Get something 256GB or higher for the OS and programs, and to use as a “working” drive. But boy does this make a difference for photo editing, I almost made it my first thing on the list. They are quite a bit faster at reading and writing than the magnetic spinning hard drives, but they are also more expensive.
Abbreviation for solid state drive, an SSD is a hard drive that uses flash memory technology, similar to the memory in your phone and the SD cards you put in your camera. You can have things work pretty will with 16GB of RAM, and can get by with 8GB, but this is the first place I would max out a system configuration for a computer and get as much memory as possible. As a software developer I think Adobe and other software companies are being lazy with their development practices because so many computer systems have high quantities of RAM, but they need every bit you can give them. These photo editing software programs are memory hogs.
2018 mac mini for video editing how to#
The recommendations are in order of priority to help you decide how to get it configured as you are ordering from a PC maker or if you are brave enough to try a custom build ( Be sure to check out the Windows Photo Editing SUPER Guide article for updated recommendations): Remember, this is very photography focused and is not a recommendation for a gaming or video editing PC (that would start off with maxing out the CPU and have some other differences).
Here is my advice on what things are worth “upgrading” in a PC to make sure it will run Photoshop and Lightroom well.