX 1660. £240, wheras a year or two ago the same card would have cost £150!
For a photo editing system I’d do the following.
A small SSD for the operating system(s) to sit on (e.g. 256gb SSD), then a standard mechanical hard drive for storage of files / user data.
With regards to future upgrades, I’d go for what you need now, as there is a chance in a year or two, standards have changed.
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+1 to @chewy’s pcpartpicker recommendation in post #20. I’ve used it for my last three builds; good compatibility checking.
How much RAM you need is somewhat dependent on the size of image your camera produces. I have 16GB and my max image size is 24MB, and that works well even with rawproc, which is a horrendous user of memory (a copy of the image for each tool…). But, having the two extra memory slots is just prudent planning…
In my recent build, I maxed out the CPU, a 12-core Ryzen 9. If your software is not using a GPU and is multithreaded in the image ops, CPU scaling has a non-linear marginal benefit as your images reduce in size. That’s due to the overhead of dividing the image vs the size of the divided image chunks, up against the CPU speed -
IMHO: simply, 8-cores should be more than sufficient to expeditiously process images up to 24MB; >8 cores will show significant increase in marginal performance for larger images, while the smaller images will start to run into the multithreading overhead vs the small chunks.
I’m not familiar with such dynamics using a GPU.
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This is probably already much better than 95% of users here have.
Makes me a bit curious, what are exactly your performance issues? What processes are slow for your? You use a Fuji APS-C, right?
What worries me is that I plan to get something similar for performance reasons that you want to get rid of for performance reasons.
@betazoid what about the Display? Do you have one already? Do you include one in our calculations?
Form my experience the proper graphic monitor eats large portion of your budget. In my case Eizo CS2420 costed 75% of the new PC and I have purchased brand new miniITX (Node 202 case based).
Overall it was like 2000Euros but like 2-3 years ago. Now it will be different.
May be of interest. GPU and CPU performance with darktable:
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I have an Olympus E-M2 Mark 3, 20 megapixels.
Well, I guess I would gain the most performance with a proper GPU for darktable. Usually, darktable performs quite ok for me on this laptop, except when I switch on denoise, then it takes 1 or 2 seconds until is see the result (preview). RT performance is quite good, but I guess it would be instantaneous, I mean live 100% live on a Ryzen 5 or 7. The performance of both programs is acceptable. Ok, maybe when I combine in darktable denoise and retouch, then I guess it gets quite slow.
I used to use an i5 laptop with integrated GPU, before the intel neo OpenCL driver, that was really really slow. But I made tests with Intel neo on this i7 laptop without Nvidia and the performance is not so bad actually. Maybe the Nvidia is twice as fast as Intel neo.
Keep in mind, this laptop is an i7 10th gen with 4 cores, but since it’s a laptop each core has only 1.something Gigahertz.
As mentioned above, I have 2x24 inch full hd screens. One is a BenQ wide gamut photography screen, the other is an Iiyama sRGB screen. Both are suitable for photography work, they are not so old. I bought the Benq… I think 2 years ago, and the Iiyama 1 year erlier or so.
So I am not planning to throw those away in the near future. Of course a wide gamut 4K Eizo would be much better, but… as said, why produce so much waste?
Hi Anna,
I recently upgraded my PC. I replaced the motherboard, the CPU and the RAM, left the rest (GPU, power supply, case, SSD/HDD) as they were.
I built the new system on an ATX motherboard (ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING, 190 CHF) and used a Ryzen 5 5600X CPU (400 CHF) with 64 GB of RAM (320 CHF). The motherboard needed a BIOS update to support the CPU, but it has a feature allowing one to update the BIOS without a supported CPU.
I kept my second-hand NVidia GTX 1060/6GB GPU (it had cost me about 150 CHF), and I do not have the impression that it’s a bottleneck.
Note that with more threads you need more RAM (typically, each thread will need some RAM to process a chunk of data), but, since most of the memory usage is independent of the number of threads (e.g. your OS, and ‘static’ data, such as already completed processing results), you don’t need to double the RAM if you double the number of threads. With more RAM, as others have said, you can run multiple apps in parallel, and if you plan to spin up VMs (to try a different version of Linux, or Windows), RAM is definitely useful.
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@betazoid be aware that ventors like Lenovo or Dell have costum build motherboards and power supplies. This power supplies are not ATX compatible. So if the power supply fails, you can only replace it by the vendor specific ones. The motherboards from this vendors have limited connectors e.g. SATA for additional drives and so on and are cheaper therefore.
So, comparison between self build and pre-build systems by mentioned vendors will be hard in terms of price and real features beyond CPU, RAM, GPU specs.
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What @pk5dark says also means that you may be better off with a custom-built PC; you’ll have more options to replace components (e.g. I was able to keep the power supply, the case, the disks and the GPU). Good for one’s bank account, as well as for the environment.
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yes, that’s the way I usually upgrade my hardware by keeping parts like case, power supply, disks, … A good case can used for 10 years or longer. The same is true for the power supply.
CPU sockets do change too often to keep the same motherboard and every 2-3 years new sockets appear on the market.
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So, how many women do you know who buit their own PC?
3, out of a not-super-large friend group. The rest are content with their laptops, or have boyfriends who are more into tech and built one.
Edit: I guess the point is that your gender has little to do with it, just your curiosity and whether you think the benefits outweigh the hurdles.
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Honestly nowadays with the way things are designed it is nearly impossible to mess it up. Everything is basically designed to only plug in one way and only in the right spot. Everything is also labeled and you even have instructions. Hardest part is making sure you don’t bend the CPU pins.
I remember my first pc build it was much harder back then because nothing was really labeled well and most of the plugs were all the same and could fit in multiple places uhg…
Gender does not matter building is very straight forward anymore to the point where the instruction are basically step by step plug and go. The little screws can be frustrating tho.
ok, I just had a look at that pcpartspicker website. I think it is not only more expensive to build a PC, like at least 300 Eur more expensive. The most important disadvantage is time.
I am a women who has neither kids nor a real time-consuming career and therefore I actually have some time (I don’t even cook or clean regularly). But even I think that I probably don’t have the time to choose between 300 motherboards and 30 Geforce 1660 Super GPUs.
Btw, yesterday I talked with a friend about this. She is a Mac user and basically a tech idiot, I think she does not even know people who built acomputer except the guys who modified the Macs at the office (I think almost everybody around her is a Mac user). She told me I should build one 
Macs are a different story. For the most part, they are intended to be, and are generally used as, off-the-shelf appliances. You choose the configuration with what you want/need, then you just use it.
There are exceptions, of course.
I mean don’t get me wrong Macs are nice, reliable, and crazy easy to use. Until you try to do something outside the little bubble niche they are designed around. Then they become a pain. The OS is rather nice but the closed up nature always becomes a burden at some point. Like the deprecation of opencl breaks a lot of software that will either lose support or has to be re written for metal in the future. The new SOC nature of the new systems will just lock it down even harder.
PC is honestly the best way to go for sure especially if you like open source.
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Established system builders do have some level of preferential treatment, e.g. they can actually buy GPUs without going through scalpers. At least from what I’ve heard from a local shop - they are allocated a certain number of units per day. They are only allowed to buy the units as long as they are guaranteed to be sold as part of a preassembled system.
The end result is that in many cases it’s actually cheaper to buy an entire system and remove the GPU than to buy the unit standalone.
If there’s any argument right now for NOT building your own machine from parts, it’s that phenomenon. If you build from parts, you’ll be paying a nasty markup to a scalper for the GPU.
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There is definitely an effort to pick components, but I do think it’s worthwhile:
I upgraded my CPU/mainboard/cooler/memory some weeks ago, after using the last set for 9 years. Considering that, it’s a fairly small time investment. It was a Xeon E3-1245 (SandyBridge Generation, similar to a i7-2700K, 3rd Gen i7 maybe, 4C/8Th) - most used for the exact same software. It is definitely worthwhile to use a modern CPU, because you can actually see how far to adjust things while dragging sliders, especially RT feels a lot snappier. I went with a AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor (reasonably priced for a few days), hoping to get a similar service time out of that one for photo purposes.
I found that once I picked the new CPU, the mainboard fell largely in place with a handful of choices - admittedly narrowed down because I kept my micro-ATX form factor case. For memory, even getting any non-gimmicky (no LED) low profile modules at the desired size and speed rating left little choice when it came to availability. I spent a little more on a cooler than essential, but I wanted something know quiet with a long-lasting fan. Hard to go wrong if you pick anything slightly overspec’d in term of power handling ability.
Apart from the above, I was able to keep: Case, power supply (went with a highly efficient one 9y ago, still quietly doing its job), graphics card which I had added sometime mid-way, disks accumulated over time (3xSSD, 1xHD). In comparison, I do like my very well built inexpensive small Dell server, running very efficiently, to which I just added disks. But if anything essential shall fail, I’ll have to replace it completely, I’m afraid.
For a long service time, I would definitely recommend to go with a CPU from a current generation, such as the 5000-series Ryzen 7 or 9 - independent which way you go.
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