Laptop Optimised for Adobe Lightroom

[John W]

Hi,

This is my first post on this forum.

Please can you offer your advice and/or suggestions.

I want to replace my laptop because it is useless for Adobe Lightroom. I decided to replace it with a model that would also become my prime PC at home (i.e replace my desktop PC as well). When using it at home I will connect it to my desktop monitor possibly even using both the monitor and the laptop display simultaneously (so I want a reasonable laptop display). Lightroom is the most demanding software I will use and so I want to optimise the configuration for that. I have a Lightroom catalog of ~25,000 photos and I regularly edit 20 Mpixel RAW filels. Photography is a hobby for me, I don't have urgent deadlines. I am not a gamer but, occasionally, I will want to edit short video clips (I don't mind if this is a bit slow because it's quite rare). The configuration below is at the top of my budget so if you suggest upgrading any part of it please also tell me what I should downgrade or delete elsewhere. If you think anything is overspecified I'd be happy to save money. I hope that is sufficient background. I think I've made the right compromises but expert help would be much appreciated.

I will post this on a Lightroom forum as well to get advice from both points of view.

Thanks in anticipation of your help.

John.



Chassis & Display
Cosmos Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS MEDIA ACCELERATOR 4600 - - Is this good enough? For a decent graphics card, I would give up half the RAM and have poorer diplay resolution and/or downgrade the processor.
Memory - Hard Disk
120GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W) -Is this worth having?
2nd Hard Disk
1TB SEAGATE HYBRID GEN3 SSHD Drive, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
2nd/3rd HDD HARD DRIVE OPTICAL BAY CADDY
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)

 

[mantadog]

If its just a hobby type thing I think your probably best suited without the dedicated GPU. The integrated solution will work fine, for ages I used my desktop with dual monitors on much older integrated graphics than you will be using. I would keep everything the same with the one exception of changing the Seagate hybrid drive to a scorpio black 750GB if you can possibly do without the extra space.

16GB is maybe overkill for photo editing, 8 would be ample. Though that reduction in itself isn't much good if you have to give up the display resolution and downgrade the processor to afford the GPU upgrade. So you can keep the 16GB or just drop to 8 and save the cash.

The SSD will make such a difference to the feel of the system, it is 100% worth it. If you ditch the hybrid drive you could afford the upgraded Hyper x from Kingston, the benchmarks say it is a decent step up from the v300 so worth a shot if you don't need the full 1Tb capacity.

 

[John W]

Hi Mantadog,

Thanks for the input, this is exactly the sort of help I was looking for.

John