Will this PC do?

L

LG9K

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Edit My Images
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My current Dell XPS is about 12 years old and, depite adding SSD, more memory and a better graphics card a few years ago, is getting slow for Capture One stuff.

This is my third Outlet bought Dell and they've served me well, each lasting more than 10 years.

Looking at this spec for £1,473
XPS 8960
Win 11 Pro
1TB PCIe M.2 NVMe Gen 4 Class 40 Solid State Drive
32GB (2X16GB) Up to 4800MHz DDR5 UDIMM Non-ECC
Intel Core 13th Generation i7-13700 Processor (16 Core, Up to 5.20GHz, 30MB Cache, 65W)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 12GB GDDR6X
750W L6 Chassis without Optical Drive (Graphite)

And all the usual Dell stuff.
I have spare additional SSD/HDDs for more storage etc

I don't do gaming, so, apart from the photo processing, everything else is pretty low usage.

Any thoughts or comments, please - I've looked for similar specs on other recommended sites and they seem to be more expensive than this.

Many thanks.
 
Have you had a good clean out before you slap your money on the table?
 
Plain Nev said:
Have you had a good clean out before you slap your money on the table?
Click to expand...
Definitely this.

Before starting, make sure that you have all the installation disks for both operating system and applications, as well as having backed up your data on at least two seperate media.
 
I'm not sure what all the clean out replies are about, but thanks for the advice. The current PC runs very cleanly, and for the most part quickly enough but is very old now - BIOS is from 2011.

Here's the config:
Win10 Pro - can't update to Win11 and support running out in October 2025, not that far away.
Samsung 940 1Tb SSD
16Gb Ram
Intel Core i7-2600 3.4GHz
NVide GEForce 1050 Ti

If ayone is able to suggest an alternative to the Dell for similar/less money, I'm all ears.
 
I see it has a 10GB USB-C port on the front, I would definitely want that nowadays as you can use it to attach a fast external SSDs - then can edit 10 bit 4K from the ext drive.
The RAM is a bit meagre even for demanding photoshop tasks like denoising. If it can be added I would double that.
 
LG9K said:
I'm not sure what all the clean out replies are about, but thanks for the advice. The current PC runs very cleanly, and for the most part quickly enough but is very old now - BIOS is from 2011.

Here's the config:
Win10 Pro - can't update to Win11 and support running out in October 2025, not that far away.
Samsung 940 1Tb SSD
16Gb Ram
Intel Core i7-2600 3.4GHz
NVide GEForce 1050 Ti

If ayone is able to suggest an alternative to the Dell for similar/less money, I'm all ears.
Click to expand...

Just something like CCleaner will do the job.
 
If, as Nev says, the old one has a good clean up and some optimization, I doubt you will see a massive improvement. Certainly not £1400 worth.
Re. Win 10 end of life. Millions will still be running it in 5-7 years time.
 
LG9K said:
can't update to Win11
Click to expand...
This was my big bugbear for upgrading. I wanted a Win11 compliant PC and needed to replace the motherboard (and CPU, and RAM) to become so for the stupid security thing. Computers are getting like politicians (choose the one you hate least) and I wish the Linux OS was up to scratch with my needs.

If you're not gaming, then your current setup is fine (with a clean as suggested) and your new config will be overkill. You don't mention your camera (the raw file size) and whether you do video, but with the 4070 you will definitely have options. The 1Tb NVMe sounds a bit stingy to me, but... Dell...

I'm running the same CPU on a desktop with the same RAM and a 2070 and have no issues with LR or Photoshop (or anything else - inc gaming tbh) Everything is on NVMe drives (5Tb in total) with only movies and TV shows on external drives and a NAS.
 
Hi,
I have a legion 5 Pro laptop Ive just put away and brought out of retirement my old Asus 990FX mobo with a AMD FX(tm)-8320 , 16 gig memory with a GTX1060 6GB graphics card and a Samsung ssd and Windows 10, about 7 years old, no where near as powerful as my laptop but does everything I need and is quite happy running Photolab 7,
try a fresh install you could get a while out of yours yet, save the cash.
 
It looks like good value. If it's what you want then go for it and it should last you another ten years.
 
I guess I've not explained myself very well. I was kind of expecting similar replies to those in this thread:
www.talkphotography.co.uk

Is this pc likely to be any good with the latest Lightroom?

Is this pc likely to be any good for the latest Lightroom? https://www.costco.co.uk/Computers/Desktops-PCs-iMacs/CyberPower-Intel-Core-i5-16GB-RAM-1TB-SSD-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-3060-Gaming-Desktop-PC/p/414577
www.talkphotography.co.uk www.talkphotography.co.uk

The PC as it is runs very smoothly and reasonably fast - boot up from powered off takes about 20 seconds including entering my pin. No complaints there.

However, when working with CaptureOne and processing/editing images (Sony A6500) etc it takes a bit of time - probably due to the limitations of the old processor, memory and graphics card.

I imagine that getting something newer will improve this aspect of performance in particular - that's the crux of this.

I guess it will run a lot quieter and use less electricity, too?

I'll cannabalise the SSD and use that as a second drive - the current setup has the old HDD as the second drive.
 
@LG9K yes it will do what you want, however I'd suggest it's not best use of your money.

If you're intending to take advantage of AI tools then having a discrete graphics card is certainly worthwhile, however that's a fairly hefty gaming card in there, so you're dropping circa £500 on something that you won't really use.

The rest looks good, but I think you're paying over the odds for your use.
 
To echo a few other posts, I would double the RAM and downgrade that graphics card to balance out the cost.
 
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