Premiere Pro Hardware Requirements
Take a look at our Premiere Pro hardware requirements suggestions with great prices on our custom computers and fast shipping.
Processor for Premiere Pro Hardware Requirements
The most CPU intensive task in Adobe Premiere Pro is rendering your files once all your edits are complete. This is a highly multi-threaded process so a CPU that emphasizes cores over speed will work best here. This means choosing a CPU with at least 12-cores. Intel’s i7 12700K with 12 cores running at 3.6GHz is a good choice.
You will get better performance with more cores, however Adobe Premiere Pro’s rendering efficiency starts to drop off after 12 cores. For example, the 18-core Intel 10980XE will render the same file only 10-15% faster than the 12-core Intel i9 10920X even though it has 50% more cores.
Choosing the right CPU therefore is a balance of rendering speed on the one hand and how valuable your time is on the other. Intel’s 12700K provides the best balance of value and rendering speed. If your time is valuable or you are constantly coming up against deadlines, a CPU with more cores will render your files more quickly and should pay for itself faster. That means the Intel i9 12900K.
Graphics Card for Premiere Pro Hardware Requirements
For Adobe Premiere Pro, if you are not using many GPU-accelerated effects, a midrange graphics card like the Nvidia RTX 3060 should be more than sufficient.
If you are working in 4K, you are pushing four times as many pixels as in 1080p so a significantly more powerful graphics card is required not only for the sheer processing power but also for the memory on the card. Practically speaking, this points to Nvidia’s RTX 3070 with 8GB of memory on the card.
You can see a list of the many GPU-accelerated effects in Adobe Premiere Pro that make use of the processing power on the graphics card.
Memory/RAM for Premiere Pro Hardware Requirements
Adobe Premiere Pro uses your computer’s RAM as the short-term memory of your computer. When you are working on content, your computer places that content and the apps you are using into the RAM so that there is fast access for the CPU to access and process your content. 32GB of RAM is a good amount of memory for video editing, however that number will quickly go up if you use plugins and programs like Adobe After Effects at the same time.
Storage That Fulfills Premiere Pro Hardware Requirements
The best hard drive configuration for Adobe Premiere Pro is one solid state drive for the operating system and a separate solid state drive for your editing your projects in progress. A solid state drive will ensure that your computer and applications load quickly. You may want a third mechanical hard drive for short-term storage.
It’s worth noting that there is no benefit to using a mechanical hard drive over a solid state for rendering your video files. The bottleneck in the rendering process is the CPU so the hard drive read and write speed won’t make the rendering process faster.
