KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[SpaceEnthusiast23]

2 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Compatible with what?

Everything else. The CPU & mobo, actually.

[linuxgurugamer]

43 minutes ago, SpaceEnthusiast23 said:

Everything else. The CPU & mobo, actually.

I had to go back to Jul 23 to find your previous post.  Is this what you are referring to:

 

[Stelum]

9 hours ago, SpaceEnthusiast23 said:

Everything else. The CPU & mobo, actually.

It's compatible, the motherboard is DDR4 and so is your RAM. I've heard that when Ryzen first released it had issues running RAM at high frequencies but that should've been fixed through software iirc. And even if it hadn't, it would've been. So yes, I am sure you're good to go

[SpaceEnthusiast23]

16 hours ago, Stelum said:

It's compatible, the motherboard is DDR4 and so is your RAM. I've heard that when Ryzen first released it had issues running RAM at high frequencies but that should've been fixed through software iirc. And even if it hadn't, it would've been. So yes, I am sure you're good to go

Thank you very much

[Fizwalker]

Greetings fellow Kerbals and friends!

 

It's getting to be about time for me to get a new computer and instead of just getting parts and mashing them together-- (I know!  I know! How un-Kerbal of me! ) I figured I'd see what you fine people thought! I also thought that this could be a tool to help people who might be looking for ideas or don't have a clue where to start use to help them get said clue.  Would have loved to have seen a thread like this idea back when I built my last machine.

Just a couple notes though. When suggesting specs and machines, lets think of a price bracket for the recommendations/thoughts.  Call them Low, Middle, High, and Fantasy (Greens for low/entry level machines, Blues for middle of the road, Reds for high end machines and Purples for machines where price isn't an issue. Hence Fantasy. You can access colors by clicking the A underscore icon and I will suggest price brackets further down in this post.-- Please code your set ups you submit!) This also assumes that KSP is the game you're primarily using it for, but it might not be the only one.

There are people who like AMD and there are people who like Intel. That's cool. I would ask that you refrain from bad mouthing your competition though or going on a bloody rant.  Please keep in mind that these thoughts are for other people's consumption and to help other people get the best equipment for their buck. Not to score points. Also I expect that there will be people just looking for recommendations for certain parts (Video Cards come to mind....) Carrying on about how Intel/AMD is a better processor isn't particularly helpful to them People aren't going to rebuild their entire computer because of 1 aspect isn't working they way they want it. Usually.

Um.... Yeah, I think that covers it except the price brackets

 

*LOW: Less or equal to $500 US Dollars

*Middle: $501-$1000 US Dollars

*High: $1001-$2500 US Dollars

*Fantasy: $2501 and up US Dollars

*:  I live in the U.S. and these brackets are arbitrarily chosen. For those of you who deal with other currencies, I apologize. I expect these will be different. For now the US Dollar is the common benchmark and I am a jerk so I won't be changing it if that does change. I should also say that these are all estimates. One might find prices when you come time to buy your machine vary.

 

Also keep in mind that people want to get the best bang for their buck. I want to maintain at least 1 build (if possible) for either AMD or Intel in the next post per category with a price for each, and to maintain those recommendations.  I won't guarantee they are equal in capabilities, but they fall within similar performance, based solely on budget. (Basing it on performance assumes that people have unlimited wallets. This isn't the case, so we must judge performance upon what we can AFFORD. It doesn't matter if a chip can make cookies and run nuclear tests if the user cannot afford to buy it. There's my bias, so take it with a grain of salt.)

In the next post I will try to keep the most popular set ups listed.  These will be updated around once (1) a month-- Hardware and the game doesn't update sooner than  that.  Might be less frequent if I deem it appropriate, (or those I appoint to maintain this in future deem it appropriate.) I hope the Devs. will help in this regard in suggesting changes in hardware beyond those already posted.

 

Premise here is that that KSP is a primary or major component in the  requirement  in deciding the specs for a new computer.

 

I will post the specs of the machine I am looking to get SOON^TM (This may neither be the cheapest nor most expensive out there) (Will Edit once I get a design I like)

 

When Making a suggestion, please let us know which bracket (with color) you are suggesting it for. It will make my life easier.

Than you all for your help! If I have missed anything, please say so!  Again, thank you for your help!

 

Edited September 18, 2017 by Fizwalker

[qzgy]

a) For one there is a dedicated thread for this 

b) I would personally advocate for something in the 800 to 1000 dollar range [Middle, according to you]. Since KSP is single thread performance bound, you'd want to side with Intel, cause they currently have better single-threaded performance. An i5 (perhaps a -k skew, for fun) is nice for both performance and your wallet. A decent graphics card (GTX 1060 or equivalent) is probably good enough, although there isn't any harm in picking up better stuff. RAM - I would say around 8 gigs minimum or so. More is nicer. Get a decent case, mobo, and power supply, and you're good!  But for KSP, definitely focus on the CPU.

Edited September 18, 2017 by qzgy

[Fizwalker]

34 minutes ago, qzgy said:

a)<Snip>

b) I would personally advocate for something in the 800 to 1000 dollar range [Middle, according to you]. Since KSP is single thread performance bound, you'd want to side with Intel, cause they currently have better single-threaded performance. An i5 (perhaps a -k skew, for fun) is nice for both performance and your wallet. A decent graphics card (GTX 1060 or equivalent) is probably good enough, although there isn't any harm in picking up better stuff. RAM - I would say around 8 gigs minimum or so. More is nicer. Get a decent case, mobo, and power supply, and you're good!  But for KSP, definitely focus on the CPU.

My figures are all arbitrary (meaning I chose them based on what sounded reasonable to me) If there is enough feedback (and given inflation, there will be) this will change. I want to create a thread where one can get an idea what they need within a few posts. I want to create something that people don't have to comb through thousands of posts to figure out. So I hope to keep the 2nd post up to date with what is current thought.

Edited September 18, 2017 by Fizwalker

[Vanamonde]

@Fizwalker, your question has been merged into the master thread for this sort of thing. 

[Ty Tan Tu]

The Sunway TaihuLight looks promising. At 93 petaflops and 10,649,600 CPU cores, it should be able to run most KSP mods. I am not claiming your load times will always be great, but I doubt you will drop too many frames because of the physics calculation in the CPUs. Since it is running a modified Linux, a port for KSP should not be that hard.

[RoadRunnerAerospace]

Soo...... Been looking for a actual computer (not a eggplant) found this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/cybertronpc-borg-q-860x-desktop-amd-athlon-ii-x4-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-green/4291231.p?skuId=4291231

I`m new to this kinda stuff, and a second opinion would be nice

[Harry Rhodan]

5 hours ago, RoadRunnerAerospace said:

Soo...... Been looking for a actual computer (not a eggplant) found this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/cybertronpc-borg-q-860x-desktop-amd-athlon-ii-x4-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-green/4291231.p?skuId=4291231

I`m new to this kinda stuff, and a second opinion would be nice

Everything on this machine is outdated and from the last generation. The processor is from the old Bulldozer line when AMD had an extremely bad IPC/single  core performance and it is still using an older socket which means you can never upgrade it to a Ryzen CPU.

[TotallyNotHuman]

So, I'm thinking of getting a computer for Christmas, and the parentals support this as well. I don't exactly know what sort of budget they have in mind, so I hammered out two builds built on the Ryzen platform.

Don't actually pay attention to the "total"; that's after mailing rebates which may or may not exist at Christmastime. The two builds aim for a price point of USD 1k and 750, respectively.

Ryzen Annihilator: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/csg69W

Ryzen Exterminator: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ZxQ4zM

Feedback would be strongly appreciated.

[Elthy]

On both you are only using one stick of RAM, which is bad since you will only have half the bandwidth of a dualchannel setup. The cheaper one includes a 1060 3GB, which is extremly limited by its low memory (there are games allready using more than this), i would rather go for a 570 with 4GB or better 8GB memory, but i have no idea how they are priced now, the mining craze seems to decline...

[TotallyNotHuman]

I get that KSP is CPU intensive and might do better with dual channel RAM, but it hurts upgradability. My old rig had 2x4GB DDR3-1866 and that had basically limited my upgrade path to another 2x4, for a total of 16 gigabytes. One of the sticks also seem to have a recurring problem, which will completely lock up my machine every once in a while.

Regarding changing the 1060 3GB to AMD cards - this machine will also do Blender renders for me, and they have better support for CUDA (i.e., Nvidia cards).

[Harry Rhodan]

6 minutes ago, TotallyNotHuman said:

My old rig had 2x4GB DDR3-1866 and that had basically limited my upgrade path to another 2x4,

The second pair does not have to be the same size as the first. You only have to be careful to put the pairs in the right slots.

[Elthy]

Didnt Blender get an update which made AMD also work for rendering? From what ive read they are even faster now since they have more compute power than Nvidias cards.

[TotallyNotHuman]

1 hour ago, Elthy said:

Didnt Blender get an update which made AMD also work for rendering? From what ive read they are even faster now since they have more compute power than Nvidias cards.

I just did another Google search – looks like that last source must've been outdated.

Thanks for the tip. I'll consider it for the lower-end build.

[TotallyNotHuman]

So having consulted one of my older classmates on what to buy, I've settled with Intel again and specced out the following $1.2k build.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/K4MFvV

Again, any constructive criticism appreciated.

[Elthy]

1. Intel new Generation will be revealed in a few days, wait that long.

2. Why did you go with a more expensive Intel Quadcore? Before you had a in most cases superior Ryzen which is also cheaper.

3. This blowerfan card will be extremly loud, the watercooling for CPU isnt, too. I would recommend a custom model for the GPU and an aircooler for the CPU, e.g. a EKL Brocken 3...

[TotallyNotHuman]

To respond to all of your points:

1. There will definitely be a fair share of waiting – I'm planning on building this computer around Thanksgiving or Christmas. If Coffee Lake drops during that time and it's not ridiculously more expensive than Kaby Lake, I can go for it.

2. I'll do some more research on this, and then decide whether Intel or AMD is best for me.

3. I run my laptop fan (MBP 13" 2017) at full blast when it's plugged in. Even through a wimpy pair of earbuds that came with my phone, I can barely hear it. Cooler noise doesn't really bother me that much.

[JWS]

I couldn't find anyone's upload of something like this, but I'll post it anyway.

I recently changed my desktop setups from Intel 3570 to Ryzen 1700. And OC'd it to 3.8Ghz with RAM to 2,666Mhz.

This is the CPU usage of heavily modded(including SVE, Scatterer) KSP*64 on my setup.

 

https://imgur.com/a/AMDq2

 

I'm at the begging of my new career save so no data available for 100+ parts ships in 2.2km range.

It seems, though, that modded KSP is utilizing multiple threads well at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

[riocrokite]

On 9/25/2017 at 5:02 PM, JWS said:

I couldn't find anyone's upload of something like this, but I'll post it anyway.

I recently changed my desktop setups from Intel 3570 to Ryzen 1700. And OC'd it to 3.8Ghz with RAM to 2,666Mhz.

This is the CPU usage of heavily modded(including SVE, Scatterer) KSP*64 on my setup.

 

https://imgur.com/a/AMDq2

 

I'm at the begging of my new career save so no data available for 100+ parts ships in 2.2km range.

It seems, though, that modded KSP is utilizing multiple threads well at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

yah, ryzen is great especially for multiple vessels on screen,

having said that the single physics thread is bottlenecking everything else and it's only single-core so cpu's with better single-core performance will allow for smoother gameplay.

[meatballcannon]

So the other day what I believe to be the beginning of the end started for my computer. I'm unsurprised, it's old and has a lot of problems. However, it's the only one I have, and I have, and I don't have any disposable income to speak of. So the plan is to ask my parents to help fund it, but obviously the less I have to ask of them the better.

So I'm looking for a relatively inexpensive laptop (I move around a lot) with a dedicated graphics card (need it to work on a personal project in unreal) that's fairly reliable (I won't be able to afford another one for some time) I'm not concerned about having a lot of power.

I just do code, I don't know much about current hardware, which is why I don't have particular specs in mind. So I just was hoping that if anyone had some suggestions, or knew where on the internet I could weigh my options, it'd be greatly appreciated.

[HighFructose]

@meatballcannon, do you need a laptop? And what does relatively inexpensive mean? Like $500, or $300? Because a laptop with a dedicated graphics card can run around 600-1000 dollars. For 500, you could build a decent PC, but if you need a laptop, then be warned you'll have to pay more.

[steuben]

I'm looking to get a new video card. But so many choices and dense terminology. I'm coming off a geforce 9500 GT.

I know that ksp isn't currently limited by the video horse power. Any recommendations?

Selection constraints:

- display two monitors

- work well with recording ksp gameplay. Trying to use OBS ATM.

- use other than ksp, general home use and retro gaming