OT: Desktop PC question re: graphics support

[eddief]

I have a generic HP Pavilion Desktop computer that's about 5 years old. Nothing fancy. I am surprised there is no model number on the cabinet. I want to do some photo editing and considering a new monitor with enough resolution and color support to see and edit my photos.

Current monitor is a few years old Dell running 1920x1080.

What does this computer need to have in terms of graphics card or on-board chipset to support an up to date monitor.

What is a reasonably priced 25 inch photo editing monitor?

Or if I get a new computer, what do I look for for graphics hardware.

I am hobby guy not a pro photog.

[benb]

5 Years old you shouldn't need much unless it was a really junky computer to begin with. 16GB of ram + a quad core i5 or i7 CPU should be sufficient. When you get into big photo storage you're not going to be able to store everything on SSDs without spending many thousands of dollars so that becomes less important.. you just want your OS + Applications and/or scratch space on an SSD. Fancy graphics cards and such don't do a lot. If the software you're working with is running fast enough you're good to go. You're not getting a good bang for the buck accelerating photo software with the high end graphics cards. Fancy graphics cards are mostly for gamers & 3D artists/CAD engineering, etc..

If you want a fancy monitor look for something with an IPS display that advertises some particular % of the sRGB or Adobe RGB gamuts.

Some of the nicer Dell Ultrasharp models are great choices.. IPS panels and they come with a calibration chart from the factory to show the monitor is tested.

After that the next piece of hardware you would want is your own monitor calibration device/software. E.x. I have a ColorMunki which is an Xrite/Pantone product.


The camera(s) you're using are a big factor too. If you're using a smartphone your requirements for CPU/Disk are trivial. Smartphone JPGs can be handled just fine on a computer that's 10-15 years old.

If you're shooting RAW photos on a 25-50mp DSLR or M-ILC camera your CPU/Disk/Memory requirements go up a fair amount. At that point you're probably talking a 5-figure gear collection though so you wouldn't be asking here?

Most of my computer is circa 2012 and it's working fine, I have a 23mp camera I bought around the same time. I'm not really seeing any need for a major upgrade till I buy a new camera, and we're way into diminishing returns on cameras at this point. I've made great 5-foot wide prints from my 23mp camera... absolutely no need for more right now, cause making prints that huge is not a common thing!

Other hardware if you have money to burn... a NAS or other RAID solution and a nice photo printer that is at least in the 13" wide category and is in the $500+ range... around that range you start to get results that are superior to consumer labs if you know what you're doing and the ink costs start to drop. If you go crazy and get into the $1000+ range for the printer (17" carriage) the ink costs start dropping significantly more. Mastering printing is really a big undertaking though.

[ultraman6970]

NO idea the pc you have, pavilion is a model series, they made a lot of different specs, I would start by posting the specs, specs are important because you can tell if can be upgreadeable, some stuff from HP is imposible to work with because the motherboard cant take any upgrades of CPU, memory nor video card. So find out the specs 1st.

Lets think that you have something that can be upgradeable... and assuming you have a decent CPU aswell as removable memory and a PCI express slot available... then you want to swap the video card you have for a new one like a nvidia 1050 or something like that. Add more memory, maybe 16 gb (hope you have 64 bits OS because 16 bits windows won recognize more than 8 gb)... hard drives are easy to replace, get a new one that is bigger and clone the one you have into the new one and you are good to go or add the extra storage into the computer.

For what you need pretty much that's it, but you need to find out if posible to upgrade the machine you have 1st.

Go to the bios, there's the model and the specs... or look around there's a little serial number number in a corner, the model could be there.

Hope this helps.

[thermalattorney]

Take a look at the Philips 276E8VJSB. 4K, IPS 10-bit panel, only $250.

4K resolution at that size makes for crisp text and your photos will look more like they're printed. Plus it supports 10bit color, which is nice if you're shooting RAW and are a Photoshop user. You don't need now but will be nice to take advantage when you eventually upgrade to a graphic card that supports it.

The only caveat to this recommendation is if your computer doesn't have either a DisplayPort or HDMI 2.0 port. The monitor will work without them, but you'll be limited to 1920x1080.