Is this Windows system all I need for photos?

I'm looking at buying a new Windows 10 desktop for photo editing only (no games or video editing), and I'm wondering if the following system from DELL would be adequate. I don't care if it might be a little more powerful than I might need right now in certain ways, only that it can smoothly and quickly run Photoshop, On1 RAW, Luminar 4 and Topaz without hiccups.

This XPS Special Edition version has the following specs:

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

Windows 10 Home, 64-bit

NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 SUPER™ 8GB GDDR6

CD ROM/DVD ROM Tray load DVD Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD)

Chassis Options500W Mineral White Bezel Chassis including optical drive

Memory: 32GB, 2x16GB, DDR4, 2933Mhz

Hard Drive: 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive + 2TB 7200RPM Hard Drive

Dell Wireless Card W1810/QCA9377 (1x1 AC,BT 4.1)

Module: No FGABaseXPS MT 8940

Keyboard: Dell Multimedia Keyboard White (English)

Driver: Dell Wireless DW1810 1x1 802.11ac Wi-Fi Wireless + Bluetooth 5.0

Wired Mouse, White MS116

Sound: Onboard, Realtek Codec

No Speakers

The price with tax is $1,537.72 USD, which seems reasonable to me. I'm not crazy about getting it in white, and will try to change that, but other than that everything seems to work. But I may be overlooking something, so I would ask anyone who wishes to respond to tell me what I may be overlooking, or if I might be paying too much for what I need.

Thanks in advance for all help and advice.

ADW02 said:

I'm looking at buying a new Windows 10 desktop for photo editing only (no games or video editing), and I'm wondering if the following system from DELL would be adequate. I don't care if it might be a little more powerful than I might need right now in certain ways, only that it can smoothly and quickly run Photoshop, On1 RAW, Luminar 4 and Topaz without hiccups.

This XPS Special Edition version has the following specs:

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

Windows 10 Home, 64-bit

NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 SUPER™ 8GB GDDR6

CD ROM/DVD ROM Tray load DVD Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD)

Chassis Options500W Mineral White Bezel Chassis including optical drive

Memory: 32GB, 2x16GB, DDR4, 2933Mhz

Hard Drive: 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive + 2TB 7200RPM Hard Drive

Dell Wireless Card W1810/QCA9377 (1x1 AC,BT 4.1)

Module: No FGABaseXPS MT 8940

Keyboard: Dell Multimedia Keyboard White (English)

Driver: Dell Wireless DW1810 1x1 802.11ac Wi-Fi Wireless + Bluetooth 5.0

Wired Mouse, White MS116

Sound: Onboard, Realtek Codec

No Speakers

The price with tax is $1,537.72 USD, which seems reasonable to me. I'm not crazy about getting it in white, and will try to change that, but other than that everything seems to work. But I may be overlooking something, so I would ask anyone who wishes to respond to tell me what I may be overlooking, or if I might be paying too much for what I need.

Thanks in advance for all help and advice.

Click to expand...

That system will handle any normal Photoediting well and more You can edit 4k Videos as well. The GPU is capable of handling games, even. To just do a bit of editing in PS, it'd be fairly overspecced, but then again, this is pretty normal for a good base desktop these days as well. DVD/ROM I never use these days, ever. I transport on USB Sticks/disks, I download drivers (network driver I download on a second machine, my laptop). Maybe you want a Bluray device instead, capable of writing Bluray Archive discs? It's one of the backup options these days. Also, AMD will release their Ryzen 5000 series soon, and those are usually the King of Productivity per Dollar. But frankly, I don't see how your work profile would require more than you specced here.

Vunite said:

That system will handle any normal Photoediting well and more You can edit 4k Videos as well. The GPU is capable of handling games, even. To just do a bit of editing in PS, it'd be fairly overspecced, but then again, this is pretty normal for a good base desktop these days as well. DVD/ROM I never use these days, ever. I transport on USB Sticks/disks, I download drivers (network driver I download on a second machine, my laptop). Maybe you want a Bluray device instead, capable of writing Bluray Archive discs? It's one of the backup options these days. Also, AMD will release their Ryzen 5000 series soon, and those are usually the King of Productivity per Dollar. But frankly, I don't see how your work profile would require more than you specced here.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your great reply. What I should have added is that my old DELL XPS can do photo editing, but there are limits to what it can do with today's software, such as Luminar 4 and On1RAW. I can't run Luminar 4's latest update at all, and I have to dumb down On1 to get it to work. And even working just with PS, it can be really quite slow. You don't want to know how long it takes to boot up.

By the way, the price for the dark charcoal setup is the same as the crystal white, so I switched to that. And as for financing, it's just $38 a month on my credit card, so I'll probably go ahead with the purchase.

And that leads me to the monitor. I'm not going to pay a thousand dollars or more for super-precise color matching, but I think the DELL U2720Q, priced at $555 at B&H Photo, should work just fine.

And finally, the DVD/ROM drive. I use it for playing my music CDs when I'm painting in Corel Painter, so it won't go completely to waste.

Thanks again for your input.

ADW02 said:

And even working just with PS, it can be really quite slow. You don't want to know how long it takes to boot up.

Click to expand...

I heard of PS to stand still at something .. like reading preferences or so? Not sure what this depend son .. even happens on fast systems. But with an SSD and those specs, if you wait, everybody waits.

ADW02 said:

And that leads me to the monitor. I'm not going to pay a thousand dollars or more for super-precise color matching, but I think the DELL U2720Q, priced at $555 at B&H Photo, should work just fine.

Click to expand...

Some use dual monitor setups for this. For work, I prefer broad, 21:9 monitors with resolutions like 3440x1440 etc .. useful for displaying documents next to each other. But these broad things are hard to get with any "photo specs". So some buy a second high photo specced monitor to do that work on that one. But I think, for normal work, many if not most people with the photo hobby do not own crazy specced photographer monitors ... and it still works quite okay. You could also try to lend a calibrator tool from someone to at least get your monitor to be calibrated. Or buy a used one etc.

ADW02 said:

And finally, the DVD/ROM drive. I use it for playing my music CDs when I'm painting in Corel Painter, so it won't go completely to waste.

Click to expand...

If I were you I'd rip those CDs with a proper CDripper like Exact Audio Copy (EAC). That converts your audio CDs into whatever you want (mp3s to save space, or FLACs to archive music). Then load them into a proper music player (Musicbee for a more traditional thing or Foobar for the geeks), then be done with those annoying disks and the noisy drives Everything at your fingertips with no hassle.

ADW02 said:

Thanks again for your input.

Click to expand...

You're welcome.

Should be more than adequate. Don't why DVD burner is still installed instead of more useful bluray burner. Handy for making bluray movie disks to distribute. Yes, I know no one uses disks these days, but we have friends and family with bluray players and HD tv and not into much streaming. Players are inexpensive. Much better than ancient DVD. Bluray burner handles all disks. Not sure how people share 4k movies and slide shows other than some stream service without high compression rates and fast internet service.

Greg

The specs are good. Depending on what kind of file sizes you are dealing with, the hard drive is what is going to bog you down during opens and saves.

plantdoc said:

Should be more than adequate. Don't why DVD burner is still installed instead of more useful bluray burner. Handy for making bluray movie disks to distribute. Yes, I know no one uses disks these days, but we have friends and family with bluray players and HD tv and not into much streaming. Players are inexpensive. Much better than ancient DVD. Bluray burner handles all disks. Not sure how people share 4k movies and slide shows other than some stream service without high compression rates and fast internet service.

Greg

Click to expand...

If I may, I'm going to branch off from my original post and talk about 4k movie discs. This has nothing at all to do with computers and their configuration for photo development, so skip this if you'd like.

It appears that 4k disc delivery may be starting to die out, to be replaced by 4k streaming, and by shows that claim to be 4k (such as those on Netflix). If true, this could make for an interesting future.

There's an old saying that you can't miss what you never had, and that may certainly be true for 4k programming. I don't know if I remember this correctly, but my understanding is that true 4k from disc delivery has around 50mbps information that is sent to the TV from the 4k player, while streaming delivers at about 15mbps. This allows discs to have actual HDR, richer color rendition and noticeably greater picture detail. This could certainly be seen when viewing Planet Earth II on disc as vs. DirecTV's airing of the same program in 4k.

Yet, if disc 4k becomes extinct future generations won't know what they're missing, as streaming will be the only content available. Then again, who can say how much streaming will improve as internet bandwidth becomes greater?

Of one thing I have no doubt, though--4k is definitely not taking off with the public to any really meaningful degree. Only 4% of disc sales are 4k, and only one satellite movie channel (Epix) shows anything in 4k. So far it's being ignored by HBO, Showtime and Starz (although 4k movies can be rented through OnDemand delivery). And I think it's because the public just doesn't care about picture quality. It may be interesting to note that Blu-ray, which has been around since 2006, still accounts for no more than 26% of all disc sales, with 70% of movie sales going to staid old DVD, which is now 23 years old.

What makes all of this truly crazy is that for four years in a row the biggest selling home entertainment product has been 4k television. Today, 4k TVs can be quite inexpensive, and I would say comprise the vast majority of all TV sales in any particular store. So, with all of these 4k TVs in peoples' homes, where's all the 4k content? Go figure.

ADW02 said:

Module: No FGABaseXPS MT 8940

Click to expand...

You definitely need FGABaseXPS MT 8940! Accept no substitutes. Do not order a PC with No FGABaseXPS MT 8940!!

What's FGABaseXPS MT 8940?

Regarding your post about 4K video disc and streaming, I have a theory. Technology progress is creeping to a crawl due to Covid19. People are afraid to visit Best Buy and look at new stuff. They're not buying. There's so much fear about everything that folks just hunker down and watch content on HBO or Netflix.

We were disappointed by BluRay HD. It's almost indistinguishable from widescreen DVD. Perhaps everyone assumes that 4K BluRay will be indistinguishable as well. I'm not sure our Sony player could play it. We don't have a 4K TV (only PC monitor). Considering our pathetic broadband connection, I doubt 4K streaming would work.

ADW02 said:

I'm looking at buying a new Windows 10 desktop for photo editing only (no games or video editing), and I'm wondering if the following system from DELL would be adequate. I don't care if it might be a little more powerful than I might need right now in certain ways, only that it can smoothly and quickly run Photoshop, On1 RAW, Luminar 4 and Topaz without hiccups.

This XPS Special Edition version has the following specs:

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

Windows 10 Home, 64-bit

NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 SUPER™ 8GB GDDR6

CD ROM/DVD ROM Tray load DVD Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD)

Chassis Options500W Mineral White Bezel Chassis including optical drive

Memory: 32GB, 2x16GB, DDR4, 2933Mhz

Hard Drive: 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive + 2TB 7200RPM Hard Drive

Dell Wireless Card W1810/QCA9377 (1x1 AC,BT 4.1)

Module: No FGABaseXPS MT 8940

Keyboard: Dell Multimedia Keyboard White (English)

Driver: Dell Wireless DW1810 1x1 802.11ac Wi-Fi Wireless + Bluetooth 5.0

Wired Mouse, White MS116

Sound: Onboard, Realtek Codec

No Speakers

The price with tax is $1,537.72 USD, which seems reasonable to me. I'm not crazy about getting it in white, and will try to change that, but other than that everything seems to work. But I may be overlooking something, so I would ask anyone who wishes to respond to tell me what I may be overlooking, or if I might be paying too much for what I need.

Thanks in advance for all help and advice.

Click to expand...

I chronicled my purchase of a very similar Dell over the last couple of months, and you may be interested in reading that thread. Here is the final post...

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64361055

Mine has 16Gb RAM, 1Tb HDD and less powerful video, but runs superbly, including a moderately demanding flight simulator on 4k screen.

Initial concerns about overheating have not materialised. Highest vent temperature recorded has been 6 degrees C above ambient.

ADW02 said:

I'm looking at buying a new Windows 10 desktop for photo editing only (no games or video editing), and I'm wondering if the following system from DELL would be adequate. I don't care if it might be a little more powerful than I might need right now in certain ways, only that it can smoothly and quickly run Photoshop, On1 RAW, Luminar 4 and Topaz without hiccups.

This XPS Special Edition version has the following specs:

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

Windows 10 Home, 64-bit

NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 SUPER™ 8GB GDDR6

CD ROM/DVD ROM Tray load DVD Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD)

Chassis Options500W Mineral White Bezel Chassis including optical drive

Memory: 32GB, 2x16GB, DDR4, 2933Mhz

Hard Drive: 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive + 2TB 7200RPM Hard Drive

Dell Wireless Card W1810/QCA9377 (1x1 AC,BT 4.1)

Module: No FGABaseXPS MT 8940

Keyboard: Dell Multimedia Keyboard White (English)

Driver: Dell Wireless DW1810 1x1 802.11ac Wi-Fi Wireless + Bluetooth 5.0

Wired Mouse, White MS116

Sound: Onboard, Realtek Codec

No Speakers

The price with tax is $1,537.72 USD, which seems reasonable to me. I'm not crazy about getting it in white, and will try to change that, but other than that everything seems to work. But I may be overlooking something, so I would ask anyone who wishes to respond to tell me what I may be overlooking, or if I might be paying too much for what I need.

Thanks in advance for all help and advice.

Click to expand...

The two things that caught my eye are:

1. This only has a 500w power supply. The CPU and graphics boards at full use can pull pretty close to 400w. Add in the other parts and this power supply will be working pretty hard at times to power everything which could lead to strange crashes. I'd suggest upgrading one or two sizes bigger power supply if that is an option. Slightly bigger power supplies don't add much cost and they will run a little cooler.

2. If you go with a 1TB SSD you can use it for temp storage for images you are currently working on. That dramticaly speeds up a lot of photo editing software. A 512GB will work but you'll spend a lot more time cleaning it off.

That's quite a powerful system. The only quibble I have with it is the storage. Myself, I have a similar system with a 500GB boot drive, a 2TB SSD (NVME) working drive where I hold photos or videos when working on them, and an 8TB HDD to store things when done. (I have a NAS for backup.)

The 500GB SSD boot drive is plenty of space, but I like that to just hold programs for themost part. I created new folders on the working drive and repointed the Downloads, Pictures, Music, Videos, etc there to keep data off the boot drive. The 8TB drive is the latest iteration there, after I filled a 4TB, and before that a 3TB, a 2TB, and various smaller sizes in years past.

ADW02 said:

I'm looking at buying a new Windows 10 desktop for photo editing only (no games or video editing), and I'm wondering if the following system from DELL would be adequate. I don't care if it might be a little more powerful than I might need right now in certain ways, only that it can smoothly and quickly run Photoshop, On1 RAW, Luminar 4 and Topaz without hiccups.

Click to expand...

You don't say anything about a monitor. That's one of the most important parts of a photo editing system. Are you planning on getting one separately, or is there one that you are using now that will be adequate?

I'm not sure how fast the Topaz applications will run even on a high-end system. You might want to check the Topaz site to see what hardware they recommend.

Try to find out if that hard drive uses CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) or SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording). CMR drives generally have better write performance.

rickpoole said:

The two things that caught my eye are:

1. This only has a 500w power supply. The CPU and graphics boards at full use can pull pretty close to 400w. Add in the other parts and this power supply will be working pretty hard at times to power everything which could lead to strange crashes. I'd suggest upgrading one or two sizes bigger power supply if that is an option. Slightly bigger power supplies don't add much cost and they will run a little cooler.

Click to expand...

Sorry, that is just wrong. That CPU has a TDP of 65W and a 2060 pulls around 160W max. Even with all the other components in this system, the 500W is way, way enough, even overspecced. It's a typical madness in PC building fora to constantly buy totally overspecced PSUs for absolutly no reason, even contraproductive, since your PC will end up in the non-efficient part of the powercurve. Even if anything would draw 400W on a 500W supply, it would be nicely sitting in the PSUs efficiency area and be totally fine. Of course you have to buy decent PSUs, that actually keep their specced rating when running, cheap noname crap does sometimes not work and is dangerous. Sadly, many PC builders skimp on the PSU being "only power" and want to go cheap on it ... while it's one of the most important features of a systems stability.

ADW02 said:

What makes all of this truly crazy is that for four years in a row the biggest selling home entertainment product has been 4k television. Today, 4k TVs can be quite inexpensive, and I would say comprise the vast majority of all TV sales in any particular store. So, with all of these 4k TVs in peoples' homes, where's all the 4k content? Go figure.

Click to expand...

Upscaling works well enough for many viewers. Not perfect, but pretty good given decent source material.

ADW02 said:

And that leads me to the monitor. I'm not going to pay a thousand dollars or more for super-precise color matching, but I think the DELL U2720Q, priced at $555 at B&H Photo, should work just fine.

Click to expand...

Looks pretty good; reviewed here:

Tom_N said:

ADW02 said:

I'm looking at buying a new Windows 10 desktop for photo editing only (no games or video editing), and I'm wondering if the following system from DELL would be adequate. I don't care if it might be a little more powerful than I might need right now in certain ways, only that it can smoothly and quickly run Photoshop, On1 RAW, Luminar 4 and Topaz without hiccups.

Click to expand...

You don't say anything about a monitor. That's one of the most important parts of a photo editing system. Are you planning on getting one separately, or is there one that you are using now that will be adequate?

I'm not sure how fast the Topaz applications will run even on a high-end system. You might want to check the Topaz site to see what hardware they recommend.

Try to find out if that hard drive uses CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) or SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording). CMR drives generally have better write performance.

Click to expand...

Tom, I had only recently written that I am strongly looking at buying the DELL U2720Q 4k monitor, so I can understand if you might not have seen my reply to another post.

Within my price range ($550 USD or less) the 2720 appears to be adequate. It isn't super-ultra perfect as far as color color accuracy is concerned, but for me as an advanced amateur creative photographer I believe it will do the job. However, with that having been said...

I notice that B&H has the monitor for a selling price of $555, and Best Buy has the DELL U2720QM for the same price. Something worries me about BB's price. What does the 'M' stand for in its monitor code designation? It may mean nothing at all, but I think I'd better find out. I'm not entirely certain I can trust BB employees to give me the correct answer, so if anyone would like to comment on that for me, I'd very much appreciate it.

In the meantime I'm going to ask a DELL sales rep about CMR and SMR. That might be important. I plan on putting my photo software on the SSD drive, and storing my photos on the standard drive, so who knows if that might be worth thinking about. Also, another respondent has written that it might be to my advantage to have a 2TB SSD drive, so that I wouldn't constantly be going between drives to retrieve and store photo images. I wouldn't think that would make much of a speed difference, but you might wish to comment on that.

Thanks for all input.

ADW02 said:

I notice that B&H has the monitor for a selling price of $555, and Best Buy has the DELL U2720QM for the same price. Something worries me about BB's price. What does the 'M' stand for in its monitor code designation? It may mean nothing at all, but I think I'd better find out. I'm not entirely certain I can trust BB employees to give me the correct answer, so if anyone would like to comment on that for me, I'd very much appreciate it.

Click to expand...

Same monitor, for different markets, with varying power cords.

https://www.dell.com/community/Monitors/U2720Q-and-U2720QM-differences/td-p/7484350

ADW02 said:

In the meantime I'm going to ask a DELL sales rep about CMR and SMR.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't understand the acronym CMR. Shingled magnetic recording only applies to HDD and as I recall you will order SSD.

CAcreeks said:

ADW02 said:

I notice that B&H has the monitor for a selling price of $555, and Best Buy has the DELL U2720QM for the same price. Something worries me about BB's price. What does the 'M' stand for in its monitor code designation? It may mean nothing at all, but I think I'd better find out. I'm not entirely certain I can trust BB employees to give me the correct answer, so if anyone would like to comment on that for me, I'd very much appreciate it.

Click to expand...

Same monitor, for different markets, with varying power cords.

Click to expand...

Monitor cables.

CAcreeks said:

https://www.dell.com/community/Monitors/U2720Q-and-U2720QM-differences/td-p/7484350

Click to expand...

Agent (TIP_Karla C): "DP cable (DP to DP, U2720Q only)"

Agent (TIP_Karla C): "HDMI cable (U2720QM only)"

OP, I think the RTX 2060 Super will have both outputs, but ask the Dell rep or see the specs to be sure.

CAcreeks said:

CAcreeks said:

In the meantime I'm going to ask a DELL sales rep about CMR and SMR.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't understand the acronym CMR.

Click to expand...

Conventional Magnetic Recording

https://www.securedatarecovery.com/blog/choosing-cmr-smr-technology-hard-drives

CAcreeks said:

Shingled magnetic recording only applies to HDD and as I recall you will order SSD.

Click to expand...

Right. HDD only.

CAcreeks said:

ADW02 said:

I notice that B&H has the monitor for a selling price of $555, and Best Buy has the DELL U2720QM for the same price. Something worries me about BB's price. What does the 'M' stand for in its monitor code designation? It may mean nothing at all, but I think I'd better find out. I'm not entirely certain I can trust BB employees to give me the correct answer, so if anyone would like to comment on that for me, I'd very much appreciate it.

Click to expand...

Same monitor, for different markets, with varying power cords.

https://www.dell.com/community/Monitors/U2720Q-and-U2720QM-differences/td-p/7484350

CAcreeks said:

In the meantime I'm going to ask a DELL sales rep about CMR and SMR.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't understand the acronym CMR. Shingled magnetic recording only applies to HDD and as I recall you will order SSD.

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to give me that information and link. If these two monitor types are essentially the same, it would make good sense for me to purchase from Best Buy, as it would be very easy to exchange or refund in case I don't want to keep the monitor. As well, in these trying times I think it would be best to do what we can to keep our local brick-and-mortar stores in business. I would have bought the DELL system I'm looking at from BB, but they can't sell or order anything on that scale. I suppose the Geek Squad could have spec built a computer for me, but I was a little leery of that idea.

DELL has just told me that they use SMR for their standard hard drive, which I think is not the one preferred, but I wonder if that really matters in my situation. I would be accessing my software (PS, On1, Luminar and Topaz) from the 512 SSD drive, and storing and accessing my photos from the 2TB 7200 rpm hard drive. Right now, it's hard for me to believe that there would be an appreciable lag in time for software programs to open or store photos from the standard drive, but if I'm wrong about that, please feel free to give me your thoughts. It's better to know that now than later.

Thanks again for all help.

Vunite said:

rickpoole said:

The two things that caught my eye are:

1. This only has a 500w power supply. The CPU and graphics boards at full use can pull pretty close to 400w. Add in the other parts and this power supply will be working pretty hard at times to power everything which could lead to strange crashes. I'd suggest upgrading one or two sizes bigger power supply if that is an option. Slightly bigger power supplies don't add much cost and they will run a little cooler.

Click to expand...

Sorry, that is just wrong. That CPU has a TDP of 65W and a 2060 pulls around 160W max. Even with all the other components in this system, the 500W is way, way enough, even overspecced.

Click to expand...

there's a lot of wrong here, as well. The 2060 Super is 175W, not 160. And the 65W TDP figure from Intel is at base speed. Their dirty little lie. When cores run at turbo, power draw steps up. So that 65W could be closer to 100 at its peak.

Throw in 25 for the MB (being optimistic), 40 for the 3 drives, and we'regetting into the mid 300s. 70% loading is efficient, but not a lot of margin for degradation over the years, and obviously a show stopper to installing a 3080 next spring.