Squadron 42 PC requirements: 16 GB RAM, 8 GB VRAM and Windows 11 minimum

Cloud Imperium opened Squadron 42’s Steam page today, October 10. The page gives a Q2 2027 release window and the game’s first official minimum PC requirements. This is the single-player campaign where you enlist as a rookie in the UEE Navy, and it won’t be light. It asks for Windows 11, 16 GB of RAM, a graphics card with 8 GB of VRAM and 150 GB of free space. Recommended specs are not listed yet.

Squadron 42 PC requirements

These are the requirements from the Steam page:

The page adds three more details:

• DirectX 12. It’s part of the minimum.
• A broadband internet connection, even though this is a single-player game.
• A Roberts Space Industries account. It’s required, and you can link it to your Steam account.

Only a Windows version is listed for now. The page has no Mac or Linux version.

Which GPUs clear the minimum

Cloud Imperium doesn’t name a specific card, only “DirectX 11.1 with 8 GB VRAM.” So canirun translates that line into a performance threshold based on benchmark scores and checks common GPUs against it.

From the cards we checked, the RTX 3060 and the RX 7600 clear the minimum. So do the RTX 4060, 3060 Ti, 3070, 4070, 5070 and 5080, plus the RX 9070 XT.

Other cards fall below the threshold, including the RTX 2060, the RTX 3050, the GTX 1660 Super, the Arc B580 and the RX 6600 XT. The GTX 1060 6GB, the GTX 1650 and the RX 580 sit further down.

RAM is simpler: if your PC has 8 GB, it falls below the 16 GB minimum.

One caveat: no recommended requirements exist yet, so no GPU shows as meeting them, because there is nothing to measure it against. For now the useful question is whether your rig clears the minimum. The game’s canirun page already uses these requirements.

What about Steam Deck?

Valve hasn’t rated Squadron 42 for Steam Deck yet. A spec-based estimate puts the Deck below the minimum, with an estimated grade of F. That is not a real-world test, just what the numbers on the Steam page suggest. You’ll find the details on the Squadron 42 Steam Deck page.

Can your PC run Squadron 42?

Here’s how your rig compares with what Squadron 42 asks for so far:

Game	Rec. GPU score	Rec. RAM	Min. RAM	Your PC
Squadron 42	—	—	16 GB	?

The full game page shows the result for your detected GPU and RAM.

Sources: Squadron 42 on Steam