speeding up the rendering process with premiere Elements 14

thank you, whspreague.  I sounds like your feedback is going to be very helpful.  I should soon have a 512 SSD and I'll definitely try it out.

Three things seem to count with video editing, including Premiere Elements.  They are the CPU speed, RAM and SSD drive speed.  The GPU doesn't do much, if anything.  GPUs are good for video games. 

Several versions ago and with a slower laptop computer, I came up with an undocumented workflow method with the intent of getting the most out of a speedy SSD. 

I normally don't make videos longer than about 10 minutes because I can put people to sleep!  To do that with HD or 4K, I maintained 50GB of free space on my SSD C:\ drive.  I create a dedicated folder (like C:\Hawaiian Vacation).  Inside that folder are subfolders for output, music, stills and video.   As I pick source files I put copies of them in their respective folders.  As soon as I open the new "Hawaiian Vacation" project I go to Preferences and make sure ALL of the "scratch disks" are set to "Same as Project".  Next I Add a "primary" clip to the time line to be sure the project settings are correct.   I also set the automatic backup to a few extra with shorter intervals.   

I do not spread the project over multiple drives, SSD or HDD because buss speeds get involved. 

As you see, EVERYTHING for a project is in the same, single folder on the fastest drive taking advantage of the very fast read and write speeds of a single SSD.  Even Premiere Elements is installed on that drive. 

A bonus to this method is that backups and archives are easily done by moving the entire folder to the laptop's slower D:\ or even an external drive.  I can't open the project while it is on the D:\ because all the references to sources is based on being on the C:\.   So, when or if I want to work on the project again, I copy the entire folder back to the C:\.   

This has worked for me for years and wrings the best ever performance out of an SSD equipped computer.   With 4K projects output render times are about 2x to 3x the length of the video itself.  A lot depends on transitions and effects applied. 

I've moved up to a faster i7 laptop with a 500GB SSD and 1T HDD.   Keeping reserved space on the SSD is much easier.  I could probably do 30 minute videos to put people to sleep!

You have a faster CPU than I have (i3-4130 which has a lower benchmark rating than what is usually recommended for HD work) BUT I have an SSD for the OS (WIN7) and another for my working directories with just a hard disk for archiving.

Since adding the second SSD for my working directories the previewing has been smooth whilst beforehand it was often very jerky.  This is understandable since PE has to work through the "pointers" in the project to the actual video clips & with an SSD latency is not an issue.

Usage of SSDs is likely to help with rendering / exporting but I would not expect a quantum leap.