Computer for Premiere Pro on a Student budget

The problem is that video editing needs everything (CPU, GPU, storage) to be fast, along with lots of memory and effective cooling, and that is never cheap. All the specs need to be better than a base model.

The Adobe reply is somewhat helpful for desktops, but is not really budget friendly. Puget Systems is a great source of information for Adobe hardware configurations, but if you click through to the pro-level workstations they configure, they are 5 to 10 times more expensive than your budget. And Puget Systems configures only desktops, not laptops.

One simple route, if you are open to Macs, is to pick up an M1 Mac mini or M1 MacBook Air. (The current M2 Air costs too much for what it is.) Both are widely used for low/mid level video editing, especially the Mac mini. It is possible to get a minimally workable video configuration for a little above $1000. But to keep the price down, shop at this time of year while stores are selling them with holiday discounts below Apple list, or buy Apple refurbished. Only buy a Mac with an Apple Silicon processor, not the older Intel models which run hotter and slower when editing video on a cheap laptop or mini desktop.

If you require a Windows PC desktop or laptop, you must pay close attention to whether the GPU is powerful to use Premiere Pro graphics acceleration, and whether the CPU is recent enough to have better integrated graphics and power efficiency. (Discrete graphics is preferred, but difficult to find for a near-$1000 total budget.) The trap is that a lot of cheap laptops have weak graphics and poor cooling, so even if you put a fast CPU in there, you don’t actually get top speed when editing video. When you spend the amount of money Puget Systems desktop workstations cost, you get very powerful current processors and the effective cooling systems needed to keep them fast, but that is far beyond your budget.

Whether Mac or PC, try to afford at least 16GB of memory, and also budget for enough SSD storage (internal or external) for all the origianl video files you need to edit together, and also for media cache files on ideally a separate fast SSD. Altogether, it is unlikely that you can keep the total budget under $1000 when you buy enough of the right hardware to not be slow when editing video. Under $1500 is more realistic.

Hey Rose,

Welcome to the community! What are the specifications of your current system, and what type of source files do you usually edit? Perhaps we can find a workaround for your workflow to be comparatively less stressful on your system components.

Please refer to the system requirements page to get an idea of the minimum and recommended system requirements for Premiere Pro. Here's a helpful link if you are looking for hardware recommendations for building a windows system: https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/video-editing-workstations/adobe-premiere-pro/hardware-recommendations/. I'm moving this thread to Video Hardware community for better exposure. 

Thanks,

Ishan