Borderlands 4 system requirements demand 8 CPU cores and 8 GB of VRAM but the reality is probably a bit more forgiving than that

After all the is-it-isn't-it $80 dollars drama (turns out it's $70 base price, which still isn't exactly cheap), the next Borderlands 4-related financial crisis has hoved into view. Just how much cash will you need invested in your rig to play the thing in all its cell-shaded glory? Well, now we know thanks to the official minimum specifications being posted on Borderlands 4's Steam page.

Up front and centre, several minimum requirements stand out. You're going to need at least eight CPU cores, 8 GB of VRAM, and Nvidia RTX 2070 or AMD 5700 XT, 16 GB of RAM and finally an SDD rather than an HDD.

Before you panic, despite these being listed as "minimum" requirements it's unlikely they are all actually required to run the game. By way of example, if these specs are to be believed, a brand new AMD Ryzen 5 9600X CPU isn't good enough. That's a very good budget gaming chip and it's highly implausible that it's incapable of running Borderlands 4.

Whether the specs really mean support for eight software threads, which a four-core CPU with multi-threading support would cover, or whether developer Gearbox is engaging in some bottom covering in order to make user support a bit simpler isn't entirely clear.

Whatever, there may be some flexibility in the other "minimum" specs, too. The Nvidia RTX 2070 supports ray tracing, for instance, but the AMD 5700 XT does not. So, clearly a GPU with hardware ray tracing isn't required, which implies that older Nvidia GPUs, like a GTX 1070, may still work.

That said, the 8 GB of VRAM and 16 GB of RAM may be more rigid requirements. Where the SSD storage requirement fits into all this is harder to call, but with any luck y'all have SSDs at this stage, anyway.

As for Borderlands 4's recommended specs, those are a teensy bit scary. Now you're looking at 32 GB of RAM, a Core i7 12700 or Ryzen 7 5800X, an RTX 3080 or RX 6800 XT, and 12 GB of VRAM.

The specs don't go into any detail as to what you can expect with a "minimum" or "recommended" rig in terms of resolutions, refresh rates or graphics settings. But we'll hazard a guess that minimum means 1080p, medium setting and circa 60 fps. Well, hopefully anyway.

Borderlands 4 is out on September 12, so it's still quite a ways off, giving you a little time to scrape some pennies together if you're not hitting those minimum specs. In the meantime, you can also catch up with all our Borderlands 4 coverage here.