Update my old workstation

Hey guys,

I work as a trailer editor for TV and just bought a new workstation to dive deeper into basic 3D animation, but since I commute every other week between my home and my grilfriend's place 200km away from me, i installed my old workstation in her place. The old workstation is >10 years old but still doing the job it needs to do admirably. And since i'll need it for my editing work, which occasionally also involves 3D animation and compositing, I wanted to update it for the lowest price that is reasonably possible so that it's compatible with Windows 11, the newest builts of Premiere and After Effects ( which it ceased to be since versions 2024 ) and do some base level 3D in Blender and After Effects if needed.

Since I bought my new 3D workstation largely with the help of this site, I thought I might chime in with a question on what now to do with old workstation.

Here are the specs I deemed relevant for you guys to know, feel free to ask for more. I plan to switch the power supply anyway, as it's starting to act up. Appreciate your advise.







Is it still salvagable to work with Premiere / After effects 2024 and Win 11?

Thanks for your replies,
Regards,
Matthias

The best CPU you an upgrade to is the i7 2700K which is slightly faster than your 2600k, but IMO barely worth it. You can certainly get more RAM and a newer GPU, but knowing that AE and PP mainly rely on CPU single core performance and the occasional multi core performance when rendering out projects, if you really want something workable for modern projects, a new Motherboard, CPU and GPU will have to be bought. Since your Mobo uses DDR3 RAM, though you'll also have to get new RAM.

You may be able to get some speedup with new SSD drives, though, as those are often bottlenecks with large footage. What kind of storage does that PC have?

hey.

thanks for your reply I appreciate your advise very much.

i should specify that my sole goal is to just squeeze some more life out of the old machine for a small buck, by maintaining its upward compatibility with

• adobe CC, which it explicitly lost due to the inability of my processor to handle Advanced Vector Extensions 2(AVX2). the only apps who give me this notice of non-compatibility, actually, are Premiere and AE
• Windows 11, due to security concerns with the impending discontinuation of Windows 10 security updates

since both features are (as far as i could research) processor related, knowing a processor that would on one hand fit my motherboard while on the other bring with it the minimum requirements to work with Win11, Premiere 2024 and AE 2024, is all i want to ask for, and frankly can, without ship-of-theseus-ing the system.

[the graphics card is not essential, since (as you said) AE is heavy on CPU, not GPU.]

For all the stuff, that's more fancy, i got my new workstation at home (it's basically the maximum recommended built by CGdirector in their PC builder anno November 2023).

So, any suggestion of processor, even an older model from eBay, i would appreciate.

Thx,
Matt

Well there are two, three things to note. AVX2 was introduced I think with the 6th or so Intel CPU gen, but they all support only DDR4 RAM. So you'll need a RAM upgrade as well. That said, you'll also need a Motherboard with TPM support, which narrows down the required "currentness" of the System even more. You may be able to find something like a i9 9900k with a Motherboard that has a TPM module, but you'll need DDR4 RAM too.

Because such CPUs are rare and not all that fast compared to what can be found today, IMO getting a lower-end new CPU+Mobo+RAM combo seems to make more sense to me.

There's no option to upgrade the CPU only on your system to get CC and Win11 support, as the CPU you have already is the near-topmost option for your Motherboard/Chipset, and that entire gen doesn't have avx2 support anyway.

thanks for the additional info. friend of mine meanwhile told me that the purpose of win11 seems to be to get people to buy new hardware.
i think i can live with using adobe premiere / after effects 2023 for some time on my projects, i guess. only updating to get win11 to work would be my minimal goal. but i guess that's unlikely.