CorelDraw computer specs

Increasingly, my CorelDraw files are becoming larger as my laser skills grow. Customers are asking for more detail and something that no one has. The file I finished yesterday had 10,766 objects and contained 3 times that many nodes. The CDR file is only a bit over 3MB. The computer I'm using, an HP (all-in-one) is falling on it's face and it's wasting my time. Any suggestions on specs for a higher-end CorelDraw computer? I'm not doing 3D work, and don't anticipate doing so in the near future. I know anything will be better than this HP (all-in-one), but I want a computer that will last a few years.

IFFFFF you got the money..... :D dual xeon quadcore processor, 30gigs of ram, 15k rpm drives, and some fancy graphics card.

I currently running a HP laptop with an I7, 16gigs of ram, 7200rpm drive (i think). It will lag alittle with corel, photoshop, excel, co2 laser and fiber all running at the same time. I want to upgrade to to something with alittle more power.

A few questions before I can recommend any PC: What's your budget? Is there any component you must have or is there anything from your current computer you would like to sue? Windows 10 or Mac OS X? Do you have a preferred PC brand or are you comfortable building your own computer?

Get an SSD, 16 gigs of RAM, and a dedicated graphics card. Most any dedicated card will be better than onboard, and since you're not doing 3D you don't need anything crazy good.

You're probably running something quite under powered.

I agree with Bert's recommendation but I wouldn't put too much focus on getting a dedicated graphics card. An onboard card with plenty of RAM available will more than do the job for you. The SSD and plenty of RAM will be the most important thing. A lot of graphics work is done in the processor now so that's also worth getting something decent.

Ultimately, $500-600 for a desktop or $800 for a laptop should get you something that would be more than capable.

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Originally Posted by Trey Tull

IFFFFF you got the money..... :D dual xeon quadcore processor, 30gigs of ram, 15k rpm drives, and some fancy graphics card....

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I have almost exactly that very computer - A Dell T5400 Precision, dual Xeon quad cores, 32 gigs of ram, 1tb drive (but only spins 7200), a probably a bargain-basement graphics card, running Win7 Pro 64--

--And my old Dell Optiplex 760 running a 2-core Intel something and XP pro 32 will absolutely run circles around it. Even my ancient HP Pavillion running Win98 is faster...

There is definitely something wrong with my 5400 but I'll be dam'd if I can figure out what. Yesterday for example, it was doing the 3-4 second wait thing just to draw a box in Corel-- hit the task manager and find out the print spooler of all things is eating 13% of the CPU (half of one core) just doing nothing...? Nothing was printing or had been printed for at least a half hour. My video card needs upgrading and may be partly to blame, been trying to figure out if it is, but the internet is useless, every time I google for help the first 3 pages are chock full of 'answers' from 8 to 10 years ago. I watch videos on MSNBC, and the screen flickers like a strobe light unless the mouse is planted along the far right edge and not moving, and if I go into Corel or something while a video is playing, the mouse moves in 1/4 second chunks. And even on fresh reboot, backspacing thru a line of text isn't a smooth movement of erasing letters, it's 4 or 5 letters, stop, 4 or 5 letters, stop- all in chunks... My email program, emails with 3 or 4 megs of attachments, typical of 3 or 4 dxf's and matching pdf's, just clicking on the email means waiting 8 to 12 seconds or more for the main body of the email to display! And one more for good measure, my Corel x4, and only Corel x4, continually gives me 'error writing --filename.cdr-- to disk' messages when it's trying to auto-backup, or when manually saving...? Even simple stuff like "Save As" takes 8 seconds before the 'as WHAT' window shows up! It's ridiculous and frustrating...

Virus and malware scans show nothing. 32 gigs of ram and I've never seen the memory meter above the high 9's. Most of the time the CPU hovering at the bottom. Trying to make head or tails out of the Resource Monitor, about all I grasp from that is the drive is always busy, and maybe an SSD would help. Or maybe the virtual memory or disk or whatever settings- stuff I don't know much about- are/is screwed up? It's as if this thing is making calculations for a moon landing before it gets to MY request!

Sorry for the hi-jack, but I too am interested in some ideas!

You can double the speed of any computer with a hard drive by installing a SSD (solid state drive) I even installed on in this mid-2010 Mac Book Pro. I run Parallels on one side for Corel Draw, all very fast. This one has a 500 Gb drive, my other two laptops have 250 Gb Samsung SSDs, this one has a Crucial and it was under $60. You do need to purchase a USB to SSD or 2.5 inch laptop drive adapter to transfer files over and its about $15, all from Amazon.

An SSD is without a doubt the best investment you can do to improve the experience of using any computer. However I would install it internally if at all possible. I have had good experiences with Samsung and bad experiences with Sandisk. In the future I am going to spend the extra $5 for the Samsung. An unrecoverable drive is a huge waste of time.

If if you are needing a new PC and have a tight budget, a refurbished desktop with an i7 second generation or newer is a fantastic bang for the buck proposition. You can usually find them for $200 ish add in $60 for an ssd and you will be set. If you are running large graphics you may need to add another stick of ram or a dedicated graphics card. If you upgrade everything you are still under $400. Keep it clean and it should run flawlessly for several years.

If if you are going to use the computer for making money, it would probably be worth it to spend a bit extra on some newer hardware. However, you are going to get diminishing returns. Spend twice as much for 50% more performance.

Personally, I avoid laptops and all in ones as much as possible. They do not have the longevity or upgradeablilty of desktops. Thermals are probably the biggest killer of laptops. I still use a couple of core2quad desktops for running a couple machines and they are more than up to the task, though I would not use them for design work.

An SSD is without a doubt the best investment you can do to improve the experience of using any computer. However I would install it internally if at all possible

All My SSD's are internal. The adapter is for transferring files over, or imaging the drive, how else you you do it? All my machine controllers are laptops, you just need to buy quality ones and know how to set them up. Mine are Lenovo and are running Win7 Pro 64, I have even ran my 3D printer off this Mac Book Pro.

Got it. I must have misunderstood your post.

Nice thing about desktops is you can plug in all the drives directly.

$600-$800 would be nice. Probably going to be closer to $900. I have no problem building my own. Partial to Dell, if I have to choose.

As much as I hate Windows 10 (I REALLY want Windows XP back), I have to use Windows. I was in the IT arena from 1992 through 2010. Did it all from PC support to Director of Technology Infrastructure. Loving my slower life now.

Corel seems to favor clock speed and ipc over core count.

Since you you have a healthy budget probably go for a new i5 or i7 with at least 16gb dual channel ram. Might want to get a low end descrete graphics card. Nothing special is needed if all you use is Corel.

I prefer to to build myself, but you may still want to look into packaged or refurbished systems. By the time you buy an OS, they usually end up cheaper in this price range.

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Originally Posted by John Rotert

$600-$800 would be nice. Probably going to be closer to $900. I have no problem building my own. Partial to Dell, if I have to choose.

As much as I hate Windows 10 (I REALLY want Windows XP back), I have to use Windows. I was in the IT arena from 1992 through 2010. Did it all from PC support to Director of Technology Infrastructure. Loving my slower life now.

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I buy my laptops as they come off lease, used by clinics and offices. Look just like new and they have a new install of the OS, Lenovo ($200-$300) and both are Windows 7 Pro 64 and I have installed SSD's in both. I have built desktop PC's since the early 1980's for my own use. The Mac Book Pro 17" purchased 3 years ago for $500 off Amazon, off lease by a vender. All mine have at least 8 mb RAM and now SSD's.

This is a pretty decent machine, the only thing I don't like is the undersized M.2 SSD at 128 GB. I recommend 256 or larger for SSDs.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell...p/NDgmbMcs417s

If you're just going to use this as a lasering PC and don't try and run your whole life on it, I'm a big fan of the HP Z series. Typically these were designed as CAD workstations. You can get the Z620 or Z820 series specced w/ dual 4-core xeon up to dual 12-core xeon processors, 96GB of RAM, and at least a dual head graphics card. Since they were CAD stations, a lot of businesses leased them and then dispose of them when the lease is up. You can almost always find them on ebay in different specs. The last time I looked, there were at least 2 sellers that would let you pick your config and give you a price.

Right now, a search on ebay will give the 1st result as "HP Z620 16-Core 2.60GHz E5-2670 96GB RAM 128GB SSD" for $600

We've got several of these spread across 2 companies. Some as user desktops, a couple running linux severs, and a couple for the lasers. They've been rock solid PCs for a good price.HP Z620 16-Core 2.60GHz E5-2670 96GB RAM 128GB SSD