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Buy, build, or upgrade my laptop?

N

nitrousninja

Golden Member
My HDX16 (C2D P8700 @2.53G, 4G ram, Geforce GT130M, Vista 64) is good for normal use and WoW at 1920x1200 with some stuff turned down.

But I've been doing a bunch of video editing lately and it takes a looooooooong time to convert videos I record.

I can upgrade the ram, cpu, and maybe a SSD hard drive but I could build or buy a dedicated box for the editing for not much more. the biggest CPU is a T9600 @ 2.8 and it'll take 8G of ram.


I like the Dell XPS 8100 and has close to what I'd build. I7, 8G ram, better video card, and more storage.

I looked at building too. Maybe an I5, 8G ram, nice video card, and a fast hard drive.


Could i improve the laptop and get it closer to a box that I was thinking of buying or building for the video I'm editing?

Thanks for any help!
 
upgrading the laptop isn't going to be cost-effective or give you the performance you want, get a dedicated box

exact recommendations will depend on what software you're using

does it use the video card at all? does it need a specific type (CUDA/Quadro)?

for straight conversion work, usually more cores is better (get at least quad-core)

while an SSD might be nice for the OS drive, i doubt it's the limiting factor when running conversions. any modern drive should have sufficient straight transfer speed to keep up
 
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I wouldn't recommend Dell at that price range. Not very cost effective imo.

Would you like this to play games as well or just edit video? It would be pretty inexpensive to just do video editing because the graphics wouldn't be as important and you can invest more in processor which is what is holding you back most. You can probably get a box for ~ $800 that will be an encoding beast. Think ~$1000 for a gaming and encoding beast.
 
The only game i play is World of Warcraft. It'd be nice to play at 1920 x 1200 with all the bells and whistles going.


I have a Canon Vixia HFM30 HD camcorder that I shoot MMA, drag racing, and Crossfit stuff with in 1080P. The files are .MTS and i convert them to Quicktime and I'm going to try out WMV too. Right now I'm using Free HD Converter its easy to use but maybe its not super optimized for what I'm doing.


I see what you're saying about Dell though. $1000 was around what I was thinking of spending.
 
So the video card has no impact on your work, but then you'll still need something decent for WoW. My recommendation would be to wait 2 months if you can. Sandy Bridge is coming out early January and Nvidia and AMD are releasing new cards. Even if you don't end up getting the latest and greatest, it will push the price of everything else down.

Also the new WoW expansion pack will be released soon, so that will give you a better idea of what exact video card you can get away with.

If you can't wait, something like an i5-760 and a GTX460 (which can be found around $115 AR now) is probably the way to go
 
I did just read about the new I5s. I'm going to hold off and build one. It'll give me time to research the rest of it.

Thanks for the help!
 
For what you do you won't need Sandy Bridge. The following will do fine. Also, if you are using Adobe CS5, the graphics card will effect your video editing. You'll want an NVidia. The new Mercury Playback Engine uses NVidia's CUDA to playback footage without need for a preview render.

Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-042-_-Product

PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-015-_-Product

CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-851-_-Product

Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-443-_-Product

RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-274-_-Product

Graphics
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CE&PageSize=20

SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-550-_-Product

Storage
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-185-_-Product

Optical
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106276


Total: $890.86
 
Thanks!

I'm going to pick up the power supply and case from Microcenter today and see what kind of deals unfold on the other stuff this weekend. The case and power supply are already cheap.
 
Ordered at Microcenter for in store pick up:


Antec 300 case: $49.99

Windows 7 64bit full OEM: $109

Samsung Spinpoint 1TB OEM: $59.99

OCZ 550W PS: $54.99

Galaxy GTX460 1G: $199 plus $20 rebate.




I'll grab the mobo,processor, memory, and optical drive after the SB processors are out. If its not worth it I might be able to swipe an I5 760 and mobo cheaper.
 
you may want to reconsider that OCZ psu... yeah, it is kinda inexpensive, but quality isn't there.

The rest looks good.

EDIT: Oh, and if you plan on using my build, a 650W is best. 550W probably isn't going to be enough.
 
That OCZ might not be the best, but 98% of the time you're not going to have an issue with it.

As far as capacity, it will be just fine.
 
Some older OCZ PSUs were crappy, but the newer ones should be ok - not the best, but at least they're not crap like most cheap PSUs out there.
 
nitrousninja said:
I'll grab the mobo,processor, memory, and optical drive after the SB processors are out. If its not worth it I might be able to swipe an I5 760 and mobo cheaper.
Click to expand...

If you're going to delay purchasing the cpu and board for almost 2 months, it makes absolutely no sense to buy the video card now.

Case and power supply now I can see, but the video card market will look very different in a couple months.
 
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