Help! I bought an underpowered laptop, Advice please!

[BoardofAdvisors]

@First off thank you for your help!@@

I purchased a Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 4-1570 80sb (specs below), prior to getting back into video editing and graphic animation (Ae, Pr, Ps, Encoder CC 2017).

​Although it hasn't been horrible, I would like to work at a more efficient speed (i.e. encoding, rendering, animations)

I have 2 external 1TB HDD, USB 3.0, @5400rpm, 120mb/s read/write. I have an ANKER 3.0 USB hub 10 port (Separate power source)

I'm assuming I would eventually need to upgrade the processor and RAM, and get myself a SSD or 3.

How could I utilize/optimize the current equipment in the meantime as I have videos that need to be produced yesterday?!?

what about a quick fix with the addition of an (in)external SSD?

Most video will be shot with my Canon XA35 - MPEG4 and(or) AVC / H.264, not a TON of effect editing as I let my shots speak for itself, maybe some fluff here and there.

Thank you again in advance for your assistance!!!

Laptop Specs are as followed:

Storage	1TB 5400rpm (Serial ATA-600)
Processor	Intel Pentium 4405U (2-Core, 2.1GHz, 2MB Cache)
Graphics	Integrated Intel HD Graphics 510
Memory	8GBx1 DDR4 SDRAM ( 2133 MHz)
Display	15.6" FHD (1920x1080) IPS
WLAN + Bluetooth	11ac, 2x2 + BT4.0
Ethernet	100/1000M
Camera	720p
Battery	3-cell (52.5Wh)
Power Adapter	65W
Operating System	Windows 10 Home 64
Connection Ports	HDMI x1 USB 3.0 x2 USB 2.0 x1 4 in 1 Card Reader (MMC, SD,  SDHD, SDXC)

[jakobb3996253]

Hello,

I can see your issue and the main reason for it is the processor. The Pentium is a quite low clocked processor and it only has 2 cores so performance in these programs would not be ideal. Upgrading your HDD to SSD and adding more ram could make things a little quicker in general but the processor is the main bottleneck. Also discrete graphics are better than integrated so if you do have integrated that could be lowering performance. If you are serious on doing adobe work you should really consider just buying a gaming laptop or building a good pc to accommodate these intensive programs. Only the storage and ram are upgradable on laptops so it is best to just buy a new one.

[jakobb3996253]

Hi, Sorry I didn't make it clearer earlier for marginally better performance add 8 more gbs of ram if possible and an internal ssd if not try using a high speed external drive

[jakobb3996253]

Thinking about it now making sure your laptop is set to performance mode in the power settings also makes a big difference

[RjL190365]

Here is the problem with the OP's laptop:

1) It has only one SO-DIMM slot, and it is occupied by its included 8GB of RAM. Thus, any memory upgrades will require the complete replacement of the single stick of memory.

2) Although that Skylake Pentium has 2 cores and 4 threads (thanks to the incorporation of hyperthreading), it suffers from that low 2.1 GHz clock speed with no Turbo boosting whatsoever, as well as the relatively small 2MB of L3 cache.

[RjL190365]

I forgot to add that the HD Graphics 510 is not powerful enough to even utilize OpenCL MPE GPU acceleration, as it has too few texturing processing units. And that's not to mention that 5400 RPM hard drive which can barely sustain 120 MB/second sequential speeds at best, and typically much lower than 120 MB/s in most uses.

[BoardofAdvisors]

Yes I hate that I cant use the GPU acceleration. Very frustrating. I have decided to just use the HD to backup my files, and the second one for media cache.

Thank You for your input, much appreciated!!

[Brijesh Gohil]

I would advise you to return this laptop.

As said by jakobb3996253, Pentium is a very low clocked CPU and it cannot handle demanding tasks like video editing.

How much is your budget? If you can spend up to $550 then the Acer Aspire E5-575G53VG 15 Inch Laptop is a pretty solid choice for video editing. It has 15 inch full HD display, sky lake i5 dual core CPU, 8GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 940MX dedicated graphics and 256GB of SSD for storage.

It is the best budget video editing laptop currently.

There are many other good laptops for video editing. Checkout this guide to buy best laptop for video editing by laptop under budget. It explains everything to look for while buying the laptop specifically for video editing and it also contains laptop suggestions in different price ranges.

[BoardofAdvisors]

Unfortunately I am unable to return this laptop, so I have made the decision to invest in a legit workstation. I am running CreativeCloud 2017 using Ae, Ps, Pr, and Au, constantly editing video and graphic animation so I don't want to deal with the frustration of a less than par laptop/system. I just need a temporary solution until I purchase my desktop.

Thank You for your help my friend!

[Bill_Gehrke · Accepted solution]

I think one important option that you add to this weak laptop that would be very valuable and be readily used in the next laptop that you buy would be a Samsung T3 portable USB 3 SSD.  As others have said a 5400 RPM disk drives are of no value for video editing.  But you can put all your project files on one of these handy devices like I do on my laptop.  It will be a great second drive on any computer You will have.

Here is approximately what you have and notice how the hard disk drives slow down as they get filled up.  Not so with SSD's

With the T3 you will get 400 MB/second write rate and even more read rate.

Of course this will not solve your CPU, GPU and memory problems but it will help somewhat and it will be a great device for whatever you do in the future

[BoardofAdvisors]

Bill Gehrke​

That's exactly what I was thinking! I have decided to roll with the 500GB T3. And will upgrade my ram to 16g, using my external HDs for backup purposes and media cache. Is that a decent plan for the time being?

Thanks my man, I can tell you are knowledgeable and I appreciate you dropping some insight on me!!

Maybe we can discuss a good setup for me to purchase next. Should be ready for the transition in about 2 months.

[Bill_Gehrke]

If I am available (we are trying to get our house ready for sale and then there we be a major move) I will be happy to help.

One other very important thing with any laptop is to operate it off AC power.  When on battery power they slow everything down to save battery so they can boast about battery lifetime.

[BoardofAdvisors]

Thank you Bill Gehrke​,

I got myself a new rig, I sent you a message with details for when you catch a break in the chaos.