Oddly enough, I’m a professional photographer, and those are the clients I am talking about. Clearly, where you’re at/who you deal with is different, but I’ve just not needed physical media for a few years now. I have an external burner, just in case. It’s been at least five years since I’ve used it. I’m not even sure I know where it is. And, while I do printing, most of my work is not printed and simply delivered. Every package I have includes the full-resolution files and a release allowing my clients to print them independently of me. That’s not really that different from most photographers these days. This is part of the current business model.
I’m still not seeing it; the ONLY thing I’ve used my optical drive for in the past decade is to burn CDs of MP3s to play in my pickup.
Otherwise, I use Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or one of the other file-sharing sites for transferring files. Much less trouble than burning it and mailing it, and faster to boot.
Oh, almost certainly - more RAM would trump faster RAM most of the time at least in Intel machines. In a Ryzen(AMD )machine RAM speeds do seem to matter up to ~3000. But in Intel-based machines they really don’t seem to have much impact in real world applications as long as you meet the minimum spec the processor calls for. Latency numbers aren’t going to make a significant difference either, far as I can tell.
Mind you, you will see a tiny difference in stuff like bench-marking. So if you’re OCD about getting every last drop of performance you can out of your silicon, more power to you :). Plenty of people are. But in actual day to day operations, it appears it usually is not going to be real noticeable.
Once you’ve got enough memory, adding more doesn’t really do all that much. So the question is what is enough. 8GB is perfectly functional really, but maybe a bit light for Windows 10 machines these days if you do anything beyond surfing the web and word processing. 16 on the other hand is pretty generous - far as I’ve read it is going to be more than enough for most any dedicated gaming rig, really. If you start doing tons of rendering with AutoCad or something, then maybe 32 might come in handy on occasion.
Before ordering the extra 16 if you haven’t yet, you might want to run your new machine under what you consider a heavy load with Windows Manager up and watch the Performance Tab Memory graph and see where it spikes. If it never gets anywhere near the top, that extra memory might be a waste right now. You could always add more later as the need arises if you have the tab space.
I should clarify: I meant “optical media” where I said “physical media for a few years now.” I’ve sent out USB sticks, shit… maybe two years ago. And “part of the current business model these days,” I should elucidate and say that it is common for that to be priced into package pricing, rather than digital downloads of files being an add-on expense. Some photographers still do what you say, but, in my experience with the photographers I know in my wedding/event niche, it is expected with this current generation of clients, that having access to the edited files and permission to print and share them is pretty much expected. So price that into your services.
I was actually a bit trepidatious two and a half years ago when I decided to just nix USB delivery and go download-only. I told them that delivery of files would be via downloading, unless they specifically requested a physical medium. I expected in that first year about half my clients requesting USB sticks (and I wasn’t expecting any optical media). I was asked for one set of USB sticks for a couple’s parents. And nothing since then. This is for over a hundred clients (and I’m not counting business/corporate clients, who definitely don’t want to deal with that stuff. I mean average joes and janes. Weddings. Birthday parties. Engagements. Engagement parties. Baby showers. Family portraits. Graduations. That sort of stuff…)
I’d guess that the average Doper is a far more standard use case than “Paid photographer dealing with getting files to clients”. I built my current PC a year ago and have noticed its lack of an optical drive exactly zero times. When I was moving my old PC, I opened the drive and found a game install disc from two years prior. If I was dealing with a photographer, I’d wonder why he’s not just uploading my files to a Box account or FTP site instead of trying to get me physical media of any sort.
However, adding an optical drive to a build costs about $15 and buying a USB optical drive if you one day realize you need one is maybe $25 so, either way, it’s hardly a hill to die on.
16GB of RAM looks out of place in your system only because your system is top of the line.Getting 16GB now and waiting until RAM prices come down to get another 16GB is a good idea. You might end up forgetting about it for several years because, unless you’re doing video editing or scientific work, it will rarely be a problem. If you do upgrade later, you have to make sure they’re identical sticks of RAM.
This video is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnuNs_Nu46Q&t=421s
tl;dr: You’re ok with 16GB.
Unless you have very specific needs, improvements are mainly about the display, the GPU and the drives. A hybrid drive might be a better idea than a solely mechanical drive for media storage as it intelligently loads your most commonly used files into a small integrated SSD.
We have an ONI thread you might find interesting in the games forum. https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=857309 It’s been fun and informative learning about other people’s experiences, especially Dr. Strangelove who plays at a different level than the rest of us.
With your system, you’ll be able to run anything as well as can be, including VR. I hear Doom 2016 in VR is pretty good.
4.7GB writable DVD - ~$0.25. Cheapest 4GB flash drive - ~$3.00. Not a hard decision to make if you have to hand out multiple disks/drives.
Also, since flash drives are rewriteable*, malware and viruses can be added without the user knowing. The user then plugs the infected drive into their friends/family/work computer to share the videos/pics they have and they infect the new computer**. Hilarity ensues as the person/company who gave the drive is blamed for adding malware or a virus to the drive.
*Yes, I know flash drives can be made read only, but this upsets people who can’t use that precious 100mb leftover. I toss free promo flash drives that contain a file(s) that can’t be deleted or formatted away, even though the unlocked portion is fully usable.
**At a company I worked for, the virus that infected the entire local network was traced to a flash drive inserted into an employee’s computer. Yeah, it was partially IT’s fault for not blocking use of removable media. Another time, we were hit with ransomware traced to an email opened by an employee. Fortunately, it only affected the shared drives and everything that day was lost when they restored from the previous night’s backup. Also, most of us worked saved our work on our own PCs so nothing critical was lost.
We’re drifting away from the OP’s question, but I’ll just add the following opinions.
Lots of reasons why physical media is still a valid delivery media. Some are:
A sense of value to physical media for the client/customer plus extras like a contact sheet that can be included with or without business info. Also, people pay extra for CD/DVD/Blu-Ray releases that come in a fancy box or case with printed extras.
Not everyone has broadband internet access, unlimited data, or access to internet at all. A 4GB file may take seconds on broadband, but minutes or hours on DSL or dial-up. Yes, some people still use dial-up!
There’s instant gratification and portability with physical media. I can take a provided disk or flash drive with me without having to burn my own disk or use my own flash drive.
Security. Anything accessible from the web can be broken into. It’s not a matter of if, but when, if someone wants to get in bad enough. If I had personal, perhaps intimate photos or videos that was for my eyes only or those who I choose to share them with, I’d wouldn’t what them on anything web accessible. Even if the provider says they’ll delete it after I download it, there’s no guarantee that the server wasn’t hacked before I got around downloading and no guarantee that provider will delete it immediately or ever once I’ve got my copy. Look up fusker and you’ll find lots of private pics and videos on supposedly secure sites posted.
Oh, physical media still has its place. It’s just that, in my experience, a lot of people no longer have optical drives. Like I said, the last computer – desktop or laptop – that I bought with an optical drive was back in 2011. I have one desktop and two laptops I’ve bought since then. No optical drives. USB sticks are the most universal physical way of exchanging files these days. That was the last physical medium I used, and it would’ve been cheaper for me to just use DVDs, but enough clients didn’t have optical drives that I switched to all USB delivery (before eventually going all online.)
Most of that doesn’t really apply to wedding photography. And if you want to offer a DVD or flash drive, go for it. I’d still expect digital file transfer to be the default and don’t need more garbage around (or wait for it to be delivered) just because someone else is emotionally invested in owning a DVD or uses dial-up.
Whether or not the pictures are available for the client to download from a web page, they are almost certainly on a computer that connects to the internet and might get hacked. So I don’t think you get much extra security here unless you think your photographer is going to do all photo-editing on a clean box that never connects to the internet (they’re not).
The difference is the presence of the photographer’s PC and the data on it isn’t publicly or privately known to anyone on the web unless they’re specifically targeting it. Sometimes on a poorly managed web server, breaking into one website opens the door for hackers break into all the other websites on that server.
Anyway, I’ll never be convinced that physical media isn’t sometimes desired or preferred and more secure and those with the opposite view sill never be convinced otherwise. As we’ve strayed far off-topic, I’ll leave the last word to whomever may want.
I’m really happy with my hybrid SSD- a Seagate Firecuda. Highly recommend.
I certainly don"t mind the drift in topic. I’ll add that I had no idea how far into obsolescence optical media had fallen. As flash drives are disabled on military networks, and personal cloud drives are inaccessible, the only way I can transfer large files to and from work is through CDs and DVDs. They are so co.mon place for me still that I hadn’t noticed how little theyre used by most people. Thats intetesting. And I even have 200GB Google Drive, so its not like Im stuck in the past or failing to embrace modernity.
This thing got here really fast. I wasn’t expecting it to arrive until after Christmas, but it came last week. I’ve added the additional 16GB of RAM, an additional 6TB 7200rpm HDD, and a Logitech Z906 system for some decent sound. I’m very happy with the whole set up. Now I just need to sell my old GTX1060, which should barely cover the cost of the Display Port–>HDMI cables. I was not expecting to need new cables, and definitely wasn’t expecting them to cost so much.