| Hardware Requirements |
PC-BSD has moderate hardware requirements and commonly uses less resources than its commercial counterparts. Before installing PC-BSD on your computer, make sure you meet the minimum requirements.
Minimum System Requirements
At a bare minimum, you need to have the following computer hardware in order to install PC-BSD:
- Pentium II or higher
- 512 MB RAM
- 4GB of free hard drive space
- Network card
- Sound card
Recommended System requirements
The following are the minimum recommended requirements. The faster your computer hardware, the better your computing experience:
- Pentium 4 or higher
- 1024 MB of RAM
- 20GB of free hard drive space (if you will be installing KDE, GNOME, or lots of software)
- Network card
- Sound card
- NVIDIA 3D accelerated video card
You can never have too much RAM, so install as much as you can afford. To play modern video games, you should use a fast CPU. If you want to create a collection of tunes and movies on your computer, you will want a large hard disk drive which can be internal or external.
Supported Processors
PC-BSD should install on any system containing a 32-bit (also called i386) or 64-bit (also called amd64) processor. Despite the amd64 name, a 64-bit processor does not need to be manufactured by AMD in order to be supported. The FreeBSD Hardware Notes list the i386 and amd64 processors known to work.
Supported 64 bit Processors
PC-BSD will install on 64-bit systems containing the following processors:
- AMD Athlon™, including 64, XP, 64 X2, FX
- AMD Opteron™
- AMD Sempron
- AMD Turion 64, AMD Turion 64 X2
- all multi-core Intel Xeon™ processors except Sossaman
- single-core Intel Xeon processors Nocona, Irwindale, Potomac, and Cranford
- Intel Pentium®, including M, D, and Extreme Edition
- Intel Core
- Intel Pentium® D
- Intel Pentium 4
- Intel Celeron D
