As Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion inches closer, developer CD Projekt Red has warned PC players to test their cooling systems beforehand. In a tweet, lead scene programmer Filip Pierściński claimed that both the game’s paid expansion and the version 2.0 update will be heavy on CPU usage, essentially squeezing every bit of performance out of the chip. As such, a 90 percent workload on an 8-core processor is easily expected, which could lead to thermal throttling. It’s unclear as to what aspect of the update is making the game so CPU-demanding, but past patches heavily focused on ray-tracing features.
Before launch, the developer recommends running software like Cinebench to ensure that the cooling is optimal under heavy loads. For the uninitiated, the free application evaluates your PC’s hardware limits by putting it under sustained stress for a period of time to deduce how stable it is by giving you a score. It’s in no way close to a real-world scenario, but if your PC manages to push through the test without crashing, it generally should be able to deal with whatever you throw at it. Indeed, such comments led to players panicking that Cyberpunk 2077 could potentially melt their CPUs, with many replying to the original tweet with their PC specs to check first-hand if they’re in the safe zone.
Before release CP2077 2.0 and PL please check conditions of your cooling systems in PC. We use all what you have, so workload on CPU 90% on 8 core is expected. To save your time please run Cinebench or similar and check stability of your systems 😉https://t.co/TWOAkP0ONu
— Filip Pierściński (@FilipPierciski) September 11, 2023
To curb the concerns, Pierściński followed that up with another tweet, remarking that Phantom Liberty and version 2.0 update will ‘perform well’ on whatever hardware CD Projekt Red specified in their system requirements infographic. His intention was simply to highlight the importance of proper PC maintenance so that in case there’s some heat dissipation issue, the general performance isn’t affected. For reference, running Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty at the lowest settings will require an Intel Core i7-6700 or an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 processor, the latter of which comes with six cores. When compared to the original — and broken — version released in 2020, the game will rely on SSDs going forward, given it has been completely overhauled.
Phantom Liberty is a paid expansion that puts you on a high-stakes espionage mission to save the President of the New United States of America (NUS). As part of this, we’ll be working with FIA Agent Solomon Reed (Idris Elba) to break into the gated community of Dogtown and in time, learn about his intentions. The expansion launches alongside a significant 2.0 patch that fully overhauls the skill system and adds a maximum capacity for how many modifications your body can handle. Tech augments can be put into overdrive to surpass those limitations, albeit with some penalties to your overall health. It’s nowhere in the same realm as Cyberpsychosis seen in the Netflix anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, but there is some risk-reward factor to how you build your character.
CD Projekt Red has also got a Night City Wire episode planned for this Thursday, September 14 at 8:30pm IST in India/ 8am PT in the US. The event will be live-streamed on the official Cyberpunk 2077 YouTube and Twitch channels and will touch upon the new radio stations, gameplay changes, abilities, and some character details about Reed from Idris Elba himself.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty releases September 26, across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X. It also comes with the free version 2.0 update.