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Computer Advice

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ChrisLF

Member
Premium Classic Member
Joined
Feb 26, 2017
Messages
47
Location
Warwick, UK.
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version 11
Operating System
  1. Other (please note in thread)
As said on another thread I'm going to have to look at replacing my existing PC tower to run LR Classic satisfactorily.

I've searched out the minimum requirements from Adobe but would appreciate it if recommendations could be given for off the shelf PCs that will provide the required performance and at a reasonable price. Not looking for blistering performance, just something to do the job. I'm in the UK.

Currently running Windows 10, I assume Classic runs OK on Windows 11?

Thanks, Chris
 
Having said all that, at the moment the advice is that there is lot of new hardware about to be released so, often, the advice at the moment is to wait a little.
David, that is so true. As a PC builder I can tell you that for the past 30 years and more, that has always been true. There is always something new about to come out no matter when you buy or build. For example, when I build a cutting-edge expensive rig that has all the lates components, it is no longer cutting edge 10 moths later, and 18 months or two years later it is a current mid-range PC.

But it is very important now to be aware of what is happening out there in the component world and what you are buying at the low to mid-level. She needs to get a pre-built good-name PC that has a Motherboard that has TB4 and USB4 connectivity and that has capability to handle PCIe Gen 4 SSDs. If the system she buys does not have that, she is going to be way behind much faster and to get a mid-range PC that has that capability in the next few months is not going to break the bank.

But it is not a big deal really. If she buys a mid-range PC two months from now from a good builder, brand or shop, she is going to get what was cutting edge two or 3 years ago that would have cost 3 or 4 times more back then. Whatever she gets is going to be very good with LR. LR is going to fly on any current mid-range desktop.
 
You might also want to take a look at the recommendations from https://www.pugetsystems.com/recomm...ightroom-Classic-141/Hardware-Recommendations - they do lots of Lightroom-specific benchmarking, so although you wouldn't want to order from them (they're US based), it'd give you some good tops on the sweet spot spec that balances performance and budget.
I live in Seattle and Puget Sound's recommendations are overkill and the cheapest system is close to $4K. Based on terrific guidance from another thread here, I got a PC custom built locally for $1.5K with the following specs:
Intel latest i5 processor
64GB RAM
1 TB SSD
NVidia 1650 Graphics card
850W Gold power supply
Lots of USB 3.1 ports
LR and PS run blazingly fast. Takes less than 10 seconds to Align 4 layered images and another 5 seconds to auto-blend.
RAM prices have come down. Getting 64GB makes a lot of sense. You will get more bang for the buck (pound) compared to more powerful CPU. YMMV.

Thanks to the folks here who gave me terrific guidance.
 
I live in Seattle and Puget Sound's recommendations are overkill and the cheapest system is close to $4K. Based on terrific guidance from another thread here, I got a PC custom built locally for $1.5K with the following specs:
Intel latest i5 processor
64GB RAM
1 TB SSD
NVidia 1650 Graphics card
850W Gold power supply
Lots of USB 3.1 ports
LR and PS run blazingly fast. Takes less than 10 seconds to Align 4 layered images and another 5 seconds to auto-blend.
RAM prices have come down. Getting 64GB makes a lot of sense. You will get more bang for the buck (pound) compared to more powerful CPU. YMMV.

Thanks to the folks here who gave me terrific guidance.
Great job! That's a great rig for 1500 bucks. 64 of ram is really a great idea for a desktop and pays good dividends. I always recommend it now even for below middle rigs. A lot of people don't know what a nice mid level desktop can do these days.
 
Yes, I'm really appreciating the help and guidance as well.

I shall probably go for 32GB of RAM but might increase it.

I was thinking about going down the route of a 500GB SSD as the C Drive (currently 150GB which is way too small) and then another HDD (a slower but bigger one, maybe 5TB) for the D Drive (currently 762GB but less than half used) for holding my catalogue and files from other applications but as I use two Seagate external drives to backup everything up and hold my original camera files then I guess it makes more sense to have one bigger 1TB SSD to take the OS and other software and data? Is yours partitioned into C and D?

If I do go down that route maybe I'll go for a bigger SSD though? My current C and D capacity adds up to just under 1TB, though it's not all used, but would be good to have some spare capacity.

Chris
 
Yes, I'm really appreciating the help and guidance as well.

I shall probably go for 32GB of RAM but might increase it.

I was thinking about going down the route of a 500GB SSD as the C Drive (currently 150GB which is way too small) and then another HDD (a slower but bigger one, maybe 5TB) for the D Drive (currently 762GB but less than half used) for holding my catalogue and files from other applications but as I use two Seagate external drives to backup everything up and hold my original camera files then I guess it makes more sense to have one bigger 1TB SSD to take the OS and other software and data? Is yours partitioned into C and D?

If I do go down that route maybe I'll go for a bigger SSD though? My current C and D capacity adds up to just under 1TB, though it's not all used, but would be good to have some spare capacity.

Chris
Chris, you have a lot of wiggle room and whatever you get in the way of a new desktop is going to work well if it is a new PC at the mid-level. I can't see your options here of course, and I don't know what you are spending. I also am aware that we in the US get better deals on electronics and computers, so there is that.

But I think you can get a really nice fairly inexpensive PC that boots off of a 1 TB M.2 SSD (which you are calling the C Drive, which it normally is on Windows). On that Boot drive is your OS (Windows), all your programs (LR) and your lightroom folder with the catalog and previews.

Then you could mount a 2 TB SSD internally (or externally if you want) for all your data needs (images). You can name that drive whatever letter you want. Call it D if internal. Then you can back it up to external HDD or SSD. You will find that 2 TB SSDs mounted externally through a USB-C port of at least 10 Gbps (or faster) will be the way to go if not now then very soon. But you still haven't said how big the folder is with all of your images. That we need to know. Maybe I missed it.
 
Hi Greg, thanks for your further thoughts.

I have two folders residing on the D Drive (Windows 10, Lightroom and other Adobe stuff and other programs are on the C Drive partition). One called Lightroom amounting to 217GB and containing catalogues and backups and the other called For Lightroom, amounting to 234GB, which contains all my folders containing images, mainly RAW, for importing into Lightroom. After extensive housekeeping LR itself currently has 2961 images in it.

Not a great number I know (photography has to compete with other more expensive hobbies and budgets!) which is why I've said I don't need top end and mid-range will be more than adequate.

For the boot drive I agree a 1TB SSD is the way to go. I currently have over 2TB on each of my external drives so an additional internal SSD of 2TB won't be enough and so I'm leaning towards a 6TB HDD but will continue to use my external drives for backup.

Yes, I've noticed that many things are more expensive over here including computers and cameras etc! :(

Chris
 
OK,
Get that mid-range PC like we described with the internal M.2 1 TB boot drive and put all of your files on a spinning 4 TB external portable hard drive for now. Those are very common and are always on sale here for around 80 bucks or less in Costco. If those old spinning external drives of yours are 4 years old, be wary of them. You need to buy three of those 4 TB drives. One is your primary data drive and the other two are exact copy backups of that drive and all of your data and images. One of the backups you keep in the house and one off-site.

But do this ... keep your eye on the external 4 TB SATA SSD market because that is what you need to go to for your data. They are getting way less expensive every month that goes by. SATA is old tech, but twice as cheap as NVMe external drives, although 4 times slower. But still, 4 TB external SSD SATA drives are 4 times faster and light-years better than any spinning hard drive. Smaller, more durable, more reliable and feels ten times faster (because of latency issues).

Without giving an SSD lecture, let me give you another market example as comparison - the external 4TB NVMe SSD, like the new SanDisk 4TB Extreme PRO Portable SSD, is far more expensive than the external SATA 4TB SSD. It is about 500 bucks now. So Jumping from SATA to NVMe doubles the price and quadruples the speed. Beyond that are the internal SSDs that are NVMe, M.2, PCIe 4 and soon to be 5, and those jump yet again in speed to 20 times faster than a SATA SSD and 80 times faster than a hard drive.
But don't worry about that. Get those 4 TB external hard drives for now, and keep an eye on 4 TB SATA external drives, and when the price drops to around 210 bucks for one of those, get one as your primary data drive and connect it to the USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x1 (10 Gbps) drive on your new PC. That is your goal.
Well, that should be everyone's goal that has less than 3 TB of data files and is running it off of spinning HDDs.
 
OK,
Get that mid-range PC like we described with the internal M.2 1 TB boot drive and put all of your files on a spinning 4 TB external portable hard drive for now. Those are very common and are always on sale here for around 80 bucks or less in Costco. If those old spinning external drives of yours are 4 years old, be wary of them. You need to buy three of those 4 TB drives. One is your primary data drive and the other two are exact copy backups of that drive and all of your data and images. One of the backups you keep in the house and one off-site.

But do this ... keep your eye on the external 4 TB SATA SSD market because that is what you need to go to for your data. They are getting way less expensive every month that goes by. SATA is old tech, but twice as cheap as NVMe external drives, although 4 times slower. But still, 4 TB external SSD SATA drives are 4 times faster and light-years better than any spinning hard drive. Smaller, more durable, more reliable and feels ten times faster (because of latency issues).

Without giving an SSD lecture, let me give you another market example as comparison - the external 4TB NVMe SSD, like the new SanDisk 4TB Extreme PRO Portable SSD, is far more expensive than the external SATA 4TB SSD. It is about 500 bucks now. So Jumping from SATA to NVMe doubles the price and quadruples the speed. Beyond that are the internal SSDs that are NVMe, M.2, PCIe 4 and soon to be 5, and those jump yet again in speed to 20 times faster than a SATA SSD and 80 times faster than a hard drive.
But don't worry about that. Get those 4 TB external hard drives for now, and keep an eye on 4 TB SATA external drives, and when the price drops to around 210 bucks for one of those, get one as your primary data drive and connect it to the USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x1 (10 Gbps) drive on your new PC. That is your goal.
Well, that should be everyone's goal that has less than 3 TB of data files and is running it off of spinning HDDs.
It is important to understand both the benefits and the negatives about SSDs. On the positive side, putting higher prices aside, they have better performance and require less power than "spinning rust." For a laptop running a batttery the latter is an important consideration. And external SSDs are far more rugged than external HDDs, another key benefit. The key negative for an SSD is its failure mode. With no moving parts, there are no odd mechanical noises that presage failure. One day, poof, the drive will simply not work.

Therefore it is important that your backup drive be a normal HDD. If you use the backup drive infrequently, then service life will not be an issue.
Of course, the price difference between a large SSD and a large HDD might be better spent on other parts of a system, such as more memory or a faster CPU or an add-in GPU card.
 
Thanks Phil
Both my external backups are spinners and whilst a few years old haven't had frequent use. I shall probably replace the older and smaller one soon anyway.

I shall take Greg's advice and make sure the ports in the new PC are suitable for SSD drives if I go down that route in the future. It will be specced with plenty of RAM and a separate graphics card with more than the minimum amount of RAM as well.

Chris
 
It is important to understand both the benefits and the negatives about SSDs. On the positive side, putting higher prices aside, they have better performance and require less power than "spinning rust." For a laptop running a batttery the latter is an important consideration. And external SSDs are far more rugged than external HDDs, another key benefit. The key negative for an SSD is its failure mode. With no moving parts, there are no odd mechanical noises that presage failure. One day, poof, the drive will simply not work.

Therefore it is important that your backup drive be a normal HDD. If you use the backup drive infrequently, then service life will not be an issue.
Of course, the price difference between a large SSD and a large HDD might be better spent on other parts of a system, such as more memory or a faster CPU or an add-in GPU card.
Phil, I do not agree with this at all. Besides vastly understating the advantages of SSDs over HDDs, that bit about the SSD not making noise and thus being a disadvantage because you can't hear it right before it goes out? No....
There are zero benefits to HDD vs SSD except for two things right now - cost and capacity. Speed, quickness, reliability, size, durability and ruggedness? The differences are vast, and the HDD has zero advantages. None. There is no comparison.
I can't wait till SSDs get just a bit more inexpensive at the 4 and 8 TB capacity so I can toss all of my many HDDs into the dustbin of history.
SSDs are far better for backup (they are better for everything) if you can swing the cost (currently). And if your data requirements are under 2 TB, you don't need an HDD (in my opinion) right now and should be moving to SSD.
They day is soon coming where HDDs will only be used at above 8TB.
 
Thanks Phil
Both my external backups are spinners and whilst a few years old haven't had frequent use. I shall probably replace the older and smaller one soon anyway.

I shall take Greg's advice and make sure the ports in the new PC are suitable for SSD drives if I go down that route in the future. It will be specced with plenty of RAM and a separate graphics card with more than the minimum amount of RAM as well.

Chris
Chris,

SSD drives are the same size as 2.5" HDDs. They have mounting points in the same positions and they use the same SATA III interface. Thus it is easy to swap out an old HDD and replace it with a new SSD. The key issue is the "data migration tools" the SSD vendor supplies with the drive.
 
There are zero benefits to HDD vs SSD except for two things right now - cost and capacity. Speed, quickness, reliability, size, durability and ruggedness? The differences are vast, and the HDD has zero advantages. None. There is no comparison.
I understand the benefits of SSD, even though I only presently use HDD. I've been looking to use SSD in my next configuration. In terms of potential disadvantage, I've seen a number of articles like this against defragging SSD's which cause me pause. Now, I agree that because of the different technologies, the same benefit of continuous blocks on HDD is not necessarily needed for SSD. However, SDD has an attribute that HDD does not 'program/erase cycles'. Yes, the HDD media will eventually fail but seems higher than SSD.

"Because of the way SSDs work, not only does data not become fragmented but running a defragmentation utility will actually burn through the program/erase cycles and potentially cause premature 'death' of your SSDs"
 
Phil, I do not agree with this at all. Besides vastly understating the advantages of SSDs over HDDs, that bit about the SSD not making noise and thus being a disadvantage because you can't hear it right before it goes out? No....
There are zero benefits to HDD vs SSD except for two things right now - cost and capacity. Speed, quickness, reliability, size, durability and ruggedness? The differences are vast, and the HDD has zero advantages. None. There is no comparison.
I can't wait till SSDs get just a bit more inexpensive at the 4 and 8 TB capacity so I can toss all of my many HDDs into the dustbin of history.
SSDs are far better for backup (they are better for everything) if you can swing the cost (currently). And if your data requirements are under 2 TB, you don't need an HDD (in my opinion) right now and should be moving to SSD.
They day is soon coming where HDDs will only be used at above 8TB.
Greg,

I have to respectfully disagree with the message being quoted.

Cost is usually an issue for most people at some level. The budget may be "soft" but in reality there is an upper limit to what most people are willing and able to spend on a new system or upgrades to an existing system. And for someone who has a perfectly functioning 2 TB HDD that they use for bulk storage of photo files, what is the real rationale for arbitrarily replacing it with an SSD? Except for import, the bulk storage drive has little effect on overall LrC performance. The same money may be better spent elsewhere.

Second the sudden death failure mode of SSDs is well known. Perhaps at some point in the (far) future, SSDs will be below in cost than equivalent HDDs for the capacities that most of us use. And perhaps the sudden death issue will be solved.

That said, I worked in a disk drive company forty years ago at a time when there were fifty ( !! ) identified hard disk startup companies. Along with massive consolidation, I have observed how hard disk drives have continuously improved capacity and performance, while shrinking in physical size and cost. Back then disk drives used either 14" or in some cases 8" platters. Now platters are either 2.5" or 3.5" while capacity per platter has increased exponentially. There are no technology factors to slow down or halt the progression of improvements in HDDs. That is reality.

"Can't wait" is certainly a reasonable aspirational personal goal, but it can't be put forth as guidance for everyone else. Same for "day is soon coming." You very well may be right, but for people making purchase decisions now, they have to make their decisions based on whats on offer now, not in three or four or more years. Statements like these two do not serve the membership of this forum, which is focused on photography and not on new developments in computer hardware technology.

And perhaps you are making an assumption that chip foundries in Taiwan and S. Korea will not be disturbed by developments in East Asia, an assumption that I don't share.
 
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I understand the benefits of SSD, even though I only presently use HDD. I've been looking to use SSD in my next configuration. In terms of potential disadvantage, I've seen a number of articles like this against defragging SSD's which cause me pause. Now, I agree that because of the different technologies, the same benefit of continuous blocks on HDD is not necessarily needed for SSD. However, SDD has an attribute that HDD does not 'program/erase cycles'. Yes, the HDD media will eventually fail but seems higher than SSD.

"Because of the way SSDs work, not only does data not become fragmented but running a defragmentation utility will actually burn through the program/erase cycles and potentially cause premature 'death' of your SSDs"
Paul,

If you replace the main drive in your system, the one that contains MacOS or Windows, with an SSD, you will be very pleased with the immediate improvement in performance. If possible, also store your LrC catalog on the SSD. Just make sure that your purchase includes a migration utility for your operating system. And do not pay the premium for a PCIE-4 drive, unless you know your system supports PCIE-4.

I believe that Windows 10's built in disk optimization feature will automatically not defrag an SSD.
 
Greg,

I have to respectfully disagree with the message being quoted.

Cost is usually an issue for most people at some level. The budget may be "soft" but in reality there is an upper limit to what most people are willing and able to spend on a new system or upgrades to an existing system. And for someone who has a perfectly functioning 2 TB HDD that they use for bulk storage of photo files, what is the real rationale for arbitrarily replacing it with an SSD? Except for import, the bulk storage drive has little effect on overall LrC performance. The same money may be better spent elsewhere.

Second the sudden death failure mode of SSDs is well known. Perhaps at some point in the (far) future, SSDs will be below in cost than equivalent HDDs for the capacities that most of us use. And perhaps the sudden death issue will be solved.

That said, I worked in a disk drive company forty years ago at a time when there were fifty ( !! ) identified hard disk startup companies. Along with massive consolidation, I have observed how hard disk drives have continuously improved capacity and performance, while shrinking in physical size and cost. Back then disk drives used either 14" or in some cases 8" platters. Now platters are either 2.5" or 3.5" while capacity per platter has increased exponentially. There are no technology factors to slow down or halt the progression of improvements in HDDs. That is reality.

"Can't wait" is certainly a reasonable aspirational personal goal, but it can't be put forth as guidance for everyone else. Same for "day is soon coming." You very well may be right, but for people making purchase decisions now, they have to make their decisions based on whats on offer now, not in three or four or more years. Statements like these two do not serve the membership of this forum, which is focused on photography and not on new developments in computer hardware technology.

And perhaps you are making an assumption that chip foundries in Taiwan and S. Korea will not be disturbed by developments in East Asia, an assumption that I don't share.
Phil, your statement about failing SSDs being well known is incorrect. Maybe at some time in the past, but not now. Any computer part or drive of any type can fail, but SSDs are far more reliable than HDDs and it's not even close. You don't pick an HDD over an SSD because of reliability. You do it because of cost or capacity.

Anyway, the lady is buying a new PC and asking for advice on what best to get at the mid-level. I'm giving her sound advice and telling her to keep an eye out on the SSDs hitting the street now and in the next few months. I think you would agree she needs to be booting off of a 1TB M.2 SSD. That's a no-brainer at even the low-cost PC level. So we are in agreement there.

For the data? There is not a photographer on Planet Earth who would pick an HDD over an SSD for working image files if cost or capacity were not an issue. In other words, you may be the only photographer in the World who would pick an HDD over an SSD because you think the HDD is more reliable and that the SSD might suddenly die.

And Phil, if I were you, I would not be waiting "3 or 4 years" (as you say) for much faster, lower priced and much larger capacity SSDs because it is happening right now, and I'm telling her to keep her eye on the market. I think she can run her data off of a 2 TB SSD right now at a reasonable cost. She should at least be aware of it as an attractive option. But I do not have a full understanding of her total data requirements, and I said in the original post that she should buy 3 4TB HDDs and keep her eye on the ball on the SSD market and be ready to switch.

By the way, why are you lecturing me about what photographers do and what best serves the forum? I'm a photographer and I'm giving the lady very sound and current advice.
 
Phil - what's the migration utility used for?
Thanks, Chris
Chris,

It's a program to transfer all the programs and data to the new drive, after ensuring that the new drive has sufficient free space.

For Windows machines, it marks the new drive as "bootable." Doing a simple "copy all" from the old drive to the new drive is not sufficient, at least for Windows. To be clear, I don't know anything about how MacOS works or if Apple itself provides a migration utility.

If the drive kit does not come with an adapter cable, you MIGHT need this sort of cable, particularly for laptops.

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-SATA-USB-Cable-USB3S2SAT3CB/dp/B00HJZJI84?asc_contentid=amzn1.osa.4d128e9a-f03c-4a0b-83a9-860753b9c23a.ATVPDKIKX0DER.en_US&asc_contenttype=article&content-id=amzn1.sym.15d473d8-31ee-48d9-a207-aaa8ce868fca:amzn1.sym.15d473d8-31ee-48d9-a207-aaa8ce868fca

The photos for this product are very helpful. I like Star Tech products over the many no-name or what-kind-of-name-is-that? products that clutter Amazon search results. Another good brand is Fideco. Avoid Orico.
 
Chris,

SSD drives are the same size as 2.5" HDDs. They have mounting points in the same positions and they use the same SATA III interface. Thus it is easy to swap out an old HDD and replace it with a new SSD. The key issue is the "data migration tools" the SSD vendor supplies with the drive.
Phil, that is true for SATA SSDs but not for NVMe M.2 PCIe (as I'm sure you know, but I'm just pointing out because there is a big difference).

And Paul, don't worry about defragging SSDs. Not really needed, especially not for the kind of work you are talking about.
 
Thanks Phil. To be clear is this for if you are replacing the HDD with a SSD in an existing PC or if transferring programs and data to a new one?

Greg - don't know why you assumed I'm a lady, though of course Chris can be either, though more often associated with male. I know two other Chris's. Used to work in an office with a Christine, shortened to Chris and I was referred to as the Chris with the moustache!
 
Ssd drives were / are a 2.5 inch fairly small form factor (compared to a typical spinning disk) and used a typical Sata connection to the motherboard. So, while these SSD drives are generally a lot faster than spinning disks, they are limited, speed wise, by the max Sata standard.

The NVMe M.2 PCIe drives are also Solid State, but are like a mini card which slots into the Pcie slot of a computer. The Sata standard has not changed for years and years and so the max throughput has been capped for some time. On the other hand, the Pcie standard is continuously improving, with each generation almost doubling the I/O speed of the bus. I think the latest generally available is Pcie 4. Your motherboard defines the Pcie version you have. I believe that Pcie 5 is just around the corner and work is advanced in terms of defining Pcie 6 and 7. The combination of M2 drive tech combined with the fast bus speeds of Pcie 4 gives rise to really fast disk I/O speeds.

Current motherboards generally now facilitate M2 PCie drives, but older motherboards (laptops or PCs) may not, so if upgrading your option might only be SSD via a Sata connection to the motherboard.
 
Ssd drives were / are a 2.5 inch fairly small form factor (compared to a typical spinning disk) and used a typical Sata connection to the motherboard. So, while these SSD drives are generally a lot faster than spinning disks, they are limited, speed wise, by the max Sata standard.

The NVMe M.2 PCIe drives are also Solid State, but are like a mini card which slots into the Pcie slot of a computer. The Sata standard has not changed for years and years and so the max throughput has been capped for some time. On the other hand, the Pcie standard is continuously improving, with each generation almost doubling the I/O speed of the bus. I think the latest generally available is Pcie 4. Your motherboard defines the Pcie version you have. I believe that Pcie 5 is just around the corner and work is advanced in terms of defining Pcie 6 and 7. The combination of M2 drive tech combined with the fast bus speeds of Pcie 4 gives rise to really fast disk I/O speeds.

Current motherboards generally now facilitate M2 PCie drives, but older motherboards (laptops or PCs) may not, so if upgrading your option might only be SSD via a Sata connection to the motherboard.
Gnits,
Good point. There is an interesting development on the PCIe front in Intel vs AMD. Intel has a bit of a platform problem going forward in terms of PCIe connectivity for M.2 SSDs. Intel was first to make use of PCIe 5 with its 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs and 600 series chipsets. That was big news, even though there are no PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs yet on the market (happening soon).

The problem is it is limited to 16 lanes, which means there is no native PCIe 5.0 support for M.2 storage slots. You have to get an add-in card to do it. That is also true for the new 13th Generation Raptor Lake CPUs and 700 series Motherboards. The Intel chipset hardware won't change anytime soon. This is a big deal and gives the advantage to AMD because AMD's new AM5 socket and Ryzan 7000 CPUs will have sufficient PCIe 5 lanes for M.2 storage on the platform. There are complex reasons why Intel is stuck for a while with this platform and it is said that they will still have to use it even two years from now on the 14th Gen CPU.

Now, there are some Intel Z690 Motherboards (and soon to be released 700 Motherboards) with native PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, but to use them, you have to steal lanes from the PEG-16 slot, which will cut the bandwidth of the GPU in half. That doesn't hinder current generation top-end GPUs, but it will soon when the new powerful (generational leap) AMD and NVidia 40 series cards are released in the Fall.

Anyway, this is something we Intel PC builders are worried about, and Maximum PC ran a big story on it today in the Sep issue (which was released to day and I just read it). Why can't Intel change its chipset hardware to better accommodate PCIE 5.0 M.2 SSDs? They are having problems with their desired 7nm production process for their CPUs. Die-shrink is difficult. AMD is already there. Remember the past several years how Intel had incredible difficulty getting to 10nm? It looks like their problems in that regard continue.
 
Thanks Phil. To be clear is this for if you are replacing the HDD with a SSD in an existing PC or if transferring programs and data to a new one?

Greg - don't know why you assumed I'm a lady, though of course Chris can be either, though more often associated with male. I know two other Chris's. Used to work in an office with a Christine, shortened to Chris and I was referred to as the Chris with the moustache!
Sorry Chris - I have two male friends in Texas named Chris and my wife's best friend (a female) is named Chris. This reminds me of the old Johnny Cash song, A Boy Named Sue. But that was the 50s....
Sorry I assumed you were a nice lady looking for PC advice. Had I known you were a man, I would not have been so polite! LOL.
Besides, in the US now you can be any gender you say you are or want to be, so it doesn't matter. If you are a biological female, you can say you are a male and if you have a baby, you can then say that men can give birth. That is an absolute fact of the current situation. I'm not being political or saying if I agree with that or not. It is just the way it is now in 2022. I don't care either way. I just declare to my wife that I am a man and thus allow the use of "he-him" in our conversations.
 
Thanks Phil. To be clear is this for if you are replacing the HDD with a SSD in an existing PC or if transferring programs and data to a new one?

Greg - don't know why you assumed I'm a lady, though of course Chris can be either, though more often associated with male. I know two other Chris's. Used to work in an office with a Christine, shortened to Chris and I was referred to as the Chris with the moustache!
@ChrisLF

My earlier reply was for replacing an HDD (or older SSD) with a new SSD.

If you need to transfer files and programs to a new computer, data file transfer is rather straightforward. Just network the two systems over WiFi and do a copy of all data folders and files to the new system. For your sanity, use the same folder locations. Do this process in chunks, perhaps two hours of transfer time for each operation.

For program transfer, you can't just copy over files. To be absolutely clear, this comment is only for Windows systems. I know nothing about MacOS, and wouldn't dare to pretend otherwise.

You have two options
  • Install all your programs all over again on your new system. For Adobe LrC you will first need to log the program out from Adobe, so you can re-use the license. This approach has the benefit of "starting over" with a clean, new system, free of any digital detritus from your old system.
If your old system is Windows 10 and the new one Windows 11, this approach may be safer.

A very useful program to help manage installs and future uninstalls is https://www.revouninstaller.com/buy-now-revo-uninstaller-pro/. There are free and paid versions. I find that I can use the extra features in the paid version, but that may not be true for you. The benefit here is that if you need to remove a program sometime in the future, Revo Uninstaller does a much more thorough job than the normal program uninstaller.

  • The other approach is to buy a program that "automagically" transfers programs and configuration settings (and maybe even data) from your old system to your new system, again over WiFi. Mostly it works well, and I ahve used this progrma to save a lot of time when transferring my wife's install from an old desktop to a new laptop. However, the pgram I suggest did not transfer over Microsoft Office or Norton Seciurty. https://www.revouninstaller.com/buy-now-revo-uninstaller-pro/ Setup took less than one hour and then I let it run to completion.
 
Thanks Phil for your detailed response. I usually do fresh installs on new computers. Being forced to do that anyway to some extent as my version of Microsoft Office is 2010 Professional and is no longer supported. Fortunately one of sons has spare licences for 365.
 
Yes, I'm really appreciating the help and guidance as well.

I shall probably go for 32GB of RAM but might increase it.

I was thinking about going down the route of a 500GB SSD as the C Drive (currently 150GB which is way too small) and then another HDD (a slower but bigger one, maybe 5TB) for the D Drive (currently 762GB but less than half used) for holding my catalogue and files from other applications but as I use two Seagate external drives to backup everything up and hold my original camera files then I guess it makes more sense to have one bigger 1TB SSD to take the OS and other software and data? Is yours partitioned into C and D?

If I do go down that route maybe I'll go for a bigger SSD though? My current C and D capacity adds up to just under 1TB, though it's not all used, but would be good to have some spare capacity.

Chris
I got a 1 TB SSD (my old machine had a 512 GB SSD) for my new computer. I split it into 2 partitions with about 400GB for C: and the rest for D:. My LR catalog is in D Drive. My images are in a 8TB external spinning drive and I back that up to another 8TB spinning drive and a Drobo RAID system. I import all my new images into the D: drive. After processing, I move the images and associated sidecar files to the external drive. Unless I make further edits, all the edits are done when everything is in the SSD. PS and LR performance is terrific.
 
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