Bungie have finally announced the date for Destiny 2’s PC beta, along with the system requirements your rig’s going to need to get in on the MMOFPS action. But if it doesn’t quite measure up you’ve still got a month ‘til the beta starts, giving you ample time to build yourself a new Destiny 2 PC.
Read more: check out our in-depth guide to everything Destiny 2 on the PC.
Destiny 2 isn’t actually the most demanding of PC games and that’s all down to its console heritage. In terms of processor, Bungie claim a four-year-old, dual-core chip will be the bare minimum, with a straight quad-core as the recommended spec. On the GPU side, they’re talking about the minimum graphics silicon being a 2GB GTX 660 / GTX 1050 or 2GB AMD HD 7850, and the recommended cards as either a GTX 970 / GTX 1060 or R9 390.
That all means we can put together a Destiny 2 PC capable of nailing those demands for a lot less that you might expect – especially now AMD have released a genuine quad-core CPU for dual-core cash in the new Ryzen 3 1300X.
_______________________________________________
CPU
AMD Ryzen 3 1300X – $291 bundle| £125
In the US, Newegg are offering this CPU in a
bundle with a motherboard and RAM.
Motherboard
Asus/Gigabyte B350 – $291 bundle | £88
In the US, Newegg are offering this motherboard
in a bundle with the CPUand RAM.
Memory
8GB ADATA DDR4 – $291 bundle | £51
In the US, Newegg are offering the RAM in a
bundle with the CPU and motherboard.
Graphics card
Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti – $145 | £132
Storage
250GB Samsung 850 EVO – $105 | £99
Chassis
Corsair Carbide 100R – $50 | £48
Power supply
Corsair VS500/VS550 – $45| £40
Total $636 | £583
_______________________________________________
That build will top the minimum specs for Destiny 2, but you could save a lot more going for a standard hard drive instead of a capacious SSD, or a weaker PSU, or a single stick of DDR4 memory. We wanted to create a gaming PC that wouldn’t just give you the bare minimum, but would also be a machine that could offer a decent upgrade path and quality out-of-the-box performance, too.
That said, if you’re happy to spend a little more, there are some tempting upgrades you could make that will net you higher frame rates in all your games.
The graphics card is the part of your system that will make the biggest difference to your PC’s performance. But times they are tough in the GPU market. Cryptocurrency miners have smashed and grabbed all the AMD graphics cards you’d want to stick into a gaming rig, which has driven demand – and therefore pricing – through the roof.
We’re on the downward curve of all that now. But even with a host of second-hand cards now, finally, appearing on eBay, they’re still extortionately priced. They have potentially been thrashed within an inch of their lives while scrabbling to uncover some ethereal Ethereum, too. Not your best bet, then.
But switching out the GTX 1050 Ti for a GTX 1060 will make a massive difference to your rig. That’s true even if you go for the cheaper 3GB version of Nvidia’s most popular GPU. The 3GB version of the GTX 1060 can be picked up for $215 (£200) while the slightly speedier 6GB GTX 1060 will set you back $290 (£270).
This build will allow for an easy upgrade path on the CPU front too. The new Ryzen 3 processor is our pick as the best budget gaming chip right now, but for less than $100 extra you could get a $210 (£185) Ryzen 5 1600 with three times the thread-count of the 1300X.
Of course, if you want to run it at 60fps with the 4K resolution we toyed with at E3 this year, then you’re going to need a little extra GPU power. We played the PC version at 4K using a GTX 1080 Ti, which reportedly was configured to use the very highest graphical settings.
After a little light Destiny 2 PC technical analysis, however, we’ve got a feeling you might be able to hit 4K lower down the stack too. And hey, the consumer-facingAMD Vega GPUs will be out by then too…
After all this, if you’d rather check how your current PC will cope with the Destiny 2 beta, try our friends over atCan You Run It.