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BoardofAdvisors
Participant
April 12, 2017
Answered

Help! I bought an underpowered laptop, Advice please!

  • April 12, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 2347 views

@11150001 off thank you for your help!@@

I purchased a Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 4-1570 80sb (specs below), prior to getting back into video editing and graphic animation (Ae, Pr, Ps, Encoder CC 2017).

​Although it hasn't been horrible, I would like to work at a more efficient speed (i.e. encoding, rendering, animations)

I have 2 external 1TB HDD, USB 3.0, @5400rpm, 120mb/s read/write. I have an ANKER 3.0 USB hub 10 port (Separate power source)

I'm assuming I would eventually need to upgrade the processor and RAM, and get myself a SSD or 3.

How could I utilize/optimize the current equipment in the meantime as I have videos that need to be produced yesterday?!?

what about a quick fix with the addition of an (in)external SSD?

Most video will be shot with my Canon XA35 - MPEG4 and(or) AVC / H.264, not a TON of effect editing as I let my shots speak for itself, maybe some fluff here and there.

Thank you again in advance for your assistance!!!

Laptop Specs are as followed:

Storage1TB 5400rpm (Serial ATA-600)
ProcessorIntel Pentium 4405U (2-Core, 2.1GHz, 2MB Cache)
GraphicsIntegrated Intel HD Graphics 510
Memory8GBx1 DDR4 SDRAM ( 2133 MHz)
Display15.6" FHD (1920x1080) IPS
WLAN + Bluetooth11ac, 2x2 + BT4.0
Ethernet100/1000M
Camera720p
Battery3-cell (52.5Wh)
Power Adapter65W
Operating SystemWindows 10 Home 64

Connection Ports

HDMI x1

USB 3.0 x2

USB 2.0 x1

4 in 1 Card Reader (MMC, SD,  SDHD, SDXC)

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Bill Gehrke

I think one important option that you add to this weak laptop that would be very valuable and be readily used in the next laptop that you buy would be a Samsung T3 portable USB 3 SSD.  As others have said a 5400 RPM disk drives are of no value for video editing.  But you can put all your project files on one of these handy devices like I do on my laptop.  It will be a great second drive on any computer You will have.

Here is approximately what you have and notice how the hard disk drives slow down as they get filled up.  Not so with SSD's

With the T3 you will get 400 MB/second write rate and even more read rate.

Of course this will not solve your CPU, GPU and memory problems but it will help somewhat and it will be a great device for whatever you do in the future

4 replies

Bill Gehrke
Bill GehrkeCorrect answer
Inspiring
April 17, 2017

I think one important option that you add to this weak laptop that would be very valuable and be readily used in the next laptop that you buy would be a Samsung T3 portable USB 3 SSD.  As others have said a 5400 RPM disk drives are of no value for video editing.  But you can put all your project files on one of these handy devices like I do on my laptop.  It will be a great second drive on any computer You will have.

Here is approximately what you have and notice how the hard disk drives slow down as they get filled up.  Not so with SSD's

With the T3 you will get 400 MB/second write rate and even more read rate.

Of course this will not solve your CPU, GPU and memory problems but it will help somewhat and it will be a great device for whatever you do in the future

    BoardofAdvisors
    BoardofAdvisorsAuthor
    Participant
    April 17, 2017

    Bill Gehrke​

    That's exactly what I was thinking! I have decided to roll with the 500GB T3. And will upgrade my ram to 16g, using my external HDs for backup purposes and media cache. Is that a decent plan for the time being?

    Thanks my man, I can tell you are knowledgeable and I appreciate you dropping some insight on me!!

    Maybe we can discuss a good setup for me to purchase next. Should be ready for the transition in about 2 months.

    Bill Gehrke
    Bill Gehrke
    Inspiring
    April 23, 2017

    If I am available (we are trying to get our house ready for sale and then there we be a major move) I will be happy to help.

    One other very important thing with any laptop is to operate it off AC power.  When on battery power they slow everything down to save battery so they can boast about battery lifetime.

      Brijesh Gohil
      Brijesh Gohil
      Participant
      April 15, 2017

      I would advise you to return this laptop.

      As said by jakobb3996253, Pentium is a very low clocked CPU and it cannot handle demanding tasks like video editing.

      How much is your budget? If you can spend up to $550 then the Acer Aspire E5-575G53VG 15 Inch Laptop is a pretty solid choice for video editing. It has 15 inch full HD display, sky lake i5 dual core CPU, 8GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 940MX dedicated graphics and 256GB of SSD for storage.

      It is the best budget video editing laptop currently.

      There are many other good laptops for video editing. Checkout this guide to buy best laptop for video editing by laptop under budget. It explains everything to look for while buying the laptop specifically for video editing and it also contains laptop suggestions in different price ranges.

      BoardofAdvisors
      BoardofAdvisorsAuthor
      Participant
      April 17, 2017

      Unfortunately I am unable to return this laptop, so I have made the decision to invest in a legit workstation. I am running CreativeCloud 2017 using Ae, Ps, Pr, and Au, constantly editing video and graphic animation so I don't want to deal with the frustration of a less than par laptop/system. I just need a temporary solution until I purchase my desktop.

      Thank You for your help my friend!

      J
      jakobb3996253
      Participant
      April 15, 2017

      Hi, Sorry I didn't make it clearer earlier for marginally better performance add 8 more gbs of ram if possible and an internal ssd if not try using a high speed external drive

        J
        jakobb3996253
        Participant
        April 15, 2017

        Thinking about it now making sure your laptop is set to performance mode in the power settings also makes a big difference

          J
          jakobb3996253
          Participant
          April 12, 2017

          Hello,

          I can see your issue and the main reason for it is the processor. The Pentium is a quite low clocked processor and it only has 2 cores so performance in these programs would not be ideal. Upgrading your HDD to SSD and adding more ram could make things a little quicker in general but the processor is the main bottleneck. Also discrete graphics are better than integrated so if you do have integrated that could be lowering performance. If you are serious on doing adobe work you should really consider just buying a gaming laptop or building a good pc to accommodate these intensive programs. Only the storage and ram are upgradable on laptops so it is best to just buy a new one.

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