I hate to bring this up because it is not as fun as discussing pictures and often starts arguments. But, I am stuck and need some other opinions. I am moving to purchase a new computer and monitor to replace my aging set.. I have been a PC user to this point, though I use a MacBook on the road. I am trying to make the decision about moving to an iMac or sticking with a PC. I am equally torn about the pluses and minuses of going either way. The candidates are a Dell XPS 8900 special edition with a Dell 27 Ultra HD 4K Monitor - P2715Q vs. comparable iMac with 5K retina display. Any thoughts on which way you would go for photo editing work? Thanks for any help.
I'm in the process of building my editing pc. I'm using windows and i'm upgrading my current machine for the task. My advice/opinion is that a intel i5 or i7 cpu,, ssd boot drive and loads of ram (8gb min I'd say) and you'll be fine. Nothing wrong with buying a Mac - they're lovely machines and if money wasn't an issue, my daily driver would be a mac pro - but the money you'd save building your own (it's really not hard these days) you could spend on a really fast components that would wipe the floor with a off-the-shelf imac. There's no need for a graphics card, the on board graphics are good enough (unless you're into gaming that is).
Bingo and ditto to this!
Intel Core i5-6600K
Z170 chipset based motherboard ( my brand preference at the moment goes to AsRock & Asus )
16GB of RAM ( 32GB if you do very heavy editing in PhotoShop with multiple layers, filters, plugins and you have a 30+ MP camera, otherwise 16GB will do more than fine )
nVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti graphics card ( higher model "required" only if you play modern games )
If you "must" have a 4K monitor, go for a UP2414q ( assuming that you're only using it for editing, not as a movie/entertainment station ) which has far greater color reproduction accuracy and a wider color gamut.
Howdy Ben iv always used a pc. .My suggestion put as much ram in as possible.I disagree with Paul regarding Graphics card as this helps tremendously with the rendering of pictures as well as video.
The beauty of a pc is the ability to upgrade so once you have a good base pc it should last for may years.
I have had issues with Lightroom and PhotoShop when the "fancy" GPU on these video cards is engaged.
I believe the problem is that some makes of discrete graphics cards work better with ps than others. A quick look at this page on adobe.com gives a list of officially supported cards. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html
Howdy i agree with you that there could be issues with some graphic cards.However i have yet to date not experiences such issues i think the reason is that iv always used high end cards and i do believe that Adobe has suggested which cards are best used for the apps.
I found an interesting discussion on the subject, I stand corrected on the graphics card thing (dammit, I now have to bump my budget up a bit!). It seems LR is fine with just the on-board graphics but PS is a different story. http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/37805/is-gpu-or-cpu-more-import...
Sorry to possibly jump in on the thread but if you were only able to choose a laptop for editing etc would it always be a MacBook? Looking to upgrade my ageing laptop now that I've updated my camera system and am torn.
If you go PC you should used your saved money and buy dual monitors. Nothing has helped my work speed more than dual monitors.
thanks for all the great input. This is very, very helpful.
I on the old computer try switching out your HDD for an SSD. You'd be surprised how that alone will breath new life into your pc. I changed my 08 MacBook hard drive and it's good to go.