Windows 11 and Copilot+ PC Hardware Requirements and Recommendations (24H2)

Windows 11 has stricter hardware compatibility requirements than its predecessor that artificially limit which PCs can be upgraded from Windows 10.

That said, Microsoft’s minimum requirements for the PC’s microprocessor, RAM, and storage remain unrealistically low. Interestingly, a new class of PC called Copilot+ PC introduces more realistic hardware requirements that more closely map to our recommendations for any Windows 11 PC. You can’t upgrade to a Copilot+ PC, you have to buy a new PC. But if your existing PC doesn’t match the processor, RAM, and storage requirements for Copilot+ PC, it might be time for a new machine. Or at least some component upgrades.

Copilot+ PC is Microsoft marketing at its finest, and it’s understandable if you’re confused by the term. All Windows 11 PCs offer the Copilot app, which works its AI magic using cloud-hosted services. Copilot+ PC indicates that the PC has powerful hardware accelerated AI capabilities that work on-device (not via the cloud). Other than the branding and the AI association, Copilot and Copilot+ PC are unrelated.

Additionally, certain Windows 11 features require additional hardware capabilities. This, at least, is reasonable.

Understand the Windows 11 hardware requirements

To upgrade to or use Windows 11, your PC must include:

A compatible microprocessor. Windows 11 requires a 64-bit 1 GHz or faster microprocessor or a System on a Chip (SOC) with two processor cores or more. But not any processor will do: Instead, Windows 11 only supports very specific, newer generation microprocessors. Generally speaking, this means an 8th Gen Intel Core processor (or its AMD equivalent) or newer, which dates back to late 2017. Regardless, we recommend the newest and fastest microprocessor you can afford.

RAM. 4 GB or more. We recommend at least 16 GB of RAM, but 32 GB is even better.

Storage. 64 GB or more, and it can be hard disk (HDD), eMMC, or SSD storage. We recommend 512 GB or more of fast SSD (solid-state drive) storage or more.

Firmware. UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) with Secure Boot enabled.

Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0. This is a hardware-based security solution and it was the subject of much consternation for enthusiasts when Windows 11 first debuted in 2021. That said, TPM 2.0 chips have been broadly available in PCs for many years, so this bar is easily met.

Graphics. DirectX 12 or newer compatibility with a WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) 2.0 driver. This compatibility is common today and will pose no issues for almost any PC.

Display. HD (720p) or higher with a physical size of at least 9-inches (diagonally), with 8-bits per color channel. We recommend a Full HD+ (1920 x 1200) or higher resolution display with a 14-inch or larger screen size for a laptop (27-inches or more for a desktop PC) and a 16:10 aspect ratio as a more reasonable baseline. A 4K+ display (3840 x 2400) or better is a noticeable improvement.

Understand the Copilot+ PC hardware requirements

In 2024, Microsoft and its PC maker partners introduced a new class of PC called Copilot+ PC. This specification is aimed at promoting Microsoft’s strategic aims with Artificial Intelligence (AI) while hopefully triggering a PC upgrade cycle.

For customers, Copilot+ PCs deliver Windows 11 features that won’t be made available to those with more pedestrian PCs. These include:

• Automatic super resolution (Auto SR). Auto SR lowers the resolution of a game to increase the frame rate while using AI to upscale the perceived graphics quality. This feature is specific to Snapdragon X-based Copilot+ PCs running Windows 11 on Arm.
• Click to Do. This feature displays an overlay over the screen and suggests quick actions you can perform on any text or image it finds. Initial actions include rewrite, summarize, edit, and explain text, and more for text, and Visual Search, background blur, object erase, and more for images.
• Cocreator, Generative fill, and Generative erase in Microsoft Paint. Cocreator works like Image Creator in Microsoft Designer but works on-device and creates an image based on your text prompts and in-app drawings. And Generative fill and erase help you edit images to add content to an image and remove unwanted objects.
• Image creator, Restyle image, and Super resolution in Photos. The Windows 11 Photos app gains three additional capabilities when run on a Copilot+ PC. Image creator uses AI to generate new images that can be integrated into your photos Restyle Image uses AI to reimagine your photos using unique styles. And Super resolution upscales low-quality or low-resolution photos into high-quality images at 4K resolution.
• Real-time language translation in Live Captions. Copilot+ PC expands on the in-box Live Captions capabilities in Windows 11 by adding subtitles with real-time language translation.
• Recall. This innovative opt-in feature records your activities on the PC so you can later find things you’d done or remember things you’d forgotten. It offers a timeline of your activities and, yes, all the expected privacy and security controls.
• Search. Copilot+ PCs offer enhancements to the system Search feature that let you describe the content you’re looking for rather than requiring you to know a document or photo’s file name.
• Windows Studio Effects. While Windows 11 offers basic Windows Studio Effects when run on any PC with an NPU, those with Copilot+ PCs will get the entire array of effects, including Portrait light, Eye contact, and Creative effects.

We will document all these features in this book by the end of 2024.

PCs that meet the Copilot+ PC specification require even newer SoCs than Windows 11 does broadly–the oldest dates to mid-2024–plus a powerful neural processing unit (NPU), more (and faster) RAM, and more (and faster) storage. Regardless of Microsoft’s goals, we feel that this specification represents a much more realistic set of hardware requirements than those for Windows 11.

Those requirements include:

A compatible system on a chip (SoC). To receive the Copilot+ PC specification–and thus the unique features it provides in Windows 11–the PC must ship with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X (Arm-based), AMD “Zen 5” (Ryzen 9000 for desktop, Ryzen AI 300 for mobile), or Intel Core Ultra Series 2 (“Lunar Lake”) or newer SoC.

NPU. The SoC in the PC must include an NPU that delivers at least 40 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of hardware-accelerated AI performance.

RAM. 16 GB of DDR5/LPDDR5 RAM or more. We recommend 32 GB of RAM for a Copilot+ PC.

Storage. 256 GB SSD or UFS solid-state storage. We recommend 1 TB of fast SSD storage or more for a Copilot+ PC.

Of note, you can’t build a Copilot+ PC or upgrade an existing PC to gain the unique Copilot+ PC features. Instead, you have to buy a new PC that meets these specifications and is branded as a Copilot+ PC. For now, these PCs are all laptops and other portable PCs, but there will soon be desktop Copilot+ PC models in the market as well.

Find out if you can upgrade your Windows 10 PC to Windows 11

If some of the information in the previous section is confusing, no worries: Microsoft offers an app called PC Health Check that will examine your PC and tell you whether it’s compatible with Windows 11. If it isn’t, PC Health Check will explain why.

If your Windows 10-based PC is up-to-date, Microsoft will have installed PC Health Check on it already, so you can use Search in the Taskbar or Start menu to find and run the app.

PC Health Check is straightforward: Just click the “Check now” button to see whether your PC meets Windows 11’s hardware requirements. If it does, you will be told so.

What if your PC is incompatible?

Depending on what the PC Health Check app reports, you will have some choices to make. Some requirements, like Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 may in fact be present in your PC but not enabled, so it may be worth booting into the PC’s system firmware–which some still call the BIOS–to see whether you can enable them.

In other cases, you can upgrade an out-of-date component. Or, you may have to buy a new PC.

Alternatively, you can follow the instructions in Install Windows 11 on Unsupported Hardware to work around Microsoft’s blockers. We don’t necessarily recommend this for everyone, but some of these restrictions feel arbitrary.

Features in Windows 11 that require additional hardware support

Aside from the unique capabilities provided by Copilot+ PCs, many Windows 11 features come with additional hardware requirements of their own. You can find the full list on the Microsoft website, but here are some that are new in Windows 11:

5G support. 5G data via cellular broadband requires a compatible 5G module.

Auto HDR. Requires an HDR-capable monitor.

DirectStorage. This gaming technology requires an NVMe SSD, support for the Standard NVM Express Controller driver, and a DirectX12 graphics card (GPU) with Shader Model 6.0 support.

Mute/Unmute from the Taskbar. This useful feature requires a web camera, microphone, and some form of audio output (speakers, headphones, and the like). It also has an additional software requirement in that this feature is only compatible with some apps.

Presence. This technology is used to wake up your PC as you approach it and put it to sleep when you walk away. It requires specific presence sensors to do its magic.

Snap. Snap’s three-column layout option requires a monitor with a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels or greater.

Wi-Fi 7. Windows 11 version 24H2 is the first version of Windows to support Wi-Fi 7.