If you are encoding to AVC rather than mpeg-2 that time seems right on a PC of that capability.

I have also noticed a long installed OS tends to "clutter" over time ond slow down. Best to keep the OS lean as possible. Even MS security patches, driver updates, over time in my experience tend to slow things a bit.

What does Task manager show for CPU, GPU, I/O loading during playback? Wondering if the noise is GPU fan... Hopefully not overclocking...

Are you using removable storage? Have you intoduced any new storage? May be a permissions issue.

DVD Architect Pro in Vegas is quite reliable.

I''d suggest you review the tutorials on the Media Composer product page whilst you consider hardware. Things have changed a bit in10 years.

There have been comments that certain operations have taken a performance hit after updating MC and OS on older hardware. If there are new features that are of benefit, then a move could make sense, otherwise updating MC might work better with new hardware. Idealy having both machines would insure your productivity woud be unterupted.

Windows downloads the build silently in the background and waits for your approval to install, so use caution using windows update. It is labled as a feature update, so it is clearly marked. Of course, it is best to wait for official Avid suppor t. In my experience the installation was simple and painless, the actual visable install took 10 miutes,

I try to close everything not needeed during renders, if task manager shows the majority of RAM assigned to the render operation and low CPU usage, you'll have to decide if its worth investing in more memory $$ in an ageing machine or to simply revert to 2019.**

Yeah, age sneaks up. Probably an idea to run Windows Task Manager during a render to see CPU and RAM usage.