After Effects Hardware Requirements
Below are our suggestions for setting up the best hardware configuration for fulfilling Adobe After Effects hardware requirements.
Best CPU for Fulfilling After Effects Hardware Requirements
The best CPU for Adobe After Effects hardware requirements depends on the programs you will use it with. Adobe After Effects favors a CPU with a high frequency over a CPU with a high core count. This suggests the 16-core Intel i9 12900K running at 5.2GHz.
Graphics Card For Fulfilling After Effects Hardware Requirements
Adobe After Effects uses the video card for processing the following effects.
- Brightness & Contrast
- Find Edges
- Gaussian Blur
- Glow
- Hue/Saturation
- Invert
- Lumetri Color
- Mosaic
- Sharpen
- Tint
You can see more in-depth GPU-accelerated effects. This page also shows more in-depth performance improvements that use the GPU in Adobe After Effects.
In Adobe After Effects, an expensive video card will not be more effective than a mid-range one so the RTX 3050 will be more than adequate for processing all of these effects.
Memory/RAM for Meeting Adobe After Effects Hardware Requirements
After Effects temporarily stores all the data it processes in RAM or memory. For example, when compositing in After Effects, all the layers are stored in RAM. Since After Effects has to store data for every frame it is compositing, this takes up a lot of RAM. Of course, the amount of RAM depends on how complex any project you work on is. However even simple projects can take up a lot of RAM so 64GB is a good place to start. More complex projects will need 128GB of RAM. Intel’s 9 series CPU’s can control up to 64GB of RAM so this is why it is better to get a 10 series CPU that can handle up to 128GB. Even though a 10 series CPU will be slightly slower in After Effects, the extra RAM will more than compensate.
Storage for Meeting Adobe After Effects Hardware Requirements
In keeping with other content creation programs, Adobe After Effects works best with a 3-drive set up.
- The first drive is for the operating system and applications like Adobe After Effects. A solid state drive will ensure that the operating system and applications load quickly.
- The second hard drive can be used as cache or a scratch disc. This will enable you to for example scrub through a timeline with minimal stuttering. NVMe drives are highly suitable for this function since they feature very fast sequential read and write speeds.
- A mechanical hard drive for storage. Mechanical hard drives still have a much better gigabyte per dollar ratio than solid state drives. In addition, current mechanical hard drives are sufficiently fast to render video to.
