PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Requires Up to 250GB of Storage

Even at minimum requires, 175GB is needed for all the game modes to work.

 & Matthew Humphries Former Senior Editor

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

Our Expert
LOOK INSIDE PC LABS HOW WE TEST
65 EXPERTS
43 YEARS
41,500+ REVIEWS

Call of Duty has garnered itself a reputation for requiring a ridiculous amount of storage space, and the next entry in the series, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, is set to continue that trend.

As Polygon reports, developer Treyarch and publisher Activision have released the PC system requirements for playing the game, which is set to release on Nov. 13. If you want to take full advantage of an RTX graphics card and Ultra settings, you're going to need an Intel Core i9-9900K or AMD Ryzen 3700K, 16GB of RAM, and 250GB of storage space.

The good news is, if you're only intending to play mulitplayer, then 50GB of storage space will suffice. However, even at minimum settings Cold War demands 175GB of space before you can access all game modes. This should come as no surprise to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone players, but it's still a huge amount of storage to set aside for just one game.

Cold War is also set to launch on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on the same day, so it will be interesting to see what the storage requirements are on each platform. For 4K gaming on the next-gen consoles, they could even match the PC requirements.

About Our Expert

Matthew Humphries

Matthew Humphries

Former Senior Editor

My Experience

I started working at PCMag in November 2016, covering all areas of technology and video game news. Before that I spent nearly 15 years working at Geek.com as a writer and editor. I also spent the first six years after leaving university as a professional game designer working with Disney, Games Workshop, 20th Century Fox, and Vivendi.

I hold two degrees: a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a Master's degree in Games Development. My first book, Make Your Own Pixel Art, is available from all good book shops.

My Areas of Expertise

  • PC components and system building
  • Raspberry Pi
  • Software development
  • Storage technology
  • Video games and gaming hardware

Read full bio