KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[Geonovast]

4 hours ago, steve_v said:

Unless your chipset has 4 memory channels (mine does) there's no reason to go with 4x8 over 2x16.

It's dual.

It has 4 memory slots, alternating two black and two grey.  Listed left to right as DDR4_4, DDR4_2, DDR4_3, DDR4_1.  I want to use DDR4_2 and DDR4_1, which are the same color, right?

[steve_v]

5 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I want to use DDR4_2 and DDR4_1, which are the same color, right?

If your motherboard follows the usual convention, yes. Confusingly (to me at any rate) each memory channel serves one slot of each colour, so to use both channels in interleave mode you use matching modules in matching colour slots.
Frankly I'd find one channel = one colour to be more logical, but whatever.

Edited September 25, 2018 by steve_v
one != I

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, steve_v said:

If your motherboard follows the usual convention, yes. Confusingly (to me at any rate) each memory channel serves one slot of each colour, so to use both channels in interleave mode you use matching modules in matching colour slots.
Frankly I'd find one channel = one colour to be more logical, but whatever.

This is the board if it helps: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128972

[steve_v]

7 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

This is the board if it helps:

You were right to begin with, I was just moaning about the "ease of use" vs "logical layout" colour coding on most motherboards.
The other way to tell is that slots on the same channel are usually adjacent, this is the case on your board as the physical layout is 1,3 (channel 1) 2,4 (channel 2).
You want slots 1&2 or 3&4 for 2 modules... Or to put it another way, a module in every second slot WRT the physical layout.

Mine was easier, 8 slots, 8 identical modules.

Edited September 25, 2018 by steve_v

[Geonovast]

4 minutes ago, steve_v said:

You were right to begin with, I was just moaning about the "ease of use" vs "logical layout" colour coding on most motherboards.
The other way to tell is that slots on the same channel are usually adjacent, this is the case on your board as the physical layout is 1,3 (channel 1) 2,4 (channel 2).
You want slots 1&2 or 3&4 for 2 modules... Or to put it another way, a module in every second slot WRT the physical layout.

Mine was easier, 8 slots, 8 identical modules.

It might be that it's 5:30 in the morning and I didn't sleep well, but now I'm more confused.  I have no idea what interleave mode is.

See, this wouldn't be an issue at all if I went 4 x 8 like I have now...

I'm gonna stick'm in the two closest to the CPU, since (on the board currently installed, anyway) the heatsink actually covers up those DIMMS.  That way, if I, for some reason, ever go to 64 GB, I don't have to remove the heatsink.

[steve_v]

24 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I have no idea what interleave mode is.

Short answer: Uses 2 modules simultaneously for the same operation (by splitting data into blocks and sending one to each module alternately), much like RAID0 does for disks. Theoretically this provides twice the performance of a single module.
Memory interleaving is just the technical term for what manufacturers call "dual channel".
You should use slots 1&2 or 3&4 (i.e. slots the same colour), for double the memory bandwidth.

Ed. This is totally in the manual for your board... You did read the manual, right?

Red or blue. Clearer?

Edited September 25, 2018 by steve_v

[Nuke]

i usually read the mobo manual before i buy it. sometimes there are little gotchas in there that dont come up on the product description page.

[Geonovast]

6 hours ago, steve_v said:

Ed. This is totally in the manual for your board... You did read the manual, right?

Uh... of course I did!   >.>

11 minutes ago, Nuke said:

i usually read the mobo manual before i buy it. sometimes there are little gotchas in there that dont come up on the product description page.

This is the first mobo I've ever purchased that didn't come with a kit.  Can you think of any of the gotchas you've run into?  I have the board, but haven't powered it up yet as I'm still waiting to purchase memory.

[Nuke]

when investigating the possibility of a ryzen build, one of the requirements was at least one m.2 slot. i usually do mini itx builds and i found on most of the asus mini-itx boards if you used the m.2 slot in anything but sata mode you would gimp your pcie-16 slot down to 8x.

usually its stupid stuff like you buy a bunch of pwm fans and realize that while the mobo has 4-pin fan headers, you find that the pwm pin is connected to 5v, so your pwm fans would run full bore all the time affecting system noise. nice to haves but not system breaking problems. 

 also there are several mobo features that depend on a certain generation of processor and if you use an older chip you might not be getting features you were looking for. 

when theory crafting i start with a cpu, find a mobo i like, check the manual. in fact check all the manuals for anything you aren't familiar with. check the memory qvl, select memory, then select video, drives, and finally use a psu calculator and figure out how much power you need. i do all this before i drop any money on actual hardware.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Nuke

[Geonovast]

2 hours ago, Nuke said:

used the m.2 slot in anything but sata mode you would gimp your pcie-16 slot down to 8x.

Well that's a bit concerning.  I guess I'll need to page through this thing, as I bought a NVMe M.2 SSD to go with it.  I'd like my GTX-1060 to run properly.

Most of my fans are already full speed since they're just connected to 4 pin molex connectors, so I'm not too concerned about that if the PWM ports do that.

My i7-7700K will be migrating over.  I haven't seen any 6th gen specific features, just 7th for XMP.

This is what's waiting for the memory.  I am definitely going to page through everything before I hook it all up.  I thought I'd done enough reading, apparently not!  Thanks guys.

 

[Nuke]

i think the problem was mostly with the asus boards i was looking at. but you can consult the manual if you have doubts.

[The_8_Bit_Zombie]

Would overclocking an i5-8600K show a noticeable increase in performance? Particularly with part counts.

[Geonovast]

On 9/25/2018 at 9:26 PM, Nuke said:

i think the problem was mostly with the asus boards i was looking at. but you can consult the manual if you have doubts.

I looked through the manual, and the only downside seemed to be that you couldn't use SATA0 if you had a SATA m.2 drive installed.  Since my m.2 SSD is NVMe, it didn't matter.

Although I can't get my memory to overclock like the 2400 mhz stuff did on my old board.  XMP sets it to 3600 mhz with the recommended timings that are on the package, but then it won't POST.  I messed with some settings and got it to get to grub, but the actual OS wouldn't load.  I have some readin' to do, apparently.

[Nuke]

some how i ended up with a 8086k anniversary edition cpu instead of the 8700k. last minute replacement because they ran out of 8700ks. i think its just higher binned and has a beefier clock. 4ghz stock. 5ghz boost.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Nuke

[The_8_Bit_Zombie]

I'm making a rig with these specs:

• i5-8600K CPU
• GTX 1050 2GB GPU
• 16GB of RAM

Could there ever be a situation in stock KSP (no visual mods) where my GPU would bottleneck the CPU?

Edited October 10, 2018 by The_8_Bit_Zombie

[themaster401]

19 minutes ago, The_8_Bit_Zombie said:

I'm making a rig with these specs:

• i5-8600K CPU
• GTX 1050 2GB GPU
• 16GB of RAM

Could there ever be a situation in stock KSP (no visual mods) where my GPU would bottleneck the CPU?

In stock KSP, there'll likely be zero bottlenecking per-se. However, the moment you want to pump in more textures and visual effects, your 1050 2 GB will likely cause the rest of the capable system to suffer.

Judging by your past questions on visual mod threads, I suggest you try cutting down on the processor and opting for an improved graphics card for balancing.

[Allglad]

Hi..I’m new to KSP & looking to get a system to play it on.  I prefer Mac but if for performance and some huge stations I’m open to an other system.

Trying to do this at the lowest cost but have smooth play.

Can I get a recommendation for an IMac that can run Huge KSP Stations/ships?   

thanks!

Edited October 10, 2018 by Allglad

[Harry Rhodan]

1 hour ago, Allglad said:

lowest cost

IMac

Choose one.

You have six options ranging from slow and expensive to fast and incredibly expensive. None of them is a gaming machine and if you want one of those don't choose it for playing KSP but for what you actually want to do with it.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Allglad said:

Hi..I’m new to KSP & looking to get a system to play it on.  I prefer Mac but if for performance and some huge stations I’m open to an other system.

Trying to do this at the lowest cost but have smooth play.

Can I get a recommendation for an IMac that can run Huge KSP Stations/ships?   

thanks!

Forget about Macs. I own one, I know what I'm talking.  

By the price you got a Mac that would do a decent job, you can get a way better Linux/Windows Machine.

If you wanna do huge vessels/stations, be prepared to withhold some frustration until you find the correct settings for your rig. Your mileage will vary, obviously. But the following general specifications should help:

• GPU is important for eye candies, but the real bottleneck is the CPU and Memory bus. Any decent GPU with 2 or 4GB of RAM will do.
• Prefer faster CPUs to more cores. Huge crafts will bottleneck a single CPU, slowing down all the rest - so it's better to have a few really fast cores than a lot of slower ones.
• Memory is important. I would recommend 16Gb as starters.
• A fast memory bus is also important.
• SSD or RAID0 for the game. a RAID0 with SSDs is even better.  The fastest the storage you use, less the time you spend waiting for the game to be loaded.

[Allglad]

Thanks Harry & Lisias.

Dang good info Lisias.  Dang I was thinking it seemed windows or Linux was needed.....I hoped more that PlayStation would do the job.   Man.... I really don’t know about picking one of those systems.   I love the Simplicity of Mac/Apple that I experience.   Man......I really like the look of the game & if I were to get into it I’d probably be a major player.... ...I don’t know anyone good with Win/lunix...I’m no programmer & don’t like tinkering with programs &/or settings.

....I guess I stick with Space Agency & the new version of it which should come out soon & play fine on my iPad.........so is life.  .....not everyone likes all the chocolate in a box of chocolates.  ...:sigH: 

 

[The_8_Bit_Zombie]

On 10/9/2018 at 9:43 PM, themaster401 said:

In stock KSP, there'll likely be zero bottlenecking per-se. However, the moment you want to pump in more textures and visual effects, your 1050 2 GB will likely cause the rest of the capable system to suffer.

Judging by your past questions on visual mod threads, I suggest you try cutting down on the processor and opting for an improved graphics card for balancing.

Thanks for the advice! I think what I'm going to do is get a really good CPU now, and then upgrade my GPU down the line. (3-4 months hopefully) That way once my build is totally complete, I'll have an awesome CPU and a great GPU.

Edited October 11, 2018 by The_8_Bit_Zombie

[Dafni]

17 hours ago, Allglad said:

Thanks Harry & Lisias.

Dang good info Lisias.  Dang I was thinking it seemed windows or Linux was needed.....I hoped more that PlayStation would do the job.   Man.... I really don’t know about picking one of those systems.   I love the Simplicity of Mac/Apple that I experience.   Man......I really like the look of the game & if I were to get into it I’d probably be a major player.... ...I don’t know anyone good with Win/lunix...I’m no programmer & don’t like tinkering with programs &/or settings.

....I guess I stick with Space Agency & the new version of it which should come out soon & play fine on my iPad.........so is life.  .....not everyone likes all the chocolate in a box of chocolates.  ...:sigH: 

 

Dont be afraid to take the plunge, man, it would be worth it.

For what its' worth, modern systems, be it laptops of pre-built PCs, are pretty much plug and play. Win10 is also super easy in that sense.

Heck, even if you build your own PC it is still super doable. I built mine here with almost zero knowledge about Windows and all that. Runs without a hitch since day one. Things are very user frinedly these days.

All the best

 

Daf

[tsaven]

On 10/3/2018 at 9:53 PM, The_8_Bit_Zombie said:

Would overclocking an i5-8600K show a noticeable increase in performance? Particularly with part counts.

Performance for part count scales pretty well with clock speed, so you will see a noticeable increase.  10-20%.

For what it's worth, I just went from an i5-4590 to an i5-8600k that's OCed using an AIO water-cooling kit and my framerate more than doubled.  Stations that used to be EXTREMELY slow and laggy at 8-10fps are now buttery at 25fps.

[The_8_Bit_Zombie]

On 10/11/2018 at 11:03 PM, tsaven said:

Performance for part count scales pretty well with clock speed, so you will see a noticeable increase.  10-20%.

For what it's worth, I just went from an i5-4590 to an i5-8600k that's OCed using an AIO water-cooling kit and my framerate more than doubled.  Stations that used to be EXTREMELY slow and laggy at 8-10fps are now buttery at 25fps.

Wow that's awesome! Thanks for the info. How many GHz do you OC at?

[tsaven]

On 10/13/2018 at 12:31 PM, The_8_Bit_Zombie said:

Wow that's awesome! Thanks for the info. How many GHz do you OC at?

Heh, honestly I'm not even sure.  I just used the automatic overclocking utility that came with my motherboard.  Somewhere around 5.3GHz, I think?  I'm not really sure because it seems to shift a lot and I don't quite understand how base clock vs turbo clock works.

I just push the "MAKE MOAR FASTAR" button and let the motherboard sort it out.