Re: New laptop hardware for adobe after effects/premiere?

#1. Return the XPS, it has well known and major thermal throttling issues that make it useless for Premiere / AE, I'm about to throw mine out the window.  See my post here: Best Workstation (Laptop) for Premiere 2019   Perhaps Dell has fixed the thermal issues with your model, but as far as I know it was still a problem in the 2018 models and I don't believe they released the 2019 models yet which may be getting a thicker design.

#2. If you decide to keep the XPS, then the only way to maybe make it usable will be to break the warranty, take it apart and fix all the thermal defects yourself, by reapplying thermal paste to the CPU and GPU and gluing thermal pads on the VRMs which were left untouched by Dell and seem to be the main source of the heat buildup and throttling issues. You also need to install ThrottleStop and MSI Afterburner to undervolt the CPU and GPU. Step by step guides for all this here:

- [CPU + GPU Temperatures + Benchmarks] - XPS 15 [9560] Kaby Lake | NotebookReview

- https://www.ultrabookreview.com/14875-fix-throttling-xps-15/

- How to UNDERVOLT your Laptop CPU! | Reduce HEAT & Increase Performance - YouTube

- How To Undervolt your LAPTOP GPU for FPS GAIN! (NVIDIA/AMD GPU Laptops ONLY) - YouTube

#3. I think you'll quickly find that 8gb RAM won't be enough and AE will freeze or give you Out of Memory errors quickly.  You'll want at least 16gb.  I have 32gb and I'm still running out of RAM on a 4K project I'm on, constantly having to purge memory (control+alt+/).

Short answer, assuming you will be using a fast external drive for media:

After Effects: More RAM needed.

Premiere Pro: Depending upon what type of media you will be editing, maybe if you use proxies.

I moved this to a new discussion, as it was posted to a three year old thread.