Do I really need to upgrade my Compuer?

Norman-B

I've got a lot of freetime these days, now I'm on my own. I've got the itch to use the 1000's of photos of my grandchildren and make Slideshows of them. I then upload them to YouTube and send them the links. Problem I have with the process is the lenght of time it takes to Save/Export the finished results to my Desktop, sometimes 30-45 minutes. Is this 'normal'? Is it my 8/9 year old Desktop that makes it so longggg? I have a Desktop and a Laptop but like to sit at my desk and work with the Desktop.
I have advice from two pals far more knowledgeable than me re PC's and both tell me I need to upgrade. One saying Windows, other a Macbook.
My Desktop is an HP Cpmpaq, intel i3-2100CPU 3.10ghz.Ram 4 gb. SSD 111gb with 8gb free and Windows 10. 

                                                                                                        

SSD 223gb with 175gb free
Laptop Lenovo i5-2410cpu 2.3ghz 8GB Ram and Windows 10. 

I suppose the question I need help with is, will I see a big mprovement if I buy a new Desktop/Laptop? I don't want to spend £1000 on new if I won't see a great upgrade with my hobby.
ps, both my machines are running fine. Thanks for reading and happy to receive any advice. Norm

GDB2222

Which software are you using?  

Norman-B

Thanks for your reply. I'm using MiniTool Movie Maker.

onomatopoeia99

Right click the task bar along the bottom of the screen, and select Task Manager, while doing an export.  Click the "Performance" tab and see if anything (CPU, Memory or Disk) is running at 100% or close to it.

You may be memory limited as 4GB is the absolute bare minimum these days, although the CPU was basic when introduced and is now 10 generations old so that could also be a bottleneck.  I wouldn't expect it to be disk limited with an SSD (or even with a mechanical drive).  Adding more memory may be possible depending on the motherboard, although just staving off the inveitable need for replacement, replacing the CPU is less likely to be possible, at least not with anything even vaguely new.

Norman-B

Thank you for your reply.

Jenni_D

8GB free space on your SSD may be a problem, coupled with only 4GB RAM ... Windows might be finding issues with trying to create a suitable size of pagefile. More RAM and a bigger main SSD (or change your pagefile to use the other SSD) should help things along.

Norman-B

Jenni_D, is that worth a try? I suppose that should cost less than £100 and last a few more years before I have to upgrade to Windows11.

GDB2222

Norman-B said:

Thanks for your reply. I'm using MiniTool Movie Maker.

There's a suggestion here that your software might be rather slow:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/all/why-does-movie-maker-take-so-long-to-save-the/19e858c3-e10f-46b4-8291-999660dc1fb3

Rendering is a big job, so I would expect it to take a while, anyway. Supposing that you bought a faster machine, so the job takes 10 minutes, rather than 45 minutes, does that really help you? 

Norman-B

GBD2222, that is an excellent point. I really don’t want to spend just to save 10 minutes.

CoastingHatbox

If it works, it works. If you aren't rendering the videos to make money, I'm not really sure there's much point. Unless you find it very inconvenient to have your PC tied up for all that time, I'd save the money.

Or buy a second cheap desktop and use that for the rendering.

Norman-B

Thank you.