Borderlands 3: PC requirements and the PC you need

About Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 is a co-op first-person shooter with role-playing elements from Gearbox Software. You pick from four new Vault Hunters, each with special skills, and blast your way across several planets against the Calypso twins, a pair of villainous streamers leading a cult. Like the earlier games, it is packed with randomly generated guns and comic-book humour. It can be played alone or in co-op online, with cross-play. It is rated PEGI 18. The makers recommend a GTX 1060 or RX 590 and 16 GB of memory, so a mid-range gaming PC runs it well.

What Borderlands 3 needs

In plain words: to play at all it needs almost any graphics, even the graphics built into the processor, and to play it well the makers suggest a mid-range graphics card from a few years ago, with 16GB of memory.

A low-spec PC or a high-spec PC?

The gap between the minimum and recommended spec is modest, so a mid-range gaming PC gives a good experience.

On a PC that only just meets the minimum, the game will start and play, but on low settings: simpler shadows and textures, shorter view distances and fewer frames each second, so fast moments can feel less smooth. A 1080p screen is the sensible match.

On a PC that meets or beats the recommended spec, you can turn the settings up: sharper textures, proper shadows and lighting, more detail in the distance, and a smoother picture. A stronger PC also lets you use a sharper 1440p or high-refresh screen.

Questions about Borderlands 3 on PC

How we match: we compare the graphics card and the memory in each PC with the makers' spec, because those decide most of how a game runs. For very new or demanding games, ask us and we will check the processor too. More help: graphics cards explained, how much RAM, which screen.