Cheapest PC build for Lightroom 5 Rendering RAW to JPG only

I use macbook pro to edit my RAWs in lightroom but was thinking of building a small PC to just send all of my RAW and XMP files over to render all of my lightroom RAWs to JPG so it frees up my laptop to continue editing. What would be a good PC build possibly from NEWEGG to slap together, just to render, nothing else. No gaming No photoshop strictly just a render farm type machine for lightroom 5. For example what is most important in export speed? CPU? GPU? RAM? SSD? all of the above? single processor? dual or quad? A build list would be sweet

Thanks!
JTP

Do all the raw edits, select the images and tell LR to export them all as jpg as a large batch during lunch, dinner, or during the night.

MCAsan wrote in post #16646628
Do all the raw edits, select the images and tell LR to export them all as jpg as a large batch during lunch, dinner, or during the night.

The problem with this is I make a new catalog with each event I shoot to help me organize things so thats why I want a separate machine.

How fast do you want to be able to export. If you want the fastest way possible then you need fast cores. That will get you there the fastest. something like a i7-3930K will yield the fastest times (over slower dual Xeon). But if you just want to take some load off your macbook pro and not care too much at having the fastest then go with a i5-4570/i5-4670K and 8GB of ram since ive never seen Lighroom take more than 4Gb by itself. You dont need a ssd but I would recommend getting one with a couple 3-4TB drives to have redundancy for the data. Then have an add on that auto scans the folder and exports the photos that only have a correlating XMP file.


I have a home server that I use similar to this. I am running Windows server 2012 with lightroom installed. I use the RemoteApp function on windows server published to my laptop so when i open up lightroom it opens and runs lightroom on the server but my laptop is remote controlloing the program. So I can have the horspower of a desktop with the mobility of a laptop. I can even run it on my windows tablet which is very convenient when I want to travel super light.

How is the image quality when using the sever remote? I tried something similar using A remote app and without a great connection the quality suffered.

silvrr wrote in post #16649489
How is the image quality when using the sever remote? I tried something similar using A remote app and without a great connection the quality suffered.

Its not bad at all. If im at home on the same network it feels like I am running the program naively on my laptop. If I am remote such as tethering off a cell phone it can be really good but also can be really bad it all depends on the ping times im getting. Typically when the ping is<200ms its pretty good. I recently went to Hawaii and would upload my Raw photos at night then the next day I would go in there with my surface RT and edit photos. this was on the hotel wireless with decent ping times (for Hawaii) it was a really good setup and I didnt have to bring my laptop. Im running Windows Server 2012 on the box.

A 6 core FX AMD, paired with a decent ~$60 mobo, would provide respectable power at a budget price point. Overclock mildly if you're feeling adventurous.

http://secure.newegg.c​om …x?WishListNumbe​r=32217428

If you're averse to OC, pop an extra $20 for the 6350 chip. IMO, its higher base and turbo clocks will be worth the $.

I'm not going to make a complete build list for you since I have better things to do and really have no idea what you consider 'cheap.' Suffice to say that you could add a ~ case+ps, HD and 8gb memory for $70~90 each. Onboard video and networking will be more than sufficient. Add a small SSD for the OS and WIP files if you're feeling rich. (64GB will be easily hold the OS, apps, swap space, WIP and a fair number of non-WIP images.) Total cost: high $3xx to mid $4xx.

Since it's a batch machine I think value is most important. A 4-6 core AMD is probably going to be the best idea, or an i5 if you think you may re-purpose it later. 4GB of RAM is probably fine for a single purpose batch machine, no SSD required either.