Fortnite Reveals Mandatory Hardware Update, Or Get Banned Next Week

Fortnite has updated its hardware requirements, with the changes coming into effect from next week. Epic Games has outlined that you’ll soon need to take extra steps to add anti-cheat measures to your set-up.

As reported by DSOGaming, competitive players will, as of 19 February, need to enable Secure Boot, TPM, and IOMMU.

What's that? Sounds complicated - all of which will be explained in due course.

Secure Boot is easy to enable, given that it's a feature within most modern computers.

It makes it so that only trusted software can run, typically protecting your computer from malware and viruses.

Of course here, it’s ensuring you don’t have any suspect programmes running.

Accessing Secure Boot will differ from PC to PC, but you should be able to use your search function to locate the right area and check it’s enabled.

It’s a similar instance when it comes to TPM, which is typically also a component of most contemporary computers.

This is a security chip that also protects your system. As DSOGaming notes, TPM 2.0 can only run on Windows 11 so if you’re running that, you’re probably good to go.

If you’re stuck on Windows 10, you may have some issues with Fortnite’s new requirements.

Finally, there’s IOMMU which sets Fornite apart from similar anti-cheat measures put in place for competitors of other series like Call of Duty.

Of course, if you’re just a regular ol’ player of Fornite and simply enjoy the battle royale alone or with friends, you don’t need to worry about this.

For those who like to compete in tournaments, however, you'll need to make the changes, or risk your account being banned.

Fortnite

How to Enable IOMMU for Fortnite’s Tournaments

This is yet another security feature. IOMMU is related to how hardware interacts with a PC’s operating system, monitoring its usage of system memory.

The idea is that Epic Games can protect Fortnite’s game memory from being accessed by cheat hardware when IOMMU is enabled.

As for how you can do that, again, it’s going to differ between computers so I can’t outline exact rules.

The key thing is to find out what motherboard model you have.

You can do that by pressing the Windows key. Then type msinfo32 and press Enter.

That should bring up information with ‘BaseBoard Manufacturer/Model’ being located somewhere near to ‘Processor’.

Once you’ve got the motherboard model, you can access your BIOS (Basic Input Output System) settings.

This, as I said above, differs between computers and motherboards so there’s no one tutorial that fits all.

Once you are in your BIOS settings, the IOMMU option should be there waiting to be enabled.

I recommend you search online for your motherboard model along with ‘how to access BIOS’ settings or ‘how to enable IOMMU’ to receive precise answers for your circumstances.

Complete all of that and you can safely keep on competing in Fortnite. It’s a lot of hoops to jump through, but you can see why Epic is making the move.