KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[Camacha]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

It's an APU. So there's nothing I can do. Great so I have nothing I can do in the mean time except to wait for either gracious donations or until I have the money. God I'm tired of lagging.

Again, what part of your performance is lacking? If it turns out to be GPU performance, you might be able to do something about it. I have a similar APU system here and it is possible to add a GPU card to it. Open up Task Manager and something like Afterburner and play one of your lagging games. The graphs will tell you (or us) which of the components is struggling with your demands.

The first step of solving a problem is knowing what your problem is exactly.

[ZooNamedGames]

8 minutes ago, Camacha said:

Again, what part of your performance is lacking? If it turns out to be GPU performance, you might be able to do something about it. I have a similar APU system here and it is possible to add a GPU card to it. Open up Task Manager and something like Afterburner and play one of your lagging games. The graphs will tell you (or us) which of the components is struggling with your demands.

The first step of solving a problem is knowing what your problem is exactly.

Well the issue is that it lags on everything. Tops 8fps during KSP. Maybe 15 on everything else. It even hangs on Microsoft word.

Also if I have to buy something then I'll just save it for my complete upgrade. 

I'll also burn any AMD hardware you don't want. Hate AMD now.

Task Manager shows the CPU constantly even when not doing anything at 40% and RAM at 50%+. 

[cantab]

6 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Task Manager shows the CPU constantly even when not doing anything at 40%

That should not be happening, even on a Jaguar architecture chip like yours. I'd first check temperatures using HWInfo. Normal CPU temperature is 40 C or below when idle, 70 C or below under load. If it's higher, clean the dust out of your PC.

If your temperatures are fine, then use Task Manager to try and find out what program is hogging 40% of the CPU, and then either uninstall or change the settings on that program.

[Camacha]

1 minute ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Well the issue is that it lags on everything. Tops 8fps during KSP. Maybe 15 on everything else. It even hangs on Microsoft word.

Lag can mean a processor that cannot cope. Lag can mean the GPU has a hard time. Lag can mean memory that is filled to the brim. Lag can mean a hard drive that just will not get with the program. You cannot fix it unless you find out what the problematic part is. You really need to compare GPU and CPU load while running a game.

 

1 minute ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I'll also burn any AMD hardware you don't want. Hate AMD now.

Bottom of the barrel Intels are not much better. In fact, some are much worse. There is a bug in Atoms that kills them dead permanently. That being said, if you manage your expectations, these little buggers can be quite useful.

[ZooNamedGames]

7 minutes ago, cantab said:

That should not be happening, even on a Jaguar architecture chip like yours. I'd first check temperatures using HWInfo. Normal CPU temperature is 40 C or below when idle, 70 C or below under load. If it's higher, clean the dust out of your PC.

If your temperatures are fine, then use Task Manager to try and find out what program is hogging 40% of the CPU, and then either uninstall or change the settings on that program.

Task manager is taking 10%. Discord is 1.5%, Microsoft edge is 0.8%, steam is 5%, window audio graph is 1.5%, desktop manager is 2.5%, system is 0.5%, and so on. Doesn't add up but that's what's happening. Exact major processes right now.

4 minutes ago, Camacha said:

Lag can mean a processor that cannot cope. Lag can mean the GPU has a hard time. Lag can mean memory that is filled to the brim. Lag can mean a hard drive that just will not get with the program. You cannot fix it unless you find out what the problematic part is. You really need to compare GPU and CPU load while running a game.

 

Bottom of the barrel Intels are not much better. In fact, some are much worse. There is a bug in Atoms that kills them dead permanently. That being said, if you manage your expectations, these little buggers can be quite useful.

It's CPU only. There is no GPU. I've got 5 charts; CPU, memory (at 59%), disk, Ethernet and wifi. 

CPU is at 60%+ while doing nothing.

Edited February 14, 2017 by ZooNamedGames

[Camacha]

Quote

CPU is at 40%+ while doing nothing.

Yes there is. There is no graph in Task Manager, but I already mentioned you need to install an application like Afterburner. I could be a smart bum an throw your comment about reading people's post in your face, but I will kindly refrain

 

10 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Task manager is taking 10%. Discord is 1.5%, Microsoft edge is 0.8%, steam is 5%, window audio graph is 1.5%, desktop manager is 2.5%, system is 0.5%, and so on. Doesn't add up but that's what's happening. Exact major processes right now.

Other than identifying your bottleneck and solving it as much as possible, you need to start tweaking your computer to bits. Optimisation can make a huge different. Eliminate all programs that are not absolutely critical, disable Windows features and services that take up resources, clean all clutter, toy with game settings to squeeze out that last frame - tune it all up.

By tweaking computers I have been able to run games fairly decently that would not even start before. You need to make sure your hardware focusses as much as possible on the task at hand. Necessity is the mother of invention. The process is actually very similar to overclocking, and the results are too.

Edited February 14, 2017 by Camacha

[ZooNamedGames]

3 minutes ago, Camacha said:

Yes there is. There is no graph in Task Manager, but I already mentioned you need to install an application like Afterburner. I could be a smart bum an throw your comment about reading people's post in your face, but I will kindly refrain

 

Other than identifying your bottleneck and solving it as much as possible, you need to start tweaking your computer to bits. Optimisation can make a huge different. Eliminate all programs that are not absolutely critical, disable Windows features and services that take up resources, clean all clutter, toy with game settings to squeeze out that last frame - tune it all up.

By tweaking computers I have been able to run games fairly decently that would not even start before. You need to make sure your hardware focusses as much as possible on the task at hand. Necessity is the mother of invention. The process is actually very similar to overclocking, and the results are too.

Honestly I don't think there's much I can do. I can't delete the actual processes that lags so what's the point.

[Camacha]

1 minute ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Honestly I don't think there's much I can do.

Rubbish. You got some solid advice and plenty of things to do and try. I know for a fact that you can improve performance by identifying problems and tweaking things. If you decide to leave it at that, that is fine, as long as you are aware that you decided not to do anything about the performance of your computer. The only way of not coming out on top is giving up before you ever started.

As has been said, the process is actually very similar to overclocking.

1 minute ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I can't delete the actual processes that lags so what's the point.

No one ever said you should. What was said is that you should eliminate or optimise anything that competes for resources, and optimise the desired process as much as possible too.

[ZooNamedGames]

19 minutes ago, Camacha said:

Rubbish. You got some solid advice and plenty of things to do and try. I know for a fact that you can improve performance by identifying problems and tweaking things. If you decide to leave it at that, that is fine, as long as you are aware that you decided not to do anything about the performance of your computer. The only way of not coming out on top is giving up before you ever started.

As has been said, the process is actually very similar to overclocking.

No one ever said you should. What was said is that you should eliminate or optimise anything that competes for resources, and optimise the desired process as much as possible too.

I've been trying to cut ends for several months now and there's no change.

[Camacha]

1 minute ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I've been trying to cut ends for several months now and there's no change.

That is great news. It is pretty much impossible that no improvements can be made, so it means you still have plenty of room to play with.

Be sure to include the graphs mentioned before of both Task Manager and Afterburner in your next post, and an exhaustive list of the many things you tried by now. I am sure we have some good suggestions on how to improve on them. Oh, and we did the wallowing dance a few months ago. No need to repeat that.

[legoclone09]

2 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I'll also burn any AMD hardware you don't want. Hate AMD now.

AMD's new GPUs have beaten Nvidia, and Ryzen seems set to beat Intel. AMD's FX series only flopped due to them focusing on more cores and less instructions per clock cycle. Ryzen is supposed to rival (or beat) Intel, and the processors are set to release before March 3.

[Elthy]

9 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I'll also burn any AMD hardware you don't want. Hate AMD now.

Its not exactly AMDs fault that you use a cheap low end system for KSP, you would have the same problems with an Intel Atom. But im still wondering why the performance is that awfull, the PS4 has the same CPU but with twice the cores. I doubt KSP scales that good with more cores...

[Camacha]

7 hours ago, Elthy said:

Its not exactly AMDs fault that you use a cheap low end system for KSP, you would have the same problems with an Intel Atom.

I see the same happening every day. Someone asked for some help reinstalling Windows on a laptop, because it was terribly slow. She noted that she was much happier with her MacBook before it broke down. When I asked her about the price of the Windows laptop, I was told it was literally picked because it was the cheapest one in that store. It had cost around or less than 20% of the MacBook when new. Yet both devices were compared in an apples to apples fashion.

When I explained that in these cheap laptops every corner is cut, up to installing third party software that is basically a bunch of advertisements, just to get that price down, I saw a light bulb go off. To drive the point home, I showed a competing product in the same price range in the form of a Surface Pro 4. The contrast between the cheap laptop and the quality machine was glaringly obvious. It is just that this difference, apparently, does not really occur to people.

That being said, I helped her refresh Windows, install anti-virus software, I explained the necessity of an administrator account and we set one up together and killed off the Windows 10 features that might hurt privacy. A few weeks later, I was told the laptop was much more pleasant to use. Even in what is pretty much the worst case scenario, there is much room for improvement and just adhering to the basics should get you good results.

[ISE]

Im thinking about getting a computer, specifically for running KSP with RSS full resolution, RSSVE, and any other combination of mods I may desire. I currently use a....

 

Mac mini (Late 2014) 

Processor: 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5

Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Graphics:  Intel Iris 1536 MB

Explain to me just what exactly would be ideal to run KSP comfortably with RSS, RSSVE, and anything. What type of computer, OS, performance. Whats Ideal for this?? Cheap, or not, just tell me what would be ideal. Because I'm telling you, my current computer can't run it very well at all. 

[legoclone09]

For price/performance, I'd go with an i5 7600k and an overclockable motherboard with an aftermarket cooler. You'll want a dedicated GPU as well, it'll help a lot, and if you ever decide to play other games you actually can. I have 8GB of RAM in the part list, but you can get 16GB instead if you need it, it's about $50 more. I also chose the case and motherboard because they both look nice (if that matters to you), you can save maybe $40 by getting a cheaper case, motherboard is one of the cheapest Z270 ones. If you're willing to spend another $40 or so you can get a fully modular PSU which lets you have better cable management and looks (if that matters to you, for me it does)

Here's the partlist: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/phDCqk

You should be able to get it OC'd to 4.5GHz or so from 3.8 at around 60*C under load, I'm just extrapolating from what I have with my 4670k (3.4GHz to 4.2GHz at 1.15v).

[ISE]

41 minutes ago, legoclone09 said:

For price/performance, I'd go with an i5 7600k and an overclockable motherboard with an aftermarket cooler. You'll want a dedicated GPU as well, it'll help a lot, and if you ever decide to play other games you actually can. I have 8GB of RAM in the part list, but you can get 16GB instead if you need it, it's about $50 more. I also chose the case and motherboard because they both look nice (if that matters to you), you can save maybe $40 by getting a cheaper case, motherboard is one of the cheapest Z270 ones. If you're willing to spend another $40 or so you can get a fully modular PSU which lets you have better cable management and looks (if that matters to you, for me it does)

Here's the partlist: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/phDCqk

You should be able to get it OC'd to 4.5GHz or so from 3.8 at around 60*C under load, I'm just extrapolating from what I have with my 4670k (3.4GHz to 4.2GHz at 1.15v).

• Processor: Intel Core i7-7700K Quad Core Processor (8MB Cache, 4.5GHz-4.5GHz) 91W

• CPU Cooler: CORSAIR Hydro Series H60 (CW-9060007-WW) High Performance Water / Liquid CPU Cooler

• RAM: 32GB DDR4-2800 | Hard Drive: 512GB Intel 600p NVMe SSD (up to 1775MB/s read and 560MB/s write) + 4TB Solid State Hybrid Hard Disk Drive

• Graphics Card: NVIDIA (MSI Brand) Geforce GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5 | Motherboard: MSI Z270A

 

 

Will this work? 

[Elthy]

3 hours ago, ISE said:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-7700K Quad Core Processor (8MB Cache, 4.5GHz-4.5GHz) 91W

• CPU Cooler: CORSAIR Hydro Series H60 (CW-9060007-WW) High Performance Water / Liquid CPU Cooler

• RAM: 32GB DDR4-2800 | Hard Drive: 512GB Intel 600p NVMe SSD (up to 1775MB/s read and 560MB/s write) + 4TB Solid State Hybrid Hard Disk Drive

• Graphics Card: NVIDIA (MSI Brand) Geforce GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5 | Motherboard: MSI Z270A

 

 

Will this work? 

Totaly overpowered and a waste of money, especially the 1080. Also it would be very stupid to buy a PC now 3 days before Ryzen gets released.

BTW: Whats up with all those compact water cooling things? Yes, they provide quite low temperatures to the CPU, but are way louder than air coolers and cost more...

[legoclone09]

4 hours ago, ISE said:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-7700K Quad Core Processor (8MB Cache, 4.5GHz-4.5GHz) 91W

• CPU Cooler: CORSAIR Hydro Series H60 (CW-9060007-WW) High Performance Water / Liquid CPU Cooler

• RAM: 32GB DDR4-2800 | Hard Drive: 512GB Intel 600p NVMe SSD (up to 1775MB/s read and 560MB/s write) + 4TB Solid State Hybrid Hard Disk Drive

• Graphics Card: NVIDIA (MSI Brand) Geforce GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5 | Motherboard: MSI Z270A

 

 

Will this work? 

Wait for Ryzen if you want that beefy of a processor, and you definitely do not need a GTX 1080 for KSP, only really for AAA games 1440p 144FPS ultra pretty much. A RX 480 8GB or RX 470 is much, much better price/performance. If you plan on water cooling using a AIO loop, the H115 is the one to use, but it is loud. A WD Black 1TB or 2TB should be more than enough, with a 240GB SSD for Windows, KSP, and a few games. You definitely don't need 32GB of RAM, 16GB 2666MHz CAS13 is good for high-end, 8GB is fine as well. ($160 for this RAM). A Ryzen R7 1800X will be best for KSP, but it's $500. Make sure you get a good motherboard as well, MSi Gaming series are good, same with ASRock and ASUS. X370 chipset for Ryzen, and Z270 if you go for a Kaby Lake processor.

Edited February 27, 2017 by legoclone09

[Elthy]

1 minute ago, legoclone09 said:

A Ryzen R7 1800X

Thats still not written in stone, afaik we still dont know how good KSP multithreads. No matter what AMD does, they wont beat the i7 770k for per core performance, the clock is simply way to high...

[legoclone09]

Just now, Elthy said:

Thats still not written in stone, afaik we still dont know how good KSP multithreads. No matter what AMD does, they wont beat the i7 770k for per core performance, the clock is simply way to high...

Yeah, the 7700K beats in single-core from the leaked benchmarks. I think a 1600X might be better single threaded because it has less cores, and could possibly overclock to a higher single core perf than a 7700K if you disable. two cores. A R7 is still likely a solid choice, we'll have to see how it happens in the next week, though.

 

And who's hyped for AMD's Vega announcement tomorrow? I wonder what it will be. AMA with Lisa Su and members of AMD's CPU team will be awesome as well.

[cantab]

With a single vessel KSP cannot effectively use more than two cores. Aspects of the vessel physics simulation inherently cannot be multithreaded well, so this is unlikely to change in future. With multiple vessels KSP can use more cores effectively, but it's not common for a player to have half a dozen high-part-count ships all at once. I would still choose a CPU for KSP based primarily on its single-threaded performance.

And I'll wait and see how good Ryzen is.

[ISE]

13 hours ago, Elthy said:

Totaly overpowered and a waste of money, especially the 1080. Also it would be very stupid to buy a PC now 3 days before Ryzen gets released.

BTW: Whats up with all those compact water cooling things? Yes, they provide quite low temperatures to the CPU, but are way louder than air coolers and cost more...

The more over powered the better in my mind.  I have suffered from too many lagging issues, fps, cpu, etc. This will be a one and done kinda purchase. 

[Elthy]

If you want to burn money its your thing. But you wont get any advantage from paying 400$(?) more for a GPU, if you just play KSP a RX 470 will provide the same FPS (since KSP is very CPU limited).

[legoclone09]

3 hours ago, Elthy said:

If you want to burn money its your thing. But you wont get any advantage from paying 400$(?) more for a GPU, if you just play KSP a RX 470 will provide the same FPS (since KSP is very CPU limited).

GTX 1080 runs around $600.

[Elthy]

52 minutes ago, legoclone09 said:

GTX 1080 runs around $600.

Yeah, but a RX 470 with 8GB would cost about 200$, right?