After Effects Minimum Requirements ★

16GB. The Sweet Spot: 32GB. The "Time is Money" Pro: 64GB+. The Processor Paradox (Single Core vs. The World) Most software loves many cores. Premiere Pro will happily use 16 cores to export video. After Effects? It’s a diva.

Laptop CPUs "throttle" (slow down) when they get hot. After Effects makes them hot in about 90 seconds. A laptop with "i9" specs will perform worse than a desktop with "i5" specs after 10 minutes of rendering because the laptop runs out of thermal headroom. after effects minimum requirements

In 2024/2025, After Effects uses the GPU for dozens of effects (Lumetri Color, Gaussian Blur, Sharpening, and the new AI tools). Without a decent GPU, those effects render via CPU—which is 10x slower. after effects minimum requirements