Which system specs will KSP benefit from the most?

[Pointy End]

I'm looking to buy an off the shelf desktop to play KSP on. Even though I've used computers regularly for most of 52 years on this rock, I've never really cared or concerned myself with owning a "gaming" machine. That said, I'm not stupid. I know about RAM and processors and disk drives, but not much about graphics cards. So...

My work desktop is a fairly new Dell Optiplex 7050, Win 10 Pro 64bit, i7 3.6 GHz, 16 GB DDR4, AMD Radeon R7 450, and it plays KSP great. Like, smooth. Granted, I'm early into replaying this game, so I haven't built any huge part count ships yet, but so far it's been sweet. Anyway, of those specs I listed on more work machine, which is doing the most to enhance the performance of KSP? As far as buying a new desktop for home, I am budgeting $750-1000. That will not get me my work machine, so what specs would you recommend I focus on in that price range?

Oh yeah, I'll be playing some modded minecraft as well, but it seems like that game is a little more forgiving than KSP is. Just FYI.

EDIT: It occurs to me this may not be the correct forum. If not, where? Is there a way to summon a moderator?

Edited May 14, 2018 by Pointy End
May have posted to the wrong forum

[Harry Rhodan]

Stock KSP benefits mostly from a CPU with a strong single core performance.

[Geonovast]

11 hours ago, Pointy End said:

Is there a way to summon a moderator?

 

You can report your own post.  Upper right hand corner, there's a Report post button.    It'll likely be merged into this thread:

 

[Cyrious]

IMO, a fat lump of ram (16GB is good), an SSD (to accelerate loading) and a good strong CPU is recommended. If you are going into OpenGL mode, lots of VRAM is also ideal. The ram becomes the biggest part if you mod, as it can easily suck up >5GB of ram.

[Deddly]

Locked at OP's request.