[SOLVED] Laptop upgrade, reinstall OS, or buy new? Need advice

Aug 27, 2019
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Hi there, first post in the forum and I'm a total noob when it comes to hardware and stuff (way more of a software person) so forgive me if this is wrong in any way, yikes. Anyway, I'll try and summarise as quick as possible!

About a year ago I bought a £600 'gaming laptop' on Amazon, which was probably already a bad idea, but my old one had died and I needed a new one for college. When I first got it it could play Skyrim on max settings with OBS recording simultaneously and it was completely seamless. For the last few months I've barely been able to run Discord and a low-effort game like HOMM3 at the same time. On top of this, the new upgrade for Premiere Pro (which I need to use for college) has meant that my laptop just categorically will not work with it properly, and all I've got from help forums there is 'get a better laptop'. Which is fine if that's the solution (not that I want to spend a load more money), but what if it's not?

I'll list some system info here. Bare in mind I'm 90% sure this isn't all you would need to know, but I'm not sure where to find any other info.
  • Microsoft Windows 10 Pro, current version 10.0.18362 (at time of posting), x64 bit
  • Processor is Intel Pentium CPU G4560 @ 3.50GHz, 3500 Mhz, 2 Cores, 4 Logical Processors
  • 4GB RAM; Total Physical Memory 3.88GB, Available Physical Memory 717MB; Total Virtual Memory 7.38GB, Available Virtual Memory 1.84GB
  • 90% sure when I ordered the laptop online it was different to the one I received, which should have been a red flag really, but it's from 'HASEE'
  • 1TB Harddrive currently split into 100GB C drive with the OS installed and 900GB D drive with personal files etc. There's about 43GB of free space on the C drive right now.
My friend has suggested I upgrade to 8GB RAM but I've read you need AT LEAST 16GB for running Premiere Pro now and I have no idea how to install RAM or how I'd know whether or not this laptop could handle certain sizes or types (again, really not a hardware person). I also don't know if I can upgrade any other bits and pieces. And after all that's said and done, is that even the best option? Should I try re-installing the OS because it's just a little bogged-down from use? I install all my programmes, games etc to the D drive so as not to fill up the C drive but maybe it's cluttered anyway. I've done plenty of disk defragments, disk cleanups, etc, but only stuff that comes with your average Windows installation.
I should also mention I'd like to avoid Macs if possible, I know they're generally supposed to be a lot better but I don't really like how they work and I'd much prefer Windows for my sort of day-to-day projects and things. If I really needed to get a Mac I could probably still do that and keep my current laptop for personal stuff, just use the Mac as the powerhouse for larger projects and programmes, but there are some games that won't run on Mac that I really like playing too, so.

Ultimately I need a laptop that can handle Discord & games on at least low settings, multiple windows open at once, etc. But the ideal is to have a laptop that can handle game recording/streaming at at least reasonable quality, 3D modeling, Premiere Pro, etc. So, what should I do? Is any of this even possible or am I really expecting too much? :LOL:

Thanks!
 
Solution
Intel processors can throttle down to as low as 200MHz (!) if needed to stop overheating, and your CPU has a pretty ridiculously high (for a regular laptop) 54 watt TDP so should blow a lot of really hot air under load. Couple the very high airflow requirements with some tiny heatsinks and it's really easy for them to get plugged up with lint fast, and then things feel like 1997 as it keeps chugging along but slowly. May be a good idea to get some temperature monitoring software--if it's pegged at 100deg C all the time then that is your problem for sure.

CS6 is version 6.0 from 2012 and PP definitely works on a 2-core 2-thread Core 2 Duo. Since then there have been CC 2013, CC 2014, CC2015, and then 11.0 (not sure where the missing...
This is what is required just for premiere Pro: Intel® i5-4590 / AMD FX 8350 equivalent or greater. Memory: 4 GB RAM. Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 970 / AMD Radeon™ R9 290 equivalent or greater. Your Laptop does not have quad core processor, which is called for Premiere. You also don't have the gpu power to drive the program. And upgrading your laptop to this level is not possible. So the only question you didn't cover is how much you can spend.
 
Aug 27, 2019
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This is what is required just for premiere Pro: Intel® i5-4590 / AMD FX 8350 equivalent or greater. Memory: 4 GB RAM. Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 970 / AMD Radeon™ R9 290 equivalent or greater. Your Laptop does not have quad core processor, which is called for Premiere. You also don't have the gpu power to drive the program. And upgrading your laptop to this level is not possible. So the only question you didn't cover is how much you can spend.

I think what frustrated me is that PP did totally work before. I had been using it for the last year but recently uninstalled to reinstall on my D drive just in case it was installed on the C drive (as I was trying to clear some space), and after that point it didn't work, even when I reinstalled an older version that did work. I've still never gotten an answer from the Adobe forums as to why even old versions wouldn't work anymore.

Ideally I wouldn't want to spend more than about £700-£800 if possible but I'm willing to go up to about £1200 if it's really necessary. I just don't want to be spending money just to find out my laptop will be useless in a year (like this one).
 
Your laptop probably just needs its heatsinks cleaned of dust to play Skyrim and feel fast again. It's kind of silly to buy a new laptop each time maintenance is needed. First try using a can of compressed air through the vents.

And the last perpetual license Premiere Pro is CS6, which definitely runs fine on a dual-core. I don't know if that's new enough for your school though

32GB So-DIMMS came out last year so if your Kaby Lake laptop has two slots, you could max out the RAM to the maximum 64GB that processor supports.
 
Aug 27, 2019
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Your laptop probably just needs its heatsinks cleaned of dust to play Skyrim and feel fast again. It's kind of silly to buy a new laptop each time maintenance is needed. First try using a can of compressed air through the vents.

And the last perpetual license Premiere Pro is CS6, which definitely runs fine on a dual-core. I don't know if that's new enough for your school though

32GB So-DIMMS came out last year so if your Kaby Lake laptop has two slots, you could max out the RAM to the maximum 64GB that processor supports.

Historically I've only ever bought a new laptop when one has 'died' completely (ie about twice in the last 10 years). Is it really as simple as dusting it out? I'm ashamed to admit I really don't know much about computer or laptop maintenance, it just seems like it'd be too simple an answer, though I do understand it affects it obviously.

As for PremierePro, I have my own personal licence so that I can work from home but it's definitely a different version to my college computers as there's no cross compatibility of files - I just bring my laptop in to college to work. It's always been fine on this laptop, not sure what version I had before (like 12.8 or something maybe?) but I never had any problems with it whatsoever. Reinstalling an older version (12.1) and the newest version (13.1) both are effectively unusable now. I just find it word that it worked one minute and then didn't literally only an hour later.
 
Intel processors can throttle down to as low as 200MHz (!) if needed to stop overheating, and your CPU has a pretty ridiculously high (for a regular laptop) 54 watt TDP so should blow a lot of really hot air under load. Couple the very high airflow requirements with some tiny heatsinks and it's really easy for them to get plugged up with lint fast, and then things feel like 1997 as it keeps chugging along but slowly. May be a good idea to get some temperature monitoring software--if it's pegged at 100deg C all the time then that is your problem for sure.

CS6 is version 6.0 from 2012 and PP definitely works on a 2-core 2-thread Core 2 Duo. Since then there have been CC 2013, CC 2014, CC2015, and then 11.0 (not sure where the missing version went. I'll bet they skipped 9.0 just like Windows because it's considered an unlucky number in Japan). At some point they must have gone to 4 threads required like you have and now perhaps 4 cores.

There's a chance the installer may have just objected to how slow your CPU was running, so do try installing again if you clean it out and it runs normally again.
 
Solution
Aug 27, 2019
5
0
10
Intel processors can throttle down to as low as 200MHz (!) if needed to stop overheating, and your CPU has a pretty ridiculously high (for a regular laptop) 54 watt TDP so should blow a lot of really hot air under load. Couple the very high airflow requirements with some tiny heatsinks and it's really easy for them to get plugged up with lint fast, and then things feel like 1997 as it keeps chugging along but slowly. May be a good idea to get some temperature monitoring software--if it's pegged at 100deg C all the time then that is your problem for sure.

CS6 is version 6.0 from 2012 and PP definitely works on a 2-core 2-thread Core 2 Duo. Since then there have been CC 2013, CC 2014, CC2015, and then 11.0 (not sure where the missing version went. I'll bet they skipped 9.0 just like Windows because it's considered an unlucky number in Japan). At some point they must have gone to 4 threads required like you have and now perhaps 4 cores.

There's a chance the installer may have just objected to how slow your CPU was running, so do try installing again if you clean it out and it runs normally again.

Wow, I had no idea it could have that much of an effect! I've given it a quick go with a lens-cleaner I already had for a camera but I suspect that won't do as good a job so I'll get some compressed air as well.

As far as PP is concerned, at a certain point the versions just stop having CC in their names, like they're separate thing. Unfortunately you can't download anything earlier than 12.1 from Creative Cloud - I'd much rather have an older version that works than a newer one that doesn't. It does appear to all install fine, but the footage is jumpy in playback and rendering. I've tried all sorts of fixes from the forums and etc.; proxies helped the playback run fine but the exports are still glitchy.

I've got a resting memory usage of about 50% - all the way up to 70% with chrome with only outlook and this tab open. Is that related to the potential dust issues as well, do you think? And if I install more RAM, is that likely to fix most of the issues? I don't want to buy any before I'm sure I can install it either so I'm wondering if there's anything that would mean I can only install RAM up to a certain amount before the rest of the laptop can't work with it? Pretty sure I do have space for 2 RAMs (which is probably not at all how you say it, lol), so would I be better getting 2 8GBs, 2 16GBs, one 32GB...?
 
Aug 27, 2019
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What model is your laptop, and are there any stickers on it that tell you what kind of gpu is in it? (Video card)

This is the listing for the laptop I bought over Amazon - not sure exactly which option I picked from the dropdown - but it looks totally different and I think it may even have different specs. If I'd realised how bad this was before now I'd probably have done something about it, but I assume there isn't really anything I can do now. The actual body looks the same, but mine is manufactured by 'HASEE'. Other than that I'm not really sure. The boot screen says 'God of War' with some Chinese characters, if that helps, lol.
As for GPU, I know it has an NVIDIA GeForce MX150, but if that's not the right thing then sorry again! Otherwise the only other stickers are for the Intel Pentium Gold and Sound Blaster Cinema 3.
 
You have a 7th gen Intel CPU which has QuickSync that meets the OpenCL Hardware Acceleration requirements for both H.264 and HEVC (H.265) encoding and decoding in PP 13.0. CUDA 9.2 also works on the MX150 but that only has 384 CUDA cores

And you are critically low on RAM for such heavy applications, especially considering it is paging to a HDD whenever you run out, which is 10,000x slower (instead of just 1,000x slower for a SSD). 2x 16GB is the most cost-effective upgrade but 2x 32GB would give you 16 times as much memory as now. Combine that with fixing any thermal issues and it should feel really fast except when loading from disk. An upgrade to SSD would fix that and prices are now at all-time lows.

The main advantage of a new laptop is with Coffee Lake you can now get up to 8 CPU cores @ 45w in a laptop, at a high price of course. Ice Lake will be out in September but so far we only know of 4 core models up to 28w.