How to build a pc for photography and video editing.

tzelk77

I am looking for help choosing components to build a pc for photography. I use photoshop, light room, DXO pro and Davinci. I have a budget of around $1,200.00.

magarity

Photoshop uses the main CPU almost exclusively. Lightroom only uses a graphics card for things like on screen preview. DXO and DaVinci Resolve are the opposite and will work a graphics card as hard as possible.

Your budget is kinda tight for a strong graphics card but if you compromise heavily on the rest, then some graphics power can be had. How important is DXO and DaVinci performance to you?

As an example, here's a system that squeezes everything else to get a 4070 (which would rip through DXO and DaVinci) at just under 1200: https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder-amd.aspx?load=db2e2849-1dca-4d50-997d-9a5072d9beb3

I'm not exactly saying get that, but just to illustrate that to emphasize those two softwares with that budget needs some compromise.

tzelk77

I don't use Davinci too much and have just started with DXO. I mostly use Photoshop and lightroom. Where would I need to be to not compromise too much?

magarity

Well in that case get a current generation CPU and let the integrated graphics get you by until you decide you want to use the two video software packages more, then you can add a graphics card later.

Something like this saves $200 and you could put that and a little more towards a graphics card later: https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder-amd.aspx?load=722faae0-d670-4a7b-8edb-09d1f0f2b82b

I have no idea what kind of case you like or how much storage you need so I just picked something.