Need help with choosing a desktop

[tugnut1]

Hello....new to the forum.

I am an administrator at a forum board dedicated to workshop type stuff.

I cover all of the photoshop needs and have started getting into taking videos of tool reviews that I edit and then upload to youtube.

My old computer is a dell and dates back abour 7 or 8 years ago. It has a 40 gig hard drive (Killing me) has 1 gig of RAM (killing me) and is slow. Did I mention that it is killing me.

It is taking me about 35 minutes to render a 7 minute video and this is killing me.

For the sake of my sanity, I need to upgrade and I am in need of help. I have never looked into computers for the purpose of drealing with video.

Here is the catch. I need to try to keep the cost down between $500 and $600.

I don't know enough about the new processors, hard drive speeds, or graphic cards to make an educated buy. I have always had dells in the past, but I don't need to this time.

I would look at a laptop, but to tell you the truth, I don't like typing on them and I don't want to have to plug a keyboard into it everytime that I use it.

Right now, I am leaning toward a dell XPS 8300 from the Dell outlet center.

Any advice/suggestions you can give would be great.

 

[maxxielol123]

do you know how to build your own pc together when you have all the components?

 

[tugnut1]

I do not. I have added memory and some cards to an existing computer, but never one from scratch.

 

[maxxielol123]

hmm it is not that difficult when you take the right parts...
watch some videos on youtube about computer building then you can see how difficult it is and say if you can or not

example:
part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-uHmL7Y2UU

2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPB3HcMjf2E&feature=relmfu

i personally like this vids cause it is very clear info in my opinion

 

[maxxielol123]

hmm it is not that difficult when you take the right parts...
watch some videos on youtube about computer building then you can see how difficult it is and say if you can or not

example:
part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-uHmL7Y2UU

2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPB3HcMjf2E&feature=relmfu

i personally like this vids cause it is very clear info in my opinion

oh yah, just go a quick look through those vids or it will take you so damn long xD

 

[Benny Boy]

I do not. I have added memory and some cards to an existing computer, but never one from scratch.

It isn't hard to build one and it's better than prebuilt because you can taylor it to your needs with better than oem components.
@7-8 yrs old, I'm sure it will take too many parts, all of them in fact, to upgrade it. So may as well build new. With $600 you can build a new machine, but if you can up it to say $700 or so it would be much better. Or if you already have a copy of Windows or whatever os you use we can see what we can do w/600.
edit:
Newegg has a good 3 part tut as well. If you register your email with them you get promo's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPIXAtNGGCw

 

[SkeptikProductio]

If you look at my signature.. my computer is going to be around $700.... for one way better than this, $800-900 will get you pretty much on par rendering speeds of huge computers......