Dell XPS Laptop - RAM for Photoshop

[guy_shultz]

I am planning on getting a Dell XPS Laptop. 1TB PCle SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 w/4GB GDDRS, 4K HD 3840 x 2160 screen. I also have a 23" ext Dell Swivel monitor and 2TB ext HD. I will be using it primarily for PSCC - will 16 GB Ram be enough or should I go with 32GB? Both are 2400MHz DDR4.

[davidc1815]

I have an XPS15 9550 and upgraded to 32Gb ram.  It made programs load quicker, but I didn't notice much else. The faster loading time has recently  been sabotaged by the reduced loading time caused by MS W10 update KB4056892.  But others have seen no degradation of performance after the update.  You pay your money and take your chance.

[guy_shultz]

Thanks David!

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

With a PCIe SSD (aka M.2, NVMe) - RAM isn't as critical as it used to be. These drives are so fast that the Photoshop scratch disk isn't really a bottleneck anymore. With 1 TB you shouldn't even need to watch it too closely for free space.

I'd say 16 is plenty enough.

[guy_shultz]

Thanks D. Great info.

[War Unicorn]

Photoshop will always benefit with as much RAM as you can throw at it but this is all dependent on what you're doing. (How big the document you're working with is in both dimensions and color-depth, number of layers, number of effects, Smart Objects, etc.) 16 GB will be fine for most work. If you can double that, great.

Slightly OT: DDR4 memory is ridiculously expensive thanks to demand. I hate this fact.

[guy_shultz]

Thanks Warunicorn. I have always heard that PS liked RAM but my docs are not that huge right now so 16 GB sounds like it will work - saving $200 sounds good to.

[Mariam Hovhannesyan]

I have Lenovo with 8 GB Ram and 1 TB HDD and AMD Radeon video card and it's work perfectly, So I think 16 GB Ram is enough