League of Legends isn’t very demanding: all you need to run it is a 2GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and around 8GB of storage space. Many people play it on old laptops and PCs, which is perfectly fine for recreational play. However, if you’re serious about climbing or even looking to become a pro, you’ll have to optimize your PC to ensure a lag-free experience. No matter how insanely fast your reactions are, if your system isn’t responding quickly enough, your KDA and MMR will suffer.
So, in this article, we’ll help you build the perfect PC for all of your ranked queue needs!
What does Riot recommend?
Riot’s official recommended specs include a 3GHz processor, at least 4GB of RAM, and 12GB of storage space, as well as a dedicated GPU with a minimum of 512MB of video memory. Of course, these are the minimum requirements if you’d like to run your game at the highest graphical settings. You can build a more powerful system if you’d like, but it won’t change our performance too much.
While your graphics and FPS rates are quite important for running the game smoothly, without a strong internet connection, it will all amount to nothing. You’ll need at least 6Mbps in regards to internet speed, with a maximum ping rate of 100-120.
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Purchasing a gaming PC might be overkill.
Buying a full-blown gaming PC just to play League of Legends is completely unnecessary, pro or not. That especially goes if you’re not particularly interested in gaming aside from League. It’s an overly expensive investment that simply wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Again, effective climbing takes more than just powerful PC specs: it takes time, effort, and willingness to learn. You don’t want to waste your money just to give up on your LoL journey later on. That’s why we recommend upgrading your existing PC according to Riot’s official specs. It’s the quickest and the most affordable way to get the performance you deserve.
Of course, if you’re already an avid gamer and have the budget for it, buying a gaming PC and setup is perfectly fine. If you decide to do so, we recommend doing tons of research to ensure you’re getting the quality you deserve.
Consider your specific needs and preferences.
Before you start buying computer parts, you’ll need to consider your own gaming preferences. For example, if you’d like to play at 2560×1440 resolution, you’ll need quality hardware to accompany it. The entire thing shouldn’t cost you more than 1000$, even if you’re planning on reaching the pro level at the game. Keep your focus on optimizing your GPU, as it’s what can make or break your FPS rate.
Again, if you’re planning on playing League with friends from time to time, you’re probably already fine as it is. All you need to do is to tweak the graphics on the client, and you’ll certainly get the lag-free experience you desire.
If you, on the other hand, plan on playing competitively, focus on optimizing your GPU as well as your internet speed. Always remember that there’s a long journey ahead of you: only around 0.01% of League players get to Challenger. You don’t have to do everything immediately, invest in your knowledge and skills before everything else.
If you’d like to speed things up, you could always buy lol accounts at places like https://eloboost24.eu/marketplace.
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League of Legends graphical settings.
Before you decide to purchase the parts we’ve mentioned, you might want to try playing with League’s integrated graphical settings. While the game would look less pretty, it would still fix some of your performance issues. Again, we believe it’s the right path to take when you’re just starting on your competitive LoL journey.
The settings you can find in the client revolve around four major categories: character quality, environment quality, effects quality, and shadows. All of these can be set to either very low, low, medium-low, medium, medium-high, high, and very high. Play around with these until you’ve found an acceptable ratio of visual quality and performance. League is not extremely visually impressive, so lowering the graphics in exchange for better FPS and ping rate is acceptable to most League players.
Of course, if you’d rather just boost your PC instead, search for computer parts that fit Riot’s recommendations. Again, everything above their official advice is probably overspending, especially if you’re doing it exclusively for League of Legends. Something like A10-7860k 3.6GHz Quad-Core, R363-M-BK MicroATX Mid Tower w/400W Power Supply + anything from Windows 7 and above would suffice.
Additional tips for streamers.
Now, if you’d also like to stream your progress (which we wholeheartedly support as it’s the best way to make money at the beginning of your journey), you won’t be able to fix the performance issues simply by purchasing hardware. You’ll need a super-strong internet connection before anything else. Of course, your CPU should be strong enough to run both of these processes simultaneously as well.
Again, streaming is an excellent way to document your journey and potentially make it profitable, but it requires a more powerful setup than for standard League play.
Besides performance and ping efficiency, consider upgrading your mic and speaker for a better streaming experience. You don’t want your hobby to impact your gameplay, so ensure everything is running smoothly before you take it to competitive play. Test the performance by running a custom game or a training session: don’t take it to ranked queue until you’re sure it’s all working properly.
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The bottom line
Overall, building a PC for League of Legends should be quite simple. It shouldn’t cost you a fortune either, since LoL isn’t particularly demanding as it is. All you need to do is follow Riot’s official system recommendations until you’ve found the right parts. For competitive play, we suggest you focus on your GPU power while optimizing your internet connection to ensure a proper ping rate.
We hope our article helped you start your journey in competitive LoL and we wish you a smooth climb during this season!
