After Effects Minimum Requirements (PLUS | CHEAT SHEET)

You open Adobe After Effects. You drag in a clip. You add one effect. The fan on your laptop roars to life like a jet engine. The playback stutters. A beach ball of death appears. Then, the crash.

More RAM. If you can only buy one thing, buy RAM. Then set your disk cache to a fast SSD. after effects minimum requirements

Now go make that glitter dystopia without the crash. You open Adobe After Effects

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