1:1 Previews were supposed to help speed up the process for very large RAW files because it gives you a smaller (and a bit lesser quality) preview to speed up the response time and the editing process.
My experience is that it does the exact opposite. Retrieval from NVMe SSDs and SATA drives with big caches is much faster than any time saved by doing this during ingestion. It just slows down ingestion (horribly so).
For the Page File System, I have fixed a minimum and maximum of 100GB because sometimes I work with very large files that only hundreds of GB or RAM could, realistically, handle them. I have tried a smaller Page File but it hasn't changed the performance at all.
I would cut this back to 16/16. Windows will automatically expand the VM file as needed, but fragments it all over the place! When you reboot, it goes back to the set size, which should be one contiguous file. If it isn't, do a boot time defrag to defragment all the system files. The effect on SSD life is minuscule, unless you do it every few minutes ...
I have it set at 90% of 16GB, which is 15.5 GB. That's why I frequently hit just below that metric when I edit pictures.
It's a consumer i9 chip so it's limited to 2 channels for memory (you need HEDT pr Threadripper for quad or even 6 channels for memory). Yes, the one good thing about this laptop is that's very easy to disassemble down to the motherboard. I have disassembled it just a few weeks ago to clean and repaste everything.
Probably not worth the cost of the changeover then. Even though the 32 GB would almost certainly alleviate your memory problem. Better off putting that money towards either a desktop, or selling your laptop and buying a more modern one. Seems like you had the misfortune to buy right at the end of a technology cycle, rather than at the beginning of one, which I have hopefully done - more by chance than planning!
I do End Task for Microsoft Edge and I stopped watching YouTube videos on the laptop while editing. I am a bit more apprehensive to shut down Windows Explorer (if that's the one you meant instead of Internet Explorer, which has been deprecated and removed on Windows 11) because it might cause instability in the UI of Windows and affect its ability to read/write files during the editing process.
Do not stop the Windows Explorer process in Task Manager. If you do, you can run it again from TM. It's a system process. But do shut down all unnecessary invocations of Windows Explorer from the GUI. They can be real memory hogs.
I thought about it but Windows laptops have lesser selling value than Apple machines unfortunately and I don't think I would get more than 1.000 £ or even less if I tried to sell it (privately or not). And I would feel remorse for losing the ability to use my active pen for making local edits (the 49% reason why I bought this laptop machine), especially for portraits. To make a similar system on the Apple side I would need an M1 device, either Mac Mini or a MacBook, and an iPad with Apple Pencil to work in tandem via Apple's Sidecar feature. (I am unable to use graphic tablets because I can't get my brain to hand coordinate when I can't see the hand/pen on the same focal plane.)
Yes, the "new" 12th Gen from Intel and 5th Gen from AMD support PCI Express 5 and on nVME storage you can get in excess of 10GB per second storage which is reaching the limits of what the OS and software can do with those speeds, but it's still nowhere near the speeds of RAM and the effectiveness of more RAM on heavy memory workloads. I did the mistake of believing people that 16GB of RAM is more than enough when I knew myself that 32GB will be the minimum for my own needs and workloads within the 5 years life span I had for the laptop.
Yes. The dangers of the internet. Everyone's an 'expert'. Most patently aren't, but occasionally some received wisdom gets through that's just unicorn droppings. The "16 GB RAM is enough" story is one of the latter. It isn't.
With the right hardware throughout the computer, 32 GB is fine. My new PC is constantly nudging 16-19 GB used. If (when ... ) I upgrade the RAM, it will be 2x 32 GB chips.
Now I am finding myself (and expecting) that 20GB RAM is the base I would need and it will grow to 32-40GB in the next 5 years. So anyone who wants to make a future-resistant (there's no such thing as future-proofing) editing device would be 32GB at the minimum and 64GB recommended.
Totally agree. Particularly if you are stuck with your initial choice, I would recommend 64 GB.
Thank you so much for the advice, I really appreciate it, see you tomorrow.
Only too happy to be of some little help, Ovi. Even if it's only as an intelligent sounding board to help you get your own thoughts in order.
I've spent nearly two years thinking about my own upgrade, which has been desperately needed for all that time. Other things prevented it from happening. When I finally plonked down the cash (nearly AU$3,000 with a couple of bits of software, but no OS, HDDs, keyboard, mouse or monitor) there was still quite a lot of trepidation at the back of my mind. With a small amount of (respected and appreciated) help from the tech at CPL, I seem to have made good choices. With all the parts that transferred, it amounts to about a AUD $5,000 build. That's not chicken feed.