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Microsoft announced Windows 11 in June, and it published the new system requirements that day. In fact, the system requirements have changed. You now need a 64-bit CPU, and it needs to have at least two cores. RAM and storage requirements have been bumped up to 4GB and 64GB respectively. Other new requirements include TPM 2.0, DirectX 12, a Precision touchpad, and more.

As usual, Microsoft also publishes a list of supported processors that you can use with Windows. While the company usually just added new processors to the list throughout the lifecycle of Windows 10, Windows 11 cuts some CPUs off of the list.

Note that if your processor isn't on the list, you can still install via an ISO, but you might not get updates. This list isn't going to change though.

But while the official spec is a 64-bit CPU with at least two cores and at least 1GHz clock speed, the list of supported CPUs doesn't reflect that. Microsoft has stripped all sixth-generation and seventh-generation Intel processors from the list. Here's the full list of supported Intel CPUs:

Ditching support for 6th- and 7th-gen Intel processors is a big deal. As far as Microsoft's own hardware goes, that leaves out the Surface Studio 2, which is the newest version. You can buy one on Microsoft's website right now with no discount; it still starts at $3,500. Another thing that's not on the list is the Pentium Gold 4415Y that's in the Surface Go.

So, as far as Surface goes, you need Surface Laptop 2 or newer, Surface Book 2 or newer, Surface Pro 6 or newer, Surface Go 2, Surface Laptop Go, and that's it.

AMD users seem to be in even worse shape. The Windows 11 supported CPU list sheds the A-series and FX-series, along with Ryzen 1000 and most Ryzen 2000 chips.

Finally, if you've got a Windows on ARM PC, the only processor that's no longer on the Windows 11 supported CPU list is the Snapdragon 835, which isn't super surprising.

Whether these Windows 11 supported CPU changes actually end up being meaningful to you remains to be seen. From experience, we usually see that Windows tends to honor the CPU minimum requirements, rather than the actual list of supported CPUs.

To check out Microsoft's documentation on supported CPUs in Windows 11, you can find out more here.