After Effects Minimum Requirements May 2026

Adobe publishes a list of "minimum requirements" for After Effects. But let’s be real: If you follow the official minimum specs, you’ll spend more time watching a frozen progress bar than actually creating.

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.

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

Pro tip: NVIDIA is historically more stable with AE than AMD due to CUDA support. Most people buy a fast CPU and forget the hard drive. Big mistake. After Effects creates thousands of temporary cache files. If you are writing those to a slow mechanical hard drive (HDD), your computer will stutter even if you have a supercomputer for a CPU.

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. Adobe publishes a list of "minimum requirements" for

You will not get real-time playback. You will get a slideshow.

32GB of RAM + a desktop i7 + a used RTX 3060. That rig will outperform a $3,000 thin laptop. Without a decent GPU, those effects render via

You’ve just had a brilliant idea for a video. It involves a 3D spinning logo, some kinetic typography that punches the screen, and a particle effect that rains glitter on a dystopian cityscape.