Asylum System Builds: Fallout 4

Game Launches always bring up the question, “Is my system powerful enough to play XYZ?”.  The game developer helps us decipher this by publishing minimum and recommended system specs but, unless your systems matches exactly it is difficult to know if your CPU is powerful enough or if it might be time to get a new video card.

In this build I’m putting together a gaming system loosely based on the Fallout 4 system requirements with a few additions to make things interesting.

When it comes to DX11 and DX12 games the most important part of your build will be the video card.  Very little graphical processing is handled by the CPU but it still needs to be powerful enough to load the maps and send data to the GPU so speed is key.  The Fallout 4 specs called for a 4Ghz processor (Core i7 4790K), likely to handle game based physics calculations.  The EVGA GTX 970 will handle the physics calculations (PhysX) and should offload almost everything from the CPU.

Given this particular setup you could get by with the lower end Core i5 6600K.  Thing is the Core i7 6700K sells for less than $400.00 so the upgrade is well worth the price.  (that is unless an online retailer is price gouging)