iMac CPU % is extremely high

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iMac CPU % is extremely high

Recently bought an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch 2020 -- Processor: 3.8 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i7 -- 8 gig memory) and am worried it may be woefully inadequate for my work in Premiere Pro. Any suggestions to improve CPU performance?

On my first attempt editing 4K footage, it was sluggish and unresponsive. I realized the 8gb of ram was way too little for this task. After several calls to customer support and them saying, "Sorry, there's nothing that can be done, and no ram can be added to your machine," I learned that I can indeed add ram to it on my own. (Thanks for nothing, Apple!) I added in 64 gigs of memory, upping my total to 72.

This helped me playback footage much better and overall performance was smoother. But now my issue is that rendering still takes an incredibly long time. When looking at Activity Monitor, I see that when I render footage, my %CPU shoots up to 1,500. Is this an extremely high number? It seems like it to me. I'm wondering if there's anything that can be done to help with this, or offload some of the processing power and speed things up. My hunch is that I should've bought a iMac with a more powerful processor, but open to any suggestions!

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iMac 27″, macOS 12.3

Posted on May 26, 2023 7:48 PM

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Answer 1

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Allan Jones

Level 9

78,344 points

May 27, 2023 9:24 AM in response to TravisJay

Are you running any anti-virus software? So-called "cleaning" apps? Client-side VPNs?

All can increase the CPU workload and slow your computer, and are not needed. The macOS—catlike—cleans itself and is quite self-reliant.

Are any web pages open in the background? I've found some that continued to task the CPU even in the background. If you are using Chrome, that can make it worse. Chrome and its minion "helpers" tend to be the big hogs at a small trough.

What storage option—size and type—do you have? I believe all 2020 iMac 5Ks had SSDs but, if yours is too small, Adobe could be running into some issues.

Lacking any suspect in those areas, you can post an EtreCheck report that puts numbers on performance issues and looks for troublemakers. It allows us to give you a data-driven analysis in a setting where we cannot see, touch,, or remotely access your computer. It is here:

https://etrecheck.com/index

The free version will do nicely for this purpose, although the app is worthy of our financial support. The developer is a long-serving and respected member of these communities and senior contributors trust him.

We can see hard data about drive performance, software issues, and RAM usage. Etrecheck is the development of a long-serving and trusted contributor here expressly for displaying information in these forums to help us help you. It will not reveal any personal or secure information.

⚠️ Please DO NOT highlight the text in the report before using Etrecheck’s “Copy report” command—that will garble the formatting and make the report slower and harder to evaluate.

See this excellent user tip on posting text reports like EtreCheck's.

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

I also HIGHLY recommend reviewing Adobe's user forums for similar reports and possible solutions.

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