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S�bastienA
Inspiring
April 5, 2026
Question

How to solve After Effects 24x 25x 26x slowdowns when you work more than 2 hours ?

  • April 5, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 21 views

Hello Adobe Community !

I’ve been working with After Effects for years, and like many of you, I’ve had to constantly upgrade my hardware just to maintain a normal level of productivity—without seeing any significant improvements (though a more powerful processor and graphics card do really help me work normally).

But in recent months, I’ve had to revert to the computing habits of the 2000s, using heavy 3D software, because After Effects—despite a complete reinstallation of Windows 11 Pro less than a year ago, the installation of a high-performance NVMe SSD (Samsung 990 Pro), major operating system updates, and the precaution of working on version 24x, the most stable version I’ve ever had, significantly slows down my entire machine after 2 to 3 hours of work.

After that time, I have to shut it down via the Task Manager to restore my PC’s usual fluidity; otherwise, everything becomes slow, laggy, and impossible to use.
The mouse freezes or becomes extremely slow; every movement, every edit, every text input—everything is sluggish, making professional work impossible.
As soon as I close After Effetcts, everything goes back to normal.

I’m all the more frustrated because, like everyone else, I’m paying more for my subscription, yet I see no improvement in the software’s performance or responsiveness.

Does anyone else have this major slowdown issue, forcing them to restart After Effects—after closing it via the Task Manager in the best-case scenario, or even having to restart their computer entirely?

I work on large-scale events that require me to use software for more than three hours straight without having to restart my computer, and I need to know how to solve this problem, at least for version 24x (and other versions if you have any ideas, of course).

Thank you in advance for your help!

Sebastien

Details :

OS : Windows 11 Professional 25H2 build 26200.8039
 

PC Case : FRACTAL Meshify 2

PSU : CORSAIR - RMx Series RM850x - 850W - 80 Plus Gold

Modular PSU 850W - ATX 12V

Motherboard : MSI Mag B550 Tomahawk

CPU : AMD - Ryzen 9 5950X - 3,4/4,9 GHz - 16 cœurs/32 threads - Socket AM4 - 105W

AIO : ARTIC COOLING - ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 - Watercooling kit 360mm

Watercooling AIO CPU - Compatible sockets Intel: LGA 2066/2011-V3/115X/1200 et AMD AM4 - Ventilateurs: 3x120mm + 1x40mm

GPU : MSI - GeForce RTX 3060 Ti VENTUS 2X 8G OCV1 LHR - 8 Go GDDR6 - HDMI/Tri DisplayPort - PCI Express (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti)

RAM : KINGSTON FURY Renegade DDR4 3600MT/s 4x16Gb

SSD 1 (C:) : SAMSUNG SSD Interne 990 PRO w heatsinker 2 Tb MZ-V9P2T0GW

SSD 2 (D:) : WD SN570 NVMe

SSD 3 (E:) : Samsung SSD 870 QVO 2To

SSD 4 (G:) : Crucial MX500 1To 

SSD 5 (H:) : Samsung SSD 860 QVO 1To 

SSD 6 (I:) : Crucial MX500 2To

    2 replies

    Nishu Kushwaha
    Community Manager
    Nishu KushwahaCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    April 6, 2026

    Hi there,

     

    Sorry to hear about the issue. To help narrow it down, could you check a couple of things:

    • Does restarting AE temporarily fix the slowdown (even for a while)?

    • Do you see RAM usage continuously increasing in Task Manager over time?

    • Does it improve if you purge memory/cache or reduce open comps?

    • Are you using any plugins, 3D layers, or heavy effects in the session when this starts happening?

    In the meantime, can you try running After Effects in Safe Mode with third-party plug-ins disabled and test it on a new project?

    Let us know how it goes.

     

    Thanks,

    Nishu

      S
      S�bastienAAuthor
      Inspiring
      April 6, 2026

      Hello and thank you very much for your reply!
       

      You’re right; I need to narrow it down to see exactly what could cause this. I had several changes on my machine before it started but what confuses me is that it also happened on my secondary PC (Lenovo Legion 5 Laptop).

      • So the actual changes were :
        • Windows updated to a new build,
        • I bought Camera 3D Toolkit Pro for a specific project (but it shouldn’t be “active” all the time right? Plus I don’t use it all the time.
        • I had to install AE 2026 to make Camera 3D Toolkit Pro work with version 3.1
        • I have experienced several power outages due to a faulty meter from my energy provider, and they stopped my PC while it was on but I took it back to a computer store, and they ran some tests that didn't reveal any hardware issues.

      More precisely on your questions :

      • Restarting AE actually fixes the slowdown. But each time, I have to close it using the Task manager (> End Task).
      • RAM does not increase linearly during render but it does reach about 99% of the total amount I’v allowed in AE preferences (and then goes back to normal (about 44%). But if I let AE opened (even without working), cached RAM climbs up to 33% and everything becomes laggy. My latest test was to let AE opened about 2 hours and a half after the last render.
      • From what I've noticed, it doesn't make any difference whether I downscale the comps / make precomps or use pre-rendering.
      • I often use Element 3D V2 but I’ve been using it for years, as well as Deep Glow 2, Optical flares, and quite a lot of third party plugins. But the problems are very recent, and 

      For several years, I’v been trying try to bake animations as much as I can, and also pre-render everything that’s too big and can be rendered.

      You’re right about the test in Safe mode ; I’ll do it when work allows me to make some tests (time is hard to find for this ;)

       

      Thank you again for your help,

       

      Sebastien

      ToolfarmJP
      Community Expert
      ToolfarmJPCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      April 6, 2026

      Would you manually delete the temp files?

       

      C:\Users\{login name}\AppData\Local\Temp

        S
        S�bastienAAuthor
        Inspiring
        April 6, 2026

        Hello :)

        I've never tried it, but do you think it might help reduce the growing RAM usage?

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