What kind of PC would I need to play KSP...

[Pipcard]

the CPU may become the bottleneck which would cap the amount of improvement you actually get.

That's what I meant when I was asking "what's the best that my CPU could handle."

The bigger concerns lie elsewhere. Video cards can be large, so you may not have room in the chasis. So take measurements where it would go to find your clearanc. Caution: Either shut your PC down or use a measuring tape (sewing), not a tape measure (construction) which is metal and can cause damage.

Then you have to be concerned about power supply, as bigger video cards need more power. See if you can find any information printed on the power supply unit that might indicate it's capability. You need to know the wattage and ideally the Amperage on the 12 volt rail. Sometimes they don't publish all of that unfortunately and wattage alone can be misleading.

As for which card specifically, I will have to defer that question to others. My card is as old as your computer (which isn't easy to find for sale anymore) and that is the last time I did any research.

My computer's transparent on one side, so I can see the power supply information (with a flashlight) without having to turn it off and unscrew things.

It says "12V" and then it says

VOLTAGE

115/230V (i'm not sure what that means in relation to the 12V)

CURRENT

10/5A

FREQUENCY

50-60Hz

Also, there's "500 W" from the Newegg page.

There's also a table with some values underneath that, I'm not sure if that is important to this.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Pipcard

[Zephram Kerman]

VOLTAGE

115/230V (i'm not sure what that means in relation to the 12V)

CURRENT

10/5A

FREQUENCY

50-60Hz

Also, there's "500 W" from the Newegg page.

There's also a table with some values underneath that, I'm not sure if that is important to this.

The 115/230V thing is the input voltage. It means you can switch it to use line power in USA or Europe just by moving that switch to the correct setting.

The Current number is what you're interested in right now. 10 amps * 12 volts is only 120 watts. So I'm a little confused about that result on a 500 watt power supply. I haven't seen a power supply smaller than 250W since the 1990s. Maybe one of these more knowledgeable folks can straighten me out on this.

Hopefully I don't hijack your thread by asking: what about laptops? In that case all of them are integrated graphics. I'm in the market for one of those right now, hopefully about 2-3 years old, and it would be nice to be able to KSP on the road. So I don't get withdrawal symptoms.

[selfish_meme]

The 115/230V thing is the input voltage. It means you can switch it to use line power in USA or Europe just by moving that switch to the correct setting.

The Current number is what you're interested in right now. 10 amps * 12 volts is only 120 watts. So I'm a little confused about that result on a 500 watt power supply. I haven't seen a power supply smaller than 250W since the 1990s. Maybe one of these more knowledgeable folks can straighten me out on this.

Hopefully I don't hijack your thread by asking: what about laptops? In that case all of them are integrated graphics. I'm in the market for one of those right now, hopefully about 2-3 years old, and it would be nice to be able to KSP on the road. So I don't get withdrawal symptoms.

The power supply delivers multiple outputs at different voltages and its 10 or 5 amps at 115v or 230vv

Edited July 16, 2015 by selfish_meme

[Alshain]

I have heard bad things about the DirectX 11 'setting', sorry I don't use Windows anymore and am not up to date on what goes on. So is it officially supported for KSP or is it a Unity CLI thing?

This is my mod list, I am using the high 8K textures for Eve and Astronomers (which is what I guess this guy wants to do). When I checked last night KSP_64 was using 68% of my RAM

ActiveTextureManagementMechJeb2RCSBuildAid

BoulderCo ModuleManager.2.6.6.dll Squad

CollisionFX ModuleManager.ConfigCache StockBugFixModules

DistantObject ModuleManager.ConfigSHA TakeCommand

EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements ModuleManager.Physics TextureReplacer

IntakeBuildAid ModuleManager.TechTree TriggerTech

Kerbaltek PlanetShine

Yeah, that is certainly not normal for that many mods to use 8GB of RAM, even with the highest res Astronomers. I have most of those installed (including Astronomers) and a lot more and don't go over 2 gb. I don't know what you've heard about the Direct X 11 setting but all it does is instruct the game to run wholly under Direct X 11. DX11 is backward compatible, but DirectX 9 games will still run on DX9, despite the fact that DX11 has the same stuff. That is what the force setting does. The thing is DX11 doesn't load textures as badly as DX9 even with the backward compatible API.

- - - Updated - - -

My computer's transparent on one side, so I can see the power supply information (with a flashlight) without having to turn it off and unscrew things.

It says "12V" and then it says

VOLTAGE

115/230V (i'm not sure what that means in relation to the 12V)

CURRENT

10/5A

FREQUENCY

50-60Hz

Also, there's "500 W" from the Newegg page.

There's also a table with some values underneath that, I'm not sure if that is important to this.

500 W is probably ok, but the problem is some unscrupulous PSU companies like to "fudge" the numbers by combining amperage from all the rails, which isn't accurate. Really wattage is not what you should be basing it on anyway, it's just one of those things that becomes a marketing ploy.

Amperage is the amount of power it can serve and wattage can be calculated from voltage, which is 12 and amps as Zephram showed. So for example, Here is my PSU. If you click Tech specs and scroll down you will see 45.8A on the +12V rail. 45.8 * 12 = 549.6, so Corsair is not fudging the numbers when they advertise it as a 550W power supply. If you can find a make and model we might be able to Google it, if not, we really are just going to have to hope it is what it says it is.

10 - 5 is the Input current as is 115/240. We are more concerned with output.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Alshain

[selfish_meme]

Yeah, that is certainly not normal for that many mods to use 8GB of RAM, even with the highest res Astronomers. I have most of those installed (including Astronomers) and a lot more and don't go over 2 gb. I don't know what you've heard about the Direct X 11 setting but all it does is instruct the game to run wholly under Direct X 11. DX11 is backward compatible, but DirectX 9 games will still run on DX9, despite the fact that DX11 has the same stuff. That is what the force setting does. The thing is DX11 doesn't load textures as badly as DX9 even with the backward compatle

Frm what I understand the stock game loads up at 2.1gb with no mods (probably dx9) but some people report graphics glitches with dx11 and even corrupted saves. This is from another thread.

[Vanamonde]

Moved to Space Lounge, since it's not about the game itself.

[Alshain]

Frm what I understand the stock game loads up at 2.1gb with no mods (probably dx9) but some people report graphics glitches with dx11 and even corrupted saves. This is from another thread.

That was from the no singlethreading switch. You can use DX11 without that. The only graphical glitch is that the text looks a little wonky, but not unreadable (I'm not 100% sure that is DX11 either).

Edited July 16, 2015 by Alshain

[selfish_meme]

That was from the no singlethreading switch. You can use DX11 without that. The only graphical glitch is that the text looks a little wonky, but not unreadable (I'm not 100% sure that is DX11 either).

I understand it works well for you, but from the other recent force dx11 thread others have experienced quite a variety of glitches.

[Pipcard]

Amperage is the amount of power it can serve and wattage can be calculated from voltage, which is 12 and amps as Zephram showed. So for example, Here is my PSU. If you click Tech specs and scroll down you will see 45.8A on the +12V rail. 45.8 * 12 = 549.6, so Corsair is not fudging the numbers when they advertise it as a 550W power supply. If you can find a make and model we might be able to Google it, if not, we really are just going to have to hope it is what it says it is.

10 - 5 is the Input current as is 115/240. We are more concerned with output.

Okay, the output is 16A for "+12V₁" and 18A for "+12V₂"

(20A for "+3.3V" and 30A for "+5V")

the PSU is an ATX-TL500W-BK.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Pipcard

[Alshain]

As suspected, that is in fact a 400 Watt power supply. It looks like they added together the wattage from the 12 and 5 volt rails. But in truth 90% of your computer uses the 12 volt rail and the other rails are barely used, so that is incredibly wrong. Though technically not false advertising, it's a really ugly practice. 18A + 16A = 34A * 12V = 408 Watts.

So, I feel like adding too big a video card might be pushing the limits. It's kind of right on the edge, but it depends on just how high end a graphics card you end up with. Plus the size of that case in the picture concerns me. That motherboard looks like a miniATX and there isn't much clearance between the drive bay and the motherboard. Gaming grade cards are quite large, and typically require a full ATX. Here is a picture to show you what I mean. That card there is 10 inches long, and it's an older one. Most don't get too longer than that though because it is a standard size. Sites like Newegg tell you how long it is before you buy usually.

Of course if you get into the realm of replacing the Video card, and the power supply, and the chasis... well at that point you might as well just build a new PC.