Personally, I currently use 16GB of Ripjaws DDR3 1600 RAM. I recommend going with at least 8GB of RAM if you are planning on using After Effects for anything other than animating text. You might get away with 4GB of RAM, but once you start to create more complex visual effects with a myriad of different layers your computer will likely start to struggle. Let’s be honest: After Effects and Premiere Pro are RAM eating monsters! It pays not to be stingy when you are looking for a processor. Remember that most of the work in After Effects is previewing and rendering effects and most of that work will be performed by your CPU. There are other great quad-core CPUs available both from Intel and from AMD and you should be able to find something that suits your budget. I used to use an Intel i7-2700K running at 3.5Ghz and have now upgraded to an Intel i7-4790K running at 4Ghz. While After Effects does support CUDA technology and utilises your GPU’s processing power to help out with rendering, the majority of the work still resides with your CPU.Ī strong, multi-core processor should be the first item on your list. If you are mainly looking at working in After Effects, a strong CPU is the most important component you can get. Let’s take a look at the most important components of a computer that is geared towards film making and visual effects with tools such as After Effects, Premiere Pro and similar.

There are thousands of options and variations for the same components and as long as you keep some of the important aspects from this article in mind, you should be able to figure out what ‘the best’ computer for visual effects and film making is that suits your budget. If either of those questions is ‘no’, maybe you should look at pulling back your specs a few notches to stay within your needs and your budget.

Sure, 128GB of RAM is better than 16, an SSD will read/write faster than an HDD and yes, that Geforce GTX 980 would indeed leave a GTX 240 in the dust.īut with improved performance comes increased cost and you have to ask yourself 2 fundamental questions whenever you look at buying a new computer or upgrading your existing machine: One of the main problems with ‘the best’ is that it is also (usually) ‘the most expensive’. While I answer a number of questions in the video above, let’s break it down! What exactly is the best computer for After Effects? Budget vs Power I recently got a new computer and, as a heavy After Effects and Premiere Pro user, I took special consideration to pick components that are geared towards video editing and visual effects.īefore I get into too much detail, here is a quick VLOG I did on my new computer and why I chose the parts that I did. I get this question a lot: “What computer should I get for Adobe After Effects?”

Adobe after effects requirements