Does Your PC Have What it Takes to Install Windows 10 Home Edition?
Though there are a lot of new features included with Windows 10, the minimum system requirements havent taken a huge leap since the previous OS generation. As Microsoft says on their Windows 10 Preview system requirements page: "Basically, if your PC can run Windows 8.1, youre good to go. If youre not sure, dont worry—Windows will check your system to make sure it can install the preview."
The current requirements for Windows 10 Home and Pro are the same. These requirements are subject to some tweaks prior to the release of Windows 10, but dont expect any big changes.
Processor: 1 Gigahertz (GHz) or faster
RAM: 1 Gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
Free hard disk space: 16 GB
Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with a WDDM driver
A Microsoft account and Internet access
Processor
1GHZ is pretty light. If anyone has held onto the same system for the last 10 years, youre in luck here -- but its always best to have the most recent hardware for driver support. Chances are if youre currently running Windows Vista or higher your processor will handle 10 just fine.
RAM
1GB of RAM is a requirement just about everyone reading this article should already meet. Most systems built even around the time of XP have this much memory.
Hard Disk Space
Keep in mind 16GB isnt much, and we can guess thats only the initial space needed. Many of us are running 1TB or more by now anyway.
Graphics Card
DirectX 9 cards work here with a WDDM driver, which does cover most of the cards out there.
Microsoft Account and Internet Access:
It sounds like everyone using a Windows OS will need an Outlook account in the near future, lets hope our old Hotmail account still works. At least its free to get, so no worries here.
Recommendations
Remember the minimum requirements are just that, the bare minimum to run the software properly. It really depends on what you plan to do with your PC. Sure, for basic browsing these requirements might be all you need. But if you plan on gaming, editing videos, or simply want the best, then I would go with some higher powered options here, like SSDs for speed and boot times, a SATA HDD with 1TB or greater for storage, and a graphics card with DirectX 12 support.
For memory I would go with 8GB of RAM. For those leaning towards video editing, I would invest in large capacity SSDs to handle those large files and not have to take a break every time you move a project. 16GB of RAM will also go well to handle those larger projects.
As for CPU, I would go with either an AMD FX-8350 or Intel i5-4690K respectively. Combine that with a higher-end DirectX capable card, just in case you want to take advantage of Windows 10s new gaming-friendly features. Put it all together and youll have a machine ready to make the most out of Windows 10.
