Ultra small form factor PC's

S

stupar

Guest
How viable are these tiny PCs when it comes to photo editing?
If you take Intels NUC and pack it with an i5 or i7 processor and say 16gb RAM plus an SSD drive, is there a limiting factor?

Because most elements of photo editing dont require a standalone graphics card and it wouldnt be used for gaming, to me it seems an ideal size when space is super limited but still pack a reasonable punch.

Does anyone here use such a device as their main editing platform?

Am i missing somethong obvious?
 
A pimped up 2012 iMac mini would be ideal.

If you search the web you will find details but basically you get a top of the range mac mini form 2012 as it's the last year that had quad core i7 chips (dual core nowadays), stick in 16gb ram and a new fast SSD and you get pretty epic geekbench scores. Rubbish for gaming though as the integrated graphics are a bit crap but for CPU intensive stuff should be ideal.
 
stupar said:
How viable are these tiny PCs when it comes to photo editing?
If you take Intels NUC and pack it with an i5 or i7 processor and say 16gb RAM plus an SSD drive, is there a limiting factor?

Because most elements of photo editing dont require a standalone graphics card and it wouldnt be used for gaming, to me it seems an ideal size when space is super limited but still pack a reasonable punch.

Does anyone here use such a device as their main editing platform?

Am i missing somethong obvious?
Click to expand...

shouldnt be limiting at all if you're using a good CPU like a quad i5/i7.

GPU acceleration still seems to be limited, LR/PS CC GPU acceleration on my Ati 7850 seems to do squat all increase in performance over the 2nd gen i7 I have.

the only thing i can think of is the cooling capacity of a NUC case (im not even sure if a NUC board can take something like an i7? an ITX form factor case would be better.
 
neil_g said:
shouldnt be limiting at all if you're using a good CPU like a quad i5/i7.

GPU acceleration still seems to be limited, LR/PS CC GPU acceleration on my Ati 7850 seems to do squat all increase in performance over the 2nd gen i7 I have.

the only thing i can think of is the cooling capacity of a NUC case (im not even sure if a NUC board can take something like an i7? an ITX form factor case would be better.
Click to expand...

The latest Intel NUC can take an i7 5550U cpu.
I know its 2 cores and 4 threads and is essentially a mobile chip so not as potent but should still be capable i would have thought.

The heat side would be a concern to me but im guessing they have a decent means of passive cooling on top of the fan cooling (assuming your not pushing the system to the extreme)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
While I have no personal comparative experience, the general received wisdom is that 2 cores are not as good as 4, and inferior performance is the result.

No doubt someone will be along shortly to explain how their dual core machine processed images just as fast as a quad core of similar clock speed and recent architecture. But if that were really true then why would anyone bother with a quad core processor that's more expensive to make and more hungry for power?
 
ancient_mariner said:
While I have no personal comparative experience, the general received wisdom is that 2 cores are not as good as 4, and inferior performance is the result.

No doubt someone will be along shortly to explain how their dual core machine processed images just as fast as a quad core of similar clock speed and recent architecture. But if that were really true then why would anyone bother with a quad core processor that's more expensive to make and more hungry for power?
Click to expand...

Depends on workload. Some tasks are mutli-threaded and will use all available cores. Some are not. For actual processing in LR, I suspect two cores will be fine. For exporting of images, somewhat slower. In Photoshop, it will depending on what you're doing.

You can get a Gigabyte Brix Pro in a similar form factor that features a slightly under-clocked Core i7. It has 4 hyperthreaded cores and achieves a benchmark marginally higher than my third gen i7:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7648/gigabyte-brix-pro

There's also a gaming version that features discrete graphics.

I believe they can get rather noisy under full load as the fans spin up.
 
If i were to use one......and its a big if, the only things i would use it for would be photo editing in Photoshop, general web browsing, media streaming and for the wife to use her design studio software for her vinyl cutting machine.
 
Pretty much all modern programs use multicore so if you are planning on CPU intensive stuff then you want Quad Core i7 as i7's can hyper-thread too which synthetically doubles the number of cores.

Times where I might notice this in my usage is importing to Lightroom with virtual copies and exporting raws to JPG or for editing in Photoshop, whether it's worth the extra is up to you.

For all other things the responsiveness of the machine comes down to the hard drive, so plan for SSD if you want a nippy machine.
 
These little things should be fine as long as you haven't got lots (double digit) layers in Photoshop. Lightroom will function fine.

My PC goes into serious heat output is when it does the Noise Reduction in DXO with its super algorithm
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top