KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[Harry Rhodan]

What Geonovast said. The CPU is slower than the one in your Mac and any GPU lower than that is not really worth it.

[Vanamonde]

@Hummingbird Aerospace, your question has been merged into the master thread for this sort of discussion. 

[Hummingbird Aerospace]

Could somebody point me in the direction of a ~600 build including an OS, PSU, and a monitor? Thanks (in advance).

 

[villetuomas]

So I am thinking of upgrading my PC a little bit. I was wondering whether I should get a better processor or a better GPU. Current setup is:

i5 2320

GTX650

8Gb RAM

Kerbal runs ok but I can’t update my other favourite game to the latest version since it won’t really run with a decent frame rate. 

I am looking at used i7 3770 at the moment since that’s about the best CPU the motherboard will accept. 

Can anyone shine any light on this subject? I am a bit of a noob when it comes to stuff like this (also not sure if this is the right forum).

[Green Baron]

I am not a specialist, can only offer basic thoughts.

From what i read the processor isn't that much faster than your old one but has more cores. If your not using heavily multithreaded stuff there will not be much of a difference. A better graphics card could help speeding up graphics, may be a gtx 670 or so ?

Limiting components these days are seldom the processor or the graphics card in itself, but io related things, memory access, bus speed etc. If you have slow memory and a lazily spinning hard disk, the best processor would starve waiting for data to do things with.

I'd wait until i can afford a complete newer machine.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Green Baron

[Harry Rhodan]

2 hours ago, villetuomas said:

but I can’t update my other favourite game to the latest version since it won’t really run with a decent frame rate.

That depends on the games then.

[Lisias]

Just to complement what @Green Baron said:

Your i5 withhold up to 3.30 GHz. Don't replace it with anything slower than 4 GHz, or you will waste money - as your focus is gaming, not processing. An i7 will be better on the overall, but your gains on gaming will be marginal. I would expend the money on memory for more add'ons on KSP.  

Your GPU, however, is utterly underpowered by nowadays standards.

This is a comparision to mine (a cheap one):
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/GeForce-GTX-650-vs-Radeon-RX460/2155vs4003

And this is a comparision with a sligthly better one, but yet damn cheap:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/GeForce-GTX-650-vs-Radeon-RX-470/2155vs3558

You best bet is GPU, and then memory.

 

 

[Harry Rhodan]

17 hours ago, Hummingbird Aerospace said:

and a monitor?

A cheap FHD TN panel will cost around 100$ or so, a 4k IPS panel comparable to your retina display will be around 300$. I'm a bit concerned that you expect to replace a machine that sold for at least 1500$ with comparable or better hardware for less than half the price.

If you take your 400$ setup from a few days ago and take a GTX1050 Ti and one of the cheaper eight generation i3s you'd have a setup that would CPU wise comparable to your Mac and GPU wise somewhat faster but still limited to playing games with reduced details in FHD.

This looks like a decent build for about 600$ but you'd need to skimp on some parts to fit a monitor into the budget: https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/J6ZxFT/entry-level-intel-gaming-build

[villetuomas]

Excellent replies everyone. I play a lot of Pro Evolution Soccer when I feel KSP is too demanding for my mood and PES19 states minimum requirements as i5 2500 and GTX 670. My spouse was just looking at Witcher 3 as well, which had similar requirements to PES. As the 2320 is not far from 2500 would this be a negligible difference? 

So if I update the GPU, could that be enough to play these games? Is i7 overkill for casual gaming compared to similar aged i5? As I said, I don’t know much about these things!

Edited January 3, 2019 by villetuomas

[YNM]

50 minutes ago, villetuomas said:

Pro Evolution Soccer 

Raise the GPU a bit.

Don't think a football game requires more processing power than KSP, unless we're chasing 60+FPS or so.

Edited January 3, 2019 by YNM

[Harry Rhodan]

2 hours ago, villetuomas said:

Is i7 overkill for casual gaming compared to similar aged i5?

Depends. Console ports like Witcher 3 seem to profit from the additional hyperthreading. But Witcher 3 also lists a 2500K as the minimum requirement, so a 2500 might already be too anemic for this game. Although the K version is not much stronger unless you oc it: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i5-2500K-vs-Intel-i5-2500-vs-Intel-i5-2320/804vs803vs790

I would either take the K version or the i7, but both options might be comparatively pricy as those higher end CPUs tend to stay expensive or even become more expensive as people become more desperate to upgrade their old hardware. So as the others said, upgrading your GPU is probably the better option.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Harry Rhodan

[Hummingbird Aerospace]

5 hours ago, Harry Rhodan said:

This looks like a decent build for about 600$ but you'd need to skimp on some parts to fit a monitor into the budget: https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/J6ZxFT/entry-level-intel-gaming-build

And an OS. Windows is very expensive. I should probably wait and save up or wait for some sale. I should probably wait until I have a good amount of money. Thank you for the help.

[Vanamonde]

@villetuomas, your question has been merged into the master thread for this kind of discussion. Good luck with it. 

[HippyChippy]

Hi Folks.

I'm not sure if I should post this here, or at Technical Support maybe?

I was wondering what sort of PCIe graphics card I'd need to max-out on KSP 1.6's visual settings, just for the heck of it.  Years ago I used to follow which cards were which but not these days, so can anyone advise on the best value card with enough Omph to do the job without breaking the bank? 

Any capable but 'yesteryear' cards I could upcycle even?

 

[Curveball Anders]

3 hours ago, HippyChippy said:

Hi Folks.

I'm not sure if I should post this here, or at Technical Support maybe?

I was wondering what sort of PCIe graphics card I'd need to max-out on KSP 1.6's visual settings, just for the heck of it.  Years ago I used to follow which cards were which but not these days, so can anyone advise on the best value card with enough Omph to do the job without breaking the bank? 

Any capable but 'yesteryear' cards I could upcycle even?

 

Keep in mind that KSP is more CPU heavy than GPU heavy, so don't splash out too much on a hip GPU unless you already have the CPU (and RAM) to match it.

[Geonovast]

It's not terribly important what GPU you have, so much as just that you have one, to take that load off of the CPU.

You could probably grab a second hand GTX 1050Ti (or AMD equivalent, if you swing that way) for not too much.

[steuben]

I asked the question a while ago.

Most of the answer is here

 

[Vanamonde]

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

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

6 hours ago, HippyChippy said:

Hi Folks.

I'm not sure if I should post this here, or at Technical Support maybe?

I was wondering what sort of PCIe graphics card I'd need to max-out on KSP 1.6's visual settings, just for the heck of it.  Years ago I used to follow which cards were which but not these days, so can anyone advise on the best value card with enough Omph to do the job without breaking the bank? 

Any capable but 'yesteryear' cards I could upcycle even?

To max out KSP's stock visual settings, you don't need too much of a GPU. However, there are mods (particularly Scatterer) which add effects that make KSP look more like a modern game. Those mods tend to even out the requirements to more like that of other games, rather than requiring much more CPU.

Scatterer, Stock Visual Enhancements, Stock Visual Terrain, Realplume, Planetshine, and KS3P (post processing) are my current favorite graphics mods, if you're looking for the best visuals. KS3P requires some large config edits in my opinion though, there's too much vignette and lens dirt by default for my liking.

Restock (stock parts revamp) and Textures Unlimited (implementation of PBR shaders in KSP) are two upcoming/under-development mods to keep an eye on as well.

[CatastrophicFailure]

So... I think I just killed my computer. 

Mods, if this is the wrong thread, plz move

Got my new computer this weekend, started very happy, all going well. Then I went to move over some SDDs from my old computer, now my old computer’s dead. Took static precautions, always touching the case, etc. There’s a lot of dust in there, too and I used the last of my canned air. 

Anyways, now in trying to boot the old machine, I get nothing. Some stuff about trying to boot IPX4, but nothing beyond. No “disc not found/OS not found,” nothing. I can’t even get into bios, I get a blank screen with a mouse pointer that just fades away after a while. 

Given what I know, even with no drives in the machine I should still get the “missing OS” errors. So... did I somehow fry my mobo? 

[qzgy]

On 1/20/2019 at 9:47 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

So... I think I just killed my computer. 

oh no. thats not good.

On 1/20/2019 at 9:47 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

Given what I know, even with no drives in the machine I should still get the “missing OS” errors. So... did I somehow fry my mobo? 

Maybe? I probably know less than half the people on these forums, but if you did fry your mobo, I would expect it completely non-functional. If you move the discs back, what happens?

[Citizen247]

On 1/21/2019 at 2:47 AM, CatastrophicFailure said:

So... I think I just killed my computer. 

Mods, if this is the wrong thread, plz move

Got my new computer this weekend, started very happy, all going well. Then I went to move over some SDDs from my old computer, now my old computer’s dead. Took static precautions, always touching the case, etc. There’s a lot of dust in there, too and I used the last of my canned air. 

Anyways, now in trying to boot the old machine, I get nothing. Some stuff about trying to boot IPX4, but nothing beyond. No “disc not found/OS not found,” nothing. I can’t even get into bios, I get a blank screen with a mouse pointer that just fades away after a while. 

Given what I know, even with no drives in the machine I should still get the “missing OS” errors. So... did I somehow fry my mobo? 

If you'd fried your motherboard you'd not get any screen output. Depending on boot order setup trying to boot from IPX4 sounds like PXE boot, which usually happens if the machine can't find a bootable drive. The best first step in diagnostics would be to strip the machine down to barebones, remove all peripherals except keyboard mouse and monitor (USB devices can interfere with the BIOS, especially if they're misbehaving). Pull everything inside the case except for one stick of memory and the CPU. No drives. If you have integrated graphics remove the GFX card and run on integrated if you can. If you can get in the BIOS then start adding internal components and see if it still gets into the BIOS and/or boots the OS once the drives are reinstalled.

9/10 something isn't sitting right or you've forgotten to plug the power in. Generally, with static damage, the board fails a few months later as well.

[CatastrophicFailure]

On 1/22/2019 at 2:11 AM, Citizen247 said:

Pull everything inside the case except for one stick of memory and the CPU. No drives. If you have integrated graphics remove the GFX card and run on integrated if you can. If you can get in the BIOS then start adding internal components and see if it still gets into the BIOS and/or boots the OS once the drives are reinstalled.

And @qzgy

Belated thanks for the assist, guys. Finally got around to doing this and it looks like it's actually the video card. Pulled that and it booted right into BIOS using the on-board graphics. Got it as far as the Windows login even, but Windows remains convinced my password is wrong even tho I've entered the correct one (and successfully logged in) umpteen times. No keyboard hooked up at the time so couldn't get further, but it looks like all I need is a new video card.

Any suggestions? One that blew was a Radeon R9 280, which I'm sure is pretty behind the curve at this point. I don't need anything spectacular for this machine, just decent. It will be used mostly for running my security camera software now, maybe the occasional older game. Would like to spend less than $100 if I can.                           

[qzgy]

3 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Any suggestions? One that blew was a Radeon R9 280, which I'm sure is pretty behind the curve at this point. I don't need anything spectacular for this machine, just decent. It will be used mostly for running my security camera software now, maybe the occasional older game. Would like to spend less than $100 if I can.

Honestly, I don't think it would be really worth buying a new graphics card unless the software is graphics intensive (which I'm going to assume it isn't super intensive). If you really want though checking ebay for a used card might be worth more than getting new (although you do run a risk of buying something used). Something like a GTX960 would probably do well, and they seem to be running quite cheap.

[CatastrophicFailure]

10 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Honestly, I don't think it would be really worth buying a new graphics card unless the software is graphics intensive (which I'm going to assume it isn't super intensive). If you really want though checking ebay for a used card might be worth more than getting new (although you do run a risk of buying something used). Something like a GTX960 would probably do well, and they seem to be running quite cheap.

It’s a bit on the graphics intensive side, it has to process and display a (soon to be growing) number of video feeds while also editing/scrubbing one. Big memory hog, too, with more hi-def cameras. The system as it was before ran pretty well (as long as I didn’t try to run KSP at the same time), and I’m looking to expand, so I certainly don’t want to step back.