Can I Run Subnautica?
To figure out whether your PC can run Subnautica, you’ll initially need to know what components you have, playing close attention to the CPU, GPU, and RAM as these have the most significant impact on performance. Should you be unsure how to go about doing this, fret not as we’ve compiled an easy to follow step-by-step guide, which you can find right here.
With your PC specifications in hand, compare them to the minimum and recommended requirements for Subnautica that we’ve listed further down. While the minimum will get the game running, we suggest aiming for the recommended requirements, if at all possible. The logic is that if you exceed them, you’re less likely to encounter performance issues when running the game.
We aren’t all that taken with how tedious it can be to ascertain whether a PC is equipped to run this or that game. In that spirit and in an effort to simplify the task, we are developing a bespoke utility to scan any given PC for its constituent parts and return a detailed list of the components. It’s still under wraps as of writing, but we’ll publish an update when it’s ready.
Subnautica Game Details
- Release Date: January 23rd, 2018 (PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One)
- System Requirements: Low
- Genre: Open-world survival action-adventure game
- Developer: Unknown Worlds Entertainment
- Publisher: Unknown Worlds Entertainment
Developed by Unknown Worlds Entertainment, Subnautica is an open-world aquatic survival exploration game that takes place on the alien planet of 4546B. After crash landing in a life pod, the player is tasked with surviving by gathering resources, fighting off ferocious aquatic wildlife, and exploring the planet.
With a sprawling water world that includes cavernous depths, stunning coral reefs, and mysterious vestiges of an alien civilization, Subnautica is a game that grows in depth as the player descends lower into the uncharted waters of 4546B.
Through gathering and scavenging resources, players can craft ever better equipment to face life in the waters, including vehicles, technology, weapons, and ultimately full bases. The idea is to explore ever deeper to find rare resources. The player must also stay alive by hunting fish and finding sources of water while also avoiding the more aggressive inhabitants of the waters. Larger predators lurk the depths and the player is in for some surprises as Subnautica stellar narrative unfolds.
Subnautica Minimum Requirements
- CPU: Intel Haswell 2 cores / 4 threads @ 2.5Ghz or equivalent
- RAM: 4 GB
- HDD: 20 GB of storage space
- GPU: Intel HD 4600 or equivalent
- OS: 64-bit Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10
- DirectX: Version 11
- Screen Resolution: 720p
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
Subnautica Recommended Requirements
- CPU: Intel Haswell 4 cores / 4 threads @ 3.2Ghz or equivalent
- RAM: 8 GB
- HDD: 20 GB of storage space
- GPU: NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti or equivalent, 2GB VRAM
- OS: 64-bit Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10
- DirectX: Version 11
- Screen Resolution: 1080p
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
Optimal Hardware Suggestions
Going against the trend of sprawling open-world games requiring beefy builds to run, Subnautica is low on the system requirements scale, and Unknown Worlds Entertainment has done incredibly well to optimize the game for a wide variety of PCs.
The minimum requirements are geared towards anywhere between 20 and 30 FPS at 720p with the settings on low to medium. Much of how the game will perform within those parameters depends on factors specific to the PC being used, but tweaking the graphical settings can significantly improve the experience for users with lower-end PCs.
While the minimum requirements include an integrated GPU, we recommend opting for a dedicated card. Doing so will improve performance quite drastically and avoid frame rate drops during particularly heated action sequences.
The recommended requirements up to the performance to over 60 FPS with the resolution set to 1080p with the settings pushed to their limit. Finding a functioning NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti GPU brand new is near enough impossible these days, which goes to show how forgiving Subnautica is even at peak performance.
What Gaming PC Do We Recommend?
In line with what we mentioned above about using a dedicated GPU, we recommend our $600 build as a good starting point for playing Subnautica.
Not the most expensive build by any stretch of the imagination, it strikes a nice balance between performance and price thanks to the use of AMD components rather than pricier Intel and NVIDIA alternatives.
The build features an AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, AMD Radeon RX 580 GPU, 16 GB of 3200 MHz DDR4 RAM, and a 480 GB SSD. As you can see, these exceed the recommended requirements by a considerable margin. You can expect a seamless Subnautica experience with no performance issues.