Longtime Vegas/Movie Studio user, first time poster on the forum. I'm a hobby video guy, mostly with outdoor action sports type stuff, a mix of action cam, handheld, and fixed cams. I just updated my PC hardware after ~8 years or so, and after having my mind blown I felt the need to remark here:

Old PC was i7-4790K, Radeon R7 260X 2GB GDDR5, 32GB DDR3, and mechanical SATA drives
New PC is i5-14600K, Intel ARC 770 16GB GDDR6, 64GB DDR4, and M.2 drives

A render that I'd have to walk away from and come back to after 3 hours now takes about 1 minute. That's a one-one comparison using the same project and render settings (MAGIX HEVC/AAC using Intel QSV), HD 30fps, VBR avg 20mbps, BEST encoding quality.

Needless to say:
If you find yourself working with hardware from the previous decade, consider an upgrade if you can...