Raising An Editing Pc From The Dead?

[BlakShadow]

I'm sick and tired of Adobe Premiere Elements crashing constantly on my laptop. I have to shut down all other apps to make it even remotely reliable, and even then it takes forever to do anything, especially render. I have an older desktop (Dell Inspiron 546) that I haven't used in a couple of years, but now that I'm set up with a home office I'm considering cleaning it up and putting it back into service as a dedicated editing PC. Here are some specs:

• Dual core AMD Athlon II X2 215 processor
  
• 4GB of DDR SDRAM
  
• Integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics (can be upgraded with a PCIe x16 card slot)
  
• 640GB hard drive (I already use an external 1.5TB drive for storage after editing locally)

I can upgrade the RAM to a max of 8GB for about $80, which would be a requirement. The graphics max out at 1920x1080, but that's what I render my videos in anyway, and it's fine for YouTube. I understand that buying a graphics card with its own memory would render much faster, but I'm cheap, or I'd be considering a new desktop PC.

Basically I'd strip out any software I don't need, install Premiere Elements and transfer my license, and call it good. I'll keep using my laptop for everything else I do, which means even if videos still take a long time to render I can let the old desktop crank away and not prevent me from doing other things on my laptop like what happens now.

How well do you think this will work? Or, if you think this idea is crap and I should just buy a new desktop PC, what minimum specs would you recommend on the lower end of the price range? Thanks!

 

[HippoDrone]

It may have been to do with me trying to PIP 2 1080p videos into a 4k video but that nearly ground my twin SLI'd 980Ti PC to a halt, if only using 1 camera at 1080p you should be ok though. Id suggest maybe getting a solid state drive though, they don't last as long but will help with speed a bit

 

[BlakShadow]

SSD helps a lot, I agree! Another future upgrade, though I wouldn't look forward to re-OSing the thing. It started as a Vista PC - eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!! But I bought it when there was a free Win7 upgrade available, which I took and installed immediately. To rebuild I'd have to install Vista, then upgrade to 7 again. And then install 78346582765965978465 updates.

 

[scooterwuf]

Your upgrade idea sounds fine, but there are little things to consider (ignore if you’re already doing this)

- Premiere is a RAM dependent software, so yes turn off all other programs you’re using at the same time.

- Do work with an external HD. If not, you’re asking your taxed computer to run the program and manage the files when you save and render Previews. Having an external allows your computer to just run the program.

- Under Preferences see if you can allocate more RAM to your software if other programs are running in the background

- Clean out your cache whenever things run slow or buggy. Also throw-out any Preview files you don’t need to clear up file/memory space.