Hey, I was having almost the same problem with large PSDs crashing on me. I tried turning off GPU acceleration like you mentioned, and it helped a little, but Photoshop still crashes occasionally when files get really big. Did you check your scratch disk settings? I read somewhere that if your scratch disk is almost full or on a slow drive, it can cause crashes with heavy files.

Also, when you reduced cache levels, did you try experimenting with increasing RAM allocation for Photoshop too? On my system, bumping it up from the default helped a bit, though it didn’t completely fix the crashes. I’m still running Windows 10 and my RAM is only 12GB, so I’m wondering if your 16GB might actually be borderline for some of these huge files.

Have you tested opening those same large PSDs on a different machine, just to rule out any hardware-specific issues? Sometimes it’s something subtle like a background process eating up resources. Also, what version of Photoshop exactly 2023 is it? Adobe pushes all sorts of patches, so maybe a newer update could help.

Would be great to hear if you find something that fully stops the crashes, because I’m considering upgrading my setup as well. Keep us posted!

I’ve dealt with similar issues working with large PSD files, and based on your setup and troubleshooting so far, a few areas might be worth exploring further.

First, double-check your scratch disk configuration in Photoshop’s Preferences. If your scratch disk is near capacity or located on a slower HDD rather than an SSD, it can severely impact performance and stability with massive files. Try assigning a fast SSD with plenty of free space as the primary scratch disk and clear old cache files if possible.

Next, revisit your memory usage settings within Photoshop (under Performance). By default, Photoshop may not be using as much RAM as it can safely handle. Since you have 16GB, you could increase Photoshop’s RAM allocation to around 70-75%, but leave enough for Windows to run smoothly. This often improves stability when handling big projects.

Also, consider resetting Photoshop’s preferences by holding Alt+Ctrl+Shift (Windows) while launching Photoshop. Sometimes corrupt preferences cause erratic crashing. If that doesn’t help, try disabling any third-party plugins or extensions temporarily to rule those out.

Lastly, monitor your system’s overall resources while opening these files using Task Manager. If you notice spikes in CPU or disk usage or any process consuming excessive amounts of memory, that could help isolate the cause. And yes, upgrading RAM is always helpful for large files, but the other optimizations above often make a significant difference before investing more hardware. Hope some of this helps!