Video Workstations for Premiere Pro - Understand Premiere Pro's hardware requirements and pick the perfect 3XS Systems graphics workstation for your project

What makes the best system for Premiere Pro?

There is no one ideal system configuration for Premiere Pro, as users will have different video resolutions to edit and make different use of the software. Premiere Pro makes use of CPU cores, but a higher clock speed is more important as many tasks are single threaded. For many tasks a fast GPUs is required, but ultimately it depends on whether you are working with HD, 4K, 6K or 8K video content.

What GPU(s) do I need for Premiere Pro?

A fast GPU is crucial for a responsive DCC experience in Premiere Pro, with more powerful models providing a more noticeable benefit when working with complex and high resolution video. We recommend the NVIDIA RTX GPUs as a good starting point in the NVIDIA range, adding in more GPUs if budget allows and your workloads scale well. If not, choose a single RTX GPU, but with larger memory.

If you are considering a dedicated workstation for Premiere Pro then we recommend consumer-grade NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards thanks to their outstanding value for money. However, if you’re also planning other intensive workloads on the same workstation then it’s worth considering a professional-grade NVIDIA RTX GPU thanks to their larger memory buffer and certified drivers.

What storage does Premiere Pro need?

We always recommend using an SSD for the boot drive that will host your OS, Premiere Pro itself, and any active projects you are working on. The high speed of SSDs allows your system to boot, launch applications, and load files many times faster than any traditional hard drive. We would also recommend a second SSD or even an NVMe SSD - depending on your budget - for active Premiere Pro projects files. If files are large or numerous several secondary SSDs can be added in RAID configurations to protect data integrity. An alternative solution for high capacity SSD active storage or cheaper HDD archiving could be to employ an external NAS device allowing both sharing and RAID protection.

When it comes to deciding on drive capacity, this will very much depend on your number of files and the project sizes. You should also consider the space required by other applications and their associated files too.