Here are the PC specs you need

Dying Light 2 is available to play right now, but before you hit checkout, you’re going to want to know whether your PC can handle the Dying Light 2 system requirements.

Developer Techland has been very thorough with the PC specs, listing both the minimum and recommended requirements, while also factoring in ray tracing.

We reviewed Dying Light 2 and gave it a 4.5 out of 5 rating. In our verdict we said, “I’ve had a lot of fun with Dying Light 2, mainly dues to its fantastic parkour platforming and engaging story that can be shaped by your in-game decisions. Those hoping for a terrifying zombie slasher will likely be disappointed, but the thrill of escaping a zombie horde by hopping from rooftop to rooftop ensures this is still an exhilarating action game.”

So if you fancy buying Dying Light 2 on PC, keep reading on to make sure your system is up to spec.

Minimum requirements (ray tracing off)

Dying Light 2 developer Techland has interestingly split up up the system requirements with ray tracing turned on and off, with the advanced light-rendering technology proving to be very taxing on a PC.

Still, if you’re happy to play without ray tracing, and just want to know the minimum PC specs are, then check out the table above, which should allow you to play the game in 1080p at 30fps with low graphics settings.

The CPU requirements are surprisingly steep here, so you’ll need a fairly up-to-date processor. But all of the other components look pretty reasonable, so long as you’ve got 60GB of space on your hard drive.

We played Dying Light 2 with a Nvidia GTX 1080 GPU at a 1080p resolution with the highest graphics settings, and saw an average frame rate of around 50fps. This suggests you’re going to need a pretty powerful GPU in order to play at higher resolutions such as 4K.

Minimum requirements (ray tracing on)

If you’re lucky enough to have one of Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards, you’ll be able to activate ray tracing on Dying Light 2, which significantly enhances the lighting effects. This is a fairly big upgrade for a game that often switches between day and night.

Interestingly, Techland has suggested opting for the RTX 2070 instead of the RTX 2060 for the minimum ray tracing performance. This likely means the company isn’t confident that an RTX 2060 will be able to hit 30fps with ray tracing activated. That said, Dying Light 2 also supports DLSS, which uses artificial intelligence to boost the frame rate quality. This could be a decent workaround if you don’t want to upgrade your Nvidia RTX 2060.

Unfortunately, the jump up to ray tracing also means you’re going to need a more powerful CPU. Techland recommends at least an Intel Core i5-8600K or Ryzen 5 3600X, which are both fairly modern chips. These processors won’t improve the ray tracing performance, but will make your PC better equipped to deal with the demanding workload.

You’re also going to need to double the amount of RAM to 16GB, emphasising once again that ray tracing is extremely taxing on gaming PCs.

Recommended requirements (ray tracing off)

Adhering to the ‘minimum requirements’ may get Dying Light 2 up and running, but it won’t necessarily look great. If you want Dying Light 2 to look as good as possible in Full HD, but don’t want to bother with ray tracing, then this is the system requirements table you need to check out.

The required specs here are very similar to the previous, with identical CPU and RAM recommendations. The only difference here is that you don’t need a ray tracing compatible GPU, so you can opt for the more affordable Nvidia RTX 2060 or RX Vega 56 graphics cards.

I can vouch for this, as my GTX 1080 wasn’t quite powerful enough to hit the 60fps mark, although still manged to see a respectable average frame rate of 50fps.

This means that the recommended specs for playing in Full HD are actually more affordable than the minimum specs for ray tracing. I reckon this will be the best build for the majority of gamers who plan on gaming in 1080p.

Recommended requirements (ray tracing on)

For those of you who want the absolute best Full HD performance, while also having the GPU-intensive ray tracing feature activated, you’re going to need a very powerful rig.

Techland is recommending that you opt for the Nvidia RTX 3080, which is one of the most powerful (and expensive!) graphics cards currently on the market. It’s also extremely to find in stock due to the ongoing chip shortage. But if you want to play Dying Light 2 in Full HD at 60fps with ray tracing activated, this is apparently the GPU to go for.

The AMD CPU recommendation has also been upped to the Ryzen 7 3700X, although the Intel option has fortunately remained at the Core i5-8600K. This means the only component you’re going to need to spend a lot of money on here is the GPU.

Strangely, Techland hasn’t given any PC spec recommendations for playing Dying Light 2 in Quad HD or 4K. We managed to play Dying Light 2 in Quad HD with max graphics settings with a PC powered by the Nvidia GTX 1080. However, that resulted in an average frame rate of 35fps, which is less than ideal. With this in mind, you’ll need a high-end GPU in order to play this game in either Quad HD or 4K.

Keep an eye on Trusted Reviews for more upcoming coverage on Dying Light 2 Stay Human.