KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[renniSaint]

Thanks for the advice!

I started with a 960 in there but I was at about 1100 for the whole thing which seemed a bit much. Plus, honestly, I really only play KSP and do some amateurish web design and photo/video editing so high GPU performance doesn't seem likely to be an issue for me. Also found this very interesting (if ultimately completely circumstantial) video comparing the 750 Ti to the 960 that showed you really don't ever drop much below the threshold of framerate mattering with either card:

Fair point about SSD, I was hoping I could get OS X, a Linux build and all my programs on there but maybe not. :/

I checked the specs and it seems I should be ok to do a Hackintosh with only some (ok probably a lot) of cursing at the gods.

The PSU is kinda awful isn't it...? I might have gone too far in trying to stretch my dollars there.

[Camacha]

Be sure to double check whether your RAM clears your cooler. These large heatsinks in the RAM are sometimes causing trouble. They are purely cosmetic anyway, so you might want to consider switching to a low (or normal) profile variety, as it will mean the RAM is usable in any system.

The PSU is kinda awful isn't it...? I might have gone too far in trying to stretch my dollars there.

Please, buy a well built PSU. It is one of two components that has to be right for a decent computing experience. The other part it the hard drive (and back up drive). Buying badly build and cheap PSU's will only lead to tears and frustration.

I have a spare 1TB WD Caviar drive that I'll slap in for additional storage

Though it is hard to substantiate, it seems the WD Greens have some reliability issues. If it is any other type, you should be good, as long as it is a drive that is not too old and passes stress tests and health checks. Old drives (>4-5 year) are statistically more failure prone, so saving a few bucks by using one of those seems a bad idea.

Also, as always, make sure you make proper backups. Any drive can fail at any time, so make sure you have a way of storing away those important files on a second drive. Like they always say: any data that you do not have double, idata you do not care about at all.

Love to know if I'm not thinking of something or if I should be changing processors to a more multi-threadable cpu with Unity 5 on the way...? I heard contradictory info that even under Unity 5 each craft will still only run on one thread. Which means KSP will still love high clock cpus.

Are you referring to hyper-threading? KSP will likely benefit little, so an i5 will be fine. The same goes for almost any other game, by the way. The i5 really is the way to go when it comes to gaming.

- The aftermarket cooler comes with thermal compound, no need to buy it separately.

Replacing the thermal paste/TIM with your own is often a good idea. The quality of the stuff that comes with the cooler varies quite a bit, so sometimes you are fine, and sometimes it really is a bit of a letdown. You will either need to confirm your cooler has good TIM, or buy some and forget about the stuff supplied.

Edited July 6, 2015 by Camacha

[Endersmens]

Ok. I've gotten frustrated enough to pop a question here. I already bought my computer, but I need help.

On lowest brightness, with all programs closed except for a game (skyrim and KSP mostly) my laptop's battery will drain. while it's plugged in!

As you can imagine this makes for a horrible experience. I get maybe 2 hours of battery before I have to shut it down and come back an hour later. It's very frustrating.

The PSU is a replacement, but it's the same specs as the original as far as I know. It seems underpowered though. It will keep the battery charged until any CPU goes over 30% for a long time. or if brightness is up.

Do I need to buy a new PSU? If so how will I know it's better?

Edited July 7, 2015 by Endersmens

[Superfluous J]

Could be your battery, but if the the problem started when you bought the new PSU then I'm guessing that's the cause.

Your laptop should say on it what volts, amps, and watts it wants. You should make sure your PSU matches. If they're different, it's better if the PSU's numbers are higher (or they can't supply the laptop as quickly as it uses power) but I wouldn't go too much higher, percentage wise.

If the numbers match and you're still having the problem, then yeah, I'd think it's a bum PSU or battery.

[renniSaint]

Ok, thanks for advice! I swapped out the PSU to a proper EVGA unit and decided the 960 is probably worth the extra 100 bucks, also changed the ram over to a unit without the fins and they also happen to be lower voltage so that should be great for heat and/or OCing.

Are you referring to hyper-threading? KSP will likely benefit little, so an i5 will be fine. The same goes for almost any other game, by the way. The i5 really is the way to go when it comes to gaming.

No, hyper-threading is the weird proprietary Intel SMT virtualization thing. I just mean regular SMT. From what I understand even with Unity 5 each craft in KSP will only run on one thread (with other tasks pushed off to other threads). So there wouldn't be really any advantage to having say a 16 core machine over a 4 core with the same clock speed.

[Camacha]

Ok, thanks for advice! I swapped out the PSU to a proper EVGA unit and decided the 960 is probably worth the extra 100 bucks, also changed the ram over to a unit without the fins and they also happen to be lower voltage so that should be great for heat and/or OCing.

Heat rarely, if ever, is a problem with overclocking when it comes to RAM. RAM heatsinks are a predominantly a marketing tool

No, hyper-threading is the weird proprietary Intel SMT virtualization thing. I just mean regular SMT. From what I understand even with Unity 5 each craft in KSP will only run on one thread (with other tasks pushed off to other threads). So there wouldn't be really any advantage to having say a 16 core machine over a 4 core with the same clock speed.

Every reasonably priced consumer system contains 4 real cores. One could argue high-end AMD chips contain 8 cores, but those are 4 units that are somewhere in between hypertreaded units and full cores, as they share a relevant part of their architecture. Only high-end 2011-3 Intel chips, Xeons and Opterons actually contain more physical cores.

Please note that hyper-threading is not purely virtual, there actually are additional bits of hardware present to enable faster switching of tasks. The bits doing the work are indeed shared.

[Endersmens]

Could be your battery, but if the the problem started when you bought the new PSU then I'm guessing that's the cause.

Your laptop should say on it what volts, amps, and watts it wants. You should make sure your PSU matches. If they're different, it's better if the PSU's numbers are higher (or they can't supply the laptop as quickly as it uses power) but I wouldn't go too much higher, percentage wise.

If the numbers match and you're still having the problem, then yeah, I'd think it's a bum PSU or battery.

Where can I find the volts amps a dwarfs requirements? Ive searched and found nothing

[Red Iron Crown]

Every reasonably priced consumer system contains 4 real cores.

Lots of Pentiums and i3s out there, my gaming PC is a dual core. Plus all those dual core laptops.

[Camacha]

Lots of Pentiums and i3s out there, my gaming PC is a dual core. Plus all those dual core laptops.

Of course there are, I was referring to the maximum cores available in consumer grade hardware I might have worded things a bit too concise. There are exceptions, but four is the current limit. You really need to seek out ultra high-end systems for more, or cross into server and/or workstation territory.

[Red Iron Crown]

That makes much more sense, thanks for clarifying.

[texasflyboy]

So, after about 7 years, I've finally built another computer, and we're having a lot of success this time!

I wanted to build a small, KSP (and FSX) dedicated computer within a budget of less than $1000 (less than $500 with donated older parts).

Here's the build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/texasflyboy/saved/dBJXsY

I've overclocked the CPU to 4 GHz with everything else running stock. I have a station with about 450 parts and most of the graphics settings maxed out and the system seems to be able to run this well, allowing me to smoothly maneuver around the station. I'm pretty impressed so far with this little thing.

By the way, the Antec ISK600 is a pretty awesome little case. The computer is called Cortana.

Let me know if anyone needs any more info.

Edited July 8, 2015 by texasflyboy

[cantab]

You need to fix your PC Part Picker link texasflyboy

[texasflyboy]

Thanks, done. They hadn't posted it yet (under review).

[T'Flok]

Oh, nice! A place where I can brag a bit about my current custom-built rig!

Motherboard: Intel DB75EN

Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50Ghz (EDIT: Derp! It's '4 cores / 8-way multitask processing', says on the box)

Graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 980 (Gigabyte's Windforce version with three fans) with 4gb RAM.

PSU: CX750M

OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Two 4gb RAM chips adding to the total of 8gb of RAM. (two more can be added)

Two hard drives each 1 terabyte. My main hard drive is an Hitachi HUA721010KLA330 and the other one is a Western Digital WD10EARS-00MVWB0. Those hard drives and I go way back to when they were in my previous computer. I also have a new 3 terabyte hard drive which I'm using externally for easy data storage and transfer for large files, can't find it's name at the moment.

And fans? Well my new GPU gets proper ventilation now as the case is full with fans in all sides.

Now the fun thing is this rig has been modified several times. It used to have a different chassis and an AMD Radeon HD 7750 (either 512mb or 1gb of RAM, can't recall properly. EDIT: It was passively-cooled, no fan) and an 500w PSU but once I bought the new GTX 980 it was so darn long that I had to upgrade accordingly to feed that beast properly! So now where all of that stuff is in and then some is in a "Xigmatek Asgard Pure Black Edition On Classic Chassis", eh well there are several versions of those it's all quite confusing but the one I have is this one:

I'm old fashioned like that. I'm not interested in bling and other vanity when it comes to computers. For me it's important for the whole thing to function as intended, doesn't need to look cool but practical which to me is cool!

And yet KSP 1.0.2 still works like it's 2000 something all over again! That blasted 32-bit with it's framerate drops and crashes due to memory overflow BS! *grumblemumble* I'm taking a break from KSP until the next version comes out porting the game to Unity 5. It's just not fun anymore when you wanna build ships with more than 300-600 parts and game is running like I'm trying to play Gothic 2 on my long-forgotten Thinkpad. Yeah I have everything on max except AA which is on 2x, I refuse to turn down quality! I tried texture quality at medium and some parts had textures that looked like the Kraken had eaten them and then barfed them back, just so muddy I can't tell what I'm looking at! Anyway, I'm quite happy with my custom built rig, best time and money spent on something that works and can be repaired/upgraded easily should one part fail or just go old. I never bring my rig to a repair place, ever. It helps a big time when your family is tech-savvy.

Wow, that has to my longest post here. Sorry, didn't mean to but.. meh, it happens.

Edited July 10, 2015 by T'Flok
A few missing details and mind passing a wind

[Camacha]

I'm taking a break from KSP until the next version comes out porting the game to Unity 5. It's just not fun anymore when you wanna build ships with more than 300-600 parts and game is running like I'm trying to play Gothic 2 on my long-forgotten Thinkpad.

You might be taking a long break, since there are rumours the update will allow KSP to assign one core (not cpu's ) to each craft. This means that if you have a single huge craft slowing things down now, it still will then.

Of course, the rumours could turn out false.

[T'Flok]

You might be taking a long break, since there are rumours the update will allow KSP to assign one core (not cpu's ) to each craft. This means that if you have a single huge craft slowing things down now, it still will then.

Of course, the rumours could turn out false.

Well, I have 4 cores to spare. Sorry my bad, when you have this much info to go over and then post, there are bound to be a few mishaps. Corrected my error on my original post here.

Edited July 10, 2015 by T'Flok

[Endersmens]

I asked this days ago and got no response. So I'll ask it again.

Where do I find my computer's PSU requirements? Searching the web didn't help.

[Red Iron Crown]

I asked this days ago and got no response. So I'll ask it again.

Where do I find my computer's PSU requirements? Searching the web didn't help.

If it is a laptop or all-in-one you basically have to go with what the PSU the manufacturer supplies. For desktops it's almost always an ATX PSU, requirements will vary with the components in the PC.

[kenbobo]

I'm getting my friend a computer for gaming. Could you recommend a prebuilt with a PCI slot?

[FireFaced]

I'm getting my friend a computer for gaming. Could you recommend a prebuilt with a PCI slot?

Ehhhm....

Budget? I can't help without that.

[Endersmens]

If it is a laptop or all-in-one you basically have to go with what the PSU the manufacturer supplies. For desktops it's almost always an ATX PSU, requirements will vary with the components in the PC.

It is a used laptop. Bought it from a computer shop. He replaced the PSU. But it seems to be underpowered like I mentioned a few pages back. So I need to get a new one. and I need to know what I should get. Any tips?

[kenbobo]

Ehhhm....

Budget? I can't help without that.

300 USD max

[FireFaced]

300 USD max

You're out of luck for a gaming computer

[Red Iron Crown]

It is a used laptop. Bought it from a computer shop. He replaced the PSU. But it seems to be underpowered like I mentioned a few pages back. So I need to get a new one. and I need to know what I should get. Any tips?

Poke around the manufacturer's website and see if you can find the service manual for your model in the support section, that should have the part number for the power supply. Call their support line or chat with an agent on the site to find out about ordering the part (this usually isn't easily available on the site itself). If it is expensive you may want to consider whether your machine is worth putting money into or if that money would be better saved toward a new one.

[Endersmens]

Poke around the manufacturer's website and see if you can find the service manual for your model in the support section, that should have the part number for the power supply. Call their support line or chat with an agent on the site to find out about ordering the part (this usually isn't easily available on the site itself). If it is expensive you may want to consider whether your machine is worth putting money into or if that money would be better saved toward a new one.

My parents funded this computer in april. Not likely I'll get another one within the next few years.

Thanks, I'll try that.