It's been a long time since I built my PC - barring a couple of upgrades, it's pretty much as I built it back in 2009, which is pretty good going IMO.  But I believe that Win10 support runs out next year, and my current PC won't support Win11.  While I know there are workarounds (and Windows alternatives), I'm giving thought to a new build.  I mentioned this to a friend who is in a very similar position, and they asked me for my advice about a new build that will be able to handle the very large photo files they routinely work with.  I said I would look into it - as it's been a while since I paid much attention to hardware, I'm not really sure how much of an issue this is, but I recall reading years ago about setups that were configured especially for people dealing with large Photoshop files.  I think that was more to do with the then-emerging technology of SSDs, different levels of cache, etc.  I haven't kept current with hardware, so this may not even be an issue anymore.

So, there are a couple of questions I want to ask:

1.For me, I'm not really playing games anymore (have kids, a busy life, don't have the time really), so a high-end graphics card isn't the natural first consideration it might once have been.  Though the hardware geek inside me still lusts after the bragging rights of a powerful graphics card.  I take very high-res gaming out of the equation (for me, 1440p+ is very high res.  I'm just as likely to play games from my glory years, which look fine at 1920x1080...), what kind of specs should I be aiming for?  A nice desktop build still appeals, but I also accept that a well specced NUC might also meet 90% of my needs (while leaving me slightly dead inside at not having a beautiful piece of hardware to marvel at).

2. For my friend, what kind of specs should they be looking at for desktop that won't be strained by dealing with very large photo and scan files?  They are the family archivist (and draw on some of their professional knowledge working in heritage preservation) and so often create very large resolution scans of documents and photos for archiving.  I think they want a setup that won't be struggling to handle the large data transfers.  Keep in mind that we're both still stuck in the SATA3 era with SSDs and some mechanical drives.  I know there are newer technologies and standards, but I'm not really sure what's what, so it would be good to get some suggestions of what to explore (e.g. m.2, NVME - not sure what they are, or what the difference is...)