Anyone Else Buying New PC for Civ7?

[Thugless]

Now the specs are out will try to buy a new PC so I can play Ultra.

I am due one and there is something about not having the settings all the way up when you first play a new Civ?

Won’t be cheap though. $2,800 odd AUD at those specs if you don’t build yourself.

 

[Leyrann]

Nope.

I'm just buying a new PC because I've now got the money and I've been dissatisfied with my current laptop basically since I first purchased it almost three years ago.

 

[Disgustipated]

The specs are out? What are they?

I'm certain my cpu and 32 gigs of ram are enough, my video card may need updating though.

 

[Thugless]

Check out the full list of PC system requirements for Sid Meier's Civilization VII here. Thanks for your patience everyone!

*Edit (Oct 4): We've updated the Minimum specs and Recommended graphics preset since this was first published to better reflect expected performance.

View attachment 705133

 

[kaspergm]

I was hoping I didn’t have to…

 

[Leyrann]

The specs are out? What are they?

I'm certain my cpu and 32 gigs of ram are enough, my video card may need updating though.

There's a stickied post on the topic.

Guess I'm not the only one who is in the habit of overlooking those...

 

[Futumch]

Now the specs are out will try to buy a new PC so I can play Ultra.

I am due one and there is something about not having the settings all the way up when you first play a new Civ?

Won’t be cheap though. $2,800 odd AUD at those specs if you don’t build yourself.

I bought a new computer last year so I'm sitting pretty as far as specs go. I'm also in Australia, I did a bit of research and bought from Scorptec, those guys are pretty good. The good thing about getting a new system now is all those sweet, sweet M.2 SSDs are getting ridiculously cheap.

Just an aside, there was an article in Tom's hardware the other day about how mass storage is looking to get to 60 TB - that's TERAbyte - hard drives by 2028. I can't even fathom that volume of space... : )

 

[Nikolai II]

Nope, my 3 year old PC should play on recommended and beyond just fine.

 

[stealth_nsk]

My 7 year old PC should handle this, but I have some concerns about HDD.

 

[shaglio]

I got laid off back in August. So if I don't get myself a jobby job soon, I won't even be buying Civ 7, let alone a new computer. And at a triple digit price, it's probably out of birthday gift range as well.

 

[Leyrann]

I got laid off back in August. So if I don't get myself a jobby job soon, I won't even be buying Civ 7, let alone a new computer. And at a triple digit price, it's probably out of birthday gift range as well.

You could see if you can convince three or four people to gift it to you together.

 

[Acepox]

Yeah this is basically going to be a 1500 dollar game for me lol

 

[Clubber Lang]

Time for a new P.C.

Any must-have advice?

 

[shaglio]

You could see if you can convince three or four people to gift it to you together.

If it came out last February, I could have asked for it for my big 50th birthday present. But, alas, 51 is “just another year.”

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I bought a new computer just under 3 years ago that should still be fine for Civ VII. What may push me to buy or upgrade next year is another game, the Anno 117 that is coming out sometime in 2025 - Anno 1800 caused me to buy the current computer I am using, because the Anno series is very CPU-intensive and RAM-hungry.

So at the moment no new computer, but I will be watching closely for the specs/requirements for some other games coming out in 2025 that may require me to at least upgrade.

 

[Lord Lakely]

It doesn't look like i'll need one, fortunately enough. Probably a new power supply and that's it rly.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Just realized I built my current PC 6 years ago.

I've upgraded the RAM once since then, but otherwise it's a champ. My RX 580 and Ryzen 5 2600X continue to handle everything I want it to and it looks like Civ 7 will be no exception.

 

[tedhebert]

Bought me a nice Alienware gig 2 months ago that allows me to go ULTRA on the specs

And no, it did not cost me over 6000-7000 $ as some have mentioned here, though it is NOT cheap at around $3000 Can...

 

[Riconatic]

Time for a new P.C.

Any must-have advice?

Very short opinion.
Get last gen AMD cpu and Nvidia GPU.

Little longer.
Sweet spot CPU last gen AMD 7800x3d
MB: can save some money with B650 chipset like msi mag tomahawk B650
Ram get good fast ram to go and last long like g.skill 6000 cl30 with amd expo support
Nvidia as good as you have money.

Extra tip: If amd releases next gen gpu soonish, there might be something there.

 

[Quintillus]

No, as I have a laptop that meets the recommended specs and is a bit less than two years old, but it's a fairly good time to buy/build one. Prices have cooled off quite nicely since the pandemic highs.

Time for a new P.C.

Any must-have advice?

The long version, which includes more about the "why", including some tradeoffs depending on your priorities.

For desktops:

Spoiler Ryzen 5000 X3D :

IMO the best value is the Ryzen 5700 X3D, or if you can find one for a similar price, the 5800 X3D. 8 cores, optimized for gaming, still quite powerful despite technically being two generations old. Really, any of the 8-core Ryzen 5000 CPUs are great options, but the X3D ones are ideal for gaming. The 5600 X3D (six-core) is not bad either although the 8-core ones have come down far enough in price that I'm not sure it would save a whole lot.

Ryzen 5000 also gives you cheap motherboards and cheap DDR4 memory, while still being able to use fast NVME SSDs (if not the very fastest ones, but those are overkill anyway). There are probably some good deals in prebuilt Ryzen 5000 systems too.

Ryzen 7000 is future-proof if you are willing to upgrade parts yourself; AMD is supporting upgrades for Ryzen 7000 systems until... 2026? 2027? Way longer than Intel does at any rate. But the tradeoff is higher costs upfront. Depends on whether you want the best value now, or likely the best long-term value with upgrades factored in.

If you live somewhere that needs air conditioning, that's another reason to favor AMD: Intel's chips are much more power-hungry. AnandTech tested Intel's latest 14000 chips against AMD's 7000 chips, and the results are not good for team blue:

It's a little better for Intel than it used to be (14600 vs 13600), but AMD still eats their lunch when it comes to energy efficiency. See here for previous-generation testing; AMD's 5800 X3D still beats Intel's latest competition despite the 7800 X3D being much more efficient. Higher energy efficiency also means less fan noise. It's the #1 reason that whether you want the best value upfront or the long-term upgradeability, I'd favor the AMD option. A marginal increase in performance for drastically increased power consumption isn't worth it.

For laptops:

Spoiler Consider Aftermarket Upgrades :

Ryzen 5000 mobile is pretty great too, I've been running a 5800H in my laptop and have no complaints. Ryzen 5800H + Radeon 6600M = good battery life and good performance at a fairly low cost, it took a decade plus but AMD finally figured out how to build laptops with good battery life.

The "soft" aspects of the laptop - keyboard, touchpad, palm rest, fan noise - will factor in, as well as ports/battery life... my philosophy is consider the whole package, not just the specs. Several years ago I went with a GTX 1050 laptop instead of a GTX 1060 laptop at a similar price because the "soft" aspects were better in the one with a weaker GPU. For me, it was the right decision.

Some manufacturers (most egregiously Apple, but by no means exclusively Apple) charge an arm and a leg for RAM and disk upgrades. You can save a fortune by upgrading these yourself, including on laptops. I paid $100 + tax for 64 GB of DDR4 for my laptop in late 2022. Today it's about $126, but that's still a great deal. DDR5 costs 40-50% more. You'll have to look at the manual and make sure it's upgradeable before buying if you plan to do this, but it can save literally hundreds of dollars depending on how much disk space and RAM you want.

SSDs are as cheap as $60 for 1 TB. Some laptops support a second SSD, or replacing the original one. Apple charges $400 for an extra 1 TB on its MacBookPro. Dell's G15 ties storage upgrades to a CPU upgrade that very few will need in the Intel version, and charges $800 for it - but has two SSD slots which are user upgradeable. For the cost of a $30 iFixit kit, you can save a fortune - and at those prices you can still save a fortune by paying your local store to do the upgrade for you.

It's similar to being able to do your own auto work, versus having an independent mechanic, versus paying the dealer. All options make sense in various cases, but it's good to know that there are options beyond just paying the dealer whatever their sticker price is.

GPUs

Spoiler Don't Spend a Fortune (Unless You Want To) :

The high end is ridiculously expensive, and in general you'll pay more for nVIDIA at the same level of performance due to their reputation of making the best GPUs. You can get a recommended-spec RX 6600 for $210, so there's no need to spend a fortune. Avoid the RX 6400 though, that was a pandemic-era compromise-to-increase-supply GPU and has too many compromises to make sense nowadays.

I'd avoid the Intel GPUs if you plan to play games other than Civ. They're still fairly new and had a lot of teething problems when they came out with glitches due to buggy drivers - probably improved by now, but not to AMD/nVIDIA levels. Presumably they'll work well with Civ VII since they're officially supported, but looking at $190 for the A750 versus $210 for the RX6600, it's definitely worth the extra $20 if you plan to play other games as well.

For nVIDIA, the 3050 is about 25% weaker than the RX 6600, though about 20% cheaper, but still below "Recommended". The 3060 is probably slightly faster, but 20-25% more expensive. Hence why I'd generally favor AMD. Although my local store has a screaming deal on a (refurbished) EVGA RTX 2080 for $240 ($275 with two-year warranty), so you may find a good deal on a previous-gen card.

NVME SSD is highly recommended (more so for general responsiveness than Civ VII specifically), but IMO there's no need to chase the high end there, basically any NVME SSD = great responsiveness. I also favor capacity over speed in RAM. At today's prices, if you aren't paying a premium on a pre-built, there's no reason to go with less than 32 GB.

And power supplies, yeah, if you're building your own, don't go with a no-name one to save money. You want it to not fail, but if it does fail, you want it to fail gracefully and not fry all of the other components. $20 more on a name-brand PSU is like $20 of insurance against potential failure, which is fairly cheap compared to the likely cost of the whole system.