I have a very specific requirement for this system: - it’s a photo workstation that needs to run just a few programs well – primarily Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. I’m never going to play games or edit video.

Macs are available with various combinations of CPU cores and speeds – but what is the best configuration for my use? I’ve learned that it is best to get the fastest you can afford without paying a premium for the bleeding edge – upgrades rarely happen in practice, and you want to extend the lifespan before advancing technology makes it obsolete. However I still don’t want to pay for capabilities that my programs can’t make use of.

Fortunately there is a great resource on the web, explicitly for photographers with Macs! It contains all the benchmarks and advice you need to configure your ideal system.

HERE

It turns out that those Adobe applications are unable to make much use of greater than four CPU cores, but having large memory capacity and fast disks really makes a difference. A faster CPU speed does benefit many photo tasks though it’s not worth paying the huge premium for the very fastest. The middle of the range Mac Pro offers 15% more speed for 15% more money, so is a reasonable option, but not essential. Given all this, and the need to support my existing high gamut monitor (Mac displays look nice, but they are not the best for pro photo work) also ruled out laptops and iMacs. …I was definitely looking at a Mac Pro.

What about memory? It seems there’s no such thing as “too much” for Photoshop! Apple memory is very expensive, but Kingston (a well known and reputable memory manufacturer) offers Mac Pro compatible memory for a third of the cost – so I decided to go for 16GB – Apple’s limit for the four core model. (It’s possible to go beyond that, up to 32GB, with third party memory. There’s a high premium though, and the benefit is limited.)

For disk, I decided on a three tiered strategy: A fast SSD for boot and loading applications, a pair of 7200rpm SATA drives in RAID 1 (mirrored) for my main working storage (With another drive for “Time Machine” backup internally) and a “Drobo” RAID enclosure to give me secure external backup (up to two of the Drobo’s five drives can fail without data loss.)

So with that decided, I placed my order…

NEXT: Making the Move.