KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[XLjedi]

Whelp...  my mobo had a good run, but alas the ethernet and sound has begun to flake out and it looks like I may have to upgrade now.

I've had good luck with Asus/AMD combos in the past.  The one I have now is the 990FX with AMD socket and a pair of nVidia GTX 970's.  If it wasn't for the mobo in the throws of death, I'd be fine with my AMD3 CPU for a bit longer.  The framerates aren't too terrible...  and alas, it seems my perfectly good DDR3 ram may have to be upgraded as well. 

This is my old mobo:  https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_990FX/

SOoo...  I'd like to maybe keep using the nVidia GTX 970 GPU's I currently have for now and was thinking about maybe pairing the following with a newer mobo:

CPU:  AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, and some new DDR4 ram.

Anyone do anything recently with an AMD CPU and dual nVidia SLI setup?  Built-in wifi/bluetooth would be a plus I think.

 

Edited August 2, 2019 by XLjedi

[Harry Rhodan]

49 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

Built-in wifi/bluetooth would be a plus I think.

Depends on how much you're willing to pay. I filtered the list for X470 and X570 boards with a decent VRM setup: https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=mbam4&sort=p&xf=16586_8~317_X470~317_X570~3784_SLI

There are two comparatively cheap X470s from Asus, but both don't have WiFi.

[XLjedi]

19 minutes ago, Harry Rhodan said:

Depends on how much you're willing to pay. I filtered the list for X470 and X570 boards with a decent VRM setup: https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=mbam4&sort=p&xf=16586_8~317_X470~317_X570~3784_SLI

There are two comparatively cheap X470s from Asus, but both don't have WiFi.

I thought I saw one from ASUS with wifi...  maybe wrong socket?

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/ROG-STRIX-X399-E-GAMING/

Hard for me to stay on top of which AMD CPU is latest and greatest...  I have to relearn everything ever 5 years or so.  I usually go for latest socket but maybe try to cut corners a bit on the CPU, a notch or two below the top of the line.  With maybe some room to get one CPU upgrade out of it in a 5 year span.

Edited August 2, 2019 by XLjedi

[Harry Rhodan]

23 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

maybe wrong socket?

Yes. AMD currently has two sockets: for consumers you have the Ryzen CPUs on the AM4 socket and for semi-professionals you have the Ryzen Threadripper CPUs on the TR4 socket. And that board is for the latter.

For KSP I would get the 3600 or instead of the 2700x because it has more single core power.

[XLjedi]

10 minutes ago, Harry Rhodan said:

Yes. AMD currently has two sockets: for consumers you have the Ryzen CPUs on the AM4 socket and for semi-professionals you have the Ryzen Threadripper CPUs on the TR4 socket. And that board is for the latter.

For KSP I would get the 3600 or instead of the 2700x because it has more single core power.

That was gonna be my next question...  since I play games mostly and maybe just dabble a bit in video, is there really any value in having 12-16 cores?

Thanks, I'll look at the 3600 then.  Do you see the AM4 socket as having enough lifespan to maybe still eeek out another CPU upgrade in a few years?

That should save me a bit on the CPU.  Just have to look for a mobo now that fits the bill. 

[Harry Rhodan]

2 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

is there really any value in having 12-16 cores?

Do you see the AM4 socket as having enough lifespan to maybe still eeek out another CPU upgrade in a few years?

The next generation of consoles will have eight core CPUs with 16 threads so that will most likely become the next yardstick for AAA gaming. With older games more cores don't scale well or can even be slightly detrimental like with Cities: Skylines.

AMD said they're supporting AM4 until 2020, so we will likely see another generation. If that'll already be Zen 3 or just a rehash of Zen 2 remains to be seen. On the other hand DDR5 RAM seems to come out in 2020 as well. I would assume that they would launch a new socket for the new RAM. In the worst case they'll just release a few Zen 2 APUs for AM4 while launching Zen 3 on the successor of AM4.

[XLjedi]

5 minutes ago, Harry Rhodan said:

The next generation of consoles will have eight core CPUs with 16 threads so that will most likely become the next yardstick for AAA gaming. With older games more cores don't scale well or can even be slightly detrimental like with Cities: Skylines.

AMD said they're supporting AM4 until 2020, so we will likely see another generation. If that'll already be Zen 3 or just a rehash of Zen 2 remains to be seen. On the other hand DDR5 RAM seems to come out in 2020 as well. I would assume that they would launch a new socket for the new RAM. In the worst case they'll just release a few Zen 2 APUs for AM4 while launching Zen 3 on the successor of AM4.

Hmmm...  now makes me wonder if I just look for a new AM3 mobo to get by on the RAM and CPU I have for another year til the DDR5 stuff comes out?

[Elthy]

You could look into the usedf market if you want to hold on your PC a while longer. But now is a decent time for upgrading, DDR4 Ram is quite cheap and AMDs new 3000 series looks realy good. I would go for an 3600 if you plan to upgrade again in the next year, there will propably be a refresh of Zen2 like the Ryzen 2000 CPUs, likely on 7nm+ with higher clocks. Or you could choose an 3700X, which will last you a long time before any possible upgrade becomes significant.

[Lisias]

18 hours ago, AmpCat said:

What's the expectation on a vanilla game with 224 parts and a good computer?

What's a good computer?

i5 with two cores and 4 HTs at 2.7GHz used to be good enough, but after some security patches from Apple to my MacMini (that nowadays are worse than the problem they aim to fix), I had to trim down a lot of things that used to run better earlier. Even recording gaming sessions are now impacting heavily the FPS, when before it was barely noticeable.

Try to reduce the Texture Quality to 1/4 . It worked to me, at least.

[AmpCat]

Well, in this case a 10 core i9, 4.5Ghz computer. I also decided to move the station away from the Mun.. for science. And sure enough, it seems that being near a planetary body also has a big impact. Between the Mun and Kerbin I get another dramatic speed boost. Also, removing Kerbal Joint Reinformcement (or one of the newer versions) improves speed a bit too. Maybe it's not so much the number of parts.

It's just odd because my 45part count orbiter has very smooth performance around the Mun, but switching to the 224 part station around the Mun is real laggy. But then moving the station away from the Mun to low Kerbin orbit, and it's fine and smooth again. So it seems some combination of high part count AND the Mun (and I believe I had the same issue before specifically around Duna).

But is 224 parts even really considered a 'high' part count vessel?

Oh, and changing texture quality didn't seem to have any effect on it. I have the Stock Visual Enhancements installed. I'll try installing the low resolution textures for that.

Edited August 3, 2019 by AmpCat

[AVaughan]

More parts means that both the physics calculations and the rendering takes longer.  

Doubling the number of parts probably roughly doubles how long the cpu and gpu takes to render the craft.  But doubling the number of parts probably also increases the physics calculations time by around 3-4 times.  

So going from 45 to 224 part is probably quite noticeable, unless the 45 part craft limited by the frame rate cap, and cpu and gpu were idle part of the time.  (Also note that much of ksp is single threaded, so don't expect ksp to ever max out all 10 cores).

[AmpCat]

2 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

More parts means that both the physics calculations and the rendering takes longer.  

Doubling the number of parts probably roughly doubles how long the cpu and gpu takes to render the craft.  But doubling the number of parts probably also increases the physics calculations time by around 3-4 times.  

So going from 45 to 224 part is probably quite noticeable, unless the 45 part craft limited by the frame rate cap, and cpu and gpu were idle part of the time.  (Also note that much of ksp is single threaded, so don't expect ksp to ever max out all 10 cores).

Yeah, I expected that, but what confused me was why it only specifically becomes a noticeable slowdown around the Mun, and not Kerbin. My Minimus station has a much lower part count, so I'm not sure on that yet. I would have expected the opposite, given Kerbin's larger number of textures and more polygons.

[AVaughan]

@AmpCat  Do you have kopernicus installed?  There has been a discussion about performance problems in 1.7.3 related to kopernicus in the kopernicus thread.  It might be relevant.

[XLjedi]

4 hours ago, Elthy said:

You could look into the usedf market if you want to hold on your PC a while longer. But now is a decent time for upgrading, DDR4 Ram is quite cheap and AMDs new 3000 series looks realy good. I would go for an 3600 if you plan to upgrade again in the next year, there will propably be a refresh of Zen2 like the Ryzen 2000 CPUs, likely on 7nm+ with higher clocks. Or you could choose an 3700X, which will last you a long time before any possible upgrade becomes significant.

@Elthy @Harry Rhodan probably the 3700x then...  thank you both for the input!

 

[AmpCat]

16 minutes ago, AVaughan said:

@AmpCat  Do you have kopernicus installed?  There has been a discussion about performance problems in 1.7.3 related to kopernicus in the kopernicus thread.  It might be relevant.

Hmm, apparently I do. Not sure why though, since I'm not using any planet mods. I'll remove it and see if that helps as well. I also lowered the texture pack I'm using. Not very scientific, changing two variables at once, but oh well.

[XLjedi]

On 8/2/2019 at 9:30 PM, XLjedi said:

@Elthy @Harry Rhodan probably the 3700x then...  thank you both for the input!

 

@Elthy @Harry Rhodan

Looks like this is what I may have to go with:

US $330 Motherobard:  ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming ATX Motherboard

My understanding is this one does support nVidia SLI so I can at least keep using my pair of GTX 970's, and it has wifi support which was a nice plus

US $330 CPU:  AMD RYZEN 7 3700X 8-Core 3.6 GHz

Not quite the fanciest or fastest, but maybe in a year or two I can still find an upgrade for it.  Should be good for awhile though!

US $260 RAM:  CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM RGB 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600)

So all in, looks like about: $920 pre-tax...  not thrilled about it, but with any luck, should get me by for another 5-7 years.  Aside from going cheap and just looking for a replacement AM3+ mobo to replace the dead one, this is probably best I can do.  Might be another week or two before I can start placing any orders though.

Edited August 5, 2019 by XLjedi

[Harry Rhodan]

12 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

(4 x 8GB)

Most boards have a memory layout that works better with only two sticks and might not achieve the same speed with four.

[XLjedi]

42 minutes ago, Harry Rhodan said:

Most boards have a memory layout that works better with only two sticks and might not achieve the same speed with four.

...even though it has 4 slots?

[Harry Rhodan]

9 hours ago, XLjedi said:

...even though it has 4 slots?

Yes. That doesn't imply in any way that you should fill all of them. It's just there so you can add more RAM later or try to fill it up with as much as possible. If you're just going for a normal amount of RAM you can achieve with only two sticks then you should use only two sticks.

[Elthy]

I think you are realy overspending on your mainboard and the RAM:

Do you even know how much benefit you get from the SLI? Most modern games that would need more power than a single 970 can provide dont even support it, the technology is more or less dead. I would sell one of the GPUs and dont worry about SLI support (which afaik doesnt need special mainboard features, just a second PCIe port with x16 size).

You could also add Wifi/Bluetooth with an extension card, that would enable you to buy way cheaper mainboards. A cheap B450 MB comes at less than 100$, but if oyu want to upgrade the CPU later there may be some reason to go with an X570 MB.

The RAM is realy overpriced, a good but way cheaper option is Crucials Ballistix Sport series. Also i think 32GB are totaly overkill for almost all tasks, are you sure you need that much?

The savings could go into a new GPU, that would be more powerfull than your SLI 970, a M2 SSD or a new CPU cooler (afaik AM3 coolers are not compatible). Or you just save it for later...

[XLjedi]

6 hours ago, Elthy said:

I think you are realy overspending on your mainboard and the RAM:

Do you even know how much benefit you get from the SLI? Most modern games that would need more power than a single 970 can provide dont even support it, the technology is more or less dead. I would sell one of the GPUs and dont worry about SLI support (which afaik doesnt need special mainboard features, just a second PCIe port with x16 size).

You could also add Wifi/Bluetooth with an extension card, that would enable you to buy way cheaper mainboards. A cheap B450 MB comes at less than 100$, but if oyu want to upgrade the CPU later there may be some reason to go with an X570 MB.

The RAM is realy overpriced, a good but way cheaper option is Crucials Ballistix Sport series. Also i think 32GB are totaly overkill for almost all tasks, are you sure you need that much?

The savings could go into a new GPU, that would be more powerfull than your SLI 970, a M2 SSD or a new CPU cooler (afaik AM3 coolers are not compatible). Or you just save it for later...

No, not entirely sure at this point...  I've liked running SLI in the past, and I also find that having the backup can be handy.  I've been known to run 4 monitors at times in the past, too...  but have not done so in awhile.  What I may very well do is split the GPU's up, and pick up a second mini-ATX AM3+ mobo to have as a portable system.  I find that air-cooled tends to work better than liquid cooled setups, so I'm good with my case full-o-fans. 

In fact, for the time being...  I may hold on shelling out $900 and just look for a mini-ATX AM3+ mobo to get me by for a bit.  I just haven't really found a mini-ATX case that I like yet. 

[XLjedi]

@Elthy  As far as whether or not I need the extra ram... 

I have 32MB now, and it may very well be overkill; but it's not uncommon for me to be running all of the following:  

• running KSP or whatever game in windowed mode (sometimes 2 instances)
• Playing with MS Excel in the background
• Taking screenshots and dumping graphics back and forth to  GIMP with about 30-ish layers
• Recording all or part of whatever I'm doing with voiceover (I do like the nVidia tool for that)
• dropping resulting graphics into MS Publisher
• publishing results to jpg and PDF docs
• and then uploading videos and thumbnails to youtube
• Possibly even running Blender for custom part models, with Unity going
• live streaming to Twitch/Steam too...

If I can continue to do that sort of stuff simultaneously with 16GB instead of 32, then sure I could cut back.

What do you think?

 

13 hours ago, Harry Rhodan said:

Yes. That doesn't imply in any way that you should fill all of them. It's just there so you can add more RAM later or try to fill it up with as much as possible. If you're just going for a normal amount of RAM you can achieve with only two sticks then you should use only two sticks.

That is an interesting comment, that I have never once heard...  from anyone...  but as I said, I build a PC about once every 5-7 years so may very well be common knowledge.  I'm a little surprised to hear that and if you could point me to any articles or references, I'd like to read up a bit more on that. 

[Elthy]

47 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

If I can continue to do that sort of stuff simultaneously with 16GB instead of 32, then sure I could cut back.

What do you think? 

You could look in the taskmanager how much RAM you are currently using. I dont know enough about those programs.

[Geonovast]

52 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

If I can continue to do that sort of stuff simultaneously with 16GB instead of 32, then sure I could cut back.

Considering I've had just KSP run over 20GB, with your workload I would definitely go with 32, although you could get cheaper RAM.  I've got two of these kits, every desktop I've built in the last few years has had Ripjaws, and I've had zero problems with them.

54 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

That is an interesting comment, that I have never once heard...  from anyone...  but as I said, I build a PC about once every 5-7 years so may very well be common knowledge.  I'm a little surprised to hear that and if you could point me to any articles or references, I'd like to read up a bit more on that. 

I've never heard that either, and it makes zero sense.  What's important regarding 2 sticks or 4 in a 4 slot board is which slots you put the two sticks in to make sure you're using dual channel.  I was debating the very same 2 x 16 or 4 x 8 before, and it was encouraged to go 2 x 16 - but only because of the upgradability later on, not because it functions better.  I'm going to need to see some kind of source on this.

[XLjedi]

@Geonovast thanks, I've used Corsair in the past, but heard G.Skill was OK...  just haven't tried it.  I may give it a shot as it appears to be nearly half the price.  I could even get 4x16 for not too much more than the 4x8 I was looking at.