Yet another "which laptop to buy" thread

curtong

New Member
In the past I have always used a laptop for intarwebs, school work (word processing, more intarwebs, etc) and general file keeping. Right now I have an HP Pavilion something or other. Up until now it has been overkill for my needs; 1TB HD, 12gb memory, and a quad core i5 at 1.7ghz. It is about 3 years old and nothing wrong with it other than it has become slow with all my junk.

I'm also a musician and photographer, but up until now I was all analog: play guitar live and sing, take digital photos and do some light editiing, etc. Now I'm diving into composing music, and HD (and possibly 4k) video editing, and audio recording. I'm also enrolled in a Master's program. So I'm thinking I'll need more oomph than what I have in the HP. Long story short, I am starting a project in which I will be producing videos and movies anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes (shot in HD or UHD) and adding in original music compositions and voice overs. I need a machine that can kill at that task.

First thought was to upgrade to an SSD and add 4gb more memory and do a fresh install of Win10, but then I would still be stuck with the i5. Not the end of the world, but I wanted some opinions:

1- Should I keep the Pavilion and upgrade it (see screencaps for specs)?

2- I get a $500 allowance with the Master's program to buy a laptop, so do I take that $500 and add on the $400 I would have spent on an SSD/RAM and buy a new ThinkPad? I'm thinking 16gb with room for more, 512GB SSD or more, and 8th gen i7? Am I on the right track?

3- What video and audio cards should I be looking for these days to fully support the video/audio stuff? The wide variety of options has me dizzy.

Specs on my current HP

device manager.jpgsystem.jpg
 
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johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Technically you only have a dual core cpu but have 4 threads, so not a true quad core. Low base frequency doesn't help much either. And to be honest, sound card doesn't have much to do with sound these days, its all about the speakers. You'll need something designed for multimedia that has software that will enhance the audio with different features. My advice would be to stay away from HP consumer laptops, their business laptops may be better. I'm not sure if having a dedicated card would be in your budget for 4k video.
 

curtong

New Member
I assumed the sound card would have a big influence on bottlenecking. For instance, if I'm in Audacity with 16 tracks going, reverb, and playing guitar to add a 17th track, I assumed that a low-grade sound card would have issues processing the data and cause glitches. But I'm also pretty dumb on how all of this works. I know the basics, but the last tower I built for video editing was in 1999 and I was shooting with a camcorder that had a 3.5" floppy in it. I'm a little behind the times.

On the video card, I don't have a problem doing it all 1080p for now. Most of the sites where I would upload for distribution will downscale it anyway. My distribution will primarily be FB and Youtube to start, but I would like to have 4k ability in case Steven Spielberg calls and wants a trailer for my next season. (a guy can dream)
 
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