The First Berserker: Khazan PC Hardware Guide
Official requirements explained
The official minimum for The First Berserker: Khazan is an Intel Core i3-6300 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 processor, a GeForce GTX 970, Radeon RX 580 or Arc A580 graphics card, 12GB of RAM and 70GB of storage. The recommended level raises this to an Intel Core i7-6700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600, a GeForce RTX 2070, Radeon RX 5700 XT or Arc A750, 16GB of RAM and the same 70GB of storage.
By today's standards, the minimum graphics cards sit in the older entry-level band. The GTX 970 and RX 580 are several years old, and the i3-6300 and Ryzen 3 1200 roughly match an Intel Core i5-4460 class of CPU. The recommended RTX 2070 and RX 5700 XT fall around the RTX 2060 Super tier, a mainstream 1080p-class choice, and the Ryzen 5 3600 is comparable to the older mainstream Ryzen 5 1600 band. In short, going from minimum to recommended roughly moves you up one or two generations on both GPU and CPU, which gives you more headroom at the intended settings.
The publisher lists no SSD requirement, only a note that the game needs 70GB. The RAM gap is 12GB versus 16GB, so if you are on 12GB, moving to 16GB is the simplest safe upgrade.
Small detail: the publisher's listings do not separately specify a higher tier for storage, so 70GB applies to both levels.
Recommended builds for three budgets
The entry budget pairs a GeForce GTX 1660 Super or RTX 3050 with a Ryzen 5 3500X or Core i5-10400F and 16GB of RAM. The aim is to comfortably hit the official recommended tier, which suits players who want to spend less and can accept medium-low settings.
The mainstream budget centres on the RTX 2060 Super, RTX 2070, RX 5700 XT or RX 6600 XT, paired with a Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i5-10400 and 16GB of RAM. This is where most players get the best value: the graphics card sits right in the recommended band, the game can run at medium-high settings, and there is room to upgrade later.
The high budget uses an RTX 4070, RX 7800 XT or RTX 3080 Ti with a Ryzen 7 5700X, Core i7-11700K or Ryzen 5 7500F and 16GB of RAM. This clearly exceeds the recommended requirement and suits players who want higher resolution, higher settings, or a machine that will last without an upgrade.
These pairings are estimates based on where each part sits relative to the official tiers, not measured results.
Graphics settings with the biggest impact
In action role-playing games with busy environments, the settings that usually cost the most are shadows, volumetric lighting and fog, ray tracing if it is offered, and the density of crowds, simulation and effects during big fights. Shadows and volumetrics are heavy and change constantly on screen, so they are often the best place to claw back performance.
Texture quality is a good setting to keep high. It mainly uses graphics memory rather than processing power, so as long as your card has enough VRAM, raising textures rarely slows the game down noticeably. View distance can usually be dropped a notch or two with less visible loss than shadows.
If the game offers DLSS, FSR or XeSS, these upscalers render at a lower internal resolution and reconstruct a sharper image. In general, enabling one trades a little image fidelity for smoother play on the same card. Which one to use depends on your graphics card brand.
Laptops and handheld PCs
Laptop graphics chips often share a name with desktop parts, such as an RTX 3060 laptop versus a desktop RTX 3060, but their power limits and cooling are usually different, and laptop versions tend to deliver less. When judging a laptop, check its listed graphics power (TGP) and cooling design rather than trusting the model name alone. Laptops also throttle under long heavy loads, so plug in, use a cooling pad, and keep settings at medium or lower for stable play.
Handheld PCs such as the Steam Deck or ROG Ally are full PC platforms in a portable form. Whether the game runs smoothly depends on the built-in processor and graphics performance and whether it can hold steady in a low-power mode. Their screens are usually lower resolution, so lower settings combined with upscaling can balance image quality and battery life.
We have no Steam Deck verification data for this game, so we cannot give a specific compatibility rating; the points above are general guidance only.
Storage and memory
The official listing asks for 70GB of storage. Leave room for that plus future updates. The publisher does not require an SSD, but an SSD noticeably shortens loading and area transitions, so if you can, use one. A hard drive will run the game, but loading times will be longer.
For memory, the minimum is 12GB and the recommended is 16GB. Use dual-channel, meaning two matched sticks, which gives better bandwidth and helps overall smoothness. If you currently have one stick, adding a second for dual-channel often helps more than simply adding capacity.
Graphics card VRAM matters too, because it determines whether textures and other assets can stay resident on the card. If VRAM runs short at high texture settings, you may see late texture loading or stutter, so weigh VRAM alongside the other specs when choosing a card.