Power Computers

[ERD50]

If you run out of memory, does it just slow down a lot due to swapping to the HD or does it just crash ?

I could live with the rare/occasional super slow down, but a crash would be very disappointing.

IME, it just gets dog slow because it is read/writing from the (spinning) hard drive, which is maybe 100x slower than accessing internal RAM. An SSD is much faster.

That in itself won't cause a crash, but I've had programs become almost totally unresponsive. And if you run out of swap space on the drive, it probably will crash at that point.

-ERD50

 

[Retch The Grate]

I am bored and thinking of buying another computer, but wonder if I'm missing some details about memory.

I looked at Costco and they have this:

Dell XPS 8940 Tower with 10th Gen Intel Core i7 Processor, 64GB Memory, 2TB HDD, 1TB SSD and GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Graphics

My current machine is: AMD® Fx(tm)-6100 six-core processor × 6
With 12 GB of memory, 1TB SSD. $1,799.99 Delivered

I have found I don't use the total of my 12 GB of memory (my swap is never used), so what do people want/need with Mega memory

My work machine has 32GB and that's only barely enough for running the game servers and development tools (and my excessive number of chrome tabs). My personal machine has 32GB and it comfortably runs every game I throw at it while also running my usual panoply of programs. If I were doing video editing, or high end photos editing, that 64 GB would look pretty good.

 

[target2019]

I have 16gb ram in my MacBook Pro and sometimes get messages indicating that I'm running out of ram when I'm editing videos in iMovie and editing photos in photoshop. I could see getting 32gb of ram but 64 gb would be excessive for my video/ photo editing.

In addition to physical memory, I recall that Photoshop uses a scratch disk while OS uses virtual memory (also on disk). With 64GB on Windows you could turn off VM for system. That was beneficial especially with a spinning disk involved.

But the apps still need scratch disk,or at least it was that way back in the day.

 

[target2019]

If you run out of memory, does it just slow down a lot due to swapping to the HD or does it just crash ?

I could live with the rare/occasional super slow down, but a crash would be very disappointing.

Here is a link that explains how Photoshop works with memory.
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

Each app could behave differently when running out of memory.

Another situation to take into account is fragmentation on the disk which holds system VM or Photoshop scratch.

The more I give thought to this, the better the Costco super special looks. Heavy Photoshop user might add a 3rd drive, and give that all up to scratch disk. And that just covers short term and long term storage needs...

 

[Ronstar]

^Thanks for the info! My problems were probably due to photoshop trying to use scratch disk, but I only had 8 gb left on the hard drive. Probably not enough for a scratch disk use. I shuffled some things around and I'm up to 391gb hard drive space. No problems since, but I need a hard core photoshop session to see what happens. I may reallocate more hd space to the scratch disk as your link specifies.

 

[target2019]

What I did in my office was install a 2nd HDD and partition that. Part 1 for Photoshop scratch, Part two for pictures and modifications, etc. If this is done with an external, say USB, it would hurt scratch disk performance. But on SATA or a high speed external port it would help. I hope...

 

[Walt34]

Timely thread for me. DW recently pointed out that our main desktop PC, a Dell Inspiron(?) is now 10 years old, 8GB memory and frankly I forget the rest and don't care. We did upgrade the video card once. We've agreed it's time for a new PC.

I do use Photoshop, Lightroom, and occasionally Premiere Elements for video editing and the system does slow to a crawl. I find this frustrating, and believe that future versions of software will use more memory so I do plan on loading up with 64GB of memory. It's relatively cheap now, it somewhat futureproofs the system, and there will be room for more. And frankly I think a PC with "too much memory" is like that mythical car, boat, motorcycle or airplane with too much horsepower - there just ain't no such animal.

I realize that gobs of memory may and probably will just shift the bottleneck someplace else but at least it'll be a while before I even notice there is one.

 

[bloom2708]

At 10 years old the processor, RAM speed, hard drive (likely spinning disc) are all dated tech.

For intensive video editing, more RAM helps. 64GB might be overkill cost wise. 32 might be overkill.

A newer/faster machine with an SSD and 32GB of RAM will feel like a major upgrade.

 

[walkinwood]

I purchased the

HP Omen 25L Gaming Desktop - 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10700F - GeForce RTX 2060

from Costco in early December when they had a good deal on it. It replaced a 7 year old pc that was struggling with Lightroom, NIK & Photoshop. This machine definitely fixed that issue. The machine is quiet - much quieter than the previous PC (that I had built). This time I felt there wasn't much savings in building it myself and this machine had just about everything I wanted.

 

[calmloki]

We went with a pair of these in the last year or so, which are happy running Quicken and email and web surfing. Normally have 6-12 tabs open in Chrome. No gaming, no video editing, don't really think we are putting any load on them:

Dell OptiPlex Business PC, Intel Core I5 3470, up to 3.6GHz, 16G DDR3, 512G SSD, VGA, DP, USB 3.0, WiFi, BT 4.0, DVDRW, Win10 64 Bit-Multi-Language(CI5)(Renewed)

May swap them out in a year or so for USFF versions - the idea of a really quiet tiny box that is easier to pack north and south is attractive. Used to drive Chevy Sprints too - 3 cylinders got me were I was going.

 

[Walt34]

I purchased the

HP Omen 25L Gaming Desktop - 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10700F - GeForce RTX 2060

I may well end up with something similar from Dell. And I'm kinda drooling over one of the 34" curved monitors, either the gaming (fast response) or Ultrasharp IPS for photo processing (higher color gamut). Since I do much more with photos than gaming I'll probably opt for the latter even though it does cost a bit more.

Does HP still use a lot of proprietary components? They used to, and I dislike that a lot because it locks you in to their stuff for upgrades/repairs and then they have another chance to gouge your wallet. It's the main reason I won't buy anything from Apple.