Elden Ring PC system requirements cause raised eyebrows before vanishing

Elden Ring’s system requirements have briefly appeared on Steam, but given that they were yanked down sharpish – and look a little iffy anyway – we can guess that this was some kind of odd mistake.

Still, it’s worth checking out what was spotted, and seeing if we can glean anything from the potential demands on your PC that were aired, which were as follows for the minimum spec.

• OS: Windows 10, Windows 11
• CPU: Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 3 3300X
• RAM: 12GB
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (3GB) or AMD Radeon RX 580 (4GB)
• Drive Space: 60GB

As PC Gamer, which spotted this, points out, that looks a little heavy on the CPU side when you consider FromSoftware’s previous efforts, the most recent of which was Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice .

That required just a Core i5-2500K processor – and that’s for recommended – with a Core i3-2100 passing muster for the minimal spec, and 4GB of system RAM being stipulated for the latter, too. For the graphics card, a GTX 760 was the minimum for Sekiro.

Analysis: Some kind of mistake? But if so, what kind?

So, theoretically we’re jumping from a Core i3-2100 plus GTX 760 to a Core i5-8400 plus GTX 1060 from Sekiro to Elden Ring, if this Steam minimum spec is correct, which as we’ve already said, doesn’t seem likely.

The fact this has been taken down so quickly is indicative of a faux pas (all the Steam listing for Elden Ring says now is that the spec is TBD), and the hard requirement for 12GB of RAM is a bit of an eyebrow raiser too. A fair few gaming rigs still have 8GB (a third of PCs have 8GB or less, going by the latest Steam hardware survey), even if 16GB has clearly become the standard in the contemporary gaming world (and you’d certainly be foolish to outfit a new machine with anything less).

There could be outright mistakes here, though, with some of the spec, or rather than the minimum as stated, perhaps this is the recommended requirements – or a working set of them – and the error has been made in that respect.

It is, however, true that we can expect Elden Ring to be more demanding than FromSoftware’s past games, given that it is an ambitious open world affair which will doubtless be more taxing on the CPU and GPU. However, looking at, say, Red Dead Redemption 2, that open world effort has a GeForce GTX 1060 plus 12GB of system RAM as the recommended spec, so for Elden Ring to go with that for its minimal spec seems off. Again, that backs up the theory that the recommended requirements have been misrepresented as the minimum.

At any rate, we’ll find out soon enough, as Elden Ring launches on February 24, in less than two weeks now. Some folks have raised concerns that being so close to launch and not seeing any system requirements published perhaps foretells something ominous in store that players won’t like, but hey, sometimes the spec doesn’t come out until the last minute (though usually, it’s beforehand, it has to be said).

• Best gaming laptops of 2022