[raider]

Hello,

Just would like to ask you guys....if u were to do it all over again, what would u guys have bought? assuming the computer is meant for lightroom post processing.

What spec PC or Mac?

Am doing some hard thinking and hope to get some clues from what u guys are thinking.

Cheers

[silver_dragon]

I don't really think I'd change any any of my choices for how I've built my PC. Built it ~3 years ago as a respectable gaming rig in the ~$1000AUD bracket. I decided to go AMD (FX8350 CPU) to keep the costs down a bit, at the time the equivalent Intel processor was considerably more expensive. I did like how AMD has kept the same pin configurations for their CPU's which I did factor in for an easy upgrade in the future. So far it's still going strong, still playing games at high to ultra settings without any dramas. Since building my PC I've only bought a larger capacity SSD and a water cooled CPU heatsink (the AMD's run bloody hot and do not cope well with Australian summer even at factory clock speeds).

I think the debate between Mac vs PC only comes down to choice of user interface preference these days. The hardware used between the two are virtually identical. I think for whatever reason people seem to cling to the idea that Mac's are better than PC's for which may have been the case in 2000-2005 for graphic design etc. but I believe that is not the case these days. Ofcourse if someone wants to correct me, I'm happy to listen.

[AldaCZ]

For LR 6 it's good to have a good GPU

[raider]

Thanks for the comments. What spec would u guys go for? The highest end i7 or the medium range i5? What sort of ram would u aim for?

[pepperberry farm]

I'm pretty happy with the current Mac I have: 2.6 Ghz i5, 16 Gb RAM... but then I don't use LR for post-processing, and rarely have to open Photoshop...

[MarkJerling]

Thanks for the comments. What spec would u guys go for? The highest end i7 or the medium range i5? What sort of ram would u aim for?

I don't think it makes a major difference if you go i7 or i5. Having said that, I run an i7 with a very grunty Nvidia graphics card. But, I needed that for 3D design work, so it's a bit overkill for photo manipulation.

[AldaCZ]

I don't think it makes a major difference if you go i7 or i5. Having said that, I run an i7 with a very grunty Nvidia graphics card. But, I needed that for 3D design work, so it's a bit overkill for photo manipulation.

LR 6 supports GPU processing so it's a good idea to have strong or more than one Graphics card. I have really old core 2 duo and it's fast with a fancy nvidia GPU! Also a good drive..ssd may make the difference or some raid array will sped things up!

[MarkJerling]

LR 6 supports GPU processing so it's a good idea to have strong or more than one Graphics card. I have really old core 2 duo and it's fast with a fancy nvidia GPU! Also a good drive..ssd may make the difference or some raid array will sped things up!

Yes, agreed. With the solid state drive, my machine turns on and is ready to work in under 30 seconds.

[Giklab]

The only thing you definitely should go for is an SSD. For photo editing, the decision between an i5 and an i7 is mostly an issue of budget (although the hyper-threading on an i7 helps). Avoid multiple-GPU setups.

---------- Post added 10-04-16 at 13:56 ----------

Yes, agreed. With the solid state drive, my machine turns on and is ready to work in under 30 seconds.

Beat me to it haha, well the OP should get the message this way

[Bengan]

I agree. SSD, minimum 16 GB memory and better than on-board graphics processor. MAC or PC which ever you feel most comfortable with.

[johnmflores]

I've got a 2011 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM, SSD, and a 2.2Ghz quad core I7 and mobile Radeon GPU. Photos stored on Thunderbolt RAID. System still runs pretty nice. The only places where it slows is rending the K-3's 24 megapickle DNG files. That, and a weird but when using the crop tool. Turning GPU support on/off doesn't seem to have much impact on performance, so I suspect that the bottleneck is in the CPU.

If I were to get a new system, I'd likely build my own Windows system since Apple doesn't seem to have what I'm looking for and Adobe Creative Suite is cross platform. I'd try to build it to last 5 years, so that means M. PCI Express SSD, fast RAM, a mono with USB C/Thunderbolt 3 support, and likely an I7 Skylake CPU. For GPU, I'd go for good price/performance and expect to swap it out in 2-3 years.

One place where efficiency and speed is often overlooked is the display. I'm running a 27" Dell wide gamut IPS now (2713h IIRC) and it was a big step up from my 24" Cinema Display. Much less scrolling and zooming in/out now. My next will be a 30" curved because even now I find the corners of the 27" a bit far away for my taste.

[macman24054]

I use a Mac Pro and on a mac the amount of RAM is way more important than the processor. GPU and HD speed are important but still not as important as RAM on a Mac.

[Kerrowdown]

Me... I'm using a Mac (27-inch), Processor 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7, memory 16GB 1333 Mhz DDR3, Graphics AMD Radeon HD6970M 2048 Mb and it seems to work just fine with Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC.

Will be interesting to see how it will handle those wonderfully large FF files.

[Dickie]

I have a PC which I built using...

Intel Xeon E3-1230v2: it gave me i7 specs (i.e hyperthreading) for less cost (and I wasn't interested in overclocking). Not sure how the prices compare these days, and you do have to check motherboard for compatibility.
16GB RAM (nothing particularly swish, spec-wise)
256GB SSD (a must in my opinion)
2GB AMD R9 285
A recent upgrade took my 1TB storage disk to 3TB (mechanical hard drive)

Dell 2412M monitor

I never really notice that I am waiting for it to do anything (although when I was doing some very poor attempts at HDR in PS6, that required a little bit of time, but I think it was still probably less than a minute - but don't quote me on that )

[jatrax]

i7 4790k or i7 5960k
32gb memory
Nvidia Geforce 760 or better graphics card. Though I'm not sure of the utility of the GPU with Lightroom as yet
500gb SSD for OS drive
250gb SSD for cache
large 7200rpm drive for local storage (2tb or larger)
NAS array for image storage 6tb minimum (currently have 4 3tb drives in a RAID array)
dual monitors probably Dell Ultasharp

Graphics card support in Lightroom is confusing right now. While Adobe says they support the GPU many users including myself have found no improvement or in many cases a negative impact. Dual cards are not supported per Adobe. Only the devlop module is using the GPU and the second window (second screen) does not use the GPU.

Adobe recommends a 760 or 900 series card. I currently have the GTX 760 and turned on or off makes no difference. Hopefully at some point they will improve this so it makes sense to have a good graphics card for future functionality but at present the GPU is IMHO irrelevant.