32gb or 64gb RAM for Adobe Suite?

[Demonic Donut]

My wife is getting closer to the end of her schooling for graphic design.

 

She uses the Adobe suite. Primarily Photoshop and Illustrator. Animator too.

 

Recently she's been having issues with running out of RAM now that her projects are getting larger and more complex. Currently only 16gb and it's just not enough. She has lagging issues and has even locked up (once a full crash) when she has Illustrator and Photoshop open sometimes.

 

I read around some and found some say 32gb is perfect, to 32gb is barely ok, 64gb is much better.

 

For those that use the programs regularly, what would you recommend?

 

I was looking at either another 16gb 3600 CL16 kit to drop in or go for an entire 64gb kit. Admittedly another 16gb kit would be much cheaper, but I'll get 64gb now if she'll need it. We don't plan to upgrade CPU etc anytime soon. Maybe summer ish 2023 at the very earliest.

 

Current System

Ryzen 3600

16gb 3600mhz CL16

5700XT

Various m.2 and 2.5" SSDs

[Shimejii]

32 GB is fine, i never ran out of memory in Premiere and i use to do 4 hour Editing sessions. 64 GB would be just for MASSIVE stuff and i honestly dont know if photoshop would like that in the first place. Save Often remember!

 

Im honestly surprised you didnt go intel for adobe, as it almost always prefers Intel CPUS for the faster clocks.

[AlTech]

I would recommend 64GB. I don't use Adobe products but I've run out of RAM with 32GB when video editing once.

 

There's no such thing as too much RAM.

 

32GB could be fine for now but you're just putting off the inevitable upgrade to 64GB once 32GB is not enough.

[dogwitch]

19 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

32 GB is fine, i never ran out of memory in Premiere and i use to do 4 hour Editing sessions. 64 GB would be just for MASSIVE stuff and i honestly dont know if photoshop would like that in the first place. Save Often remember!

 

Im honestly surprised you didnt go intel for adobe, as it almost always prefers Intel CPUS for the faster clocks.

new version of software will ram cache the ssd if you have one.

which you dont want to do.

[SupaKomputa]

Add another 32gb for a 48gb (16+32) system before go straight to 64gb.

It really depends on the task memory load. If it's not enough, adding another 32gb is an easy thing to do.

[Demonic Donut]

@Shimejii PC was built with gaming and budget in mind. She hadn't planned to do any Adobe work when the computers were built. It does pretty well though. Now I probably would have spent the extra $150 or so but it didn't make sense back then.  

 

@dogwitch  I know it's already trying to use the SSD as a cache and it's not pretty.  

 

@SupaKomputa  I've thought about this but people seem to act like it's sacrilege to run mixed sizes or a mixed kit. I used to run 1 extra 4gb ddr3 stick with two matched 4gb sticks in my old build and the extra ram was better than any possible performance hit I took from having uneven slots.   I'd like to save the extra $100 on 32 vs 64 and use it towards a more color accurate monitor if I can get away with it.

[dogwitch]

57 minutes ago, Demonic Donut said:

@Shimejii PC was built with gaming and budget in mind. She hadn't planned to do any Adobe work when the computers were built. It does pretty well though. Now I probably would have spent the extra $150 or so but it didn't make sense back then.  

 

@dogwitch  I know it's already trying to use the SSD as a cache and it's not pretty.  

 

@SupaKomputa  I've thought about this but people seem to act like it's sacrilege to run mixed sizes or a mixed kit. I used to run 1 extra 4gb ddr3 stick with two matched 4gb sticks in my old build and the extra ram was better than any possible performance hit I took from having uneven slots.   I'd like to save the extra $100 on 32 vs 64 and use it towards a more color accurate monitor if I can get away with it.

on mix/match ram. if the ram speed is really not need for software you need. its fine to mix

[SupaKomputa]

mixing 2 different kit size is not a problem at all. i've done it multiple times.

16gb dimms are getting cheaper, it's a better investment than having 8gb dimms, in 2-3 years when you want to upgrade to maybe ddr5, 16gb probably going to sell faster than 8gb sticks.

[Roswell]

32 should be plenty if you're using the right apps for the right purpose, though it sounds like that may not be the case. Photoshop can easily chew through 64GB of memory if you have a boatload of smart objects/vectors on a large canvas.

 

That said, there are almost zero instances where that should ever take place. Illustrator would handle the same projects while using a fraction of the memory. Gotta get in the mindset of editing or touching up assets in Photoshop and then moving said stuff into Illustrator to compose the project. 

 

2 hours ago, Shimejii said:

32 GB is fine, i never ran out of memory in Premiere and i use to do 4 hour Editing sessions. 64 GB would be just for MASSIVE stuff and i honestly dont know if photoshop would like that in the first place. Save Often remember!

 

Im honestly surprised you didnt go intel for adobe, as it almost always prefers Intel CPUS for the faster clocks.

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I would recommend 64GB. I don't use Adobe products but I've run out of RAM with 32GB when video editing once.

 

There's no such thing as too much RAM.

 

32GB could be fine for now but you're just putting off the inevitable upgrade to 64GB once 32GB is not enough.

 

OP isn't asking about video editing.

 

1 hour ago, Demonic Donut said:

I know it's already trying to use the SSD as a cache and it's not pretty. 

That's intended no matter how much memory you have. Adobe apps use a scratch disk to store uncompressed assets, rendered effects and versioning. Without a scratch disk the apps would be an absolute nightmare and take ages to apply/undo/preview changes.

 

A moderately high resolution edited photo in PSD form can easily be 200MB.  Once uncompressed on the scratch disk that would end up being around 2GB. Now imagine a composite made up of 10 images of similar size... PLUS whatever gargantuan size the actual composite is. Unless you want to splurge on 128-256GB of memory, you're gonna be using a scratch disk in Adobe.

 

You can manually set a size, but you should really just let the apps handle it. Always have at least 30GB (preferably more) free for scratch.

[cmndr]

Any reason why you can't go for 48GB total?

That's literally just buying a 32GB kit and slapping it in.

Also consider putting your page file on a 16GB $10ish optane stick. Those don't choke under mixed read/write the way SSDs do.

[Roswell]

5 minutes ago, cmndr said:

Any reason why you can't go for 48GB total?

That's literally just buying a 32GB kit and slapping it in.

Also consider putting your page file on a 16GB $10ish optane stick. Those don't choke under mixed read/write the way SSDs do.

16GB isn’t enough for Adobe scratch. Realistically need at least 32, preferably more so you’re not teetering on the edge when you need it. Page file is also unrelated, Adobe apps handle their own caching.

[cmndr]

8 minutes ago, Roswell said:

16GB isn’t enough for Adobe scratch. Realistically need at least 32, preferably more so you’re not teetering on the edge when you need it. Page file is also unrelated, Adobe apps handle their own caching.

You can buy two or put some of it on your boot drive. You wouldn't end up any worse than where you started.

[Kalindu]

Nothing is too much, but with your current cpu, 32 would be the best, But 64 is the best for future.

You can buy from a brand like "Team" to save some money

 

[Roswell]

14 minutes ago, cmndr said:

You can buy two or put some of it on your boot drive. You wouldn't end up any worse than where you started.

I don’t know 100% for Windows but I know you can’t split Adobe’s scratch disk on Mac. 
 

Whenever you open a project file it just decompresses everything and dumps it to disk, so it’s a constantly fluctuating size and then disappears once you close the program.

[Demonic Donut]

Good to know. Thanks for all of the information everyone. Definitely a lot I didn't know about Adobe.

 

I'm planning to go with a 32gb kit for now. I need to check her drives because she tends to fill them. I wouldn't be surprised if the drive Adobe was using for scratch was near full as well. Might need more storage.

[dogwitch]

1 hour ago, Demonic Donut said:

Good to know. Thanks for all of the information everyone. Definitely a lot I didn't know about Adobe.

 

I'm planning to go with a 32gb kit for now. I need to check her drives because she tends to fill them. I wouldn't be surprised if the drive Adobe was using for scratch was near full as well. Might need more storage.

i

CrystalDiskInfo them.

also i do a high read/write drive to for it.

[Demonic Donut]

18 hours ago, dogwitch said:

i

CrystalDiskInfo them.

also i do a high read/write drive to for it.

Would she actually benefit from a pcie4.0 m.2 like the 970 pro?

 

I'm a fan of Samsung drives. They have served me well. I have 870's, 970's and a couple crucial mx500's between our two systems.

[dogwitch]

1 hour ago, Demonic Donut said:

Would she actually benefit from a pcie4.0 m.2 like the 970 pro?

 

I'm a fan of Samsung drives. They have served me well. I have 870's, 970's and a couple crucial mx500's between our two systems.

not really.

its endurance you want to look for.