At the relatively low resolution of 1280x800 Brink is very hardware-friendly. Affordable $110 graphics cards such as the Radeon HD 6750 and GeForce GTS 450 provide playable performance with maximum visual settings enabled.

In fact, that remains somewhat true as you scale up to a more desirable resolution such as 1680x1050. You shouldn't have to splurge on a flagship single-GPU card like the GeForce GTX 580 to play Brink with most of its eye-candy enabled. The Radeon HD 6790 and GeForce GTX 460 averaged around 50fps.

Because Brink is largely GPU-dependent, you shouldn't need to worry much about your processor either. Most entry-level parts were capable of delivering between 84 and 94fps. That's not half bad considering the beefier Core i5 and i7 processors maxed out at ~104fps.