If you are building a machine for After Effects Multi-Frame Rendering today, ignore the "minimums." Aim for this:
Adobe’s official "Recommended" spec often lists 4GB of VRAM. Ignore that. In an MFR workflow, 4GB is a bottleneck. If you are building a machine for After
Multi-Frame Rendering allows After Effects to render multiple frames simultaneously, which scales performance based on your CPU's core count and available system RAM. Minimum Specification Recommended (High Performance) 4-Core (Intel 8th Gen / AMD Ryzen 1000) 8-Core or above for MFR (Intel 11th Gen+ / Ryzen 3000+) System RAM 32 GB for HD; 64 GB – 128 GB for 4K workflows GPU VRAM 8 GB – 16 GB+ for 4K and Advanced 3D Storage 8 GB for install Fast NVMe SSD for dedicated disk cache (64 GB+) GPU & VRAM deep Dive If you run out of VRAM, MFR performance
4 GB of VRAM is the baseline for smooth operation. 4K & Complex VFX: If you run out of VRAM
The amount of VRAM is critical because After Effects' newer is heavily GPU-accelerated. If you run out of VRAM, MFR performance can degrade as the system struggles to allocate memory for concurrent frames.