For Lightroom: Dual-Core + SSD or Quad with HDD?

burningbright said:

Hi, I'm planning on getting a Mac Mini, mostly for Lightroom, and wondered if Lightroom would perform better on the base dual-core upgraded with an SSD or on the 2.3 quad-core with the stock HDD?
Thanks for any info!

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I use my mini primarily with Lr + CS6, definetly go with Quade core with HDD, I've dual core with SSD on my MBP and it is nowhere as fast as i7 2.3 + HDD on my Mac mini. Make sure you upgrade ram to 16GB.

For LR work, CPU and RAM are more important than SSD, all SSD will do really is load the application a little faster.

LR4 opens in about 2-3 seconds on my 2.6 i7 Quad with 16Gb RAM.

Quad Core

I recently upgraded from a 2007 iMac to the latest Mini... wanted to bring my own monitor and didn't want to wait for the iMac's any longer.

I do a lot of work in LR 4 and the system I put together works fantastic...

2012 MacMini with Quad Core i7
16Gb RAM (self upgraded from OWC)
256Gb SSD (factory)
4.0Tb External USB 3.0 "MiniStack" from OWC
ViewSonic VP2770-LED 27" monitor

With the OS, LR 4, and the Nik plugins on the SSD and my pictures on the External USB, the system flies... I find the performance of the USB 3 external drive equally as good the internal I had on my iMac, which was sufficient. I know one of the knocks on USB is the CPU load it introduces, but I experience no lag because of that... the CPU has plenty to give!

Hope this helps in your decision making process...

--Rob.

burningbright said:

Perfect! Thanks Mjoshi, that was, of course, just the kind of information I was looking for. One quad-core Mini with monstrous quantities of RAM coming up!

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Corsair vengence 16GB RAM is on sale on Newegg and Amazone so make sure you get those, it works just fine in my 2012 mac mini with i7

here is link from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Venge...524930&sr=8-4&keywords=corsair+vengeance+16gb

and if you are itching for SSD upgrade please dont get it from Apple, it is not at all hard thing to do it on your own. There is video on youtube showing exactly it needs to be done. Just see same video 2-3 times and you will be pretty confident to do it on your own.

burningbright said:

Hi, I'm planning on getting a Mac Mini, mostly for Lightroom, and wondered if Lightroom would perform better on the base dual-core upgraded with an SSD or on the 2.3 quad-core with the stock HDD?
Thanks for any info!

Click to expand...

I used the latest LR with the upgraded quad, 16GB RAM (Corsair Vengence) and Apple's SSD. It's a super-duper quick machine. SSD is superfast and I had no qualms about paying Apple's inflated SSD price for not having to meddle too much in the machine.

buy the quad core as it gives you an upgrade path to add the SSD. Just put a second drive in it when you are ready.

dazey said:

buy the quad core as it gives you an upgrade path to add the SSD. Just put a second drive in it when you are ready.

Click to expand...

Can you not upgrade the HDD in the base model?

jimmy83 said:

Can you not upgrade the HDD in the base model?

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Apple doesn't offer upgrades but you can certainly do it yourself.

What improvements would you prefer 1 - program responsiveness or 2 - export render speeds?

I have several macs running LR and Photoshop. The ssd is a great upgrade for speeding up the program , althought it doesn't speed up the file handling unless the files are on an ssd. CPU upgrades will make a huge difference on render times. My MacBook Air with 4gb of ram i5 1.8 handles files just as fast as my 2011 imac with 16gb of ram - although the imac exports files a little bit faster...