Graphics Workstations for Photoshop

Understand Photoshop’s hardware requirements and pick the perfect 3XS Systems graphics workstation for your project

What is Photoshop?

Adobe Photoshop is a photo editing, image creation and graphic design software. The software provides many image editing features for raster (pixel-based) images as well as vector graphics.

What makes the best system for Photoshop?

Photoshop itself is not a particularly demanding application to run, but it is often used in conjunction with other applications as part of creating a project. The below recommendations and guidance focus primarily on the requirements for Photoshop software alone, so you may want to read other application pages to understand how systems specifications may be impacted if multiple applications are used together.

What CPU should I choose for Photoshop?

Most tasks in photography and graphics applications only take advantage of a single CPU core. While some actions utilise multiple CPU cores (such as blurring and colour conversion), benchmark tests show that they max out at six to eight cores. Therefore, the clock speed per core is more important than the number of cores. We recommend starting with an AMD Ryzen 5 or Intel Core i5. If you’re also going to doing larger projects then you may see benefits from faster Ryzen 7 and 9 or Core i7 and i9 CPUs.

What GPU do I need for Photoshop?

Photoshop has minor benefits with a GPU, so it is not worth investing in a high-end card. If you are considering a dedicated workstation for Photoshop then we recommend consumer-grade NVIDIA GeForce cards thanks to their outstanding value for money. However, if you’re also planning on modelling on the same workstation then it’s worth considering an entry level professional NVIDIA RTX GPU thanks to their larger memory buffer and certified drivers.

How much RAM is recommended for Photoshop?

The minimum RAM that we recommend for Photoshop is 16GB, upgrading to more memory if you’re working with large projects or multiple applications at once.

What storage does Photoshop need?

We always recommend using an SSD for the boot drive that will host your OS, Photoshop itself, and any active projects you are working on. The high speed of SSDs allows your system to boot, launch applications, and load files many times faster than any traditional hard drive. Alternatively, as your work projects increase you may want to consider a second SSD or higher capacity HDD - depending on your budget - so your OS, Photoshop and live projects benefit from SSD speed, but your archived work uses the HDD where speed isn’t a necessity and costs can be lowered. Another archive solution could be to employ an external NAS device allowing sharing and RAID protection.

When it comes to deciding on drive capacity, this will very much depend on your number of files and the model sizes. You should also consider the space required by other applications and their associated files too.

Recommended Photoshop Workstation Specifications

Workstation specifications
	High-End	Mid-Range	Entry-Level
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 / Intel Core i9	AMD Ryzen 7 / Intel Core i7	AMD Ryzen 5 / Intel Core i5
RAM	64GB	32GB	16GB
GPU	NVIDIA RTX	NVIDIA RTX	NVIDIA RTX