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An overview of a town in Cities Skylines 2
Screenshot by Dot Esports

Cities Skylines 2 system requirements

The hardware you need in your PC.

Cities Skylines 2 is the long-awaited sequel to one of the best city-building simulators to ever grace the video game market. It arrives first on PC, and players need to figure out if their machines match up to the system requirements.

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The original Cities Skylines can essentially run on any somewhat modern computer. As long as your hardware is from this century, it can likely support the city-builder in some way. However, the same can’t be said for the sequel, which truly turns it up a notch when it comes to the required processing power you need in your machine.

To see the full list of system requirements for Cities Skylines 2, check out the guide below.

What are Cities Skylines 2 PC requirements?

Aerial view of a city in Cities Skylines 2
The minimum and recommended requirements. Image via Colossal Order

There are two sets of requirements the developers have specified for Cities Skylines 2. One is the minimum hardware you need in your PC to run the game at a low resolution and frame rate while the other list is the recommended requirements you need to have a smooth experience.

Below, you can find both the minimum and recommended PC requirements to see where your hardware falls. These lists both come from the Steam page for Cities Skylines 2.

Cities Skylines 2 minimum requirements

  • OS: Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
  • Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K | AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 (4 GB) | AMD Radeon RX 480 (8 GB)
  • Storage: 60 GB available space
  • OS: Windows 10 Home 64 Bit | Windows 11
  • Processor: Intel Core i5-12600K | AMD Ryzenâ„¢ 7 5800X
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (10 GB) | AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16 GB)
  • Storage: 60 GB available space

As you can see, you need a fairly modern set of hardware to simply get Cities Skylines 2 up and running. However, the minimum requirements don’t call for anything too extreme, so most players should have the ability to play the game at launch.

If you want to rank your settings and view your city in the highest graphical fidelity possible, though, you need a PC that was built in the last few years, at least. An RTX 3080/6800 XT and CPUs that are a couple of generations old are the bare minimum required to run Cities Skylines 2 at a high resolution with all of the in-game settings turned up.

Most players will likely fall somewhere in the middle of the minimum and recommended requirements. If you’re a part of this crowd, then I suggest tinkering with your resolution and graphics settings at launch to see how many frames per second you can achieve. With a game like Cities Skylines 2, though, 60 fps should suit a majority of players.


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Author
Image of Joey Carr
Joey Carr
Joey Carr is a full-time writer for multiple esports and gaming websites. He has 6+ years of experience covering esports and traditional sporting events, including DreamHack Atlanta, Call of Duty Championships 2017, and Super Bowl 53.