Input on building a new system?

Adobe After Effects

Input on building a new system?

Posted by Malcolm Desoto on August 28, 2012 at 5:33 pm

Hey guys, hope this is the right forum to post some system specs for my new comp. I use After Effects for 90% of the work that I do so I figured this would be a good place. I’d like to hear your thoughts on my system and what you might do differently. I’m building this from scratch…

Specs:

ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel i7 Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 2011 130W Six-Core

two Raid Array 64GB SATA III SSD(system drive)

Western Digital Caviar Green WD30EZRX 3TB (internal storage)

CORSAIR Vengeance 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3

GeForce GTX 570

I know it’s not the newest processor but the price/performance ratio isn’t that great when buying top of the line. The other components I’m unsure about is the RAM (not sure if I should just go for 64GB) and the graphics card. I’ve done some research but I really don’t know a lot about graphics cards…

I’ll be running Windows 7 64 bit and CS6.

Angelo Lorenzo replied 13 years, 8 months ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
5 Replies

Angelo Lorenzo
August 28, 2012 at 6:26 pm

After Effect will use as much RAM as you can throw at it. I use motion graphics, moderate effects (particular, and other generative effects), roto, etc, and 32 gigs suits me just fine. YMMV on that.

I would suggest against the green hard drives. They are tuned for energy saving and have inconsistent spin and access speeds. These will become your bottleneck quickly. WD also has blue and black label drives, with blue being the normal line if I recall correctly.

I would also throw in an SSD specifically for After Effect’s cache. The cache in CS6 is so well improved that a speed boost there can improve your performance a good amount.

Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks
Malcolm Desoto
August 28, 2012 at 6:31 pm

Thanks for the input. I was just reading up on that green drive and I think you are correct.

The SSD for the cache is a good recommendation as well.
Duane Giliam
August 29, 2012 at 7:57 pm

HI Malcolm, Angelo

I’m wanting to get back into doing editing with After effects and Adobe.
What would be a good medium level system to go with?
Any recommended mother boards I should know about? etc

I wont be cranking out feature films – just like 30 to 60 second product placement adverts.

Please kick me off in the right direction.

thanks guys.

D
Malcolm Desoto
August 29, 2012 at 8:05 pm

Asus boards are usually good. The ASUS Sabertooth X79 has been rated very high for stability. Get at least 8GB or RAM
Angelo Lorenzo
August 29, 2012 at 8:22 pm

I recommend ASUS as well, I have a P8Z68-V PRO GEN3 (LGA1155 socket with i7 2600K) loaded with 32 gigs of RAM.

Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks

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