Specifications for PC Build

[AlexGamer587]

Ok so I want to build a Windows PC. I want to run Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Animate and After Effects.

And for all that, I'm choosing the following specs:

-Intel Core i5 13400F

-M.2 NVMe 1TB SSD

-32GB DDR4 (16x2) 3200MGHz

-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB

Help me with the video card, specifically. 

And my CPU budget is only ₹50k-60k (Indian Rupees), so please help me and recommend me the video card and CPU of least price which can handle the above mentioned softwares smoothly. Also tell me if Core i5-12400F or 12400 is sufficient for the softwares mentioned.

Thanks in advance!

[ShiveringCactus]

I'm probably out of date with my thinking, but in my opinion, an Nvidia card is the right approach.  There's quite a few plugins which seem to work better with Nvidia.  In terms of an actual card though, I'm not sure about comparitive specs. 

A 1Tb is a good sized hard drive, but if you can add a second one (it can be smaller) for your media cache, that would be sensible.  If you have the money for a third drive for your actual files, it makes future upgrading easier, as you can install the files drive in your new computers.

32Gb of RAM is pretty good, but that's AE's current reccomedend specs, which probably means that within 5 years it will be the minimum.  The more RAM you can afford the bigger the improvements you'll see, even compared to GPUs and CPUs.

Finally, if you check out this article ( https://www.schoolofmotion.com/blog/after-effects-computer ) , the team at School of Motion looked into how to build the ultimate AE machine.  While it's probably out of your price range (it is for me) they do go through their research.

[AlexGamer587]

Yes, taking NVIDIA in the sense, from a website it told me that After Effects does not fully utilise the GPU and that Integrated Graphics might work as well. It said the most important things for After Effects are CPU and RAM. So will it be ok if I use integrated graphics (for that I'll take Core i5-12600K because F series don't have integrated graphics support). But still with 12600K, I think a GTX 1650 should be OK for AE. What do you think?

[ShiveringCactus]

Video Copilot's Element3D was the first plugin I'd heard of which used the GPU, they did publish a list of graphics cards that were compatible:

https://www.videocopilot.net/assets/public/misc/Element-GPUs.pdf

It's not been updated for a few years and does state that intel graphics cards are not supported.

I don't know much about GPUs, but I have an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 if that's any help.

[Andrew Yoole]

I have an order of importance for hardware builds for After Effects:

1 - CPU

2 - RAM

3 - GPU

In modern computing, SSD goes without saying.  Buy the biggest you can afford, you'll always want more than you have.

I think the i5 is a mistake.  I'd spend more on the CPU, even if it means skimping on the GPU for now.  It's easier to upgrade your GPU in the future than the CPU.

32GB of RAM is the minimum I'd consider these days.  If you can afford more, do it.  If not, try and buy a configuration that allows you to expand in the future, ie if you have 4 RAM slots on your motherboard, get 2 x 16GB RAM modules now, leaving two slots free for expansion.

While Adobe software is making better use of GPU power all the time, their products are notoriously CPU hungry, especially After Effects.