Microsoft is doubling down on Windows 11 hardware requirements

In a recent AMA, Microsoft doubled down on its hardware requirements for Windows 11

Technology moves at a breakneck pace and sometimes that means older hardware is left in the dust as companies push towards more advanced systems.

Windows 11 is Microsoft's next big operating system, coming six years after Windows 10. It has a new look, new features but more importantly, new hardware requirements.

To be fair, the Redmond giant has always strived to support older systems the best they can. The minimum requirements for Windows 10 were a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM for 32-bit or 2GB of RAM for 64-bit and 20GB of hard drive space and a DirectX 9 GPU with a monitor that supported a Super VGA resolution (800x600).

Now that is a fair barrier to entry given the number of advancements that happened before Windows 10 launched. Windows 11 is revaluating those requirements. In comparison, Windows 11 requires a dual-core 1GHz processor (2nd Gen. AMD Ryzen or higher and 8th Gen. Intel Core processor or higher), 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, DirectX 12 GPU with WDDM 2.0 with a monitor that supports HD (720p) or higher, UEFI or Secure Boot firmware and a motherboard with TPM 2.0 support.

That seems like a steep climb between operating systems until you realise that it has been six years since Windows 10 first hit our PCs and in that time, the PC landscape has changed massively.

In a recent AMA (Ask Microsoft Anything) Microsoft's Aria Carey doubled down on these choices but emphasised that the new requirements seemed higher because they wanted to ensure compatible devices are more productive, have a better experience and have better security.

Microsoft will be putting safeguards in place to ensure a system meets the minimum requirements needed to run Windows 11. The company said that they will be able to identify if a PC was compatible with Windows 11 and will only offer the option to upgrade to systems that meet the minimum requirements.

“We’re still going to block you from upgrading your device to an unsupported state since we really want to make sure that your devices stay supported and secure,” said Carey in the AMA.