New PC – Suggested spec?

[Grant Swanson]

Well for your budget you won’t be able to get a super computer, but you can still come up with something decent.

In my opinion, and I can speak from experience, the component you don’t want to skimp on is the graphics card. I highly recommend any of the Nvidia Quadro FX cards, the higher up in the product line the better. These are absolutely amazing.

From there I would definitely say get a mulitcore processor.

I really don’t think you need monster amounts of RAM, unless you’re doing something extremely intense (in which case you’d want to increase your budget) you don’t need any more than 2-4 gigs.

If you make the graphics card your number one priority, then the CPU, you should have a pretty solid machine. And after those components just buy as much as you can staying within your budget.

I know it’s a little vague, but I hope it helps some!

-Grant Swanson

PS – If you want something off the shelf, try looking in to a Mac Pro if you prefer Mac, or an HP Workstation if you prefer Windows.

[Ian Collister]

Thanks for the advice, have seen some nice HP workstations.

Also, does hard disk speed make a big difference? Do i need anything faster than 7200rpm?

Cheers.

[Steve Roberts]

[Grant Swanson] “In my opinion, and I can speak from experience, the component you don’t want to skimp on is the graphics card. I highly recommend any of the Nvidia Quadro FX cards, the higher up in the product line the better. These are absolutely amazing. “

For AE, just go for a midrange card. AE’s implementation of Open GL is not very good, so most of us just switch it off. As long as the card is supported by AE, it’s good.

As for the drive speed, it’s not as crucial with AE as it is with an NLE that has to access footage in real time. Since AE has to render every frame, processor speed and RAM is more important than drive speed. 7200 is fine for AE. Put your money into RAM and multi-processors.

[James Benoit]

[Steve Roberts] “For AE, just go for a midrange card. AE’s implementation of Open GL is not very good, so most of us just switch it off. As long as the card is supported by AE, it’s good.”

I disagree. OpenGL works great in AE as long as you have a workstation card, one tailored for video and 3D performance. You see, the mistake most people make when purchasing a workstation computer is to purchase a card that was actually meant for gaming, such as the Nvidia GeForce series, which are great cards, if your a gamer…

You see the gaming cards, such as the GeForce series are set up to render the whole screen in one shot, and thus have lower floating point calculations.

The Quadro cards are great for running multiple apps an processes simultaneously, and takes care of everything on your screen and UI for you.

The GPU is probably the most important consideration when considering a new workstation computer, and I’ve been working with AE for years. I agree with the first post, set the GPU at #1, and the CPU at #2.

[Ian Collister]

How would i find out if a card is supported by AE? What in the spec should i be looking for?

[Steve Roberts]

https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html

[Grant Swanson]

[Steve Roberts] “For AE, just go for a midrange card. AE’s implementation of Open GL is not very good, so most of us just switch it off. As long as the card is supported by AE, it’s good.”

Well that’s very debatable. OpenGL works just fine if the card on the computer can support it, which not all AE-supported cards can do very well…for instance, I would not recommend a GeForce card for any sort of post-production work, they’re designed and built for games and other home-use applications, they simply don’t perform very well on video and 3D applications.

I’m sticking with what I wrote earlier. Obviously a top of the line Quadro card such as the FX 4500 will cost to much to be reasonable. For your budget, you should check out the Quadro FX 1500. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133179

Converted to the Pound, it’s right around £235, which is right in line with your budget.

From there, again, spend your money on a dual/quad core CPU, and 2-4 gigs of RAM.

7200 RPM should be plenty, how often do you use Premiere? Do work on long projects with it? If you do you may want to consider an “editing” drive that is built for speed, such as a 10k Raptor, which you’ll store your temporary video files onto while your editing, and save the final clips to a separate, larger drive.

Those HP’s are nice, I’ve worked on a few of them, with very few hiccups. I did a little looking for you, and they have three different performance levels (https://www.hp.com/sbso/busproducts-workstations.html), all of which should be within you budget when converted out of US dollars.

I hope this helped!

-Grant Swanson

[Bryan Bush]

Don’t buy off the shelf! Just my 2 cents, maybe it has gotten better since last time I checked it out.

[Steve Roberts]

[Grant Swanson] “OpenGL works just fine if the card on the computer can support it, which not all AE-supported cards can do very well…”

Now there’s a statement. If that’s the case, Adobe better tighten up their testing. But maybe they don’t want to make a list with only two cards in it …? 🙂

I’ll add that caveat to any OpenGL statements I make in the future. Thanks, Grant!

[Ian Collister]

Having had a look around, and taken some other advice from friends, i think i might pick one of these up:

https://www.johnlewis.com/230472307/Product.aspx

Your thoughts and comments would be much appreciated.

Cheers
I.