Building a good After Effects desktop
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- Projectile
Hey QBers!!
I'm building a BEEEAST machine for rendering complex After Effects projects with some 3D and lighting.... that my current laptop can't handle.
For context, I recently worked on a project where I could edit files, but couldn't preview the animation and couldn't render... not even 1 second. Just to view 1 frame on the timeline at 1/4 quality took about 20 seconds.Budget: up to €5k
Current laptop setup:
Processor:
11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz, 2304 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop
RAM: 32.0 GBA colleague managed to render the impossible file, he says he has an old Mac desktop but it has 2 graphics cards and 128gb of RAM. I think 1 gfx card is enough, but research tells me that RAM is the most important thing for After Effects, so that's what I'm mostly after. I also need 2 separate SSD's and a processor with good clock speed (multiple cores less important)
I found a couple of decent looking machines.... sorry it's in Portuguese
https://www.pccomponentes.pt/dee…
https://www.pccomponentes.pt/dee…
And I found a couple of sites where you can configure, and I get get my 128gb, with decent processor and GFX card, with two SSD's and keep it under €5k
https://deepgaming.es/configurad…One doubt I have is that I've never hear of Deep Gaming.
This is another site where you can configure, but it get's above €7k pretty quickly, but I don't know the brand
https://www.pcspecialist.pt/comp…My first thought was to try known brands (Lenovo, MSI, HP etc) but none of them let you go above 64gb ram. That's only 2x what I have, so will be an improvement but I need a paradigm shift.
Is it safe, do you think, to buy a random brand? The proccessor is Intel / Ryzen, the gfx card is NVidia... so it's not Temu parts. But if I'm spending this much I don't want something that's Temu quality and might fry my very expensive Intel / NVidia parts. Or is it common to buy random brands when building a desktop? I mean the tower isn't exactly important or complex to manufacture.
Thanks!!
- srhadden1
cjheck out https://bto.eu
- _niko2
I have no idea what I'm talking about but for €4k you. can get the most tricked out MacBook Pro
m5 max chip
18‑core CPU,
40 core GPU
128GB unified memorysurely this is better than any Temu build?
- Laptop GPU's are inferior
Check this link, you'll see the RTX 5080 is waaay better thann th Laptop versionProjectile - https://www.videocar…Projectile
- ah sorry I thought
you were looking at a laptop_niko - this is a mac. m5 is great, could imagine AE faster on a m5 MBP than a 5k PC with a 5080 for most things.kingsteven
- not comparable to even a desktop 4060 for anything 3d though.kingsteven
- Yeah I just tried to create in AE a simple shape with 4 parts, using Cinema 4D renderer... and it completely crashedProjectile
- was blown away with my 2024 m4 mac mini.. and the recently got a new macbook pro m5 pro.. and its obscene .. like cant imagine needing this much power.autoflavour
- Laptop GPU's are inferior
- Projectile0
Goddamn just speccing out a Mac Studio...
You can't get 2 separate SSD's! Why make it so small?
With AE, you want to run OS on one drive and have your project file and cache on another, apparently
- That's pretty much the way I've always done. OS on the MBP, anything not OS or app on an external drive. Saves me a lot of headaches.Continuity
- external TB5 drives almost as fast. >6000MB/s is like 10 simultaneous 8K ProRes streamskingsteven
- duckseason0
If you're going the PC route, why not just build it yourself to the spec you want? I know RAM is an arm and a leg right now, but is it anymore expensive than a pre-configured option?
- As someone who has never even opened up a PC to clear out dust, I don't trust myself to try and build one. And no point in buying a weaker machine....Projectile
- only to replace parts immediatelyProjectile
- Luckily, I bought a PC workstation last October just before RAM prices exploded. Puget Systems is great to work with but if you're geek-smart build yourself.CyBrainX
- If you can put together a lego set, you can put together a computer. Just sayin... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯duckseason
- That gives me the heebie jeebies. I asked about a Blackwell GPU and it turns out I can't even get one in my apt. because of the electrical plug it needs.CyBrainX