LoSBoL

That's a pretty tight budget. I don't know where you are located and how accesible the second hand market is, but I would realy consider buying second hand. You should be able to get a massively better performing machine that will last you a whole lot longer. With Intel lacking on performance progression in the last few years a 2014 machine with an 4th gen I5 or even I7 would cost you about the same. If new is what you want, and you can wait a few more months, it could be profitable to wait for the introduction of the Ryzen 3. My take on your wishlist if you won't or can't consider second hand: You can get a digital windows licence for about a 3rd of that price I'd opt to at least getting an I3 instead of the Pentium. I'd opt to get 16Gb ram, if you are going to stick to 8 GB, then get 2x 4GB do make use of the dual channel capability If you don't intend to game much, or if you just intend to play KSP, then you could consider running it of the CPU's internal graphics card, you won't be able to use many graphics enhancing mods, but it will run stock KSP fine. You can then add a graphics card later. (although at this point and time, the GTX1050Ti is pretty good bang for buck) The PSU is cutting it close, if you want to upgrade to a better graphics card in the future, you probably are going to need a higher output PSU. For the external drive, it's probably going to be dead slow when connected threw USB, If you can get the drive out of its casing and into the tower it will run without an performance penalty. You loose the 'external' part off course.

Now that surprises me, for multithreaded performance that was certainly the case, if you say 'by far' I would have certainly noticed. Then again, I haven't been doing the math, so you could be right. Maybe I've looked to much to overclocked speeds, because every 'K' spec I5 runs easily at 4,6 GHz and the I7's at 4,8 GHz. I wished those Ryzens could match those speeds...

It can make it more challenging if you've never felt the need to explore outside of Kerbin's SOI. But if your sole goal is to unlock the techtree, yeah, I can imagine that it would feel even more grinding. For me personally, I use career to add the funds variable, and do contracts whenever needed to 'finance' my own goals. I like some of the contracts challenges, but it could indeed use more variety in them.

I have to refrase that sentence a bit, It was not a Ryzen discussion, I made the post because there is a lot of discussion if KSP benefits from more cores. what I really ment to say was: Don't get an 2 core chip because it will hurt performance, but you don't need an I7 either, because I see no gain in performance having hyperthreading on top of 4 cores. As for Ryzen, I have had my fair share of AMD's in the past and wouldn't hesitate to buy one in the future. The Ryzen blows away equaly priced Intels when multithreaded applications are in play, you want to do content creation, heavy multitasking or things like rendering. For games however we have to face the facts, games are rarely CPU limited but are mostly GPU limited. So it doesn't really matter much which one you will buy. There are however always going to be certain games that due to their specific nature will be singlethread limited (like KSP), and the current Ryzen lineup is behind Intel on this one (although not much), and that won't get better with this generation Zen. If we're talking about futureproof for games, you really can't say if more cores and threads are going to be usefull, it's pretty hard to split gameworkloads, even for 4c/8t's, and it's going to be even harder when talking 6c/12t's or 8c/16t's. You won't see any advantages for games of the past, they are not going to be optimized, and the question remains if in the foreseeable future games will be optimized for specific CPU's. I found this to be a very good read on the subject: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/intel-still-beats-ryzen-at-games-but-how-much-does-it-matter/ A big heads up for AMD, we've got competion again, and we'll all benefit from that. As for now, I'm pretty good where I am now, but if I had needed a new platform (for gaming) I would definately consider an AMD, but there are some bumps that would hold me back to: The AMD Ryzen platform is brand new, it has it's quircks at the moment, bios updates, memory compatability issues and such. It will get better for sure, but it's tinckering for now and I don't think we will see miracles in (game) performance gains. A bit of the 'more for less' is being somewhat comprimised right now (again, for gaming), mainboard's are cheap for AMD, but the Ryzens seem to benefit most from the fastest and most expensive memory one can buy, it's not only the CPU which you have to fork out for. And the above mentioned considering spreaded workloads and singlethread limited games. (and for KSP in particular, Ryzen seems to be at the same performance point as Intels Haswell's at the same clockspeed) It's just one benchmark though, I'm eager to find out what the future holds, in any way, it looks brighter than it has in the last 4 years, we really did need competition.

Yes, one isue to consider (as the thread performance has been answered), a 29" 2560x1080 or an 34" 3440x1440 Ultra wide monitor. You will absolutely love it I wouldn't say multithreading is minimal nowadays, offcourse the main thread will be its bottleneck, but I put it to the test a few weeks ago because I wanted to find the maximum performance... I7 with 4 cores + hyperthreading I7 with 4 cores, hyperthreading disabled I 7 with 2 cores disabled and hyperthreading enabled There was no noticeable performance difference between the I7 running with or without hyperthreading, there was most definately a performance hit when just running 2 cores (and hyperthreading enabled) I would not advice going for an high IPC i3, an quad core i5 with an high IPC is the way to go

Ah man, that sucks! Don't feel stupid, Intel is stupid, one bios update from Intel would have solved your problem... Here's what I would do, find yourself a second hand Z97 board and continue your plan to clock the living daylights out of it. No need to go for an servergrade mainboard, any decent mainboard like Asus, Gigabyte or Asrock with a Z97 will be stable. Slap the 4771 on the Z87 mainboard, accompanied by 16 GB ram and sell it! And like you said, the performance advantage from an 5th or 6th generation will bring you nothing, the 4th generation is far from obsolete, because the performance advantage of the 6th and 7th generation has basicly been achieved by bumping the clockspeed. speeds you can easily reach when overclocking the 4790K. (and at the same time 5 GHz is about the absolute maximum you would get out of 6th or 7th gen intel overclock, spending more and achieving the same result) As for the OS, I don't know if Windows 7 is more sensitive, but with Windows 10 I had no issues when swapping an H85 mainboard for an Z97 mainboard without reinstalling the OS I got a originated KSP computer story to. Bought an second hand H85 + I5-4440 + 8 GB ram + GTX970 for a nice price to start gaming again After about 3 months I bought KSP and started playing, wanted more performance and saw a second hand I5-4690K, only to be scammed €175 out of my pockets... A week later I saw an second hand Z97+4790K+16 GB ram for a steal (€ 320 Euro), picked it up and 2 days later I sold the H85+I5+8GB for € 200.

I've learned a thing or two And you are more then welcome, I like to help out when I can. What I meant with graphical mods, is that Squad made the game which can be altered (modified) as you seem fit, so there are tons of modifications that people make that you can make use of. Graphical mods to make the game look better, mods that have new parts, mods that makes the game easier to use, harder to use etc. Basicly if you think the game could use something extra, somebody probably has made a mod for that already. I saw this video today, a very different beast than the standard rocketparts, but it still is Kerbal Space Program. Somewhere in your taskbar is a battery icon, If you click there you'll find something like energysettings, from there you can put it in a different mode, the performance mode will give you the best gaming performance, at the cost of batterytime. Since the game is pretty demanding, youre laptop will get hot,as you start building bigger vessels, it will get warm in space also, not just in the VAB (building area). That's the just the downfall if you play on a laptop.

I have been reading a certain techwebsite since I was 16, and for years now every time there was a spacetech article the comments were loaded with KSP references. References to the related article and peoples own experiences within KSP and offcourse the Funny Kabooms would come by, Haven't been 'gaming' for years, but KSP got my attention since I have more time at hand. (kids )

You should try em, just for the fun of it

You are right, I'm not interested, that's why I started with No... Unless it's toggleable. For me personally, I don't want to keep fiddling to keep my vessels in space, hence the toggleing. I don't see it happening at all though, the strain of physics calculations is already off the charts, adding even more stress just to have a realistic orbital decay certainly won't add to the gameplay

I played the tutorials, and because they were so tedious in how you must do things, after that the real thing was a peace of cake (and offcourse watching YouTube, reading the ingame wiki, the internet wiki and searching this forum)

No... Unless... It's toggleable, then I'd say... No... ...Problem Unless... It takes an performance hit, then I'd say No again... But more seriously, I see very little to nothing added to the gameplay, to me it's adding realism, just for the sake of realism.

Youre good Here's what I did, I have an laptop witch an I5-5300U, there are 2 differences compared to your I3-5010U, Mine has a base clock of 2,3 GHz which turbo's to 2,9. The I3-5010U has a clock of 2,1 GHz and no Turbo.So I disabled the Turbo on my CPU to let it run at 2,3 GHz and I disabled my secondary graphics card. Those changes made it run a slightly faster than your I3. I booted KSP and toned down the graphics details. I took 2 stock vessels, the 89 part Learstar A1 and the 110 part Dynawing, and to my surprise it runs pretty good numbers! FPS at launch is between 25 and 40, And the physics is in the greenish (meaning it can run the physics calculations in real time mostly) I was sceptic about the CPU speed, It really did surprise me that it didn't choke. Just don't install graphical mods and keep the part count of youre vessels low, and I think you will enjoy it. (Just make sure your laptop is in performance mode in the battery setting, and you don't have programs running in the background) Happy Launchings!

to exclude an ground (or earth) loop problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_loop_(electricity) It is not uncommon for 'coil whine' to be picked up by your computers audio card. It's not uncommon that KSP envokes coil whine more then other games do. I had an coil whine in KSP while with other games, it never even caught my attention. Also, when a computer gets older, and maybe even when it gathers a whole lot of dust inside, coil whine could be getting worse. Try booting up KSP without speakers or headset connected, put your ears as close to the PC as you can get, opening the case and disconnecting fans (except for the CPU fan) is even better, and see if you hear that noises is in your PC to. Here is a good read to, I still suspect either PSU, mainboard or Graphics card. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2743256/high-pitch-whistling-coming-sound-systems-coil-whine.html

These questions come to my mind: Are we talking PC or laptop? Does the sound come out of the headset? Is the headset connected properly? Did you try exchanging front panel and rear I/O pannel connection? Is the headset powered? Did you try another headset or speakers? Is your computer properly earthed? Did you try another power socket? Basicly need more info, what have you already tried to pinpoint the problem?

Are you sure the noise is coming out of your speakers? The symptoms you describe sound like 'coil whine' from your computer itself (graphicscard, mainboard or PSU)

Must be an Intel HD integrated Graphics card. It runs on my HD4000 (I7-4600U), but not very smooth. @John_M42 Can you share which CPU you have? That gives insight in which version Intel HD Graphics you have and gives a better view on the overall performance.

Hmmm, I don't know, did they have PCIe already back then? Maybe you need a AGP card instead of an PCIe card.

Enjoying KSP running at its peak performance

That does work, just don't forget to set the other monitor as primary for running games on.

You can get active converters for about a third of that price nowadays... That's for the DVI connection, you can connect just about everything to the DP 1.4 connector Better yet, don't throw away the old monitor when you get a new one, KSP absolutely loves triple monitor setups

Looks like the card has one 'Display Port' connector next to the 3 HDMI connectors, I'd use that Displayport to connect your VGA monitor. (Unless the VGA monitor also has an DVI Input, then I'd opt for both on DVI)

I think Budgetspaceflight set a record, 'slowest machine ever running KSP'

Make myself a nice big cup of coffee, boot up KSP and end up with cold coffee... (and I like my coffee...)

Great mod indeed! I've put it to use yesterday evening and continued building my new Minmus station and Mining shuttle, and although I haven't figured out all the uses of the mod, it does help out a lot already!