Hoping I can get a collective brain-picking session going here!
Let me start by saying I'm not a gamer (anymore). I work in media production and find myself finishing video edits at home, where my computer is starting to feel old and honestly act a little funny sometimes. So, I was thinking I should format and start fresh, but if I'm doing that anyway, perhaps some hardware refreshing would be in order?
I've had this for a long time and I'm on a tight budget for working at home, so please don't make fun- I'm currently using a Gateway DX4860-UR21P.
Its got a Intel Core i7 2600 (3.40 GHz), 8 GB DDR3, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 520. Believe it or not, when I bought this that setup was considered awesome, and it has actually been really good to me all these years editing 1080p video and working in After Effects without much of a hiccup. Also helps that I think I paid about $500 on a special or something for this thing many years ago.
I replaced the measly 5900rpm 1.5TB drive with an Intel SSD as soon as SSDs were widely available... but 80GB was one of the largest available at the time, so that's all I have. Performance boost on startup was noticeable, but the original HDD is now my secondary drive where all storage goes, and I have a third 4TB HDD as a scratch/working drive for my media when working locally. Aside from that, I haven't really added or modified much.
Here's what I've been considering doing to improve my experience and work more efficiently:
1) First things first, I can feel the 8GB being a limitation when I'm deep into a job. Multi layered chroma-keyed after effects comps do a lot of virtual memory swapping. Clicking away from a window and back in can take a few seconds to be responsive again. I think going to at least 16 would be a big improvement, maybe even more if the mobo supports it and budget allows.
2) Replace the SSD with a normal sized one so I'm not starving for space on drive C. Seriously, I'm constantly cleaning up the drive to keep my installation low profile, most applications go on my secondary mechanical drive, often negating some of the performance benefits of the SSD.
3) USB 3.0! Yes, this box has only USB 2 ports. How have I been getting along with USB 2 you ask? Well, about 3 or 4 years ago I installed a eSATA bracket so I could connect drives faster when backing up / working off externals, but these days I don't think I even have any eSATA hardware to connect to it anymore. A lot of my card readers, for example, or Atomos recorder drive bays are currently all USB 3 and bottlenecked by my 2.0 speeds.
4) Video card. Yeah, I'm not a gamer so this isn't usually a big thing for me. My little GT520 is good on resources (ie. not power hungry) and drives my 2 monitors just fine. But now that there's CUDA acceleration for encoders, I could benefit from something a bit better. But, cost is a HUGE inhibitor here. Most of my video tools don't use the GPU much, and the cards that would really improve my encoding times are exponentially more expensive.
The flip side:
If I sell/donate/give to family member/etc this box and start over with a new one, I'll most definitely get something faster than my 2nd gen i7, probably already have USB3, and hopefully even an incrementally better gpu. I'd probably still have to buy a larger SSD either way since none of the budget friendly i7's come with one as a main drive. So I keep going back and forth with the idea of just saving my pennies and upgrading this box until something fundamentally different comes out (or I'm forced to start working in 4K or something like that and need a massive overhaul).
What do you think?
Let me start by saying I'm not a gamer (anymore). I work in media production and find myself finishing video edits at home, where my computer is starting to feel old and honestly act a little funny sometimes. So, I was thinking I should format and start fresh, but if I'm doing that anyway, perhaps some hardware refreshing would be in order?
I've had this for a long time and I'm on a tight budget for working at home, so please don't make fun- I'm currently using a Gateway DX4860-UR21P.
Its got a Intel Core i7 2600 (3.40 GHz), 8 GB DDR3, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 520. Believe it or not, when I bought this that setup was considered awesome, and it has actually been really good to me all these years editing 1080p video and working in After Effects without much of a hiccup. Also helps that I think I paid about $500 on a special or something for this thing many years ago.
I replaced the measly 5900rpm 1.5TB drive with an Intel SSD as soon as SSDs were widely available... but 80GB was one of the largest available at the time, so that's all I have. Performance boost on startup was noticeable, but the original HDD is now my secondary drive where all storage goes, and I have a third 4TB HDD as a scratch/working drive for my media when working locally. Aside from that, I haven't really added or modified much.
Here's what I've been considering doing to improve my experience and work more efficiently:
1) First things first, I can feel the 8GB being a limitation when I'm deep into a job. Multi layered chroma-keyed after effects comps do a lot of virtual memory swapping. Clicking away from a window and back in can take a few seconds to be responsive again. I think going to at least 16 would be a big improvement, maybe even more if the mobo supports it and budget allows.
2) Replace the SSD with a normal sized one so I'm not starving for space on drive C. Seriously, I'm constantly cleaning up the drive to keep my installation low profile, most applications go on my secondary mechanical drive, often negating some of the performance benefits of the SSD.
3) USB 3.0! Yes, this box has only USB 2 ports. How have I been getting along with USB 2 you ask? Well, about 3 or 4 years ago I installed a eSATA bracket so I could connect drives faster when backing up / working off externals, but these days I don't think I even have any eSATA hardware to connect to it anymore. A lot of my card readers, for example, or Atomos recorder drive bays are currently all USB 3 and bottlenecked by my 2.0 speeds.
4) Video card. Yeah, I'm not a gamer so this isn't usually a big thing for me. My little GT520 is good on resources (ie. not power hungry) and drives my 2 monitors just fine. But now that there's CUDA acceleration for encoders, I could benefit from something a bit better. But, cost is a HUGE inhibitor here. Most of my video tools don't use the GPU much, and the cards that would really improve my encoding times are exponentially more expensive.
The flip side:
If I sell/donate/give to family member/etc this box and start over with a new one, I'll most definitely get something faster than my 2nd gen i7, probably already have USB3, and hopefully even an incrementally better gpu. I'd probably still have to buy a larger SSD either way since none of the budget friendly i7's come with one as a main drive. So I keep going back and forth with the idea of just saving my pennies and upgrading this box until something fundamentally different comes out (or I'm forced to start working in 4K or something like that and need a massive overhaul).
What do you think?