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I've been working on a laptop for years. Currently have a reasonable laptop with 10th gen i7 and Nvidia graphics. Does everything I want, although the fan does go a bit crazy when doing CAD (and browsing here). I recently bought a second hand desktop for a project that never happened so I set it up for work just to try it and it actually works pretty well. A little slower at video editing and does complain about memory when I do 3D CAD but still works fine and is much quieter. I was wondering if it was worth sticking in some more RAM or getting a graphics card. Its obviously not worth spending much on but there do some to be some reasonably priced 2nd hand graphics cards out there from gamers who have upgraded. This is the spec: HP EliteDesk 800 G3 TWR x64-based PC, processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 3408 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
Assuming my priorities are 3D CAD, illustrating and video editing is there benefit in more ram or a cheap-ish graphics card? What's a good card to look for? Or just buy a better PC? I do seem to have to spend quite a lot to get something a little better though.
How much ram does it have? It's pretty damn cheap right now so seems logical to dump more in if you can.
The GPU seems sensible as well but you've not said what it has.
Thanks. Its currently go 16gb of ram the graphics are just the built in one: intel hd graphics 530 with 1gb
+1 for stick as much RAM in it as there's space for. Did it a while back with my old (c. 2010) desktop and it's loads better to use now, and cost about £20.
Edit: though I'd already replaced the hard drive with an SSD years ago, and that makes a big difference too.
Yea, just agreeing with the above, as much RAM as you can.
Should be able to plug the serial number into the HP support site to get the capacity - but it will do 32Gb at least. Next CPU generation of the 800G3 does 64Gb.
GPU - well need to go quite light here. It will be worth doing though as a lot of editing software will use GPU as well. I would look at an older 1050 that doesn't require external power - but check the chassis to see what will physically fit.
Fan going crazy on a laptop is not good news for performance - quite likely the CPU clock is throttling then, so you're losing that 10th gen power... old desktop sounds a good idea. As above more memory the better, and then an SSD. Depending on the workload GPU might be nice - but I suspect CAD 3D is orders of magnitude less complex (and you don't really need 60+FPS) than 3d games, so you might not see much difference.
Crucial's scanner will tell you what RAM you have in and what you can install.
https://uk.crucial.com/store/systemscanner
If it hasn't got an SSD / M.2 drive installed already, that's likely the single biggest improvement you can make. According to the spec sheet it came in umpteen different configs so it may or may not have.
Yep: SSD if not already, a slug of RAM and then GPU. Be careful with the GPU though, I think the machine you have will be in a Small Form Factor case, you'll need to get a SFF/low profile card to fit in, and preferably one that doesn't take extra power as you may not have any connectors from the PSU to run it.
I bought an ASUS Nvidia GeForce GT 730 2GB GDDR5 at the massive cost of £23 second hand from ebay; made a big improvement to the PC I've got similar to yours (mine is used almost entirely for Zwift).