New Computer

I've posted about this several times but I'm finally going to pull the trigger on a new computer.  I think I've got it pretty squared away but have a few additional questions.  I mainly use the computer for photoediting with Canon DPP and Photoshop.  Currently I do not use Lightroom but may in the future.  Would also like to look into Helicon for photo stacking although I won't do this a ton.  Below are the specs as well.

-  Additional RAM is easy to add in the future but am consider going with 128 right away.  Is this neccessary, would I see a significant improvement with 128GB to justify the cost?
- Photoshop scratch disk:  Is this something I have to worry about?  I was considering adding a 2nd Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB M.2 NVMe to dedicate as a scratch disk.  It seems like dedicating a drive as a scratch disk is the way to go.  Does this make sense or will I not see enough of an improvement to justify.
-  I was considering adding another M.2 drive or SSD drive to put current files on that I am editing frequently (opening/saving).  Will this speed up the opening and saving in Photoshop compared to just having the files on the WD 6TB drives?  On my current PC some files take 1-2 minutes and a larger 20 GB pano I'm working on takes probably like 10 minutes.  I'm guessing this has to do with more than just the HD. If point #2 above makes sense I would have to go with an SSD as the motherboard only has 2 M.2 spots.  If point #2 does not make sense I could go with an M.2 drive.

i9-10850K
RTX 3070
MSI Z490 Carbon
Fractal S2 Vision Blackout
Corsair Vengeance 64GB
Antec 850W Gold
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB M.2 NVMe
Noctua NH-D15
2- 6TB WD 7200 RPM HD

Any insight is appreciated.

Looks great although, unless you are planning on spending a lot of time on the new Microsoft Flight simulator, the graphics card is overkill, at least today but it does futureproof you to some extent

As to your questions:
- Whether or not 128GB will make a difference depends on the size of your files, how much you use multiple layers and how many programs you run at the same time. In my case going from 64 to 128 was a fairly significant boost as the computer virtually never needs to go to scratch or cache (although Adobe's poor coding forces some operations to go to scratch regardless of whether or not you have memory available to do the operation)
- With NVME disks, a dedicated scrach doesn't make that much difference as long as your NVME is big enough to dedicate a decent size chunk to scratch but I prefer having a totally seperate scratch disk.
- Most definitely that will speed up lad/save but eventually it does need to go to the spinning platters Most definitely you have something else going on on your system that is slowing load times but the new system will probably resolve that. My guess is that the times it takes extra long is when you Windows is doing it's search indexing.

Overall, the system you have outlined above looks great! Personally I would go 12TB on the HD's (or bigger, I went with 16TB drives), they don't cost that much more when building a system like this.

E.J. Peiker wrote:Looks great although, unless you are planning on spending a lot of time on the new Microsoft Flight simulator, the graphics card is overkill, at least today but it does futureproof you to some extent

As to your questions:
- Whether or not 128GB will make a difference depends on the size of your files, how much you use multiple layers and how many programs you run at the same time.  In my case going from 64 to 128 was a fairly significant boost as the computer virtually never needs to go to scratch or cache (although Adobe's poor coding forces some operations to go to scratch regardless of whether or not you have memory available to do the operation)
- With NVME disks, a dedicated scrach doesn't make that much difference as long as your NVME is big enough to dedicate a decent size chunk to scratch but I prefer having a totally seperate scratch disk.
- Most definitely that will speed up lad/save but eventually it does need to go to the spinning platters  Most definitely you have something else going on on your system that is slowing load times but the new system will probably resolve that.  My guess is that the times it takes extra long is when you Windows is doing it's search indexing.

Overall, the system you have outlined above looks great!  Personally I would go 12TB on the HD's (or bigger, I went with 16TB drives), they don't cost that much more when building a system like this.

Thanks E.J. I can't believe you said something I choose was overkill, haha.  It's either the 3070 or the 2060 is all that is available.  I hate to go with the 2060 which is over a year old.  My current PC is 8 years old so I figure this will keep the system current for some time as you say.

Is there anyway to determine the appropriate size of scratch disk?  I was thinking of getting a 2nd 500GB M.2 for this.

In terms of the extra SSD for files that I am actively editing is there a way to quantify the difference I will see.  Just trying to understand if I should get an SSD for this or just live with the spinning platter drives. As you say eventually they will all go to the platter but when I'm editing photos I tend to process images over a period of time and open them on 5-10 different occasions until I finalized the processing.

- I can definitely understand why you would choose the 3070
- 500GB is more than enough.
- On small files it won't matter at all but on big files, especially things like panoramas, it will definitely make a big difference.  Even an old style SSD is approximately 5 times as fast for reads and writes than a spinning platter drive is.

I am in the market for a new Dell.  Was going to get the i7.  Is an i9 really necessary if i do Photoshop and video editing?  I never play games (never had a PC fast enough to play any games).  

OntPhoto wrote:I am in the market for a new Dell.  Was going to get the i7.  Is an i9 really necessary if i do Photoshop and video editing? 

No, i7 has plenty of power for PS.  Get as much memory as you can afford and make sure the system drive is an m.2 nVME type of drive and your performance should very good.  I would not go below a GEForce 2060 for graphics card on a new system and would prefer a 2080 or a 30XX.  No sense in getting a new computer with yesteryear graphics

And I would get win 10 Pro over win 10 Home. When I had my new desktop built last year that is what I was told to get. I do not know the specific reason why however.

photoman4343 wrote:And I would get win 10 Pro over win 10 Home. When I had my new desktop built  last year that is what I was told to get. I do not know the specific reason why however.

Most of the differences revolve around group policies and multi-user management as well as remote accessibility.  Most of those don't matter to those here but two might:  1. Home is limited to 128GB of RAM where Pro is virtually limitless.  2. Pro gives you some control over how and when updates are delivered where home gives you little control of that.

Personally I run Pro on all of my systems and have had little problems where the Home versions gave me all sorts of problems but that may be specific to me.  Being able to determine when and where your updates are done is huge for me as is the potential for addressing more than 128GB of RAM.  Being able to get onto my system from anywhere in the world is nice too although, these days, that function is not used.

E.J. Peiker wrote:

OntPhoto wrote:I am in the market for a new Dell.  Was going to get the i7.  Is an i9 really necessary if i do Photoshop and video editing? 

No, i7 has plenty of power for PS.  Get as much memory as you can afford and make sure the system drive is an m.2 nVME type of drive and your performance should very good.  I would not go below a GEForce 2060 for graphics card on a new system and would prefer a 2080 or a 30XX.  No sense in getting a new computer with yesteryear graphics

Thanks EJ.  Current performance of my approximately 10 year old Dell Studio XPS leaves me little choice.  Getting another Dell.

Is i7 good enough for 4k video editing? Whst is the minimum RAM?

My 10 year old i7 really struggles to convert GoPro 5 videos. Takes forever. But that is a vey old i7.

What about Win 10? I will Googe this one to see if Home or one step up wil be sufficirnt..

OntPhoto wrote:Is i7 good enough for 4k video editing?  Whst is the minimum RAM?  

My 10 year old i7 really struggles to convert GoPro 5 videos.  Takes forever.  But that is a vey old i7.

What about Win 10?  I will Googe this one to see if Home or one step up wil be sufficirnt..

Yes, but there are many versions of an i7 - I'd get the fastest one you can afford with a minimum of 8 cores, more if you can afford it.  Also make sure it is at least an i7-9xxx or better an i7-10xxx.  I'd go for 64GB minimum, 128GB optimal.  A 10 year old i7 is significantly slower than a current i3.  Also get a good graphics card with plenty of video memory - that plays a huge role in that type of task.  Now that I know you want to do that, I'd suggest a 2080 or greater.

What about Win 10?  Home is OK but has some limitations as outlined above.  I recommend Pro to anyone that asks.

Finally, make sure you check out the Ryzen thread a couple of entries below this one.

I have the following components on a Dell XPS Desktop. I will try and make the adjustments you mentioned above.  
If I keep the current build, under what usage would I see a slow down (one of those 'I wish I had listened' moments)?

Is BlueRay that useful?  I rarely use my current DVD/CD drive.

10th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-10700 processor(8-Core, 16M Cache, 2.9GHz to 4.8GHz)

Windows 10 Home, 64-bit, English  (after some Googling, I think Home is good enough for my use)

NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 2060 6GB GDDR6   (Oops, let me go find the 2080 but what happens if I sray with the 2060??)

RAM:  32GB, 2x16GB, DDR4, 2933Mhz  (will see how much 64GB adds to the price but what happens if I stay at 32GB??)


512GB PCIe M.2 SSD +1TB SATA 7200 RPM HDD  


500W Night Sky Bezel Chassis including optical drive

PS.  Is this wireless card sufficient?
[font=roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Driver[/font]Dell Wireless DW1810 1x1 802.11ac Wi-Fi Wireless + Bluetooth 5.0 Driver

My last two desktops have not had a DVD player built into the tower. Instead I have a USB powered DVD drive that I have used once or twice for my laptop and three desktops in my house used by my family. If the Dell XPS tower does not have enough USB ports, you should be able to easily add a part with extra USB ports where the DVD drive would be installed.

I also agree that your spinning drive needs to be 12 TB or larger.

32GB is completely inadequate in today's world of video and high megapixel files. Remember that in general other programs you are running, the OS, and system overhead will consume 10-25% of that before you even start to launch imaging and video programs, and then add plug-ins, maybe some music the system might be playing, etc. There is no way today I would buy a new computer for this type of work with just 32GB. The DVD/BluRay is completely unnecessary at least to me. You can get a really cheap USB one if you ever need one. No point in putting it in the system.

The 2080 is a lot faster if you are going to do video rendering. For still photography there won't be that much difference although if you use some AI plug-ins like the Topaz stuff, I would think it could make quite a bit of difference. those programs absolutely hammer and max out whatever GPU power you can throw at it.

E.J. Peiker wrote:32GB is completely inadequate in today's world of video and high megapixel files.  Remember that in general other programs you are running, the OS, and system overhead will consume 10-25% of that before you even start to launch imaging and video programs, and then add plug-ins, maybe some music the system might be playing, etc.  There is no way today I would buy a new computer for this type of work with just 32GB.  The DVD/BluRay is completely unnecessary at least to me.  You can get a really cheap USB one if you ever need one.  No point in putting it in the system.

The 2080 is a lot faster if you are going to do video rendering.  For still photography there won't be that much difference although if you use some AI plug-ins like the Topaz stuff, I would think it could make quite a bit of difference.  those programs absolutely hammer and max out whatever GPU power you can throw at it.

I am getting 32GB from Dell and buying the extra 32GB (2x16) from Amazon (Kingston HYper $152 CAD) to make total of 64GB.  Dell is charging $400 CAD for the extra 32GB.  Thanks for your help.

photoman4343 wrote:My last two desktops have not had a DVD player built into the tower. Instead I have a USB powered DVD drive that I have used once or twice for my laptop and three desktops in my house used by my family. If the Dell XPS tower does not have enough USB ports, you should  be able to easily add a part with extra USB ports where the DVD drive would be installed.

I also agree that your spinning drive needs to be 12 TB or larger.

What happened to the old advice to not put all your eggs in one basket?  (They said the same thing for camera memory cards back in the day).  If a drive fails, would only a part of it go bad or the whole HDD?  I would hate to see a 12TB drive go bad.  

OntPhoto wrote:

photoman4343 wrote:My last two desktops have not had a DVD player built into the tower. Instead I have a USB powered DVD drive that I have used once or twice for my laptop and three desktops in my house used by my family. If the Dell XPS tower does not have enough USB ports, you should  be able to easily add a part with extra USB ports where the DVD drive would be installed.

I also agree that your spinning drive needs to be 12 TB or larger.

What happened to the old advice to not put all your eggs in one basket?  (They said the same thing for camera memory cards back in the day).  If a drive fails, would only a part of it go bad or the whole HDD?  I would hate to see a 12TB drive go bad.  

Nobody is saying not to back-up.  You are going to generate huge files with 4K video so why start out with a small drive.  Of course you need to back that up constantly.

E.J. Peiker wrote:

OntPhoto wrote:

photoman4343 wrote:My last two desktops have not had a DVD player built into the tower. Instead I have a USB powered DVD drive that I have used once or twice for my laptop and three desktops in my house used by my family. If the Dell XPS tower does not have enough USB ports, you should  be able to easily add a part with extra USB ports where the DVD drive would be installed.

I also agree that your spinning drive needs to be 12 TB or larger.

What happened to the old advice to not put all your eggs in one basket?  (They said the same thing for camera memory cards back in the day).  If a drive fails, would only a part of it go bad or the whole HDD?  I would hate to see a 12TB drive go bad.  

Nobody is saying not to back-up.  You are going to generate huge files with 4K video so why start out with a small drive.  Of course you need to back that up constantly.

OK, I see what you mean.  I likely will not be taking too many 4k videos but I'm sure many will to get the best quality possible.  I still have so many old video tapes that need to be transfererd to a hard disk.  Tapes going back to late 1997.  They're mostly SD but it's of family so it is very precious. With the new faster computer, I am hoping to finally get to this important task. 

With a 12TB HDD, if something goes wrong, is it easier to recover fata on the disk nowadays?  I know in the past, you might have to send it into a specialist that works on recovering data from failed HDD.  

If an HD fails you should have a backup and you just throw away the bad disk (or try to claim a warranty replacement - good luck with that! ). Look at hard disks as consumables - BUT - in a properly cooled and ventilated system, HD's rarely just fail but eventually they will wear out. 90% plus HD failures are due to thermal issues resulting in electronic component failure, not the actual platter failing. The other 10% is usually due to the drive taking some sort of shock. Never ever move a computer or an HD (including external ones) with power to the drive. Also, internal disks, if properly ventilated fail far less frequently than external drives despite the drive inside the external housing being the same drive, due to thermals and shock due to moving or bumping. But back to your question, look at any HD as a consumable and always have at minimum one and preferably two or three backups. So when a disk fails, it's as simple as either installing a new disk and copying the files from the backup or making the backup the primary. I prefer using a backup that does not do any proprietary compression. I much prefer a backup that duplicates the file structure so you can simply swap in the backup or copy files from the backup without going through a perilous decompression scheme and hoping that everything is alright. This also makes it much easier if you accidentally trash a file to just copy it from the backup without any proprietary software machinations. This is why things like GoodSync or the old SyncToy are so popular - they are just a file for file copy and the backup simply adds the new files or replaces ones that changed into an identical file structure.

In other words, if you follow this sort of philosophy, you won't ever need expensive data recover services.

E.J. Peiker wrote:If an HD fails you should have a backup and you just throw away the bad disk (or try to claim a warranty replacement - good luck with that! ).  Look at hard disks as consumables - BUT - in a properly cooled and ventilated system, HD's rarely just fail but eventually they will wear out.  90% plus HD failures are due to thermal issues resulting in electronic component failure, not the actual platter failing.  The other 10% is usually due to the drive taking some sort of shock.  Never ever move a computer or an HD (including external ones) with power to the drive.  Also, internal disks, if properly ventilated fail far less frequently than external drives despite the drive inside the external housing being the same drive, due to thermals and shock due to moving or bumping.  But back to your question, look at any HD as a consumable and always have at minimum one and preferably two or three backups.  So when a disk fails, it's as simple as either installing a new disk and copying the files from the backup or making the backup the primary.  I prefer using a backup that does not do any proprietary compression.  I much prefer a backup that duplicates the file structure so you can simply swap in the backup or copy files from the backup without going through a perilous decompression scheme and hoping that everything is alright.  This also makes it much easier if you accidentally trash a file to just copy it from the backup without any proprietary software machinations.  This is why things like GoodSync or the old SyncToy are so popular - they are just a file for file copy and the backup simply adds the new files or replaces ones that changed into an identical file structure.

In other words, if you follow this sort of philosophy, you won't ever need expensive data recover services.

You are right of course.  Don't count on the HDD not failing.  Back it up.   BTW, I tried that backup software you mentioned and it is not simple to use with all those settings.