Best Processor For After Effects

Best Processor For After Effects

No matter what creative work you do, from Motion Design to Video Editing, or Graphic Design to content creation, choosing the best processor for After Effects can be the most crucial decision that will make or break your workflow. Yet, with so much info out there like specs, benchmarks, jargon, marketing spiel, it can be hard to determine what is best for your situation. The goal of this article is to save you time and give you solid recommendations for the best processor for After Effects.

In order to give you these five best CPUs for Adobe After Effects, I’ve combined my experience building design PCs over the past 10+ years, with constantly staying up-to-date on the latest tech/hardware improvements. In addition, I have reviewed all the various CPU benchmark tests for all the creative applications. The reason being, the CPU needs to be capable of running all apps smoothly with multitasking the new norm these days.

No matter what kind of creative work you do in After Effects, I’ve got you covered with five recommendations based on price and performance. This way you can quickly find a CPU that meets your needs, and future-proof your system, so that you can work efficiently as a creative. Enough is enough, let’s go!

Best Processor For After Effects

This list is curated by the highest value considering the price to relative performance.

Which Processor Is Best For After Effects?

The best processor for After Effects currently, based on aggregate benchmarks scores would be the AMD Ryzen 5950X(currently hard to find in stock), AMD Ryzen 3950X, Intel i9-10940X, and the Intel i9-9900K. I’ve listed these four purely based on performance testing.

It’s all well and good to know what the best CPUs for After Effects are on paper. These processors are probably overkill for most. What’s best for you will depend on a number of factors. In order to determine what is the best processor for After Effects, based on your unique situation, we should understand each computer component’s role from an overall system perspective.

What specs do I need for after effects?

CPU (Processor):

The processor is the most important part of your After Effects computer. The CPU is constantly working, receiving countless inputs and delivering outputs. Because design applications like After Effects are taxing on the CPU, choosing a capable CPU is absolutely key. But it’s not just about choosing a CPU based on Adobe’s minimum After Effects system requirements. There’s more to it than that.

Adobe is simply giving generalization, “multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support” for the program to run. Any multicore processor will not ensure your work in After Effects will run smoothly. What CPU you choose should depend on a number of factors such as:

• What kinds of motion work do you do?
• What file types do you work with
• What size of files do you work with?
• What other applications do you use?
• Do you need to multitask with other apps and browsers open?
• Do you want to future-proof your system?
• Your budget is another consideration.

After Effects leverages CPU speeds (clock speeds) for individual cores, measured in GHz, as opposed to relying on the number of cores. However, you still need a decent amount of cores for After Effects, other apps, multitasking, and for your overall system to run smoothly. The sweet spot for After Effects an 8 Core CPU with speeds in the 3.6 GHz to 4.8GHz range.

RAM (Random Access Memory):

If you are like me and can’t stand slow or choppy previews, and an overall sluggish feeling when creating, you need to have a lot of RAM. Because After Effects is constantly grabbing data from RAM, in my opinion, having as much RAM is possible in the next most important component in an After Effects PC build. I always recommend 64GB of RAM for After Effects. This will keep your system and workflow from slowing down.

If you are building a professional workstation where file sizes are massive, you should consider 128GB or 256GB. If you are in this camp, you need to ensure your CPU supports these large amounts of memory.

If you are looking to upgrade your RAM and want more information about why RAM is important for After Effects, check out our resource: Best RAM For After Effects

Graphics Card (GPU):

A high-quality graphics card isn’t as important to an After Effects specific build as your CPU and RAM will be. However, depending on your use case, there are benefits to having a newer GPU that is supported in After Effects. These benefits include GPU accelerated effects and rendering (list of GPU accelerated effects here). Check out this link if you want to know more about my recommended graphics cards for After Effects.

Hard Drive (storage):

Like the saying goes; a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the same can be said when building a computer. If you have a great CPU, enough RAM, a good enough graphics card, but if your storage isn’t fast enough or you don’t have enough storage, you won’t reach the desired performance. 

To get the most out of all your computer components for After Effects, you should have 3 to 4 storage drives. If possible all of them should be SSD M.2 NVMe. SSDs are much faster than the older HDD technology.

Your primary drive should be as fast as possible to run After Effects and all your other applications. 512GB – 1TB SSD M.2 NVMe is ideal.

The secondary drive should also be an ultra-fast NVMe SSD. This is where all the working project files will be stored.

The third drive is for dedicated media cache, also known as a scratch. Having a separate SSD that is specifically for cache will give you massive performance gains. You will notice this most when scrubbing the timeline and during playback. Ideally, this drive is also an NVMe M.2 SSD.

Finally, I recommend having another drive or two, internal or external, for long-term storage and backup. Backup storage doesn’t have to be NVMe SSD. You could opt for a cheaper HDD, as read/write times aren’t as vital.

How Many Cores Does After Effects Use?

After Effects can make use of all the cores a processor has. And more cores are sometimes better for After Effects. However, the newest versions of Adobe After Effects favors the speed of each individual core, over the number of cores.

The sweet spot is to be in the neighborhood of 3.2 GHz – 4.8 GHz clock speeds, and 8 Cores. More cores are beneficial if your workflow involves multi-tasking in other applications and rendering. If you are an After Effects user who also uses Premiere Pro, more cores, generally speaking, will give you faster render times. 

For most designers who mainly work on motion design in After Effects, from a price per core perspective, there are diminishing returns. For example, in After Effects the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X 24-Core performs only about 10% better than the AMD Ryzen 3900X 12-Core.

Does After Effects Use GPU or CPU?

After Effects uses both the GPU (graphics card) and the CPU (processor). However, the CPU is the more important part as it relates to performance in After Effects. The CPU processes all the data, inputs, and outputs. Whereas the GPU’s job is mainly to display that visual information on the screen. While there are benefits to having a capable GPU in After Effects, you will be better off making sure you have a powerful CPU.

If you are building a professional or workstation level PC for After Effects, I recommend having a good GPU that is supported. The newer RTX and Quadro GPUs will give you performance gains in specific tasks, such as GPU accelerated effects and rendering. If you want to learn more about graphics cards for after effects, check this article: Best GPU For After Effects

Intel or AMD For After Effects – What’s Better?

Both Intel and AMD processors are good for After Effects. What CPU brand is better for After Effects will ultimately depend on a number of factors. But I will say the numbers don’t lie.

In 2021, AMD and Intel have similar performing CPUs at all price ranges. However, AMD is starting to separate itself in value and performance for the money. In fact, at each price range, AMD CPUs manage to outperform Intel across a variety of benchmark testing.

In the high-end workstation category, AMDs Ryzen 5950X and 3rd Gen Threadripper CPUs outperform Intel’s fastest x-series contenders by about 18%. That said, in this price range AMD CPUs are more expensive.

In the $750 range, AMD still offers more value for money. The AMD Ryzen 9 3950X offers similar to better performance over the X-series Intel CPUs.

When you are spending this much, know what you value more; export times or playback. In this high-end CPU tier, AMD Threadripper CPUs will give you the most benefit if you need the fastest export times. Where-as if you put more value on playback, the Intel Core i9-10940X CPU offers very similar performance at a lower price than the Threadripper.

Another consideration is if you want to run Thunderbolt, which support is very limited for AMD users. There’s only a handful of motherboards that support AMD CPUs and Thunderbold 3 as standard. The Gigabyte TRX40 Designare is one of them.