I need advice on whether my PC needs upgrading. Help!

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CrabbyGuy

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Joined
Apr 24, 2013
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Location
San Luis Obispo, CA
Lightroom Experience
Beginner
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
6 with latest update
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I have a 4-year-old, DDR3 motherboard with 32 GB of RAM, an overclockable, 4-core i5 Haswell processor now being cooled with air, and lots of SSDs. I want to speed up this PC to run Lightroom faster. Should I:

1. Buy a water cooler and push up the processor speed for maybe $100? What percentage speed increase is possible?
of
2. Sell everything on eBay and start over for maybe $1000? What percentage speed increase is possible?
 
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CrabbyGuy said:
I have a 4-year-old, DDR3 motherboard with 32 GB of RAM, an overclockable, 4-core i5 Haswell processor now being cooled with air, and lots of SSDs. I want to speed up this PC to run Lightroom faster. Should I:

1. Buy a water cooler and push up the processor speed for maybe $100? What percentage speed increase is possible?
of
2. Sell everything on eBay and start over for maybe $1000? What percentage speed increase is possible?
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CabbyGuy,

You may already know this, but there are two ways to overclock:

1. Buy and all-in-one CPU-only cooler. I believe that these kits include only a radiotor big enough to be cooled with one 120 or 140 mm fan. Easy to install, but limited to water-cooling the CPU.

2. Go crazy, really crazy, :eek: and build up your own from parts. The benefit is that you have the potential for much more aggressive overlocking than with a kit.

However. You can have one or more radiators, any of which can be cooled with two, three or even four fans. You can also watercool the graphics card, the motherboard chipset, etc. You will need a case big enough for all the radiators and fans, preferably one with pre-drilled mount holes. You will also need to get into all the arcana of cooling blocks, pumps, radiators, reservoirs, additives to the water, different types of tubing, etc. Cost can be easily $300 - $500. Plus, many such watercooling enthusiasts "rebuild" their "loops" every year with new tubing and coolants. There are websites like www.overclockers.net and www.hardforum.com that focus on watercooling and specialized companies and web stores to supply the parts.

Phil
 
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Is there a particular aspect of Lightroom performance that you want to improve?
Dave
 
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I did decide essentially to start from scratch and to include water cooling with one of the 9th gen. Intel processors that have solder between their core and top. I wanted everything on LR to run faster as I have many old photos I want to go through and--I hope--find several worth printing. My plan is to keep this new PC four or five years as the time required for me to get back up to speed on computer technology is considerable.

Thanks for your comments and questions!
 
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CrabbyGuy said:
I did decide essentially to start from scratch and to include water cooling with one of the 9th gen. Intel processors that have solder between their core and top. I wanted everything on LR to run faster as I have many old photos I want to go through and--I hope--find several worth printing. My plan is to keep this new PC four or five years as the time required for me to get back up to speed on computer technology is considerable.

Thanks for your comments and questions!
Click to expand...
CrabbyGuy,

There are no end of websites devoted to building your own PCs, picking the right parts, overclocking, etc. etc. I've mentioned two such sites in a prior post.

For parts and pricing see www.pcpartpicker.com. And of course for actually buying the parts, my go-to store is www.newegg.com.
 
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