You Will Need An SSD

Following Starfield’s big showing over the weekend at Microsoft’s Not-E3 presentation, some more practical details about the game are coming to light. Among them are the game’s specs on PC, and while we don’t normally post that sort of stuff here, one key requirement makes these pretty damn notable.

Here are the specs, courtesy of the game’s newly-updated Steam page:

MINIMUM:

OS: Windows 10 version 22H2 (10.0.19045)

Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel Core i7-6800K

Memory: 16 GB RAM

Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700, NVIDIA GeForce 1070 Ti

DirectX: Version 12

Network: Broadband Internet connection

Storage: 125 GB available space

Additional Notes: SSD Required

RECOMMENDED:

OS: Windows 10/11 with updates

Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, Intel i5-10600K

Memory: 16 GB RAM

Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080

DirectX: Version 12

Network: Broadband Internet connection

Storage: 125 GB available space

Additional Notes: SSD Required

A solid state drive isn’t just recommended, it’s necessary, even on minimum specs. I honestly can’t think of another game that requires you to have one. They come strongly recommended on PC, of course, especially for big open world video games, but saying you need one is something else.

If you don’t already have one, were thinking of picking up Starfield, met all the other specs but didn’t have an SSD…you are probably very much in the minority, but if so, then that sucks that you’ll need to spend some extra money on hardware you might not have otherwise been expecting.

That said! An SSD really is a huge help for so many types of PC games, and the fact they’re relatively cheap—and very easy to install—means this isn’t the same level of disaster as you not meeting, say, the minimum graphics card requirements.