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KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread


Leonov

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Is a new Dell Latitude with a Intel i7-5400 (quad-core, 2.6gHZ, TurboBoost to 3.7)16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX-860, 15" touch screen a sufficient all-round gaming computer (KSP, MineCraft, Sims 3/4, SimCity, Universe Sandbox2, Civ V, Civ Beyond Earth, SimplePlanes, TF2 -  running with a 22" external monitor as main screen, Razer Ouroboros mouse, Razer BlackWidow Chroma Stealh keyboard, Corsair Gaming 2100 headphones) or do I need to upgrade?

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1 hour ago, KocLobster said:

@Alphasus @Camacha

The day has finally arrived that I will be buying my computer parts. Needless to say, I am very excited. I'm still going with everything we discussed (link to post here). Unfortunately, the video card we eventually selected is out of stock on Newegg, and the same card on Amazon is an extra $70. I think I am going to choose a different GFX as a result. I don't want to have to spend extra for the same card on Amazon, and I want everything to be in one order and at the same time, from Newegg. I don't want to have to wait for them to restock the card. So I think I am going to just go with an equivalent and equally awesome card, by a different manufacturer. I've decided on this MSI card, and I am pretty happy with it.

If I'm lucky I will have everything by next weekend. I'll take pictures then.

Lol, why are you asking for a PC months ago if you didnt plan to buy it directly? Now the GTX 980 is outdated and mostly worthless. The GTX 1070 should offer better performance for the same price while the soon to be released RX 480 will offer about 980-performance for half the price. If you cant cancel your order send it back unopened...

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@KocLobster No 980 looks like a great idea at the moment. The new 1070 is priced around $400-450 and stomps the 980 performance-wise, although availability is an issue. The 980 Ti is also in that same price bracket, runs the 1070 close and is easier to find.

@OrbitalBuzzsaw sounds reasonable for 1080p gaming, with a GPU comparable to a 750 Ti and a CPU that'll be great for KSP and just about anything else. The gotcha with laptops is often whether their cooling is up to the job.

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2 hours ago, KocLobster said:

@Alphasus @Camacha

The day has finally arrived that I will be buying my computer parts. Needless to say, I am very excited. I'm still going with everything we discussed (link to post here). Unfortunately, the video card we eventually selected is out of stock on Newegg, and the same card on Amazon is an extra $70. I think I am going to choose a different GFX as a result. I don't want to have to spend extra for the same card on Amazon, and I want everything to be in one order and at the same time, from Newegg. I don't want to have to wait for them to restock the card. So I think I am going to just go with an equivalent and equally awesome card, by a different manufacturer. I've decided on this MSI card, and I am pretty happy with it.

If I'm lucky I will have everything by next weekend. I'll take pictures then.

1 hour ago, Elthy said:

Lol, why are you asking for a PC months ago if you didnt plan to buy it directly? Now the GTX 980 is outdated and mostly worthless. The GTX 1070 should offer better performance for the same price while the soon to be released RX 480 will offer about 980-performance for half the price. If you cant cancel your order send it back unopened...

Agreed. The 980 is on the way out. If you can score a great deal it might be worth it, but it looks like AMD will release much more interesting cards very soon. Buying now at full price would certainly be a mistake. You are buying something that is already out of date.

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11 hours ago, KocLobster said:

@Alphasus @Camacha

The day has finally arrived that I will be buying my computer parts. Needless to say, I am very excited. I'm still going with everything we discussed (link to post here). Unfortunately, the video card we eventually selected is out of stock on Newegg, and the same card on Amazon is an extra $70. I think I am going to choose a different GFX as a result. I don't want to have to spend extra for the same card on Amazon, and I want everything to be in one order and at the same time, from Newegg. I don't want to have to wait for them to restock the card. So I think I am going to just go with an equivalent and equally awesome card, by a different manufacturer. I've decided on this MSI card, and I am pretty happy with it.

If I'm lucky I will have everything by next weekend. I'll take pictures then.

Go with a 1070. Its really fast.

17 hours ago, Kernalrom said:

So I decided to purchase a new iMac as my 2010 iMac is showing its age on graphics performance.

I want to be able to run RP-0/RSS/RVE/EVE smoothly. My current iMac frame rates are poor when I install RVE/EVE to being unplayable. I want some clouds dangit!

I have narrowed down to two builds.. both 27" iMac 5K Displays.

Build 1: i5/8GB RAM/2TB Fusion Drive with a upgraded AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB VRAM

Build 2: i7/8GB RAM/2TB Fusion Drive with standard AMD Radeon R9 M395 with 2GB VRAM

Which would I see more KSP performance .. i7 CPU or i5 with faster GPU and double the VRAM? Would the bigger impact be CPU performance or graphics card?

 

Thanks in advance!

PS.. No I wont consider getting a windows computer. LOL

The GPU performance won't matter as much. Get the one with as i7 if you're set on a Mac.

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On 6/18/2016 at 3:43 PM, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Is a new Dell Latitude with a Intel i7-5400 (quad-core, 2.6gHZ, TurboBoost to 3.7)16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX-860, 15" touch screen a sufficient all-round gaming computer (KSP, MineCraft, Sims 3/4, SimCity, Universe Sandbox2, Civ V, Civ Beyond Earth, SimplePlanes, TF2 -  running with a 22" external monitor as main screen, Razer Ouroboros mouse, Razer BlackWidow Chroma Stealh keyboard, Corsair Gaming 2100 headphones) or do I need to upgrade?

Good job going with a Latitude rather than an Inspiron. Latitudes are their business line and usually are engineered to actually last  3+ years rather than being something you upgrade yearly for the newest shiniest thing.

Which model of Latitude is it and what are the other specs?  (You can email the cart to yourself and then PM me or post a link if you want). I routinely order these at work and my first step is usually to toss* the HDD (keep it for warranty purposes) and throw in a Samsung Evo SSD -- it's cheaper than ordering it configured that way and super easy to do (though entails reinstalling Windows).  You can do similar with the memory -- order it with bare minimum and upgrade it yourself if you're shooting for 16gb or more.

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Well, I'm not sure how many of you would be interested or would be able to make it, but I'll be streaming building a friends first computer and rebuilding my own machine in a new case (Corsair 400Q) and adding a new processor (i7 6700k) tonight at 9PM E/6PM P. If you all have any questions or just want to hang out, feel free to join me. It'd be nice to meet a few more Kerbinauts :) 

https://www.twitch.tv/avera9ejoe

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Question... would it be bad to have an SSD, and HDD, and a Hybrid drive all in the same machine? All three are different companies but that shouldn't matter. What I'm worried about is the fact that the Hybrid drive automatically moves the programs that you use the most on to it's small built in SSD. I'm worried that that could do odd things with my SSD.

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Just now, Elthy said:

No, that shouldnt cause any issues, just be carefull which drives get defragmented by windows (defragging an SSD is bad!).

Sounds good. I haven't done anything with the default defragging that Win 10 has which means it's set to do do an automatic defrag every week. Is this a bad thing? I'm putting in my first SSD and I'd love to know any small or important details.

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I have no idea if anything knows how to handle a hybrid drive in terms of fragmentation.  That said:

1. Hybrid drives work by trying to copy the most frequently accessed sectors from the spinning rust to the SSD portion.  Most of this disk access is reads, not writes, so the occasional flurry of writes from defragmenting most likely won't significantly affect longevity.  It's entirely possible that the access pattern from defragmenting won't even trigger writes to the SSD portion at all.

2. At modern HDD sizes and speeds using modern filesystems, fragmentation rarely makes a noticeable impact on performance.  You won't lose much by turning it off entirely; and you can always do it manually once every few months.

3. There is a very small improvement to be made defragmenting a SSD.  While random access isn't a concern with an SSD, there is a tiny bit of increased overhead when your OS has to say "Give me block 12.  Now give me block 42.  Now give me block 29" instead of "Give me 3 blocks starting at block 14".   Again, this is unlikely to be anything you'll ever notice unless you're trying to push for a couple less milliseconds on a benchmark.

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1 hour ago, Avera9eJoe said:

Question... would it be bad to have an SSD, and HDD, and a Hybrid drive all in the same machine? All three are different companies but that shouldn't matter. What I'm worried about is the fact that the Hybrid drive automatically moves the programs that you use the most on to it's small built in SSD. I'm worried that that could do odd things with my SSD.

What would that do with your SSD? Modern incarnations of Windows distinguish between drive types and apply the appropriate technologies.

 

1 hour ago, Avera9eJoe said:

Sounds good. I haven't done anything with the default defragging that Win 10 has which means it's set to do do an automatic defrag every week. Is this a bad thing? I'm putting in my first SSD and I'd love to know any small or important details.

Turn on AHCI before you install Windows for the SSD and hook it up to the lowest numbered SATA port (typically something like SATA_0). You want to make sure use a native SATA600 port, unless you got one of those newfangled M.2 slots (SATA or NVMe) - in that case you usually have little choice :D Doing a fresh Windows installation is preferred over cloning it from an existing drive.

Those are the most important bits. Windows knows what to do (and what not to do) with a SSD. If you do not mess that up too much, all should be well.

Edited by Camacha
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25 minutes ago, Camacha said:

What would that do with your SSD? Modern incarnations of Windows distinguish between drive types and apply the appropriate technologies.

 

Turn on AHCI before you install Windows for the SSD and hook it up to the lowest numbered SATA port (typically something like SATA_0). You want to make sure use a native SATA600 port, unless you got one of those newfangled M.2 slots (SATA or NVMe) - in that case you usually have little choice :D Doing a fresh Windows installation is preferred over cloning it from an existing drive.

Those are the most important bits. Windows knows what to do (and what not to do) with a SSD. If you do not mess that up too much, all should be well.

I'd actually love to do a full reinstall myself (I had some... interesting issues with windows 10 seizing upon reaching the login screen when I first installed it and it had some taskbar GUI issues which have since resolved on this install. A new fresh install would ease my conscience) BUT that would mean reinstalling windows, which I can't do as I bought windows 8.1 and upgraded from that. I don't think I can install windows 10 from the same key/disk. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

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26 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

I'd actually love to do a full reinstall myself (I had some... interesting issues with windows 10 seizing upon reaching the login screen when I first installed it and it had some taskbar GUI issues which have since resolved on this install. A new fresh install would ease my conscience) BUT that would mean reinstalling windows, which I can't do as I bought windows 8.1 and upgraded from that. I don't think I can install windows 10 from the same key/disk. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

It seems you can do a clean install in a few ways, on of which is reading the key from your installation and plugging it back in after a fresh and clean installation. You might also consider sticking with Windows 8.1 for a while, as your copy of Windows 10 has been activated and is yours to keep forever. Windows 8.1 has some neat advantages.

Do not make the mistake to think you are stuck with Windows 10 (and specifically that exact copy of Windows 10) because you upgraded to it :) 

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25 minutes ago, Camacha said:

It seems you can do a clean install in a few ways, on of which is reading the key from your installation and plugging it back in after a fresh and clean installation. You might also consider sticking with Windows 8.1 for a while, as your copy of Windows 10 has been activated and is yours to keep forever. Windows 8.1 has some neat advantages.

Do not make the mistake to think you are stuck with Windows 10 (and specifically that exact copy of Windows 10) because you upgraded to it :) 

I'm actually much more of a fan of Windows 10 then Windows 8.1 :P - the menu system is a lot more intuitive. You're positive though that if I where to wipe my discs and do a clean install, I could still use the same win 8.1 key to install Windows 10?

 

EDIT: I did some asking around before posting here on microsoft help and someone answered as well with matching info. It sounds like I have nothing to worry about :)

Edited by Avera9eJoe
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36 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

I'm actually much more of a fan of Windows 10 then Windows 8.1 :P - the menu system is a lot more intuitive.

Bow down to your new master! The wonderful cherry flavour disguises the cyaniade. Har-har-har!

Sorry, it is getting late and I am getting a bit giddy.

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So I'm back with a higher budget, and different components. Just gonna post them here and ask on opinions to make this even cheaper, with around the same performance. Also, there's no hard drive as i plan to borrow one from a junkyard, or my dad's workplace from old computers.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($84.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($58.98 @ DirectCanada)
Memory: Crucial 2GB (1 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory  ($12.00 @ Amazon Canada)
Memory: Corsair ValueSelect 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($16.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 950 2GB Video Card  ($181.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Case: Rosewill FBM-05 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($29.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Power Supply: EVGA 400W ATX Power Supply  ($35.98 @ DirectCanada)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit  ($114.98 @ DirectCanada)
Keyboard: Cobra Polygon Wired Gaming Keyboard  ($27.05 @ Vuugo)
Total: $562.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-29 14:09 EDT-0400

And i couldnt find that pc master thread or whatever so ya.

Edited by SpaceplaneAddict
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