KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[briansun1]

How did I not notice this thread before? In case anyone cares, here's my computer. It runs 1k+ part ships in mid single digit framerates, which I consider playable.

GPU1: HIS HD 7970 @ 1050 MHz

GPU2: HIS HD 7970 @ 1050 MHz

CPU: Intel i7-3770k @ 4.9 GHz

Cooler: Hyper 212+ /w 2 Cougar fans in push/pull

SSD1: Samsung 840 Evo 512GB

SSD2: Mushkin Chronos Enhanced 120GB

SSD3: Corsair 128GB

HDD1: 2.5TB Seagate

HDD2: 3.0TB Seagate

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme6

Memory: 8GB G-Skill DDR3-2200 (forget the model, probably Ripjaws X)

PSU: SeaSonic X650 Gold

Case: Rosewill Thor V2

Those of you wish sharp eyes for power consumption are probably scratching your heads right about now. Why, yes, I am running a ~750W computer on a 650W supply (and have been for two years). SeaSonic is just that good.

Or the numbers that AMD and Nvidia put out are for crap PSUs

For GPUs, I recommend Nvidia. Their drivers will cause less problems than AMD's will. You get the best bang for your buck in the ~$200 price range, with anything less than $100 being generally an awful deal. If you're on a tight budget, I'd suggest going to Tom's Hardware and looking at their best GPUs for the money article that comes out each month. I'd aim for $125-$150, if you're on a tight budget. Less than that and I'm really out of my element, and can't help.

See the guy above me.

For a CPU, get the Intel 3570. Skip the K edition, since your H77 can't overclock (forget the Bclk, waste of time). Should cost about $200, and will get you much, much better performance, especially in KSP which is CPU limited. I consider the *570 the gold standard for gaming, and don't recommend getting anything else.

Agreed

Finally, you really want 8GB of memory. It's best to use an 8GB kit, but since budget is tight, you can't really justify throwing out 4GB of perfectly good memory. So I'd add another 4GB kit.

If you do go this route make sure that the 2 Ram sicks work in duel channel mode.

All together, it would be somewhere in the vicinity of $400 of upgrades. $150 for a GPU, $200 for a CPU and $50 for memory. Memory can wait until later, GPU could be swapped for one marginally cheaper, to bring this down to about $300 if necessary.

@the general jacob. For GPU perhaps something like the r9 270/x(around $200 for the "x" version). I have the 7870 which is the last gen version and it does pretty well in KSP

Edited November 18, 2014 by briansun1

[Camacha]

Or the numbers that AMD and Nvidia put out are for crap PSUs

A lot of review measure the actual power consumption, so you do not have to take the manufacturer's word

@the general jacob. For GPU perhaps something like the r9 270/x(around $200 for the "x" version). I have the 7870 which is the last gen version and it does pretty well in KSP

Most cards do wel in KSP. My card is a 4870/4770 territory card and with all the bells and whistles turned up the system is still CPU limited. Just to clarify - it is a pretty beefy CPU. KSP does not need a lot of graphics power.

[LaytheAerospace]

Do you have any numbers to back that up? In my experience neither of the brands has a real edge

It's not a performance thing. Performance per dollar, AMD is great. It's things like "I've been trying to make Skyrim work with Crossfire for three days. Forget it I'll just turn Crossfire off." or "Look, another display driver crash at stock settings without any games running." or "Why are all my games running at 240 FPS when I connect a 120 Hz monitor?" or "Gee, I sure love that the drivers default to overscanning my monitor by the maximum amount, leaving a 2" black border until I jump into CCC and fix it."

It's just a nonstop parade of stuff going wrong, all centered on the display drivers. My last video cards were an ATI x1950 Pro, HD 4870, HD 6950, then the HD 7970s, so I'm definitely a long time fan of AMD GPUs. My experience with Crossfire was just the last straw in a strained relationship with their sometimes decent drivers. I actually pulled one of my cards out of the computer for about six months because I was tired of the weird things that were happening when Crossfire was enabled.

Also, Raptr installed by default. Screw that. After I got tired of disabling it on every driver install I just revoked everyone's permissions on the Raptr install folder, leaving it in its own little disk purgatory. Take that, data miners.

If you are not going to overclock you are totally right. However, Intel chips tend to have a lot of headroom, so if you want the best KSP experience money can buy, an overclocked i5 might very well be the ticket.

Absolutely agreed. Only problem is his motherboard is an H77, so without another $100-$150 invested in a Z77 board, it's a no go. But in general, if you want the most bang for your buck, you want to overclock. It's free performance, and sometimes lots of it. Just resist the urge to put 1.536V into your 2500k, like I did. It won't boot at that frequency anymore.

[Camacha]

It's not a performance thing.

Just to be clear; I was not talking about performance, but about driver issues In my experience - I have pretty much switched back and forth between brands every upgrade in the past 10 years - both brands are not without their issues. Case in point was my Nvidia card acting up in the past year. The driver kept crashing out, causing black windows and areas everywhere, making the computer effectively unusable. When doing my searches I found out it was driver related indeed, that a lot of people were suffering from the problems across a range of cards and that fixing it is a rather hit or miss affair. Nvidia did not seem to recognize the problem at all. I finally managed to fix it in a way I am still not sure how, but I am too afraid to poke it any more. Another recent experience was SpaceEngine bugging out after a driver change, where it broke all kinds of graphic effects and features.

Though I am only one person with limited experience, these incidents make my hesitant to endorse Nvidia as the more stable alternative Nvidia has its share of problems too, just as AMD has them.

I am not going to argue CrossFire is not temperamental, dual card technology can be a bit rickety at times.

Absolutely agreed. Only problem is his motherboard is an H77, so without another $100-$150 invested in a Z77 board, it's a no go. But in general, if you want the most bang for your buck, you want to overclock. It's free performance, and sometimes lots of it. Just resist the urge to put 1.536V into your 2500k, like I did. It won't boot at that frequency anymore.

I missed that the H77 board was already present, in that case it is a somewhat pointless/expensive affair indeed That 2500K just needed a splash of liquid nitrogen or helium, har.

Edited November 18, 2014 by Camacha

[Elthy]

CPU: Intel i7-3770k @ 4.9 GHz

Cooler: Hyper 212+ /w 2 Cougar fans in push/pull

How do you get a 3770k @ 4.9 Ghz cooled by a "normal" cpu cooler? Which voltages do you need, which temperatures do you get with Prime95?

In my experience Ivy Bridge needs lots of energy to get past 4,5-4,7 Ghz and i cant belive you can cool that properly without a good water cooling system...

[LaytheAerospace]

How do you get a 3770k @ 4.9 Ghz cooled by a "normal" cpu cooler? Which voltages do you need, which temperatures do you get with Prime95?

You can take a nice chunk off the top by 'delidding' it. Also, it helps to have a reckless abandon for the well being of your CPU, thanks to Intel's $20, one time overclocking warranty.

I actually got it to validate at close to 5.1 GHz, but it wasn't remotely stable, and would crash if you looked at it funny. Prime95 temps at 4.9 start to plateau in the mid 90s (highest core temp is usually ~97-99), though I don't like running it that hot with that much voltage for more than a few minutes. It would certainly go over 100 if I let it.

Truth be told, I'm not really hitting it that hard most of the time, which helps a lot. Worst load this computer sees is a big ship in KSP while Plex Media Server is transcoding something, which might get me to 60% or 70%.

Here's my highest validation on the 3770k. I tried running this for a while, but it wasn't stable. Something's up with the validation, voltage is way too low. Was probably at 1.384, like this one at 4.85 GHz.

Couldn't find a current one, I'll do another validation when I get home.

[Elthy]

I did thought any sane person would realy try to delidd a CPU

Also i didnt thougt about the overclocking warranty, back when it was introduced i thought its only for the USA. To bad i didnt purchase it, i would go past my 4.2ghz at stock voltages...

[LaytheAerospace]

As promised, the updated validation. Not running at quite the speeds I thought I was, a few MHz shy on both the memory and CPU frequency.

http://valid.x86.fr/bhb3n9

I did thought any sane person would realy try to delidd a CPU

I practiced on an old Xeon I had from the days of LGA 775. Made it a lot less nerve wracking. The exposed die on the Xeon was pretty neat, especially since I didn't care about damaging it. Don't have a decent microscope to look at it, and I don't remember what I did with the chip, but I don't think I threw it away.

Edited November 18, 2014 by LaytheAerospace

[Slam_Jones]

So I built my computer a few years ago (summer of... '12 I think?) and it's starting to get a little behind the times. I need to upgrade it, but can only afford one piece (of $100 - $200ish or so) at a time. Any suggestions on what the first piece should be?

The three parts I'm thinking of upgrading (and what I want to upgrade to):

AMD Processor, 3.6gHz Quad-Core (Prolly last to be upgraded, it still runs most everything great)

ATI Radeon 6850 HD (Thinking of upgrading to a R9 280X, maybe a R9 290 if I can afford it )

4 gB RAM (I think this should be upgraded first to 8gig)

KSP runs at 60fps at title screen, usually 30-40 in regular gameplay, down to 5 FPS if using a ship of more than 300+ parts and terrain is in view.

Any suggestions?

Edited November 18, 2014 by Slam_Jones

[Camacha]

ATI Radeon 6850 HD (Thinking of upgrading to a R9 280X, maybe a R9 290 if I can afford it )

Due to mining, a lot of cheap second hand 280X's seem to be available. Of course, some have had a hard life, but some have receipts that show they are only a couple of months old. Even with the most severe beating, they cannot wear out that fast.

Then again, it is quite obvious that your performance problems stem from a lack of single threaded processing power, so adding such a powerful card is not going to do much good if KSP is your primary interest.

[Slam_Jones]

Then again, it is quite obvious that your performance problems stem from a lack of single threaded processing power, so adding such a powerful card is not going to do much good if KSP is your primary interest.

So of the three, what would you recommend I upgrade first?

I don't like the idea of upgrading my Processor just for single-thread processing boost, as KSP is the only game I play that can't utilize all four cores.

[briansun1]

So of the three, what would you recommend I upgrade first?

I don't like the idea of upgrading my Processor just for single-thread processing boost, as KSP is the only game I play that can't utilize all four cores.

I want to say Ram, then CPU, then GPU.

[Camacha]

So of the three, what would you recommend I upgrade first?

That rather depends on your priorities. What can't you do that you would want to do? Which games do you want to play, at what resolutions, settings and frame rates? Are there any other tasks you would like to perform?

It might also be useful to measure the performance of CPU, GPU and RAM while playing the problem games. That way you know what the problem is and can spend your money wisely. Otherwise it is just a guessing game.

I don't like the idea of upgrading my Processor just for single-thread processing boost, as KSP is the only game I play that can't utilize all four cores.

I would say 2 + 2 cores (like cars have 2 + 2 seats), but that is nitpicking

I want to say Ram, then CPU, then GPU.

Upgrading RAM is only useful if you run a 64 bit OS, and if the current system is swapping to the hard drive. Otherwise, you will gain little.

[Slam_Jones]

I want to say Ram, then CPU, then GPU.

Good to know. Thanks!

That rather depends on your priorities. What can't you do that you would want to do? Which games do you want to play, at what resolutions, settings and frame rates? Are there any other tasks you would like to perform?

Basically 99% gaming. The other games I've been playing lately are: Warframe (it got a big graphical boost recently, so I had to turn down the graphics ) and Battlefield 4. I find that the "unplayable" line for me is around 25 FPS. Below that, I just get irritated. I love playing on 1920 x 1080, but I'll turn that down if needed (only had to do it in Warframe). I prefer max'd out settings, and resolution is usually the last setting I tune down.

I also occasionally do 3d design, game development (in Unity) and some programming (C#) but none of those programs have had issues with my current system.

EDIT: As far as RAM goes, would I be better off getting another 2x 2gB RAM set in addition my current one (so all 4 slots are filled), or would I be better off with 2x 4gB and taking out my current 2x 2gB (so that only two slots are still filled)

Edited November 18, 2014 by Slam_Jones
Clarification and details

[Camacha]

Good to know. Thanks!

Sorry, I don't feel that is a very comprehensive advice. See my earlier post.

[Slam_Jones]

Sorry, I don't feel that is a very comprehensive advice. See my earlier post.

Oops, didn't see your post when I replied. I edit'd my reply.

Thanks!

[Camacha]

Good to know. Thanks!

Basically 99% gaming. The other games I've been playing lately are: Warframe (it got a big graphical boost recently, so I had to turn down the graphics ) and Battlefield 4. I find that the "unplayable" line for me is around 25 FPS. Below that, I just get irritated. I love playing on 1920 x 1080, but I'll turn that down if needed (only had to do it in Warframe). I prefer max'd out settings, and resolution is usually the last setting I tune down.

My gut says that the video card might be the issue here, but my gut is hardly a scientific instrument. I would open Task Manager and something like GPU-Z before playing the games you mention. Just check out whether you max out the processor, video card or your memory. Depending on the results, you have your answer. Again, the only way to be sure is to measure it.

EDIT: As far as RAM goes, would I be better off getting another 2x 2gB RAM set in addition my current one (so all 4 slots are filled), or would I be better off with 2x 4gB and taking out my current 2x 2gB (so that only two slots are still filled)

Filling up the slots is fine, though you should realize upgrading becomes harder after that. So you might want to consider adding another 2 x 4 GB. It would be wasteful to throw away the 4 GB you already have Maxing out the slots does, in theory, put extra strain on the memory controller, but unless you are overclocking right at the very edge of the limits, this should not be an issue at all.

[Slam_Jones]

-Snip-

Lots of good advice here. I'll d/l GPU-Z and test it like you mentioned (wish I'd thought of that a while ago xD).

My other question regarding RAM is, how bad is it to mismatch gB sizes? Like would it be a good idea in any way to add 2x 4gB with my 2x 2gB currently installed? I wouldn't do it that way, but I'm curious what the theoretical side-effects would be (if any).

[Camacha]

My other question regarding RAM is, how bad is it to mismatch gB sizes? Like would it be a good idea in any way to add 2x 4gB with my 2x 2gB currently installed? I wouldn't do it that way, but I'm curious what the theoretical side-effects would be (if any).

Sizes are not an issue at all. However, memory type and speed can, on occasion, cause issues on its own or when combined with others. It if fairly rare, but it does happen. If you want to be sure it will be fine, pick memory that is on the QVL, which is a compatibility list found on the manufacturer website. If you can't find memory that is on there for a good price, don't fret, it is probably going to be fine, but it is a precaution you could take.

As long as you make sure you have equal sets of two and install them in the proper slots on your motherboard, you will be able to use dual channel mode. This is a nice small bonus to have and costs you nothing, outside of looking in the manual which RAM stick should go in which slot exactly. This will only work when paired correctly, which is typically indicated by slot colour, but be sure to check the manual.

Edited November 18, 2014 by Camacha

[Camacha]

In the name of practising what you preach I bought a new hard drive today. I have been using an old HDD for backups of my most vital data, but its age is unknown (though at least 7 years) and it was spitting out some... interesting SMART values. Not disconcerting ones, like you normally see when things go south, they are just not making sense at all. Both are red flags when it comes to drive reliability, so I decided to finally upgrade to a large new drive that has ample room for trivial data. I also neglected to setup properly automated backups last time around, so that is something to take care of too.

After this is said and done I will still need to devise some way of doing off site backups in case of fire, theft, or some other catastrophic type of failure. I rather dislike making online backups, since you have no control over the specifics, but for consistent and day-to-day off site backups it might very well turn out to be the best option.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Camacha

[Red Iron Crown]

After this is said and done I will still need to devise some way of doing off site backups in case of fire, theft, or some other catastrophic type of failure. I rather dislike making online backups, since you have no control over the specifics, but for consistent and day-to-day off site backups it might very well turn out to be the best option.

If you do end up going for an online solution, I'd suggest CrashPlan, it's very affordable, multi-platform, and is "set and forget". It also supports backing up to another PC you control on another premises. If you have someone you can trust with your data, you can have automated offsite backups at no charge.

[Camacha]

Nevermind.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Camacha

[Error404brain]

• What are you planning to do with this compuer? Please be as specfic as possible.
  

Mostly KSP, modded as possible and coding (python and java). It would remplace my actual laptop wich has a an i3 and a nvidia geforce 720. That's a personnal computer, and for to play.

• What is your budget?
  

1000 €

• Does this include a copy of Windows?
  

Nope

• Does this include peripheals (a keyboard, monitor, mouse, speakers, etc.)?
  

I got a micro+headset and a mouse.

• Are you from the United States or a different country? Are you ordering from your own country or from across borders?
  

Belgium, buying in belgium.

• Wherever you may be from, does the store that you are planning to order from have a website? It's okay if it isn't in English, we can manage.
  

http://www.microcity.be/webshop/catalogue-7-5-12-microcity-Processeur.html?page=2&MC=all&BRAND=all&sp1=all&sp11=all&sp72=all I am going in a magasin, thought

• Do you plan on overclocking? If yes, do you have a specific goal in mind?
  

Yes, if possible and that would be about MOAR POWER.

• Would you prefer the build to be particularly small?
  

Nah.

• Would you prefer the build to be particularly quiet?
  

I don't really care. I would probably change fan cooling for a water based one, once I got money for it.

• In general, do you prefer this to be a computer that you can spend money on now and let it rest, or a box built for continuous upgrading?
  

Upgrading. Once every 2 year or so, thought.

• Do you ever plan on utilizing NVIDIA's SLI or AMD's CrossfireX technologies? These features, with a compatible motherboard, allow a user to link multiple identical graphic cards together for added performance. In real world terms, this lets you buy a second identical graphics card down the line as a relatively cheap and easy way to gain a fairly large boost in performance. However, this requires buying a SLI/CFX compatible motherboard and PSU now, which may result in slightly higher initial cost.
  

If that's more cost efficient, I am all for.

For the time being, I want to build a pc in a tower, but I will probably upgrade it into a case with a glass, led and water cooling, for the awesomness sake. I have a 3D printer if that can be used and I have already built things in arduino (a car and a quadrocopter). That would be my first hand built pc.

For "experimental technology" (overclocking, SSD, watercooling,...) I am all for.

[Elthy]

1000€ should be more than enough since you wont need a expensive GPU.

Why did you choose this store? It doesnt have much stuff and is quite expensive, e.g. i miss the i5 4690K (which would be ideal for your PC) or Asrock mainboards (and there are no AMD CPUs at all). It also has a bad sorting system, i cant select the chipsets for mainboards (Z97)...

[Error404brain]

http://www.elak.be/

After asking to a friend he pointed me out this store, if that could help ?

It has ton of z97 and i490k.

(I apologise for not having done that before )

EDIT : Can I take 2 ram thing for now and add 2 other, after ? (assuming the motherboard have 4 slot)

Edited November 22, 2014 by Error404brain