KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[Camacha]

On 20/09/2016 at 10:15 PM, Elthy said:

Nope, at least for Windows 7 you just need the other DVD to change the 32/64 bit version, no new key. Ive done it myself, and im quite sure its still true for the newer versions.

Most people do not have an the other dvd and quite a few will not even have any dvd at all. If you have a 32-bit license of Windows [version X] you also have a license for a 64-bits copy of Windows [version X], though getting an appropriate image is not always as straightforward as you would hope. If you are willing to and capable of fiddling with things a bit, it should not be impossible, though.
 

4 hours ago, Benji13 said:

I'm getting a new laptop soon and I was wondering if anyone else has something similar or knows how well it would go with large ships/scatterer/not having pixel light count turned right down. Especially that last one. Specs are:

•Core i7-6700HQ Processor (6M Cache up to 3.50 GHz)

•Nvidea GeForce GTX 960M w 2GB DDR5 VRAM

•8GB DDR3 RAM. I know it doesn't really matter as long as you've got enough but I thought I'd add it anyway. 

Thanks anyone who can help,

Benji13

As far as laptops go, this should be a good one. Having a modern Intel chip with such a high turbo clock speed should give you the best chance of having a more than decent gameplay experience. The thermals of a laptop will never be ideal, but that is one of the obvious trade-offs that come with portability.

[Guest]

Well, I've made my decision that I'm going to start putting money aside for a new GTX 1060.  

[legoclone09]

On 10/7/2016 at 7:09 PM, CliftonM said:

Well, I've made my decision that I'm going to start putting money aside for a new GTX 1060.  

Get the 6GB one. Way better and only $50 or so more.

[Guest]

Just now, legoclone09 said:

Get the 6GB one. Way better and only $50 or so more.

Yeah, that's the one in my list on Amazon.  

[legoclone09]

Just now, CliftonM said:

Yeah, that's the one in my list on Amazon.  

Good.

 

Now you just need a new mouse, keyboard, processor, SSD, PSU, motherboard, case, and water cooling system. All with RGB.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, legoclone09 said:

Good.

 

Now you just need a new mouse, keyboard, processor, SSD, PSU, motherboard, case, and water cooling system. All with RGB.

...when I just built my computer a little over a month ago...  Just upgrading, which was the plan.

[wojo1210]

So after playing kerbal on crappy laptops since before 0.20, before I was even out of freshman year of high school, I have finally been able to pull the trigger and build my first desktop pc. I'm insanely excited for mainly the improvement in kerbal but also for games like arma and other such games. Now its just a waiting game for my parts to come in.

Here are the stats

Spoiler

• core I5-6600K 
• Corsair H100i v2 liquid cpu cooler
• msi z170-a pro motherboard
• kingston 8 gb ddr4 ram
• 240 gb ssd
• 1 tb hard drive
• gigabyte geforce gtx 1060
• corsair vengeance c70 case 
• evga 650 power supply

I already have a cheap keyboard, monitor and mouse but plan on upgrading all that in the future. Any input is greatly appreciated. 

 

[legoclone09]

On 10/9/2016 at 9:01 PM, wojo1210 said:

So after playing kerbal on crappy laptops since before 0.20, before I was even out of freshman year of high school, I have finally been able to pull the trigger and build my first desktop pc. I'm insanely excited for mainly the improvement in kerbal but also for games like arma and other such games. Now its just a waiting game for my parts to come in.

Here are the stats

  Hide contents

• core I5-6600K 
• Corsair H100i v2 liquid cpu cooler
• msi z170-a pro motherboard
• kingston 8 gb ddr4 ram
• 240 gb ssd
• 1 tb hard drive
• gigabyte geforce gtx 1060
• corsair vengeance c70 case 
• evga 650 power supply

I already have a cheap keyboard, monitor and mouse but plan on upgrading all that in the future. Any input is greatly appreciated. 

 

Looks good, but make sure to get the 6GB version of the 1060. And for a keyboard I'd get a Ducky or a Pok3r, those are great (Duckys are a little more expensive, though). For a mouse I really like my Logitech G602, but I've heard the Corsairs are good. For a monitor I've heard Asus is good, but I personally have a Panasonic 1920x1080 and like it, but don't know how it stacks up. Processor is great, RAM is great, but I'd get a 2TB HDD instead.

[Randazzo]

Since I've been able to purchase my own machines, I've always ended up shooting for a middle-of-the-road rig. I've managed to get 3-5 years (of satisfactory gaming) out of each machine I've purchased, and usually when I upgrade my rig I cannibalize parts from the previous machine -- RAM, Hard Disks, Power Supply Units -- to help keep the cost down. The time to upgrade has rolled around once more, and for the first time ever I bought (what I think is a mostly) top end machine. No old parts.

CPU - Core i7 6700k 4.00GHZ
MOBO - MSI Z170A Gaming M7
RAM - 16GB (2x8) Corsair Vengeance DDR4
GFX- EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Superclocked ACX 3.0 Edition 8GB GDDR5x
SSD - 128GB Intel 600p series 1800MB/s read & 560MB/s (never had one of these before)
HDD - 2TB

I considered this purchase for weeks. I have no impending financial obligations that would have impeded this purchase. But I still feel terrible, as if I should have spent it on something better. Bad enough that I'm whining here. Goodness.

I suspect I will feel better once I have the machine running something on Ultra. In the meantime, internet validation will do  

or not.
 

 

Edited October 17, 2016 by Randazzo

[Superfluous J]

You earned the money, have no pressing need for it, and spent it on something you wanted. Sounds perfectly fine to me.

Also, look back on your prior computer buying and ask yourself:

When was the last time I bought a part and - after installing it and using it - thought 'Man, I wish I'd bought the cheaper, less powerful one.'

[Legendary Emu]

Maybe you're sentimental towards your old PC's. You've been using the old parts for so long that you feel bad for throwing them away.

[legoclone09]

You didn't waste anything. That rig is great! Waaay better than mine right now.

Now go play KSP with some 16k textures and Principia, as well as lots of parts mods. 

[Randazzo]

5 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

You earned the money, have no pressing need for it, and spent it on something you wanted. Sounds perfectly fine to me.

Also, look back on your prior computer buying and ask yourself:

When was the last time I bought a part and - after installing it and using it - thought 'Man, I wish I'd bought the cheaper, less powerful one.'

Powerful logic, sir. A vulcan would be hard pressed to argue.

[Vanamonde]

Overlapping threads have been merged. 

[katateochi]

I upgraded my rig last week, after much planning and pondering over which direction to go in.  I've upgraded the CPU, RAM and motherboard but kept all the other parts. That's how I tend to do it, rather than going all out on a whole new setup. 

So the spec is now;
new parts:
CPU: i7 6800k - 6 physical cores (12 threads) 
RAM: 32GB DDR4 Corsair Dominator Platinum (quad channel kit)
MB: Asus Rampage V Extreme (X99 chipset) 

existing parts:
VID: Geforce GTX 760 (4GB) -> 2x 24'' dell monitors. 
SSD: 500GB Samsung
HDs: 1x 2TB, 2x 1TB, 2x 300GB Raptors (all Western Digital)
PSU: 1000w CoolerMaster silent pro
Case: NZXT Phantom (black, obviously).
IO: Das keyboard (brown switches) & Razor Ouroboros mouse (3rd replacement and this one squeaks, not impressed, don't recommend). 

I'd like to upgrade the graphics card, but honestly, I can run Doom on full settings and KSP isn't exactly graphically punishing so that can wait for another time. 

I was originally looking at the Skylake CPUs and the Z170 chipset, but I could not find a MB that I liked with adequate SATA support. So I turned to the X99 chipset and I've had a Rampage III motherboard before and they are simply amazing motherboards. So I'm very happy to have another Rampage in my rig. and it's got plenty SATA support and more USB than I know what to do with. 
The Broadwell i7 6800 is not as powerful in terms of MHz as the Skylake i7 6700 but its 6 cores (vs 4 on skylake), a stonking 15mb of cache (vs 8mb), 28 PCIe lanes (vs 16)  and 4 memory channels (vs 2) is what sold it to me.  And it's has some overclocking potential (I've got mine running at 3.8 now. windows is stable with it at 4.0, but not linux for some reason).

oh....and the other new part, a AIO water cooler for the CPU. First time I've ever intentionally put water into my computer and the best part.....it's a Kraken!! (NZXT Kraken X41). So...yeah...I've intentionally put water and a Kraken into my computer! 
But my case is an original model Phantom (good few years old now) and it's not designed to take a radiator and doesn't have anywhere to fit a 140mm fan. So I had to ghetto mount it. Involved (literally) whittling the corners down on the fan so it would fit snugly into a hole in the top of the case (designed for a 200mm case fan), zip-tying the fan into place and then bolting the radiator under it. Nothing quite like taking a knife to a new bit of hardware! But it actually worked very nicely.

Spoiler

Some pics of the finished build;

Spoiler

 

I have an issue with my old power supply, it's a great PSU except that the bearings in the fan are dying. So no longer silent pro...more like rattle pro.  But it's a 135mm fan and I can't find anywhere that sells that size (at low dB ratings).  I'm considering soldering a 2 pin connector onto one of my spare 120mm fans and finding some way to attach that to a 135mm mounting. 

My other issue is with overclocking (something I'm kinda new to).  I can up my cpu multiplier to 40 with the strap at 100MHz and that stands up to a stability test in windows (without needing to adjust the core voltage). But in Linux everything freezes after a few minutes of running. I've tried increased core voltage, upgrading the Kernel, latest graphics drivers, setting the cpu c-state (all from suggestions on how to stop linux freezing) but it's only happy with the multiplier at 38. So I'm not sure what I need to do.  Any suggestions? 

[Camacha]

On 17/10/2016 at 9:24 PM, 5thHorseman said:

Also, look back on your prior computer buying and ask yourself:

When was the last time I bought a part and - after installing it and using it - thought 'Man, I wish I'd bought the cheaper, less powerful one.'

Oh dear. It looks like you have still deeper to go into the rabbit hole.

On 18/10/2016 at 5:01 PM, katateochi said:

I upgraded my rig last week, after much planning and pondering over which direction to go in.  I've upgraded the CPU, RAM and motherboard but kept all the other parts. That's how I tend to do it, rather than going all out on a whole new setup. 

So the spec is now;
[...]
PSU: 1000w CoolerMaster silent pro

What is your typical workload? The CPU and GPU power seem a bit unbalanced for gaming, but you do mention that your games are not too graphics heavy to begin with. The RAM also suggests you do other things. What are you doing that requires all that RAM and CPU cores?

Also, what made you get a PSU that is at least triple of what you will ever actually use?

[katateochi]

Just now, Camacha said:

The CPU and GPU power seem a bit unbalanced for gaming

yeah the GPU is old, I didn't have the budget to upgrade it this time around, that will be next.  
 

Just now, Camacha said:

What are you doing that requires all that RAM and CPU cores?

Mostly development on a project that has a very intensive multi-threaded CI test suite, running various virtual machines and web servers while working on them. So multiple threads and plenty RAM is helpful. And, while not often, I do some media processing so again lots of RAM helps with that.
 

1 hour ago, Camacha said:

Also, what made you get a PSU that is at least triple of what you will ever actually use?

on my calculations my setup can use ~650W and that's with a single graphics card. I plan to add a more powerful card or two at some point, maybe a physX card (maybe), I'll probably at some point add another hardrive, so it gives room for overhead. I also reckon on going for a PSU that is around 200W more than what you need.

[Camacha]

11 hours ago, katateochi said:

on my calculations my setup can use ~650W and that's with a single graphics card. I plan to add a more powerful card or two at some point, maybe a physX card (maybe), I'll probably at some point add another hardrive, so it gives room for overhead.

Unless you have a chipset that runs on steam, you will never come anywhere near 650 watt It would be fairly surprising if you ever even got past 333 watt. That is, with full overclocking on both and doing unrealistic torture tests. The real life number is probably a lot less that that. It would not surprise me if your realistic number would be 1/5th of your PSU rating.

That is not even taking into account that CPU and GPU probably do not even touch 30 watts idle. Of course, your hard drives will add to that, but considering power supplies are least efficient when barely loaded, it is not the place you want your PSU to be hovering 99,8% of the time. There is a reasons all those fancy graphs will not show what's below 20%

Finally, having 200 watt headroom only makes sense if you seriously consider upgrading to multiple cards in the near future. Having that much room to play with made sense 20 years ago, but nowadays even the high-end stuff could be powered by a few mice having a marathon in a wheel. I happened to test one of the higher end Skylake systems just a few days ago and it did a whopping 11 watt when idle. Even a proper laptop chip just 2 years old gets humiliated by those kinds of numbers.

Do not get me wrong, I do not want to rain on your parade or anything. It just pains me to see people buy IT'S-OVER-9000-PSU'S when they could have saved some cash and would end up with a better balanced system to boot.

 

11 hours ago, katateochi said:

Mostly development on a project that has a very intensive multi-threaded CI test suite, running various virtual machines and web servers while working on them. So multiple threads and plenty RAM is helpful. And, while not often, I do some media processing so again lots of RAM helps with that.

Yeah, that makes sense. Just sneeze and your VM's will eat up all of your RAM.

[pincushionman]

I'm looking into building a "starter" PC with my son, so I'm looking at ways to save money while at the same time "future-proofing" the build by choosing a mobo with an LGA 1151 socket. The low end of the processor line for that socket is a Core i5-6400 (which should be no slouch in the processing department), and is advertised as having "integrated graphics HD 530". I'm used to "integrated graphics" meaning a graphics chipset on the motherboard, not a feature of the processor (but then again, I haven't built a system in nearly five years). Does this mean we can save money by using a mobo such as this one which has no on-board graphics, just apparently a pass-through of some kind?

I'll note that Toms Hardware rates Integrated HD 530 at roughly the same "value" as the GeForce 9800 GTX+ I'm using in my machine right now, so I don't think I'd be holding him back too much by not spending another $100 or more on a dedicated graphics card if we can get away with it. All the motherboards I'm considering have PCIe x16 3.0 slots so we can add one later.

Of course, similar motherboards that do have on-board graphics are only $10 or $15 more than this one, so I'm less concerned about validating one particular super-inexpensive board than I am about making sure I don't get one that won't work without a bunch of extra expense. But if I'm not careful $10 or $15 here and there starts to look like an additional $100 real quick for the whole system..

[legoclone09]

1 hour ago, pincushionman said:

I'm looking into building a "starter" PC with my son, so I'm looking at ways to save money while at the same time "future-proofing" the build by choosing a mobo with an LGA 1151 socket. The low end of the processor line for that socket is a Core i5-6400 (which should be no slouch in the processing department), and is advertised as having "integrated graphics HD 530". I'm used to "integrated graphics" meaning a graphics chipset on the motherboard, not a feature of the processor (but then again, I haven't built a system in nearly five years). Does this mean we can save money by using a mobo such as this one which has no on-board graphics, just apparently a pass-through of some kind?

I'll note that Toms Hardware rates Integrated HD 530 at roughly the same "value" as the GeForce 9800 GTX+ I'm using in my machine right now, so I don't think I'd be holding him back too much by not spending another $100 or more on a dedicated graphics card if we can get away with it. All the motherboards I'm considering have PCIe x16 3.0 slots so we can add one later.

Of course, similar motherboards that do have on-board graphics are only $10 or $15 more than this one, so I'm less concerned about validating one particular super-inexpensive board than I am about making sure I don't get one that won't work without a bunch of extra expense. But if I'm not careful $10 or $15 here and there starts to look like an additional $100 real quick for the whole system..

I'd get the Nvidia GTX 1050ti when it comes out. It's going to be a great low-cost graphics card, around $150 are estimates. On-board graphics are very weak, you will be holding him back a lot (well, depends on what games you play). And don't skimp on mouse/keyboard! I recommend a Cooler Master Quickfire Rapid as a keyboard, cheap (for a good mechanical keyboard, it's $75), and good quality. For a mouse a Logitech G502 is really good, but is $50. Expensive, but you won't have to replace them and they are much better than a $10 mouse/keyboard combo set.

Edited October 23, 2016 by legoclone09

[Elthy]

Are there still mainboards with integrated graphics? Anyway, an i5 6500 would propably be a better choice depending on the price difference, the difference in clockspeed is quite large.

But yeah, all mainstream Intel mainboards have graphics connectors to utilize the integrated GPU of the processor. While a HD530 is enough for basic stuff i would realy recommend a dedicated GPU for gaming, currently the AMD RX 460 4GB is the best choice for futureproof budget PCs.

Edited October 23, 2016 by Elthy

[legoclone09]

I'm just going to assume my graphics card is dying.

EDIT: Just cleaned my computer fully, seeing if it's better.

 

EDIT 2: Still weird. I think I'll reinstall Overwatch, if that doesn't work I'll probably get a new GPU sometime.
If only I had money...

Edited October 24, 2016 by legoclone09

[Elthy]

Didvyou also try reinstalling the driver? At least you have the coolest looking graphics bug ive ever seen

[legoclone09]

9 hours ago, Elthy said:

Didvyou also try reinstalling the driver? At least you have the coolest looking graphics bug ive ever seen

No. I'll try a reinstall today and if that doesn't work I'll update drivers.

[cantab]

On 23/10/2016 at 5:06 AM, pincushionman said:

I'm looking into building a "starter" PC with my son, so I'm looking at ways to save money while at the same time "future-proofing" the build by choosing a mobo with an LGA 1151 socket. The low end of the processor line for that socket is a Core i5-6400 (which should be no slouch in the processing department)

Well, there are Pentiums and Core i3's for less.

On 23/10/2016 at 5:06 AM, pincushionman said:

, and is advertised as having "integrated graphics HD 530". I'm used to "integrated graphics" meaning a graphics chipset on the motherboard, not a feature of the processor (but then again, I haven't built a system in nearly five years).

Yeah, that's changed. Nowadays 'integrated graphics' generally means integrated into the processor, and most processors have it. Motherboard integrated graphics is very rare on consumer desktops and workstations, though you might see it on servers.

On 23/10/2016 at 5:06 AM, pincushionman said:

Does this mean we can save money by using a mobo such as this one which has no on-board graphics, just apparently a pass-through of some kind?

Yes. You just need to check that the graphics outputs include one compatible with your monitor.

On 23/10/2016 at 5:06 AM, pincushionman said:

Of course, similar motherboards that do have on-board graphics are only $10 or $15 more than this one

Link? Because to my knowledge it's rare for Skylake/LGA1151 motherboards to have that. What you do see on slightly more expensive motherboards is a VGA graphics output which for Skylake requires a converter chip because the processor only does digital outputs itself.