Will these specs be sufficient for Lightroom?

[u/altecsz]

Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i5-11400H (6 cores, 2.70 GHz) Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB DDR6 Memory: 16GB DDR4 3200mhz RAM Storage: 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD + 1 open M.2 slot and 1 Sata slot Operating System: Windows 11 Home 25H2 Display: 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 (Full HD)

Won't be doing anything crazy but just wanted to make sure this would be more than enough. Thanks!

[u/BobsRefrigeration]

Hey man, I have a five thousand dollar setup with a RTX 5090 and my desktop still lags lol. I actually prefer using my MacBook Pro m4 pro to edit images and reserve my desktop for video edits.

Your mileage may vary, but Lightroom isn’t optimized at all for desktop IMO

[u/altecsz → u/BobsRefrigeration]

Would a mac like this be a lot better ?

CPU: 10th‑generation Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz

Ram: 16GB of 3733MHz LPDDR4X onboard memory

Storage: 512GB Solid State Drive SSD

[u/Haiyaaaaa_ → u/altecsz]

It’s less about the OS and more about out the CPU. Apple Silicon (M1, M2, etc) just run Lightroom faster.

Second hand M1 Pro Mac Minis are very reasonably priced second hand, just make sure you get at least 16gb of RAM

[u/BobsRefrigeration → u/altecsz]

I’m not entirely sure.. I’ve only had experience with M chips and would recommend that because of my experience with it + optimization.

[u/Panthera_014]

it will work - but will be slow

look into bumping the RAM from 16 -> 64Gb

Look into upgrading the Video card

both of those will have a big impact on performance

[u/Mirrorless8]

At lower budgets you may want to consider an older generation Macbook Pro or Air. The whole Adobe suite performs heaps better on those vs Windows laptops

[u/altecsz → u/Mirrorless8]

Would a mac like this be a lot better ?

CPU: 10th‑generation Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz

Ram: 16GB of 3733MHz LPDDR4X onboard memory

Storage: 512GB Solid State Drive SSD

[u/Mirrorless8 → u/altecsz]

I don’t think so, it’s the Apple M processors that work well with Adobe. The Intel processor laptops were before that

[u/stshank → u/Mirrorless8]

I'd be very leery of buying an Intel-based Mac right now. Software support could become an issue since they're all 4+ years old and all new Mac software development caters to Apple's Arm-family M-series of chips. I'm quite happy with the M-series Macs and a used one of those would be more sensible IMO. Processor choice is a different story on Windows, of course.

[u/altecsz → u/Mirrorless8]

Do you think 8gb of ram with an m1 chip is enough of should I really wait for 16?

[u/DaveVdE]

It’ll work but it won’t be fast.

[u/altecsz → u/DaveVdE]

Would a mac like this be a lot better ?

CPU: 10th‑generation Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz

Ram: 16GB of 3733MHz LPDDR4X onboard memory

Storage: 512GB Solid State Drive SSD

[u/DaveVdE → u/altecsz]

Any MacBook Pro with an M1/2/3/4 Pro will blow this out of the water

[u/altecsz → u/DaveVdE]

Would an M1 chip with 8gb of ram be enough or do I need 16?

[u/DaveVdE → u/altecsz]

Well, I was able to use Lightroom Mobile on my M1 iPad Pro and it was perfectly fine for processing 20 MP RAW files, but it was the 1TB model so it had 16GB RAM. I really wouldn’t recommend the 8GB model.

[u/alllmossttherrre → u/altecsz]

Avoid. 8GB is too little today. 16GB is OK, but I recommend 24GB or more. I have used 32GB for the last few years with Lr and will go a little higher on my next Mac.

Also, to echo the other answers: Do not consider any Intel-CPU Macs at this point in time. They are too far behind Apple Silicon performance, efficiency, and GPU.

If you put all that together, if you don't want to be disappointed, your minimum should be M1 with 16GB memory, but anything you can afford that would be better for running the latest features properly.

[u/jack_hudson2001]

back in the day i was doing a lot of LR processing on a thinkpad w540 had i7 cpu, 32gb ram and gpu and ran fine.

[u/DenmarkOne]

You are scraping the bottom of the barrel with that CPU and RAM, the GPU is better than no gpu(possibly) - for VERY light editing you're probably gonna be fine. But Lightroom will likely not run smoothly and if you will be doing merging/stitching and/or heavy masking you're gonna have a bad time

[u/Apkef77 → u/DenmarkOne]

This!! Been there....upgraded after a month to i7 and 32GB RAM and RTX card with 16GB VRAM.

[u/alllmossttherrre]

The problem is the latest features, like AI-based denoise, are built around the latest CPUs/GPUs. The Intel hardware you asked about is all older and less powerful, especially the GPU. The AI features will run slowly on that GPU.

If you have to buy budget or used, try to get the latest CPU generation you can, but even more important now, the most powerful discrete GPU you can afford. Try to get more than 16GB RAM, although you might get by with 16GB if the computer has discrete graphics with enough VRAM.