Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Suggests Testing Your PC’s Stability Before Phantom Liberty Drops

Cyberpunk 2077’s big, free 2.0 update and the paid Phantom Liberty expansion are around the corner. To prepare for this coming one-two punch, developer CD Projekt Red is suggesting you check your PC’s specifications ahead of time.

Both the 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty are massive additions that significantly change Cyberpunk 2077. There’s a redesigned skill tree and perk system, a revamped cyberware system, vehicular combat and car crashes with actual explosions, enemy AI improvements, and a lot more. And that doesn’t even include everything in Phantom Liberty, the game’s sole paid expansion. But either way, both updates are so huge that lead scene programmer Filip Pierściński suggested on X on September 11 that folks check their PC’s cooling systems to ensure they can handle the newly tweaked open-world RPG.

“Before [the] release [of Cyberpunk 2077] 2.0 and [Phantom Liberty], please check [the] conditions of your cooling systems in PC.” Pierściński wrote. “We use all [of] what you have, so workload on CPU 90 percent on eight core is expected. To save your time, please run Cinebench or similar and check stability of your systems.”

Cinebench is a free cross-platform program that tests your PC components by running various stress tests and assigning standardized scores that let you compare your rigs with others’. Pierściński seems worried that folks could run into throttling/overheating problems if their PCs aren’t up to snuff, which could result in poor performance or game crashes.

When reached for comment via email, a CD Projekt Red spokesperson pointed Kotaku to Pierściński’s follow-up X post explaining why he made the suggestion. He shared an image of Phantom Liberty’s recommended specs, saying that if your machine fits the bill, then it should perform just as expected.

“My intention was to highlight the need to maintain your cooling systems and check them regularly,” Pierściński wrote. “Neither Cyberpunk 2077 after 2.0 nor Phantom Liberty will melt your PCs. Game will perform well on recommended hardware.”

Phew! It’s good to know that Cyberpunk 2077 won’t absolutely fry your PC when the 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty land on September 26. It’s still a big update, though, so it’ll be interesting to see how it performs in the long run.