A budget system for photographer

[Aminoacow]

I'm building a budget system but powerful enough for a smooth Lightroom and possibly Photoshop experience.

 

I have learnt that both applications are more CPU hungry and therefore decided not to cheap out on CPU (still on a budget of around £150 though).

 

I originally considered i5 8400 (£165), but then I saw Ryzen 5 2600 (£139), which is cheaper but more powerful in terms of multi-core performance which these applications utilise a lot. However, the only setback is it does not come with a graphic card. Therefore, I need a budget GPU. Ryzen 5 2400G comes with a graphic card and even cheaper but inferior CPU performance compared with i5 8400.

 

GTX710 2G seems to be a good choice, at a price of £33. Otherwise, the only budget choice would be GTX1030, but more costly (£76).

 

To sum up with a score matrix:

CPU		GPU		total cost		CPU performance		GPU performance		Score

Weightings			2			3			0.5

i5 8400		on-board	1.5 (165)		2			2			10
Ryzen5 2600	GTX710 2G	1.5 (172)		3			1.5			12.75
Ryzen5 2600	GTX 1030	1 (215)			3			4			13
Ryzen5 2400G	on-board APU	2 (122)			1.8			4			11.4

It seems Ryzen 5 2600 + 1030 is the best choice with i5 being the worst.

 

What do you guys think? Have I got a better option? 

[Sychic]

Wait for ryzen 3000. much better ipc at a similar price. then go with a cheap gpu but maybe not a 1030. A Ryzen 3000 apu would work too.

[porina]

It's been a while since I did serious photography, before Ryzen was launched so I don't have specific comment on how those CPUs would work. I believe that Lr and Ps can make use of GPU acceleration. Even if it is increasing your costs, it might be worth considering a faster GPU.

 

3 minutes ago, Sychic said:

Wait for ryzen 3000. much better ipc at a similar price. then go with a cheap gpu but maybe not a 1030. A Ryzen 3000 apu would work too.

Note the Ryzen 3000 APUs are one gen behind the upcoming 3000 desktop parts.

[Princess Luna]

29 minutes ago, Aminoacow said:

multi-core performance which these applications utilise a lot. 

Actually not really, both applications you listed as extremely single-threaded depended and since it's Adobe it favors Intel in every way it can.

 

What is your true budget for the PC as a whole? we can help you put it together on PCPP considering you're from UK right?

[TheoKondak]

44 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

Actually not really, both applications you listed as extremely single-threaded depended and since it's Adobe it favors Intel in every way it can.

 

What is your true budget for the PC as a whole? we can help you put it together on PCPP considering you're from UK right?

And that's one of the reasons I despise Adobe. A decade later, and still their multicore performance is still in the 2000s era. At the same time, they charge you monthly for what? Nothing. They just want to milk you.

 

I run some tests with the latest Lightroom to check how good it utilizes all 4 cores of my Intel i5 2500k, so it seems that Adobe might have addressed the multicore performance of Adobe Lightroom in the latest versions.

[Alan G]

The best hardware recommendations for Adobe LR and Photoshop are over at Puget Systems.  LR recommendations are HERE and Photoshop recommendations are HERE..  I do a lot of photo editing and 95% of my work can be done in LR with only occasional Photoshop work.  I've been running a Haswell i7 CPU and an NVIDA GTX 960 (2 GB RAM) for the past three years and don't see any issues at all.  I've done some panorama stitching and the wait time for the process to finish is not unreasonable.  If you do a lot of Photoshop work, maxing out system RAM is a good idea.  I have 16GB right now but if I were to build a new work station I would bump that up to either 32 or 64.  My previous workstation ran an i5 CPU and that was OK at the time.

 

Hope this helps.

[TheoKondak]

53 minutes ago, Aminoacow said:

I'm building a budget system but powerful enough for a smooth Lightroom and possibly Photoshop experience.

 

I have learnt that both applications are more CPU hungry and therefore decided not to cheap out on CPU (still on a budget of around £150 though).

 

I originally considered i5 8400 (£165), but then I saw Ryzen 5 2600 (£139), which is cheaper but more powerful in terms of multi-core performance which these applications utilise a lot. However, the only setback is it does not come with a graphic card. Therefore, I need a budget GPU. Ryzen 5 2400G comes with a graphic card and even cheaper but inferior CPU performance compared with i5 8400.

 

GTX710 2G seems to be a good choice, at a price of £33. Otherwise, the only budget choice would be GTX1030, but more costly (£76).

 

To sum up with a score matrix:

CPU		GPU		total cost		CPU performance		GPU performance		Score

Weightings			2			3			0.5

i5 8400		on-board	1.5 (165)		2			2			10
Ryzen5 2600	GTX710 2G	1.5 (172)		3			1.5			12.75
Ryzen5 2600	GTX 1030	1 (215)			3			4			13
Ryzen5 2400G	on-board APU	2 (122)			1.8			4			11.4

It seems Ryzen 5 2600 + 1030 is the best choice with i5 being the worst.

 

What do you guys think? Have I got a better option? 

Maybe you should wait a bit more for the Ryzen 3000. Even if there is no Ryzen CPU that fits your needs, a lot of people are going to upgrade, and maybe you can hit some good value second-hand CPU, and since the budget is the main factor, going for a second-hand CPU might yield the best value for your system.

 

In your post, I don't see any mention on Mobo, or RAM. Adobe Lightroom is not that RAM dependent, but if you want to do heavy Photoshop, with multiple layers and effects, you might want to go for 8gb of RAM or more.

 

Also, an SSD for storing your Catalogue could make a good difference in performance.

 

I just did some benchmarks to see how Lightroom utilized all four cores of my Intel i5 2500k. My camera is a Nikon D7100 (24mp) and all my files are converted to DNG. It seems that it uses all four cores when Browsing the library, and while performing edits in the Develop tab. I don't know if this scales to 8 or 12 cores that well, but for 4 cores (no HT) it seems that it benefits from all cores. I performed basic changes like Exposure, Contrast, Curves, Noise reduction, and Spot Removal and File Export. In every case, I saw all 4 cores bump to 100% which is good news. 

[Aminoacow]

On 5/30/2019 at 1:01 PM, Princess Luna said:

Actually not really, both applications you listed as extremely single-threaded depended and since it's Adobe it favors Intel in every way it can.

 

What is your true budget for the PC as a whole? we can help you put it together on PCPP considering you're from UK right?

I don't have a set budget. I intend to go as low as possible but the system should have a sound performance, i.e. smooth LR and PS experience for photos with ~2000MP. Slow on exporting images and applying non-slider adjustments (such as fx in PS) are fine. I know I need i5 or Ryzen 5 only, so I wrote I have a budget of ~£150 for CPU, which is the price point for these CPUs. And I have already made a list on PCPP: 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor	£129.97 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard	ASRock - B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	£69.90 @ CCL Computers
Memory	Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory	£67.45 @ CCL Computers
Storage	Toshiba - P300 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£63.99 @ Amazon UK
Case	NZXT - H500 ATX Mid Tower Case	£69.99 @ Box Limited
Power Supply	Corsair - TXM Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply	£66.99 @ CCL Computers
Monitor	Dell - U2518D 25.0" 2560x1440 60 Hz Monitor	£293.00 @ Amazon UK
Keyboard	Logitech - K120 - UK Layout Wired Standard Keyboard	£10.71 @ Aria PC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£772.00
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-06-01 23:51 BST+0100

 

For storage, I have a spare NVMe SSD 1TB, so I only selected a HDD. Graphic card is missing because I'm still searching for one.

 

On 5/30/2019 at 1:19 PM, Alan G said:

The best hardware recommendations for Adobe LR and Photoshop are over at Puget Systems.  LR recommendations are HERE and Photoshop recommendations are HERE..  I do a lot of photo editing and 95% of my work can be done in LR with only occasional Photoshop work.  I've been running a Haswell i7 CPU and an NVIDA GTX 960 (2 GB RAM) for the past three years and don't see any issues at all.  I've done some panorama stitching and the wait time for the process to finish is not unreasonable.  If you do a lot of Photoshop work, maxing out system RAM is a good idea.  I have 16GB right now but if I were to build a new work station I would bump that up to either 32 or 64.  My previous workstation ran an i5 CPU and that was OK at the time.

 

Hope this helps.

I have looked at Puget. Their options are too expensive for a casual photographer, but offers useful information for building a custom system. In fact, I took their words for saying LR and PS are more CPU hungry. Also my wife does not need "Enhanced Details" for her photo editing, so I decide to go cheap on GPU.

 

On 5/30/2019 at 1:57 PM, TheoKondak said:

Maybe you should wait a bit more for the Ryzen 3000. Even if there is no Ryzen CPU that fits your needs, a lot of people are going to upgrade, and maybe you can hit some good value second-hand CPU, and since the budget is the main factor, going for a second-hand CPU might yield the best value for your system.

Yup, I agree but my wife seems a bit anxious about waiting. I told her that the Ryzen 5 3600G coming in early July would be a beast at its price point compared with those currently on the market. What about now and then, she asked. I don't fancy sharing my PC with her since I work at night too sometimes D:.

 

................... I might better off sharing my PC with her for her good sake.