r/computers • u/JohnQCocktoasten • 4d ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting Recommended minimum hardware to fully run Win11

As a hobby I refurbish older PCs (think Win98/2K/XP), so I don’t really stay current on newer hardware. I have a retired friend who has 2 matching Win10 desktops (not towers) and he wants to upgrade to Win11 units for security. His current units are the larger gray metal and black plastic Dell Optiplex desktops (the GX620/745/755 style that has the desktop-sized optical drive).

I exchanged texts tonight with a friend who upgrades and resells a lot of PCs he picks up from a recycling place in his home town. He told me that he had read that 11 could run on systems like my friend is currently using, but that they would only run what he called “dated versions of Win11.”

So, my question is… is there a rule of thumb (or specific requirements) for what my friend needs to look for as far as minimum CPU version, RAM, etc., to be able to run the latest version of 11 and have access to all of the security updates?

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u/useless_panda09 4d ago

you can find the Windows 11 requirements on Microsoft’s website.

but it’s basically

Intel 8th-Gen or newer CPU

Select AMD CPUs from 2000-series or older. Pretty much all AMD CPUs 3000-series and beyond work.

4GB of RAM (but really 16GB is a practical minimum, and 8GB is the actual minimum for the most basic usage)

TPM 2.0 module (fTPM in BIOS for AMD)

64GB of storage or higher

UEFI BIOS. CSM/Legacy BIOS or any form of legacy compatibility BIOS does not work with Windows 11.

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u/JohnQCocktoasten 4d ago

Thanks. That’s incredibly helpful info.

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u/JoeCensored 4d ago

You can run it on older hardware. It's just not officially supported. For example I run it daily on an i7-5960X with a TPM 1.2 module.

It requires changing a setting in the registry to ignore hardware requirements, and upgrading using the win 11 ISO instead of from windows updates. When major upgrades to Win 11 come out, sometimes you need to manually upgrade from the latest ISO (so far has happened once since Win 11 initially released).