Trying to decide on a new PC

bissquitt · November 20, 2018

My 2 thoughts are a new Surface Pro or a custom built rig. If I go surface, I would like my entire photo editing workflow to go there. Gaming can stick to the desktop with dedicated GPU. Otherwise desktop for both but no portability.

Current hardware:

I work in IT (But have not speced anything out or really dealt with hardware in AGES), I have tons of old hardware laying around. My current "Main" computer is an old Dell i7-4770 with a GTX 1050 thrown in and 24gb of RAM. This surprisingly does most of what I need it to. I also have a alienware m11x r3 which is a bit dated but still works ok, and a work laptop that is new compared to the rest of my hardware (i5-6550HQ).

What I use them for:

I was a gamer, though I rarely have much time anymore and mostly end up playing quick games or things most current gamers would laugh at, about the most intensive (and what prompted with 1050) was deus ex: mankind divided. Its the first one the baby alienware could not handle. The current system is enough. I don't have a problem playing on lower resolutions and turning most things off as long as it doesn't look TERRIBLE. The other intensive thing is photo editing. Mostly lightroom with a little photoshop. Photoshop runs fine on the current desktop, lightroom mostly runs fine, but occasionally lags. I think this may just be memory leaking though since a restart seems to help it and cpu/ram are far from maxed out when it happens.

My desires:

1) I want something with modern "stuff", until I migrated to this desktop (discarded from a client) I didn't even have usb3. Usb-c or thunderbolt would be nice.

2) I do my photo editing in 2 stages, select pictures then edit. I have been looking for a good way to go through the pictures on a tablet, but there doesn't seem to be a good way, and I would have to deal with transfer back and forth. The surface (or any x86/x64) tablet could likely handle this, but if I'm getting a new machine to do this, might as well make it decent enough to edit on as well. I'm not sure if lightroom leans on the CPU or GPU more intensively, I've looked but never got a clear answer other than it can use both. Obviously the surface is a downgrade in GPU, but will the CPU make up for it?

3) Futureproof as a far third place.

Surface Concerns: no usb-c, max of usb3 for i/o, fast enough to not drag in lightroom?, HDD space. I would get the largest, but I still foresee having to use some externals since I easily fill my two 500gb SSDs on the desktop if I have a few concurrent photo projects. Network storage and spinning drives I have plenty of.

My ideal setup would be a Surface with Thunderbolt an an external graphics card that I can use while docked, but they don't make that and I don't know if its worth waiting for MS to disappoint me next year. Price is not too much of a concern, but I'm not wanting to buy 2 major purchases at the same time. I plan to utilize blackfriday/holiday sales for whichever I go with.

Thanks for any input or alternatives I haven't seen.