Upgrade questions?!

[Shwanpughah]

Hey people,

 

     I currently have two PC's. One is a 2012 Dell XPS 8500 tower with 12gb ram that I use to record music. The other is a 2016 Dell Inspiron 13 7378 laptop with 8gb ram that I have started learning how to edit video on because my desktop keeps crashing whenever I attempt to do so (I'm using openshot because it's free and that's about the budget I work with regularly). What I have learned so far is that it is possible, but incredibly frustrating, to edit church services on my laptop. It's slow, it takes forever to render the finished product, and I can't even connect directly to the internet because the laptop has no ethernet port.
     LTT keeps talking about upgrading an existing PC, so I was wondering what it would take to upgrade my existing tower to something relevant for video editing, while still being able to record music on it. What would be a good order to start upgrading things on my desktop? Case first? More ram? Motherboard? Processor? I work as a teacher's assistant as well as general tech / sound guy for a church in Wilmington, NC, so I'm not able to burn it to the ground and begin anew, otherwise I would just do so (not paid much monies, in case that wasn't clear). I'm looking for budget options, but I'm open to being told that it's impossible and starting from scratch is the only way. 

Thanks everyone!

[Oswin]

8 minutes ago, Shwanpughah said:

One is a 2012 Dell XPS 8500 tower with 12gb ram that I use to record music

can you provide the rest of the specs? do you have a budget for the upgrade?

[Shwanpughah]

On 6/20/2020 at 1:46 AM, Oswin said:

can you provide the rest of the specs? do you have a budget for the upgrade?

Absolutely!
It's a Dell XPS 8700 Desktop
- 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5-4460 
-12Gb 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM (Dual Channel)
-1TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
-Unsure of graphics but internet searches claim it's a GeForce GTX 745
that's the best I could find.

 

Edit:
The Inspiron 13 7378 specs are as follows
- 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5-7200U

- 8Gb (2x4Gb) DDR4 PC4-19200 2400MHz Non-ECC SODIMM RAM
 

[dizmo]

You might not be able to burn it down and start over, but you can certainly wait and upgrade later. Doing it piece by piece usually isn't the smartest way to go.

I'd save up any money you were going to throw into upgrades, and buy a complete PC on Black Friday.

 

For example, of the things you listed:

• Case won't help your performance issues, and as the Dell is a prebuilt there's a chance the parts you have won't fit anyway
• DDR3 RAM is more expensive than DDR4 a lot of the time, it doesn't make sense to sink the money in
• If you upgrade the motherboard, you have to upgrade the processor and RAM at the same time

[KarathKasun]

Thats a standard mATX case on the desktop.  You can upgrade the internals, but replacing it with a much better case is possible for $40.

 

Honestly its better to just replace the whole thing, PC part prices are kinda stupid right now though.

[SansVarnic]

-= Topic moved to New Builds and Planning =-

[Nena Trinity]

Crazy idea but how about looking for a used i7-4790? Another stick of RAM or maybe just a new kit of required amount & buy a shiny new RX 5500XT? Should make it quite capable IMHO.

 

Edit:

If Windows 7 reinstall whole thing, 10bthen use refresh Windows function so all driver and programs gets removed. 

[Shwanpughah]

On 6/20/2020 at 9:58 AM, Nena Trinity said:

Crazy idea but how about looking for a used i7-4790? Another stick of RAM or maybe just a new kit of required amount & buy a shiny new RX 5500XT? Should make it quite capable IMHO.

 

Edit:

If Windows 7 reinstall whole thing, 10bthen use refresh Windows function so all driver and programs gets removed. 

That's not a bad idea. I'll have to double check and make sure that processor will work with my motherboard, but if it does, that wouldn't be super expensive. I'll call around to a couple local computer spots and see if they have that used. Thank you!