Valorant PC requirements: what your PC needs

The short answer

Five points decide whether your PC holds up under Valorant. Each one names its level in the text, so you see the stakes before you touch anything.

• Essential: compare your processor, graphics card and RAM with Riot's three lists (minimum, recommended, high-end).
• Essential: if Wi-Fi gives you trouble, try a network cable.
• Essential: with little RAM or few cores, close the applications you do not need.
• Worth testing: clean the machine and keep an eye on its temperatures.
• Advanced (experienced players): according to Intel, XMP may void the manufacturer's warranty; CPU overclocking voids it on AMD parts. EXPO is named here without any claim.

The detail follows, from safest to riskiest. For operating system settings, open Windows for Valorant. For the in-game video options, see the graphics settings page.

Essential: no risk, check these first

Here you compare and verify; nothing gets taken apart. Start by finding your processor model, your graphics card model and how much RAM you have.

Compare your PC with the three tiers. Riot publishes three configurations. The names below are copied as Riot writes them.

Minimum, 30 FPS

Recommended, 60 FPS

High-end, 144+ FPS

The FPS figures are Riot's labels for each list; none of them is a measurement from your machine. If your PC sits between two tiers, you cannot deduce your smoothness from the tables. You have to play and watch.

Check the system. For Valorant, Riot asks for:

• Windows 10 build 19041 or later, or Windows 11, 64-bit.
• SSE 4.2 or AVX support, and DirectX 11.
• At least 1 GB of VRAM if your graphics card is dedicated.
• On Windows 11, TPM 2.0 and UEFI Secure Boot on top.
• No cloud gaming and no virtual machine: Riot does not support either.

Go wired if Wi-Fi gives you trouble. Riot writes that a cable makes the connection faster and more stable. If the problem stays, its page lists more steps: the Windows network troubleshooter, a public DNS server, the ipconfig commands. Be careful with DNS: Riot notes that some ISPs block third-party DNS servers, so write down your original settings before changing them.

Watch the background. Gamertop advises paying attention to it with 8 GB of RAM or less, or a processor with fewer than 6 cores, and closing non-essential applications while you play. It names Chrome, which uses a lot of memory. This tip comes from a third-party site, not from Riot: treat it as common sense, with no gain figure attached.

Know the Multithreaded Rendering bar. This video setting asks for at least 8 GB of RAM, 2 GB of VRAM and a CPU with 8 cores, physical and virtual; Riot adds that many 4-core CPUs should work. So the 4 GB in the tables covers Valorant itself, not this setting. How to switch it on is covered on the graphics settings page.

Worth testing: reversible, effect varies

These steps can be undone, but nobody can promise what they change on your PC, so you measure before concluding.

Maintenance. Cybertek advises cleaning the fans, checking the case airflow and replacing the thermal paste if the PC is more than two years old. As a precaution, open the case with the PC off and unplugged. No source on this page says how many degrees a cleaning saves.

Temperatures to watch. Cybertek names HWiNFO for reading temperatures. Two published reference points exist:

• For Intel, the maximum junction temperature is usually between 100 and 110 °C depending on the model. When thermal control activates, the processor reduces frequency and power, and performance loss is possible.
• For NVIDIA, the maximum temperature is 90 °C for each of the nine GeForce RTX 40 Series cards in its comparison table.

These cover only part of the picture. The second applies to those nine models alone; for another card series or an AMD processor, this page has no figure. Look up your model's value with its maker.

How to judge the effect. Read your temperatures before the cleaning, then after, running the same activity. If nothing moves, put things back as they were: a cleaning with no visible effect only taught you that.

Advanced (experienced players)

Two settings belong here: the XMP memory profile and CPU overclocking. The risk is real. Writing down your original BIOS values only lets you put the settings back: it restores neither the warranty nor a damaged component. The settings that stop Valorant from starting are covered on the Windows page.

XMP (and EXPO)

• What it does: Intel presents XMP as overclocking DDR5 or DDR4 memory beyond the standard settings. EXPO is named here without any claim: no source on this page covers it.
• Measured gain: no reliable measurement published for Valorant.
• Risks: Intel warns that altering clock frequency or voltage may void product warranties and reduce stability, security, performance and the life of the processor and other components. Your warranty is therefore on the line.
• How to undo: in the BIOS, put the memory back on its standard settings, the ones you wrote down before the change.

CPU overclocking

• What it does: you run the processor, or its memory, outside the specifications its maker publishes.
• Measured gain: no reliable measurement published for Valorant.
• Risks: AMD states that this voids the applicable warranty and that users assume all risks: hardware failure or damage, reduced performance, data loss. That wording targets AMD processors and memory; for Intel, the warning about frequency and voltage is the one in the XMP entry.
• How to undo: restore the BIOS factory values, the ones you wrote down before the change.

Measure before and after: training next to Valorant

Once the machine is sorted, what remains is what you run alongside the game. The benchmark scenarios are played in KovaaK's (Voltaic x KovaaK's). This page cites no specs for KovaaK's: read its own before you change or buy hardware.

The benchmark sorts you into 3 levels, from Novice through Intermediate to Advanced. Budget 20 minutes per routine session. How many sessions you run depends on the intensity you pick: Challenger plans 1 with 10 deathmatches, Elite 2 with 15, Hardcore 3 with 20. For warm-ups, the generator builds sessions of 10 or 20 minutes. With several sessions in a day, your PC works for longer: as a precaution, take your temperature readings again during a training session.

To compare before and after a hardware change, replay the same benchmark scenario under the same conditions and look at your score, not at a promise.

As for the site's tools, the sens converter covers 6 games (Valorant, CS2, Apex, Overwatch 2, Call of Duty, Marvel Rivals), no account needed. Road2Radiant is free; only the Sensitivity Finder uses tokens. An account receives 25 tokens, and one Sensitivity Finder test costs 5 tokens.

What these checks do not change

A requirements list tells you whether Valorant starts and how smooth Riot ties your parts to. It says nothing about your crosshair, your positioning or your rank, and no component will earn you any of them. What these checks bring you varies from one machine to the next, and only your own test will tell.

To get started:

1. Compare your parts with Riot's three lists and with the system it asks for.
2. Switch to a cable if Wi-Fi bothers you, and close extra applications if your RAM or cores are tight.
3. Clean the machine and read your temperatures; touch XMP or overclocking only if you accept the risks listed above.

From here you can move on to Windows or go back to the section overview. To keep track of your aim from one week to the next, an account costs nothing. If you are coming from another shooter, the page for players switching FPS games is waiting.