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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Specs & PC Requirements
August 02, 2023
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is the long awaited next entry in the STALKER saga. Almost 13 years on from its original announcement, 12 years on from its cancellation, and five years on from its re-announcement, STALKER 2 is finally almost here. And it looks stunning. Like the original game, STALKER 2 looks set to push graphical boundaries with its incredible realism, incorporating some of the latest visual effects of today, including the ever-demanding ray tracing.
That means that like any stalkers looking to survive within the Zone, you’re going to need to bring some heavy firepower to the table. You can skip the Geiger counter this time, but you’re going to need a powerful processor and graphics card to play it at anything above the lowest settings.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, as STALKER 2 will look great at even 1080p low. But if you’re intrigued by the idea of real time lighting effects, or even 4K resolution, you’re going to need to have a very special kind of gaming PC indeed. Here’s what you’ll need to run STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl.
Minimum system requirements
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600X, Intel Core i5-7600K or better
- RAM: 8GB
- Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 580, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB or better
- Storage: 150GB SSD
- Operating system: Windows 10 64bit
As modest as the above system requirements are, and as achievable as it should be for most gamers, this is still relatively steep for minimum requirements to get a game running; even a modern one like STALKER 2. Most games support processors that were a decade old and hardly powerful when released, but with Heart of Chornobyl, the weakest CPUs it will support are around six years old, and they were mid-range when they debuted.
Still, most Steam gamers have processors that are as good, if not better than these, so that shouldn’t be too steep a hurdle. Graphics are a little more demanding, but the GTX 1060 is still one of the most popular GPUs on Steam and the majority of Steam gamers have a GPU that is comparable, or better than what’s recommended here.
Anyone with a mid-range gaming PC from the past five years shouldn’t have any trouble getting this game up and running. You’ll be restricted to around 30 FPS at 1080p with all settings on low. It’s perfectly playable on this sort of hardware, but you will be missing out on some of the aesthetic beauty in this Unreal Engine 5 game.
Matching the minimum system requirements with a modern PC
If you’ve been waiting more than a decade for a new STALKER game, then you deserve to play it at greater than low settings and at a smoother frame rate. While the developer, GSC Game World might be comfortable recommending a 30 FPS experience, we prefer something a little smoother, even if most of the settings remain on low.
Recommended system requirements
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, Intel Core i7-9700K or better
- RAM: 16GB
- Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700XT, Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti, or RTX 2070 Super or better
- Storage: 150GB SSD
- Operating system: Windows 10 64bit
Here we can see just how much more demanding STALKER 2 can be, as even raising the bar from low to high settings at 1080p and a 60 FPS average frame rate, it’s an enormous jump in hardware demands. The processors are both eight-core models, and from much-more recent generations, and the graphics cards were some of the best in the world just a few years ago. Modern hardware can still easily outstrip them at the high-end, but we’re still only talking about 1080p.
Fortunately memory requirements remain modest, with only 16GB recommended here. Storage requirements remain the same, though the SSD recommendation is much harder at this tier. Chillblast only ever recommends installing your games on solid state drives if you want fast load times, but you can typically use a hard drive in a pinch. That’s not recommendable with this game.
These kind of hardware demands are more than the majority of Steam gamers have to hand, so don’t fret if you find that your PC just can’t quite measure up to these specifications. Fortunately, there are a wide range of modern upgrade options which can bring your PC up to speed, or give you an entirely new system that’s ready to take on STALKER 2’s more demanding settings.
Matching the recommended system requirements with a modern PC
As much as the recommended system requirements are something you might be able to meet by dropping in a GPU upgrade to your otherwise capable system, it’s not always recommendable. The second-hand market is rife with old mining hardware that could die at a moment’s notice, and unless you pick your hardware carefully, you could miss out on features that just aren’t available on older gaming PCs.
Conclusion
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has been a long time coming, and fans of the series are hotly anticipating its impending release. If you’re one of them, and have been watching a long time for this, do consider upgrading to play it. You deserve the best STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl experience possible. With a Chillblast gaming PC, you’ll get it, guaranteed.
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