Mini PCs for photo editing

Hi,

Does anyone have any experience of using a, so called, 'mini PC' for photography post production?

My current PC was given to me years before I'd ever bought a camera and since becoming more serious about wildlife photography in the last 18 months, I've recently started to dabble in some basic post production using Gimp.

The PC is a very basic 13 year old Acer, has little RAM and I've got it hooked up to a 32" Panasonic Viera flat panel tv so I figure if I'm going to replace the PC I might as well do it with a nod towards something more suited to photo editing.

I've been looking at Geekom's range of mini PCs, something like the A7 mini (AMD Ryzen 9, AMD Radeon 780m iGPU, 32mb DDR5 RAM) can be had in the UK for £599, coupled with an ASUS ProArt monitor, I've got something more photo friendly for under £1000.

Doing some reading, I appreciate that a few years back, a dedicated GPU might not have always been necessary, however, with the arrival of AI, it seems that a lot of software calls for a GPU, something the mini PC's will always fall down on unless you use an external eGPU cradle or go down the docking station route.

I've no intention of using Lightroom, I don't buy into the subscription idea but I have looked at the recommended system specs for DxO Photolab 9 to give me an idea of what is required to run something like that well and they definitely specify a dedicated GPU so perhaps my idea is dead in the water before I start but I'm interested to know if anyone uses one of these PCs.

Many thanks for your time.

They should work no issue for photo editing, if you want to start video editing grab a model with the 890m integrated graphics from AMD or Arc 140 from intel. Either will do fine if you are not wanting to push multiple projects per day through them.

Hell I push video work through my 2020 Dell laptop with Iris Xe graphics and it works fine.

Some of this depends on how important this is for you but in general.

1) prioritize a good monitor It doesn't need to be a flanders that costs more than a car but make sure you're getting a good monitor. Maybe look for reviews aimed at video colour grading. A good colour accurate monitor will work for either don't let the word video in the reviews scare you off.

2) If you're shooting a lot make sure the PC has fast ports to plug in a fast card reader. If you're shooting SD cards the card itself will be your bottle neck. But if you're shooting faster cards the time saving offloading big cards can add up.

3) Storage and backup. You need some sort of backup plan. It can be something simple like an external drive you make routine copies to. Or if this stuff is really important and you shoot a lot it might be an offsite backup.

I think the main GPU effect you'll likely be doing is NR. A faster GPU likely won't hurt but if you aren't in a hurry it might not be an issue.

The newish Intel workstation GPUs are cheap , not power hungry, small and seem to work okay. If you want a SFF box they might be an option.

Unless you're really short for space understand mini PCs are often costing you more money for the size. Either up front or later on when upgrades or repairs aren't that easy. A normal PC with commodity parts can be kept running or upgraded fairly easily by anyone with a screwdriver. Some of those smaller boxes have small form factor PSU, motherboards etc or other non standard parts.

Thank you both for your replies, much appreciated.

The Point and Shoot Pro said:

They should work no issue for photo editing, if you want to start video editing grab a model with the 890m integrated graphics from AMD or Arc 140 from intel. Either will do fine if you are not wanting to push multiple projects per day through them.

Hell I push video work through my 2020 Dell laptop with Iris Xe graphics and it works fine.

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Yes I've seen the AMD 890m mentioned, it's in their top of the range A9 model, only trouble is that's almost £1000 on it's own, that's kind of my budget for both PC and monitor which I know is gonna be hard to achieve.

I totally take your point about your 2020 Dell and in my situation anything I buy will be a massive improvement on what I've got at the moment hence why I don't really want to spend a tonne of money...that and the fact I don't have the funds lol!

NickZ2016 said:

...prioritize a good monitor It doesn't need to be a flanders that costs more than a car but make sure you're getting a good monitor. Maybe look for reviews aimed at video colour grading. A good colour accurate monitor will work for either don't let the word video in the reviews scare you off.

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I do agree with you on this, that's one of the reasons I started to investigate a new PC as the colour on the Viera is not up to the job.

The Point and Shoot Pro said:

Unless you're really short for space understand mini PCs are often costing you more money for the size. Either up front or later on when upgrades or repairs aren't that easy. A normal PC with commodity parts can be kept running or upgraded fairly easily by anyone with a screwdriver. Some of those smaller boxes have small form factor PSU, motherboards etc or other non standard parts.

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I did consider building a PC, I've never done it before but I've dabbled with changing drives and RAM in my first Mac 25 years ago and watching tutorials on YouTube, the actual assembly of the physical parts I could deal with, it's needing to be a computer programmer when you boot it up for the first time and have to get involved with BIOS that scares me a bit.

I did try the pcpartpicker website to spec something out, trying to keep the CPU under £200 and a similar price for the motherboard but once you then add in a GPU you're probably over £600 before you've even looked at cooling, case, RAM etc.

Installing windows isn't that hard. Reality is you should learn how just in case your computer trashes the OS installed by the factory.

For the most part you can ignore the bios. But once again being comfortable with it will help if you need to fix something in the future. Also don't count on the factory to make the best choices

DXO 9 is recommending a 3070 or better for a lot of their AI features. Those aren't necessary but they might help someday which is why I might take a different course.

Mini PCs are really niche and other than simple business ones performance per dollar you're often better off getting a laptop. If you have space for it a low end gaming one would be useful and give you that GPU. Plus you could just use it as a small secondary monitor to whatever display you buy.

Thanks for the continued replies, much appreciated.

CBR1100XX said:

...If you have space for it a low end gaming one would be useful and give you that GPU...

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Actually it's interesting you say that because I have been looking at some gaming pc's, some of their specs are incredible but was wondering whether buying second hand might be worth considering.

This afternoon I had another bash at spec'ing a PC on pcpartpicker trying to be really frugal with individual component prices and still can't get it under £1000 so I think I'll drop that idea for the moment.

Venger said:

Thanks for the continued replies, much appreciated.

CBR1100XX said:

...If you have space for it a low end gaming one would be useful and give you that GPU...

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Actually it's interesting you say that because I have been looking at some gaming pc's, some of their specs are incredible but was wondering whether buying second hand might be worth considering.

This afternoon I had another bash at spec'ing a PC on pcpartpicker trying to be really frugal with individual component prices and still can't get it under £1000 so I think I'll drop that idea for the moment.

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If you're going to build your own I would recommend an mATX setup. The cases aren't super small but you can't get one that's reasonable. They're also usually cheaper.

You might be able to go used for the whole system and get a good deal but there's also a lot of them out there on some new chips. Ryzen 7000 series especially.

It's the same deal with storage where if you don't go for the latest M.2 drives even high end ones from the last gen are a fraction of the price.

I would look at used GPUs though as you could go for an RTX 3060Ti or 3070 and have a good one to start with.

I prefer Windows but:

Windows mini PCs with highest end APUs might eke through GPU rendered image processing tasks but compared to a discrete GPU its an ugly experience, There are image processing apps that just don't do well with integrated graphics of any ilk, memory bandwidth possibly being an issue.

The basic M4 macMini with 16gb of ram can run any GPU dependent image processing software and will generate a Puget Sound Photoshop score that shames high end Windows desktops. On sale the price is more than competitive, its kind of the best low end value out there for desktop image processing.

DXO runs just fine on my M4 laptop, as do Adobes and On1.

The biggest problem with the macMini is that you have to live on Apple Island, not as onerous as it used to be now that most things are web based, but impossible for many. Also Photoshop and their ilk seem to be just ports to Apple ARM, warts and all.

All mini pcs, regardless of OS, like laptops require you to live with external storage, nearly unlimited internal storage being a big advantage of Windows desktop PCs for me.

There are many desktop prebuilt PCs with an adequate discrete GPU for less than $800, much less on sale. In my experience with a range of GPUs from nVidia and AMD the lower cost SKUs, starting with AMD 6000 and nVidia 3060, are more than adequate, CPU horsepower remains more important than the GPU by far, but any recent Intel I5/Ryzen 5700x or better is more than adequate.

I run DxO PhotoLab on a Mac Mini M4 that I bought 11 months ago. I was going to say pretty much what you have said, but then I stopped myself because we are here in the PC forum. But your having said it, I can at least say that I agree.

I like Windows better, but the Mac OS isn’t too bad. I am getting used to it.

dmartin92 said:

I run DxO PhotoLab on a Mac Mini M4 that I bought 11 months ago. I was going to say pretty much what you have said, but then I stopped myself because we are here in the PC forum. But your having said it, I can at least say that I agree.

I like Windows better, but the Mac OS isn’t too bad. I am getting used to it.

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Same here. The base M4 mini is hard to beat. Even if you upgrade the RAM one level it's still pretty decent and should be useful for awhile as long as you use external drives for all your photos/files. And that's what I would do because instead of getting an extra 256GB you can get an extra 2tb plus an enclosure for a higher end NVME or just get a regular external.

The mini is just not something that there's a real PC equivalent for. Against the M4 pro mini there's AMDs strix halo mini PCs that are coming out soon but then you need to make sure that the program plays well with AMD cards which isn't always the case.

We're getting close to a controversial Mac vs. PC thread, and OT for the OP's request. No more Mac at this time, please.

Many thanks for the further replies, I do appreciate it.

I note the MOD's post so will try and respect that and not take my own thread OT but I had my first Mac 25 years ago for music recording/production, long before anyone, probably outside of graphic design, had even heard of them or certainly used them, so I'm very pro Mac despite posting in the PC forum.

The reason I haven't really considered one in this instance is that I could only afford the very basic model and I just didn't think that 16GB RAM and a very paltry 256GB of storage would come anywhere near close enough for photo work.

I don't want to get anyone in trouble with posting about Macs in the PC forum, perhaps I'll pop over to the Mac forum and ask about the base M4 model.

Thanks again.

Venger said:

Many thanks for the further replies, I do appreciate it.

I note the MOD's post so will try and respect that and not take my own thread OT but I had my first Mac 25 years ago for music recording/production, long before anyone, probably outside of graphic design, had even heard of them or certainly used them, so I'm very pro Mac despite posting in the PC forum.

The reason I haven't really considered one in this instance is that I could only afford the very basic model and I just didn't think that 16GB RAM and a very paltry 256GB of storage would come anywhere near close enough for photo work.

I don't want to get anyone in trouble with posting about Macs in the PC forum,

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Casual mentions are not a problem, I just don't want the OT Mac posts to continue indefinitely. No one is in trouble.

Venger said:

perhaps I'll pop over to the Mac forum and ask about the base M4 model.

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Good idea; you should get expert advice there. I read Mac Talk regularly, since I have several Macs, but my base Mini is the original M1, and much has changed since then.

Venger said:

Thanks again.

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If anyone has further Mini PC advice, that's also OK here.

I have also had a look at the landscape of pre-built hardware that would suit my needs, and most of it is extortionately priced or carries the same level of annoyance as a girlfriend with daddy issues - you're just stuck with something that won't change. Laptops and many pre-built systems rarely offer many upgrade pathways, they can't change with your needs and this trait eventually becomes problematic.

So in order to avoid this pitfall, I bought an A4-H2OC Chassis from Lian Li and stuffed it with a 600W PSU, ITX Motherboard, Intel I7 CPU, and AIO to cool it, 64Gb of ram, spacious SSDs and a low profile video card - basically the kind of hardware trimmings you'd find in your typical $5000 laptop (with the added efficiency of water cooling) for a fraction of the cost in an 11 liter Small form factor do-anything PC.

Though to be honest building your own PC requires some skill (and in a TINY ITX case skill is definitely needed) but the ability to build your own PC (and fix it if things go awry) is a valuable skill to cultivate.

My only commentary on PC Vs MAC is the ability to repair and upgrade pathways are broader with PC's than Macs, which often carry a higher cost margin and upgrades are often quite limited and costly.

--
A camera is just a camera. Who is behind it, matters far more.

Digitalis32 said:

I have also had a look at the landscape of pre-built hardware that would suit my needs, and most of it is extortionately priced or carries the same level of annoyance as a girlfriend with daddy issues - you're just stuck with something that won't change. Laptops and many pre-built systems rarely offer many upgrade pathways, they can't change with your needs and this trait eventually becomes problematic.

So in order to avoid this pitfall, I bought an A4-H2OC Chassis from Lian Li and stuffed it with a 600W PSU, ITX Motherboard, Intel I7 CPU, and AIO to cool it, 64Gb of ram, spacious SSDs and a low profile video card - basically the kind of hardware trimmings you'd find in your typical $5000 laptop (with the added efficiency of water cooling) for a fraction of the cost in an 11 liter Small form factor do-anything PC.

Though to be honest building your own PC requires some skill (and in a TINY ITX case skill is definitely needed) but the ability to build your own PC (and fix it if things go awry) is a valuable skill to cultivate.

My only commentary on PC Vs MAC is the ability to repair and upgrade pathways are broader with PC's than Macs, which often carry a higher cost margin and upgrades are often quite limited and costly.

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When I was shopping for a desktop it was the time when graphics cards were unobtanium. So, I bought a dell XPS 8940 tower with the graphics card I wanted. It was a 2070 super at the time, with 16gb of ram, an intel 10700, 512gb of ssd and a 2tb HDD. At that time it cost me 2599.00 cdn. The same price of the video card I wanted because of the supply and demand issues.

I then upgraded the ram to 128gb, put a 2tb SSD for OS and software, 2 1tb Sata ssd for project and scratch drives, and an 8tb HDD plus all noctua cooling and a firewire card for the old cameras I have around. This system has been perfect for me and will be so for the forseeable future when I install linux on it.

I would suggest a lower end prebuilt and upgrade when budget allows.

I love mini PCs and have 3 in regular service plus a old spare that I can play with if the need arises.

Two function as excellent HTPCs. They do everything I need and consume very little space (and power). The third operates as a web server supporting several apps on my LAN.

But for creative work including photo/video editing give me a desktop with a huge case. That gives me endless scope for upgrades (the badest GPU I can afford) and other additions, easy access and plenty of cooling.

A good case and PSU isn't going to cost an arm and leg and provides virtually unlimited scope to build whatever your heart (and wallet) desire.

Many thanks for the additional replies, much appreciated.

This.... flagship AMD mobile APU, 64GB ram & 2TB storage.

https://www.amazon.com/GMKtec-Compu...fix=ryzen+ai+pro+max+390+,aps,328&sr=8-1&th=1

Given that you're on a 13 yo unit, and are cost constrained, don't make it too complicated.

1- the Chinese mini PCs from $300-500 (forgive me - I only can speak to US market pricep points). I have a couple of the AceMagicians - they're fast, cheap, come with windows. They frequently (nearly all the time) have big discounts on their amazon listings. Two years ago I got a 5800U based on with 32gig, 500gb SSD, Windows 11 Pro for $350. You want something with 32gig, probably 1tb ssd, and any 8 core cpu. Some come with 780M graphics around the $500 price point- like the geekoms in the A7/A8 generations.

I think this is your best bet- take the easy win for the lowest cost.

Mini pcs with much better specs than this become price uncompetitive - you're paying for the size. By the time you get to $1000USD, you could build or buy more a more capable tower PC that is easily upgradeable in the future.

In the 500-1000 range, the M4 mini (or deals on predecessors) is a serious option to consider. Better warranty, maturity, etc than the nameless minis, less problems with cpu throttling. But yes, restrict to 32gb models.

The other option is used markets, esp from people you know.