p.1 #1 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
My 5yo high-end home-built PC is gradually dying. It had 128GB of RAM but that's now down to 96GB because one RAM module and one RAM socket are dead. Other RAM or hardware may have intermittent problems. There are 8 RAM slots and 8 16GB modules. I used to have a decent size RAM Disk to speed up data validation of external backup HDDs, but that has become unreliable. I'm out of touch with modern PCs but I'm sure they're a whole lot faster than what I've got. I expect the next PC will be my first AMD system, probably with a Ryzen 9 99??X CPU. Maybe a 3D version. It will have no HDDs internally, just NVMe M.2 SSDs. I'm not into computer games.
So, my 1st question for this post is: How much RAM should I aim for? e.g. 128, 96 or 64GB.
My 2nd question is: Does a modern high-end PC benefit as much from having more RAM as older PCs did, now that RAM and everything else except HDDs are already so much faster than 5 or 6 years ago?
p.1 #2 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
Alan321 wrote:
<snip>
So, my 1st question for this post is: How much RAM should I aim for? e.g. 128, 96 or 64GB.
My 2nd question is: Does a modern high-end PC benefit as much from having more RAM as older PCs did, now that RAM and everything else except HDDs are already so much faster than 5 or 6 years ago?
Thanks in advance.
- Alan
1. 64 GB RAM is sufficient for general photo and video editing; probably 128 GB RAM if you're working on large composite or 4K video files. With software being more GPU intensive, consider a GPU with at least 16 GB RAM. If your workflow is more video centric, consider a GPU with 32 GB RAM or more if needed. CPU with 8+ cores helps too.
2. Yes, running today's software benefits from an adequate amount of RAM. The amount depends on how you plan on using the system. Plus, you're building in some future-proofing as well.
p.1 #3 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
Honestly 32 GB is probably sufficient but I would go for 64 anyway. Nvme drives are great - I have 3 internal. Put the extra money into a high end video card with as much memory as you can. AMD with a Nvidia card is a great choice.
This is for a photo centric machine - video would require more.
p.1 #4 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
Alan321 wrote:
My 5yo high-end home-built PC is gradually dying. It had 128GB of RAM but that's now down to 96GB because one RAM module and one RAM socket are dead. Other RAM or hardware may have intermittent problems. There are 8 RAM slots and 8 16GB modules. I used to have a decent size RAM Disk to speed up data validation of external backup HDDs, but that has become unreliable. I'm out of touch with modern PCs but I'm sure they're a whole lot faster than what I've got. I expect the next PC will be my first AMD system, probably with a Ryzen 9 99??X CPU. Maybe a 3D version. It will have no HDDs internally, just NVMe M.2 SSDs. I'm not into computer games.
So, my 1st question for this post is: How much RAM should I aim for? e.g. 128, 96 or 64GB.
My 2nd question is: Does a modern high-end PC benefit as much from having more RAM as older PCs did, now that RAM and everything else except HDDs are already so much faster than 5 or 6 years ago?
7000 and 9000 series don't run 4 sticks at the fastest speeds and speed/latencies are more important for basic performance than the amount. 2x48GB would be best in the long term, though 2x32GB is fine for most all purposes.
If you are not gaming there is not much point in the 9950X3D over the regular 9950X. In fact there are arguments that the asymmetry between the two CCDs (one with 3x the L3 cache) results in some detriments to using all 16 cores efficiently in some applications. There is also more heat to deal with at a given clock speed.
p.1 #5 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
How much memory are you using right now when the system is being maxed out with processing + open programs? This should guide you ... ie avoid going to your SSDs if you fill the RAM
p.1 #6 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
mcbroomf wrote:
How much memory are you using right now when the system is being maxed out with processing + open programs? This should guide you ... ie avoid going to your SSDs if you fill the RAM
That's a good question but to be honest I can't answer it with any certainty. In days gone by I knew for sure that 64GB was not enough but that was much slower than todays RAM. I don't know how well everything scales up in a more modern pc now that the GPU seems to be the busiest component. e.g. do I need lots of RAM if I've got speedy ssds feeding data to a super speedy graphics card doing photo processing that used to be done by the cpu ? It's all so different now.
There used to be a DMI bottleneck between the CPU and the chipset, which I partially avoided by getting a motherboard and CPU with more data lanes directly connecting CPU to SSDs. Now everything is so much faster, but of course the system is doing more complex work too.
Meanwhile, I'm deliberately not pushing my pc hard because it is very sick. Pretty much everything except the M.2 SSDs and maybe the 15GB RTX A4000 graphics card is destined for a rubbish bin. I would not let a friend have any of it. I'm doing relatively little photo editing until I get a new PC. I've got data backups but I'd like to have the old pc alive until I get the new one up and running. And yet I don't trust it as far as I can throw it
p.1 #7 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
If I was building a PC today, I'd start at 128GB with room to grow as needed. As you probably know, though, the GPU is FAR more important so spare no expense there.
p.1 #10 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
Another vote for 64GB ... PLUS a powerful GPU.
When I went from 32GB to 64GB, I didn't notice a significant gain from the RAM. I did that exercise on three different rigs (one PC, two Mac's). Personally, I have 64GB (shared on a Mac) and do just fine with 64GB. I realize this isn't a Mac build, but the point is that the preponderance of performance on RAM has been shifted toward the GPU in recent years for certain tasks to offload from RAM based tasks. The historic view of RAM vs. the contemporary / future view of RAM + GPU is salient, looking forward to how software is being programmed, now >>> future.
p.1 #12 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
I built a super high-end PC about 1 year ago and installed 2 sticks totaling 64GB (as EB-1 noted, four sticks run slower). Running LightRoom, playing music, three monitors, LR on center monitor, Email and music player on the other, browser on the third with many tabs open including YouTube... So you would think I ate up memory... nope. I pretty much know you could get by with half that at 32GB. However, I build machines to go longer-term so I would recommend 64GB but in all honesty, I never performed functions where that was needed.
I wish software engineers would look at your available RAM, and just use the stuff... it is there, so use it for performance... pre-fetching the next 10 or so pics, keeping the last 10 or so fully in mem etc. whatever, they are clever. I think the last forty years of RAM scarcity burned habits into their approaches that are not needed anymore.
p.1 #13 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
Thank you all for the responses.
It seems that my new PC is destined to be a rather expensive one for various reasons, but mostly a speedy graphics card. I'm likely to opt for two sticks of 64GB or maybe 48GB RAM - not necessarily all needed for the photo editing but useful for speeding up bulk testing of many files normally stored on external backup HDDs (copy to large RAM disk or else SSD, quickly test multiple files in parallel, move on if files are ok). Another reason is that I don't want to be caught out trying to find additional matching RAM later on when it's become harder to find.
I'm hoping that the reliability of my new PC will be enhanced by not having lots of smaller RAM modules instead of two bigger modules. That should minimise the risk of hardware timing glitches. Also further enhanced by using ddr5 RAM with its built-in automatic error correction (ECC) for minor glitches.
p.1 #14 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
My good news is that my PC is no longer gradually dying.
The bad news is that it's dead. I'm pretty sure it's irreversible.
Something a Safety Manager at work taught us long ago was that "irreversibly dead" is quite different from "dead"
I think I'll be getting a low-end Threadripper system with 2x48GB RAM.
I'm tempted to keep using my current RTX A4000 graphics card for a while, partly to alleviate the shock of the initial expense and partly just to see how fast it can actually go without a PCIe 3 handbrake being applied. It might be quite fast enough for me until the 6000 series of GPUs arrive. For a while my priority will be more on data validation than on new photo processing, because this computer failure has been progressive and could have damaged a lot of stuff without me knowing.
p.1 #15 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
I would try the a4000. We had one data point in the old table for a mobile RTX 4000 of 16 seconds for Adobe Denoise of a 60MP file. It was listed as having 232 Tensor cores. I just looked up the a4000 and it's listed as having 192, so in the same ballpark. But I'd imagine when you get to it, that AI intensive edits will be about the same as your old PC given they are not CPU bound.
p.1 #16 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
The A4000 is an old Ampere GPU with about the same compute as a 5060 or so depending on what tests you look at. Since it's quite easy to drop in a new GPU you can try the old one and then upgrade later. Just make sure you have at least three slot widths (two open spaces to the left of the GPU slot) for future use of a higher powered GPU. I would just start with a 5080 in a new build since it will be noticeably faster.
Edit: The A4000 GPU is a GA104, so similar in cores to the RTX 3070 of that generation but with the extra RAM.
p.1 #17 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
One thing to keep in mind about RAM, is the amount of HD space that will always be locked up for either hibernate of sleep modes (I forget which).
Maybe it's not such a huge deal now, but when I built a rig in 2012 with 64 GB of RAM, and SSDs were still pricey above a certain size, effectively 64 GB of the SSD in question was forever spoken for. If, indeed I liked the convenience of sleep or hibernation.
p.1 #18 · How much RAM for a high-end photo editing PC?
Gosh, I always disable Hibernate with a registry entry. It is mostly archaic with so much RAM to write to disk and sleep modes in laptops being power efficient. It may be a bit difficult to remove hiberfil.sys in some pre-configured machines.
