Premiere Pro with a Dell Precision 3541?

[mikef87074686]

Hi,

I am currently looking to upgrade my laptop and one of my main criteria is to comfortably run Premiere Pro CC (1080 and maybe 4K footage). I also will be using Lightroom+ Photoshop.

My budget is quite tight so I have found the Dell Precision 3541 with the following specs:

Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

i5-9300H (2.4GHz)

16GB RAM (1x16GB, 2666MHz DDR4 Non-ECC)

M.2 256GB SATA Class 20 SSD

Nvidia Quadro P620 w/ 4G GDDR5

Display- 15.6" FHD WVA 1920x1080

This spec of laptop is at the very top limit of my budget so there isn't really any room to go any higher spec, so I am concerned that:

1. As Dell Precision Laptops are more tailored for CAD work, are they not really suited to video editing on Premiere?

2. The graphics card is not listed on the recommended list for Premiere Pro (although other Quadro cards are), is it suitable/ok to run Premiere Pro?

I don't know a huge amount when it comes to the intricacies of graphics cards etc, so any help/advice anyone has would be great!

Sam.

[Ann Bens]

Moved to Hardware Forum​

[Peru Bob]

For 4K you will need a faster processor, 32 GB RAM preferably, and more fast storage.

You may need to use proxies with only 16 GB RAM and a faster processor.

[RjL190365]

I echo Peru Bob for the following reasons:

1) That i5-9300H is not a 6-core CPU at all - like all recent mobile i5 H and U series CPUs, it is only a quad-core CPU with hyperthreading. And no quad-core CPU, even with hyperthreading, is any more powerful than the weakest of the 6-core CPUs of the same CPU generation and architecture.

2) That Quadro P620, in a mobile environment, is basically a cut-down GeForce GTX 1050 (non-Ti) with only 512 CUDA cores (instead of 640) and slower-clocked memory, running at only 5 GT/s instead of 7 GT/s. That gives it a memory throughout of only 80 GB/s instead of 112 GB/s.

3) A single 256 GB SSD is barely adequate for just the OS plus a few applications these days. If that laptop cannot accommodate a second internal SSD or HDD, then you will need an external USB 3.1 drive (preferably a portable SSD) in order to do much if any video editing work.

4) And, of course, 16 GB total RAM is iffy for 4k. Adobe recommends 32 GB or more RAM for any workflow that involves 4k content.

[mikef87074686]

Hi,

Thanks for your answer, very detailed!

In reality, I would only be using 1080 footage but it would be nice to be able to handle 4K. So for now let's assume I will only be working with 1080.

Do you think premiere would even run very well with these specs? I've done a fair amount of research online and any laptop that has min 16GB of RAM and has a GPU that is listed on the recommended list from Adobe (mainly GeForce) is over my budget. So if you have any recommendations that would be great! My budget is £1200.

I just want to make sure I'm going to be able to run premiere and edit video 1080 video smoothly without any problems really.

As for the 256GB SSD, there is the option of choosing a 1TB HDD (7200RPM)- would you recommend I stay well clear of traditional disk drives?

I'm not too concerned with internal storage itself as I will be using 2 x external hard drives for storage.

Thanks,

Sam

[Ann Bens]

I just want to make sure I'm going to be able to run premiere and edit video 1080 video smoothly without any problems really.

You wont know for sure until you have tested it.