Cities Skylines 2 system requirements

The Cities Skylines 2 minimum and recommended system requirements ensure the sky really is the limit when running this city-sim on your gaming PC.

An overview photo of a big cityscape, featuring the Cities: Skylines 2 logo in the middle.

What are the Cities: Skylines 2 system requirements? The eight years separating the original city builder and its sequel naturally mean you’ll need much more powerful hardware to run Cities: Skylines 2. However, before thinking your city building dreams are done for, you’ll be relieved to hear the PC specs aren’t too demanding.

To meet the Cities: Skylines 2 minimum requirements you’ll need an Intel Core i7 9700K, or an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X processor, paired with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 470 GPU. Don’t forget 8GB of RAM too. That’s all very easy to achieve, even with a budget, entry-level build, as you’re looking at nowhere near the best graphics card or best gaming CPU to enjoy city-building satisfaction.

Here are the Cities: Skylines 2 system requirements:

Minimum Recommended
OS Windows 10 64-bit Windows 10/11 64-bit
CPU Intel Core i7 6700K
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
Intel Core i5 12600K
AMD Ryzen 5 5800X
RAM 8GB 16GB
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 780
AMD Radeon RX 470
Nvidia RTX 3080
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
Storage  TBC TBC

Colossal Order hasn’t given us an indication of what level of performance these specs will guarantee. Although, considering how old the hardware is, we believe this will place you firmly in the realm of needing to opt for low settings.

The Cities: Skylines 2 recommended specs certainly demand a lot from your set-up, but it’s understandable given the amount of detail packed into the game. The developers recommend an Intel Core i5 12600K or AMD Ryzen 5 5800X paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU and at least 16GB of RAM.

That’s a big step up from the minimum specs, and one that we’re not used to seeing, but it guarantees a substantial performance boost. Again, we don’t know for sure what frame rate and resolution the recommended specs are good for, but we think it’s a safe bet to presume something in the realm of 60fps using high settings in 1080p.

The Cities: Skylines 2 size has yet to be officially revealed. Cities: Skylines only requires 4GB, but as this sequel looks to be even more sprawling and detailed than its predecessor, it’ll likely have a larger footprint.

We don’t yet know if you’ll need a solid-state drive, or if you’ll be okay with an older set-up running an HDD, however, developer Colossal Order are likely to update this closer to the Cites: Skylines 2 release date.

Although it’s still a few weeks off launch, we’ve managed to put together a handy guide on Cities: Skylines 2 maps to give you an idea of where your magnificent metropolises will be built.

Take the Cities: Skylines 2 system requirements test over on PCGameBenchmark to answer the question… Can I run Cities: Skylines 2?