KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[RizzoTheRat]

Thinking about buying a a complete new machine rather than upgrading my old potato.  Would like to get something that runs KSP well and can manage a VR headset as my next upgrade.  So I'm thinking Ryzen 5 2600 and a 6GB GTX1060 seems to be decent performance for the price. 

Thinking something like this https://www.scan.co.uk/products/3xs-gamer-amd-ryzen-5-2600-8gb-ddr4-6gb-evga-gtx-1060-240gb-ssd-1tb-win-10 but slightly surprised how expensive computers are these days.

Any thoughts on better performance for cost?   Is 8GB RAM enough or do I really need 16 for modern games?  Are graphics card prices likely to come down with the new 20xx cards out?

[TeslaPenguin1]

I have this:

 

 

The "Eat Chicken Game Mouse"

Lol

[AxiomK]

I'm looking to buy a new laptop soon, and I would love it if it could run KSP (even if the graphics aren't very good). So my question is, do you know of any laptops which meet the system requirements and don't break the bank?

Recommended:

OS:Windows 10 64 bit

Processor:Core i5

Memory:4 GB RAM

Graphics:DX10 (SM 4.0) capable, 1GB VRAM

Hard Drive:6 GB HD space

[Geonovast]

What's breaking the bank for you?  My laptop runs KSP quite nicely and was $600 (i5 7200U @ 2.5 Ghz, 8 GB DDR4, 2GB Nvidia 940MX.  But I know a lot of people can't / don't want to spend that much.

Your main focus should be clock speed and single thread performance of the CPU.  External GPUs are nice to have, but not really necessary.  If you're shopping New, it'll probably be difficult to find a real laptop (by real I mean none of that chromebook / cloudbook crap) with less than 8GB of RAM.

Also consider getting a cooling pad. 

 

Edited September 11, 2018 by Geonovast

[SiriusRocketry]

Well, my NZD$399 laptop (4 GB RAM, Intel HD Integrated graphics and a 1.6 GHz dual-core Celeron) runs KSP at least tolerably under 40-50 parts, and only encountered awful, sub 10 FPS conditions when in a 100-150 part physics bubble. A decent-ish laptop with a reasonable, quad core processor, at least 4/8 GB of RAM and 1 GB of dedicated graphics should run well even with some light graphical mods installed.

[Vanamonde]

@Kerbal Astronautics, your question has been merged into the master thread for this sort of thing. Good luck with it.  

[RizzoTheRat]

On 9/1/2018 at 9:25 AM, SiriusRocketry said:

Well, my NZD$399 laptop (4 GB RAM, Intel HD Integrated graphics and a 1.6 GHz dual-core Celeron) runs KSP at least tolerably under 40-50 parts, and only encountered awful, sub 10 FPS conditions when in a 100-150 part physics bubble. A decent-ish laptop with a reasonable, quad core processor, at least 4/8 GB of RAM and 1 GB of dedicated graphics should run well even with some light graphical mods installed.

Similar story here with a 2.5GHz i5-7200u, 8GB RAM, and Intel integrated 620 graphics (Dell Inspiron 13 2-in-1).  Runs the early game fine but starts to struggle a bit with high part counts, which I'm guessing is processor limited rather than the graphics card.  I'm actually pretty impressed with the graphics, it copes with quite a few games, I've been playing Rebel Galaxy and XCOM Enemy Unknown with no problems, albeit a slightly longer load time in XCOM than my desktop.

Depends on your location but take a look at the Dell Outlet store, bought mine from there as a refurb and got a decent discount over new price.  eg the UK store currently has a couple of 15" Inspirons with the 3.4Ghz i5-8250U  for under £400 which ought to cope with a much bigger part count that mine can.

[StrandedonEarth]

Ok, so I have this LED cooling pad I've been using for awhile, but it seems to have died, apparently at the little PCB holding the light switch and speed dial.

I see a two-wire connector connected to the USB power cord, one black one grey. There's a three-wire connector leading into the pad (which has a fan and LED lights, explaining the three wires), two black and one with grey printing on it.

I assume that I can just connect the grey to grey wires and the black to the two black wires, bypassing the light button and fan speed dial. It'll just be always on when I plug it in, right? Should be all there is to it, no?

[qzgy]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I assume that I can just connect the grey to grey wires and the black to the two black wires, bypassing the light button and fan speed dial. It'll just be always on when I plug it in, right? Should be all there is to it, no?

That sounds about right, assuming the issue is the PCB and not something within the actual wires. Maybe just check with a multimeter to be certain?

[Kernel Kraken]

On 8/31/2018 at 6:48 PM, Kerbal Astronautics said:

I'm looking to buy a new laptop soon, and I would love it if it could run KSP (even if the graphics aren't very good). So my question is, do you know of any laptops which meet the system requirements and don't break the bank?

Recommended:

OS:Windows 10 64 bit

Processor:Core i5

Memory:4 GB RAM

Graphics:DX10 (SM 4.0) capable, 1GB VRAM

Hard Drive:6 GB HD space

Definitely try to get a laptop with a graphics card. They tend to be really, really, really overpriced, though. 

Edited September 4, 2018 by Kernel Kraken

[RizzoTheRat]

Anyone got any thoughts on this as a potential build  https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/by6dMZ?  After something as a mid range gaming machine with the potential to run a VR headset at some point in the future.

 

[invision]

16 minutes ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Anyone got any thoughts on this as a potential build  https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/by6dMZ?  After something as a mid range gaming machine with the potential to run a VR headset at some point in the future.

 

i would sacrifice something like the speakers and get a gtx 1080. the reason for this is the GPU is going to cost you the most to replace, and since a 1070 is still a very  capable card its going to take a 1080ti to even be worth upgrading @650.00 vs 450.00 for a 1080.

other than that your computer will play anything

 

[RizzoTheRat]

Now you've immediately hit on the biggest problem I have with this kind of thing...where to stop?  My original plan was 6GB 1060 as that seems to be the recommended spec for VR...then I thought it's the most expensive component so it might be worth spending the extra £100 for the 1070 to ensure I've got some headroom in the spec and don't want to upgrade too soon.  Similarly the original Ryzen 5 2600 crept up to a 2600x on the grounds that KSP likes a higher clock speed, so there's an extra £60 too.

Part of me's thinking well the Ryzen 7 2700X is only an extra £80, and an M2 drive would only be £70 more than that SSD, and maybe 4TB would be a good idea rather than 2TB....   At least the 1080ti is significantly more than the 1080 to stop the creep there, but by that point I'm 50% over the original budget

I'm not planning on ordering until some time in October though, and the new 20xx cards are due out this month so I'm not sure if the the 10xx cards will drop in price a bit, or if there will be stacks of second hand bargains about.

 

[invision]

4 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Now you've immediately hit on the biggest problem I have with this kind of thing...where to stop?  My original plan was 6GB 1060 as that seems to be the recommended spec for VR...then I thought it's the most expensive component so it might be worth spending the extra £100 for the 1070 to ensure I've got some headroom in the spec and don't want to upgrade too soon.  Similarly the original Ryzen 5 2600 crept up to a 2600x on the grounds that KSP likes a higher clock speed, so there's an extra £60 too.

Part of me's thinking well the Ryzen 7 2700X is only an extra £80, and an M2 drive would only be £70 more than that SSD, and maybe 4TB would be a good idea rather than 2TB....   At least the 1080ti is significantly more than the 1080 to stop the creep there, but by that point I'm 50% over the original budget

I'm not planning on ordering until some time in October though, and the new 20xx cards are due out this month so I'm not sure if the the 10xx cards will drop in price a bit, or if there will be stacks of second hand bargains about.

 

storage can always be added. same with ram. i was stuck in your spot too with 1070 vs 1080 and spent the extra 125.00 at the time for the 1080 and glad i did.  i use a ryzen 5 1600 overclocked with 16 gigs of ram and a 1080 and this pc plays everything easily at 1080p @120 fps and quite a few newer games at 4k 60 fps.

[RizzoTheRat]

Yeah, but it's the extra £100 to get a 1080 when I've already put in an extra £100 to get up to a 1070 from the original 1060 plan which puts me off a bit, but I can see where you're coming from.

[invision]

2 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Yeah, but it's the extra £100 to get a 1080 when I've already put in an extra £100 to get up to a 1070 from the original 1060 plan which puts me off a bit, but I can see where you're coming from.

i think youll be just as happy with the 1070 its not like its a weak card at all just something to consider 

[tsaven]

On 9/10/2018 at 11:34 AM, RizzoTheRat said:

Anyone got any thoughts on this as a potential build  https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/by6dMZ?  After something as a mid range gaming machine with the potential to run a VR headset at some point in the future.

 

It's a solid all-around build for a reasonable budget.  As others have commented, a 1080 Ti will be better for VR, but for 1920x1080 gaming a 1070 will do very well.

However, if you're playing KSP then the graphics card is overkill even with a ton of visual mods.  KSP is almost entirely single-thread CPU limited, which is something that AMD's recent processors aren't good at.  Unfortunately Intel does hold the performance crown in that category and an overclocked i5-8600K is the best you'll reasonably get (the i7 has no benefit for most use).

[RizzoTheRat]

Yeah but the 1080 is only an extra hundred quid and has now really got me wondering

I figured Ryzen 5 over 7 for clock speed rather than more cores, but accept that the intel chips tend to be a bit quicker but usually more expensive.  Looking at a benchmark site it looks like the i5 8600k is quicker than I though.  I'll have a fiddle tonight and price up an equivalent with that chip and see what the price difference is.  My current PC has been AMD ever since I replaced its original 486 DX2-66 processor over 20 years ago so I automatically looked at AMD rather than Intel.

Does the overclocked i5 tend to run a bit hotter and how good is the stock cooler?  I'd ideally like the keep the thing relatively quiet and apparently the stock cooler on the Ryzen 5 is pretty good.

[RizzoTheRat]

Hmmm, switching to an i5 8600k, with a decent cooler to account for a bit of overclocking, and then a difference case because the cooler doesn't fit in the one I had specced before.....all adds up to an extra £100 or so, for potentially 10-20% better single core performance if I'm reading the benchmarks correctly.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/sTQWmq

That's a fairly basic motherboard though  so will need to look at overclocking capability on it.

Alternatively an 8600 without overclocking would come in somewhere in between this and the Ryzen 5 in cost, but still potentially 5-10% faster than the Ryzen.

So my original thinking of a sub £1000 machine is now over £1400, so part of me thinks maybe I should put a 1080 in there and just accept that I'm suffering from mission creep, and part of me things I should try again with the £1000 cap

Edited September 12, 2018 by RizzoTheRat

[tsaven]

4 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

So my original thinking of a sub £1000 machine is now over £1400

I love this hobby

An 8600k doesn't come with a stock cooler, so you're looking at something aftermarket.  If you're OCing, figure at least $50-$70 big a large and quiet air cooler, or in the $100-$150 range for a pre-made closed loop watercooling kit (Fry's has the H115i refurbs for a steal at $90, and that's a beast of a 280mm radiator system).  Admittedly, that's a lot of extra money for another 15% of single-thread performance that isn't going to help any games that aren't KSP (Or Dwarf Fortress).  I play this rediculous game enough that it's worth it for me, but I'm not sure expanding your budget that much makes sense if you're going to be playing many other games.

[RizzoTheRat]

That was with a Cryorig H5 which looks to be good for a mild overclock but I assume a liquid one would be needed to really push the chip, but that would likely need a higher spec motherboard too...

There's a few retailers selling "professionally overclocked" bundles of processor, motherboard, cooler and memory, but they all seem to come with 8GB of fairly slow memory which seems a bit silly. 

Edited September 13, 2018 by RizzoTheRat

[RizzoTheRat]

So if I go with the "&%#* it, it's only money" option, I could go for an overclocked i5 8600k and a 1080 for a bit over £1500

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/GsbJBb

For a bit extra I can buy that processor/motherboard/cooler/memory combo from a UK supplier assembled, tested, and with 2 year warrantied overclocked to 4.8 GHz (11% up on it's usual 4.3GHz), which might be a sensible idea for someone who's never played with overclocking before.

That presumably would give me a machine that could run pretty much anything I'm likely to throw at it for the next several years.

 

But it's about £400 more than my original Ryzen 5 and 1060 idea...

...and then another £400-£500 to add a Rift/Vive at some point... so nudging £2k all in...I've bought cars for less than that!

 

How much can you get for a kidney these days?

[Nuke]

next month i will be building a ryzen 7 rig. i think im going to go with the 2700x and 16 gigs of ram. its mostly a straight forward core components only build. im going to cram it into my old but beloved elite 110 mini-itx case.  im also going to use my existing 600w modular sfx supply (to the best of my knowlege nobody made a better one since i bought it) and the 1060 i bought last year with my psu. storage is going to be in the form of a 512gig m.2 ssd (also bought last year, i actually thought ahead and got m.2 even though i had to use an adapter to use it back then). 

 

the one thing im going to be doing differently is ditching the stock cooler (the stock cooler wouldnt even fit in my case, so thats something to do with it) and using an aio liquid cooler. this case has mounting holes for a 120mm radiator. water cooling has always been a laughable concept with me, but after experiencing heat isues with my 4790k i realize i need a better cooling solution. anything i should know about these things before i take the plunge so to speak. 

[tsaven]

5 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

How much can you get for a kidney these days?

You've got two lungs as well!  And surly you don't need both of them. 

I'll be honest though, you're spending a lot more money for a kinda questionable gain in performance on a very specific niche game.  For anything that's not KSP, a Ryzen will be excellent and even for KSP it's not going to be bad.  Maybe you'll have to keep your part counts under 300 and back off the mods a little, or just deal with 20fps (which is still totally playable for most situations).

 

In a world where money grows on trees, sure an OC'ed i5 with a 1080 would be awesome but . . . I'm not sure it's worth 50% more.  I have no idea what your situation is like, but I might just stick with the 1070 for now and keep saving your money, and maybe buy a 2080 in a year or so once you can also afford the VR googles.

Edited September 13, 2018 by tsaven

[tsaven]

2 hours ago, Nuke said:

Im going to cram it into my old but beloved elite 110 mini-itx case. 

after experiencing heat isues with my 4790k i realize i need a better cooling solution. anything i should know about these things before i take the plunge so to speak. 

That case is impressively tiny.  I didn't know a case so little existed that could still fit a GPU of any kind.

Heat is always going to be an issue in a small case like that, a 120mm AiO kit is the best you'll be able to do.  I know the 2700 has a 105w thermal envelope but I don't know what the realistic consumption is during gaming or whatever other CPU intensive activities you're doing.

For what it's worth, I just bought a Fractal Designs Core 500 case for my OC'ed i5 build.  It's similar height/width to the 110, but longer.  This length allows for much larger cooling systems though, it'll even fit a 280mm radiator for some near-silent OCing.  Maybe consider that if you want to stay small but keep heat under control.