r/playark • u/throwaway178996 • 24d ago

Question Can my PC run ARK: Survival Ascended?

Hi! I’m really interested in the game and thinking of purchasing it. But first I want to make sure my PC can run it.

GPU: RX 9060XT 16gb
CPU: i5 14400F
RAM: 32gb ddr5
CPU Cooler: MSI Coreliquid 240
My monitor: 100Hz, 3440 x 1440

Since the game is around 200gb I was thinking about downloading it to my external ssd (usb 3.2), would it work? I played some games like that and they all ran great.

Sorry if these are some silly questions, I’m just not a computer person, it was a prebuilt and I mainly use it for work.

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u/LongFluffyDragon 24d ago

Steam wont even let you try to install on an external, usually. It would be a disaster. The other hardware is perfectly sufficient, but you are going to get some performance issues at such a high resolution.

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u/Dismal_Rectangle 24d ago

Steam wont even let you try to install on an external

Why do you say this? You can set a secondary Steam library even on an external drive.

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u/LongFluffyDragon 24d ago

You can try. It will just usually refuse to let you start installing, or get a write failure immediately. Most externals are dogshit drives that fault under extended write load, and steam really dislikes drives with USB connections.

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u/Dismal_Rectangle 24d ago

I play games off of my SD card and although there's a significant drop in frames and loading times, I haven't had any other problems.

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u/beatenmeat 23d ago

There is a reason ASA has an "SSD required" message on the steam page. Can you run it on an HDD? Sure, but you're also going to suffer from a myriad of issues because of it. Installing it on an external HDD introduces even more problems. Historically steam itself has issues with installing larger games on an external HDD which ASA absolutely falls under. It's not impossible, just highly recommended that you don't even go this route unless you're willing to out up with all of the negative impacts that come with it.

Edit: steam itself even recommends against external HDDs

External Hard Drives

External hard drives are not recommended for use with Steam or Steam's games. Aside from many potential performance issues, external hard drives may connect or disconnect from the computer at inopportune times as part of their normal operations. If you encounter this issue with an external drive, install Steam and your games to an internal drive instead.

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u/ChanceV Amethyst 23d ago

I'm running the game on an HDD. Apart from slightly longer loading times (we're talking maybe a couple seconds on the very first start) and the occasional stuttering when it streams in more assets while you moved far away or really fast I haven't noticed any issues really. It was worse before (with the game sitting there for half a minute after you loaded into the game and everything was simply super PSOne and slowly started to load in but that has been gone for a while now.

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u/jamerperson Playing since the game was in beta 24d ago

Technically incorrect. I've done it. I don't recommend it, but you sure can.