Last Updated on 08/22/2019 by Mark Beckenbach
These powerful HP Pavilion laptops and desktops will breeze through image editing in Capture One, Lightroom, and beyond.
As our cameras become more powerful and pixel-dense, the RAW files they create become larger. As a result of the larger file sizes, our PC’s need to be more powerful to can render and manipulate the images easily. It’s a vicious cycle, but it’s one that can be dealt with. New NVIDIA GPUs can make image editing easier on your system, especially when partnered with third-generation Ryzen 5, and 7 CPUs, or new 9th generation Intel Core offerings. HP has been putting together new desktop and laptop PC’s aimed at gamers, but content creators will find them just as nice. Join us after the break for more details about the new computers.
A recent post at Digital Trends talks about the new HP Pavilion PC’s and how they can benefit gamers. While photographers like to dabble in games (some more than others, and yes that would be me), we also need computers to work on. These new Pavilion models have what it takes to blow through image editing and content creation jobs without breaking a sweat.
The HP Pavilion Gaming 15 laptop could be great for photographers on the go. The Gaming 15 laptop comes in a variety of configurations, all of which will help benefit you as a photographer. For $799 you will be able to get one of these bad boys with a brand new Ryzen 5 3350H, 8GB of RAM, incredibly fast NVMe storage (512GB), and a dedicated NVIDIA GTX 1050 GPU. This model would be great for those who have light editing loads, and who like to play less demanding games.
Splurge a little, and you can outfit the Gaming 15 laptop with a blazingly fast AMD 7 series CPU, 1TB of storage and an NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti Max Q. The 15.6-inch screen is capped out at 1080p, but it does have a 144hz refresh rate. The base model of this laptop will be great for light loads, while the fully maxed out version will be a portable dream for image editing.
The new HP Pavilion gaming desktop is where things get taken up a notch. Base models of this desktop will feature the 9th generation Intel Core i7, which is excellent for gaming. If you wish, you can switch that out for an AMD 3700x, which, in my opinion, has better performance for multi-threaded applications like LR and Capture One.
The base model desktop comes equipped with an NVIDIA 1660 Ti. I currently rock a 1660 Ti in my custom system, and I can tell you that it helps Lightroom and Capture One churn out images effortlessly. Monster 200Mb files from the Fujifilm GFX 100 and 190Mb pixel-shift images from my Pentax K1 II are processed incredibly fast. The 1660 Ti will also allow you to play triple-A games at max settings at 1440p without dropping below 60fps. The base model also comes with 16Gb of RAM, a 256GB NVMe, and a 2TB hard drive for $699.
If you want to be a bit more spendy, you can bump the GPU up to an NVIDIA RTX 2060 Super, or an NVIDIA RTX 2070. NVIDIA and Adobe joined forces and have claimed that Turing based RTX GPUs with Ray Tracing technology will speed things up for photographers and graphic designers. These new offerings from HP should be available to purchase this August. Definitely keep these options on your shopping list if you’re looking for a pre-built desktop or a powerful laptop for your image editing needs.