Do I need to upgrade the PC?

[tenohfive]

I'm currently tinkering with some video editing for the first time and using two different editors (GoPro Studio and Garmin Virb Edit) both are repeatedly crashing whilst doing fairly basic tasks - stringing together several clips (less than an hour) and cropping etc.
My PC build is fairly dated but copes fine with most tasks I throw at it, including photo editing in Lightroom etc. Is it likely to be the main reason?

Specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 955BE @ 3.6ghz
16GB RAM
GTX 570 GPU
SSD for OS and programs
HDD for media
W10.

If it's not the hardware that's likely causing the software to crash repeatedly, and ideas on what it might be?

[gweaver]

You haven't mentioned the power supply or motherboard. If either is substandard, and/or the motherboard is getting old that could be the cause of the instability.
Is the machine getting hot? Can you hear the CPU fan going flat out?

If you were to upgrade, you'd likely need to replace power supply, motherboard, processor and RAM, so in the region of £200 for decent parts.

[ZesPak]

So what exactly do you mean by crash? The programs stop responding? Or the whole system goes down?

PS: As your PC is at most 7 years old I will refuse to admit it's dated, as that would make my own rig ancient

[tenohfive]

Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-870 UD3. Can't think what the PSU is but it's a 650W Corsair one that is probably one of the more recent components to be added IIRC.

And it's just the video editing program's that end up Not Responding - it doesn't crash the whole system.

[gweaver]

I'd suspect poorly written software then. Have you tried the Microsoft equivalent? Are there open source alternatives that you could try?

[FourWheelDrift]

Taking a few guesses on other things this - http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculato... - has you at about the following.

Load Wattage: 512 W
Recommended PSU Wattage: 562 W

So 650W is ok.


Have you cleaned out the dust from your PC recently, dust clogging fans or the heatsink of your CPU can increase temperatures under heavy load (like video editing) and can cause crashes.

[Bullett]

Dodgy memory?
Might be ok running day to day but as soon as you get up into using lots then it finds a bad block and falls over.

[ZesPak]

Bullett said:

Dodgy memory?
Might be ok running day to day but as soon as you get up into using lots then it finds a bad block and falls over.

That's what I thought, but I'd expect the entire system to crash not just the app?

[gweaver]

ZesPak said:

Bullett said:

Dodgy memory?
Might be ok running day to day but as soon as you get up into using lots then it finds a bad block and falls over.

That's what I thought, but I'd expect the entire system to crash not just the app?

I think it's unlikely, but worth testing. I'd pop a Linux install disc in there and run memtest, and I'd also try a Prime95 run to see if that kills it. I still suspect crap software though.

[The_Jackal]

That spec should be fine for editing video. It wont be the fastest but it will work. Video editing will eat up RAM and you have plenty. Even your GFX card is fine. I use a Radeon equivalent and use Premiere Pro and After Effects.
What will be the problem is the stability of your OS and the programs.
You may find a fresh OS install will clear out the crap and make it run better.
The Go Pro Studio software is one of the worst/unstable programs I have ever used, so don't expect that to be fully stable even on a supercomputer. Your other potential issues are with the Cineform (GoPro) video codec, this can conflict or corrupt, hence another reason to reinstall some elements of your build