Is my RAM the problem?

garyskeepers

I have a HP Pavilion 14-ce3520sa (Core i7. 512 SSD)
8GB Physical RAM (Available 4.81 ?)
Total Virtual memory 15GB



https://www.currys.ie/ieen/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-pavilion-14-ce3520sa-14-laptop-intel-core-i7-512-gb-ssd-silver-10198863-pdt.html

Ive had a look, and the RAM can be upgraded, here: https://eu.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/hp---compaq/pavilion-14-ce3520sa

The trouble is, when editing in Premiere Pro and After Effects its impossible. Even editing a 30 second youtube opener its so laggy its impossible to edit.

Will upgrading the RAM sort this problem.

PS. The laptop is only a couple of months old.

Thank you all in advance

K.O.Kiki

Have you checked what the average CPU speed is during work?

Are you plugging in while working?

garyskeepers

it says CPU @1.30 GHz up the top right

then down the bottom it has

Utilisation up to 100% sometimes and speed up to around 3.38GHz

is that good or bad

K.O.Kiki

Download & run HWiNFO https://www.hwinfo.com/ / https://www.fosshub.com/HWiNFO.html

This is a diagnostic tool that should let you see what speed your cores are maxing/averaging at.

garyskeepers

Thanks.. This is the result



I think ill buy 16gig of RAM.. That should help ?

K.O.Kiki

That's only a system summary.

When you start up HWiNFO, run it as "Sensors only" - this gives you a long list including the CPU core state(s).

Try to run your workload for 10-15 minutes (at least) to see what speeds your CPU is running at, how much RAM is being used, etc.

It definitely sounds like it's throttling more than it being out-of-RAM to me.

*edit:
Going by ED E's review I'm incorrect & OP's intuition was right. Get more RAM.

garyskeepers

Thanks for your help K.O.Kiki

Any help appreciated. Just wanna get this sorted so I can edit videos like a normal person.

This is the usage running only Premiere pro rendering a video

ED E

Your GPU is reserving several gigs for its VRAM, then you have windows using about 4GB. That leaves about 1GB really free. Not nearly enough for PPro/AE. You're going into virtual memory which means the page file which really just means you're burning out your SSD.

Cuddlesworth

Where you seeing that? Seems like the onboard has 1gig reserved to me. With a Nvidia dedicated having another 2 gigs onboard.

Does seem like he is slamming off the pagefile though.

BloodBath

Laptops really aren't cut out for this kind of work tbh. 8gb of ram ain't cut out for video editing either.

If you're going to get serious about it I'd recommend a desktop workstation. Even a basic one will eat a high end laptop for breakfast.

Looks like your cpu is reaching it's max temp and throttling as well which is gonna kill performance.

Xenoronin

Gonna expand a little on what the guys are saying above to dumb it down a bit.

Is this a work machine or is video editing just a hobby?

If it's a hobby, the short answer is that more RAM will help, but it's still not gonna be a great experience. You can help your PC run a little faster by reducing the quality/size of the preview to 25% or something like that.

If this is a machine for work, it's just not up to the task. Laptops are small and can't get rid of heat over a long period of time, so you'll see very low "base clock" speeds advertised with very high "boost clock". If you look at the CPU-Z image you have, you'll see what I mean. 1500MHz (1.5GHz) base, and 3900MHz (3.9GHz) boost. When a CPU runs at it's highest rated speed for a few minutes, it will generate too much heat and will slow down (throttling) so the fans can keep up and the CPU doesn't melt itself. In your HWINFO image, you can see the CPU is actually running at 1895MHz (1.9GHz) on each core, which is quite slow.

Depending on what video you're working with, your RAM might not be up to the task either. 4K is standard nowadays, so if you are trying to edit that with 8GB, the RAM is just going to be eaten and windows will try to make up the difference by taking a part of your hard drive and making it act like RAM. RAM is meant to be quick, so anytime this "virtual" RAM is accessed, it slows things down a lot. Your hard drive is an SSD which is good in one way and terrible in another, it's good because an SSD is faster than a regular hard drive with spinning metal disks, but worse because making lots of writes that fast to an SSD shortens it's lifespan.

Most video applications are GPU accelerated nowadays which helps things like the video preview render fast. You don't have a dedicated GPU, so it just uses the internal one. It's a pretty good internal GPU, but it's still not amazing, so it might not be able to handle high quality video. It also looks like it grabs a chunk of RAM for Video Memory, which further reduces the amount of RAM available to the rest of the system. (I can't really tell very well based on specs, but it might have 1GB dedicated, and then grabs a further 1GB from RAM, or just dynamically allocates VRAM up to 2GB from RAM).

Ideally though, you need a proper workstation PC. Video editing and rendering is a very heavy workload so most professionals have very powerful PCs (we're talking in the region of €2000-5000, if not more), and even then they can chug with 4K video editing. A hobby video editing PC is probably around €1000-€2000 depending on what you're doing and how much you want to put into it.
You would need a powerful multi-core CPU like a Ryzen 7 3600/3700, 16-32GB of RAM, and a dedicated GPU.

garyskeepers

Hey thanks for that guys.. I understand a bit better now.

But I also should have said clearly what I was doing video wise.

I am just doing it as a hobby, and only editing in 1080p. Wouldnt even bother with the 4k . Its just for youtube videos. There is also not a hell of a lot of editing, in the sense that, I don't do lots of graphics and there is not pages and pages of videos on top of videos. They only last a few minutes too.

Here is an example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy-5eAFhwIA

So if what Xenoronin said, 16GB ram should be ok. Unless I can transfer some virtual memory over somewhere to help with this.

Xenoronin

Yup, I can't guarantee this will fix the issue, but it looks like your PC was trying to use up to 13.5GB of RAM at one point (6.5GB Physical, 5.5GB Virtual and I assume 1.5GB Graphics), so it definitely won't hurt to upgrade to 16GB.

Definitely take onboard the advice to make sure your laptop is getting loads of airflow, and also to look at any options premiere offers to help increase performance.

garyskeepers

OK,, so my 16gb stick of ram should be here tomorrow.

Tell me,, it seems like i just pop the other one out and replace it with the new one, is that correct?

No messing with settings?

SweetCaliber

garyskeepers wrote: »

OK,, so my 16gb stick of ram should be here tomorrow.

Tell me,, it seems like i just pop the other one out and replace it with the new one, is that correct?

No messing with settings?

Yep should just be a straight swap, pop into settings > system > about and check the installed ram amount is correct when done to verify.

garyskeepers

SweetCaliber wrote: »

Yep should just be a straight swap, pop into settings > system > about and check the installed ram amount is correct when done to verify.

Thank you

K.O.Kiki

Make sure to turn the laptop off & remove the battery (if possible)!

garyskeepers

So I removed the battery, removed and rep[l;aced the RAm with the 16gb and put it back together.

Now, my laptop seems largely uninterested in working most of the time. Sure, the odd time it behaves ok, but its running slow and lacks responsiveness. #

Ive trimmed the HD and done a disk clean and disk check and it still cant be arsed.

Am I doing something wrong?

Its showing as 16 gigs in the system

(even getting to the system took me 15 seconds or more)##

Cuddlesworth

garyskeepers wrote: »

So I removed the battery, removed and rep[l;aced the RAm with the 16gb and put it back together.

Now, my laptop seems largely uninterested in working most of the time. Sure, the odd time it behaves ok, but its running slow and lacks responsiveness. #

Ive trimmed the HD and done a disk clean and disk check and it still cant be arsed.

Am I doing something wrong?

Its showing as 16 gigs in the system

(even getting to the system took me 15 seconds or more)##

Two main options.

Ram is faulty.

You bumped something loose, like a cooler or a chunk of dust blocking cooler fins.