KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, SNAZZ said:

I'll keep checking around for a used one then. Everything I keep finding locally used is around $200-$400. I'm looks for around the $100 mark.

For a 1050?  You can get new 1050Tis for ~$170.  Although there aren't a lot of options anymore since they stopped making the 10 series cards.

This is the exact same GTX 1050Ti I have, and it seems to be one of the more expensive options on eBay for a used 1050Ti.  (Not saying you should jump on this, just using the listing as an example) https://www.ebay.com/itm/Gigabyte-GeForce-GTX-1050-Ti-4GB-Windforce-Graphics-Card/153651387736?epid=18032167986&hash=item23c6561d58:g:sOkAAOSwZexdUpSR

 

$200-$400 used market should net you a GTX 1070Ti or even a GTX 1080.  If people in your area are asking $200-400 for a 1050/1050Ti, they're either clueless or think you are.  $400 will get you a brand-new RTX 2060.

 

6 minutes ago, SNAZZ said:

Biggest problem seems to be the memory issue though. I have 8gb and KSP is running around 6.5-75gb constantly. I've ordered two more stick's to put in so I'll be at 16gb then. I'm assuming KSP will still hog the same amount then and not try to eat all 16gb? 

Correct.  KSP will use what it needs.  But if it's bumping up against the limit of what your system has, that means there's not any RAM for anything else and you're going to be paging a lot.  This will be especially detrimental if you're paging to your HDD instead of your SSD.  (Which you shouldn't be).

[SNAZZ]

15 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

For a 1050?  You can get new 1050Tis for ~$170.  Although there aren't a lot of options anymore since they stopped making the 10 series cards.

This is the exact same GTX 1050Ti I have, and it seems to be one of the more expensive options on eBay for a used 1050Ti.  (Not saying you should jump on this, just using the listing as an example) https://www.ebay.com/itm/Gigabyte-GeForce-GTX-1050-Ti-4GB-Windforce-Graphics-Card/153651387736?epid=18032167986&hash=item23c6561d58:g:sOkAAOSwZexdUpSR

 

$200-$400 used market should net you a GTX 1070Ti or even a GTX 1080.  If people in your area are asking $200-400 for a 1050/1050Ti, they're either clueless or think you are.  $400 will get you a brand-new RTX 2060.

 

Correct.  KSP will use what it needs.  But if it's bumping up against the limit of what your system has, that means there's not any RAM for anything else and you're going to be paging a lot.  This will be especially detrimental if you're paging to your HDD instead of your SSD.  (Which you shouldn't be).

I don't remember what cards they were last time I looked. Currently the only things locally I see is a couple 1060, one for $200 and the other for $250. Then there's a couple old looking ones for $50, a frozer something and a 465(?).

I haven't used ebay since like 2005 or something. Lol got ripped off on there and they wouldn't do anything about it so haven't bought anything off there since.

I'll keep checking around for a used one.

I set up a 16gb page file on my hdd in hopes that would help some. Idk if it did or not.

Should my page file be on my ssd? I always heard it was bad to have them there.

Edited December 23, 2019 by SNAZZ

[Geonovast]

Page file on the SSD isn't great for the lifespan of the SSD, as SSDs are limited to number of write cycles.  However SSD technology has been advancing a lot and I don't personally know anyone who's killed an SSD from hitting that limit.

Paging to a HDD is safer, but much slower.

[davemackron]

Hi guys, not a total noob, but fairly close to one. I inherited a gaming PC that was probably pretty good a few years ago.

Intel Core i5-4670

16gig Ram

MSI Radeon R9 270X 2GB Twin Frozr Gaming OC

It worked quite well for all of my gaming needs. I know it's not the best in the world, but it did the trick and ran things well enough.

And that was great for the past few years. But now the graphics card is excrements. I got those green lines on my screen and I had to rip it out. I don't want to build a new pc (not true, the fact is I can't afford to)

All I really want is to find a graphics card that isn't too powerful for my older processer and won't break my wallet in the process. I'm willing to spend a few hundred bucks at the most.

I checked around review sites and they are all hyping the newest and the best. I don't have a 4k monitor and honestly couldn't tell you what ray tracing is. So all the superlatives they toss around doesn't help me much at all.

Does anyone know of a solid graphics card that will work with my pc?

[Vanamonde]

Hi @davemackron and welcome to our forum.

We have a dedicated thread for questions like this, and your thread has been merged into it. 

[Arco123]

6 hours ago, davemackron said:

Hi guys, not a total noob, but fairly close to one. I inherited a gaming PC that was probably pretty good a few years ago.

Intel Core i5-4670

16gig Ram

MSI Radeon R9 270X 2GB Twin Frozr Gaming OC

It worked quite well for all of my gaming needs. I know it's not the best in the world, but it did the trick and ran things well enough.

And that was great for the past few years. But now the graphics card is excrements. I got those green lines on my screen and I had to rip it out. I don't want to build a new pc (not true, the fact is I can't afford to)

All I really want is to find a graphics card that isn't too powerful for my older processer and won't break my wallet in the process. I'm willing to spend a few hundred bucks at the most.

I checked around review sites and they are all hyping the newest and the best. I don't have a 4k monitor and honestly couldn't tell you what ray tracing is. So all the superlatives they toss around doesn't help me much at all.

Does anyone know of a solid graphics card that will work with my pc?

The best ones would be GTX 1070, used. GTX 1060 6-3gb Great and cheap, GTX 1660 ti-non-ti Great cost 220-270 ish. RTX 2060, okay but costly. I hope I could help you. Please do give me all of your specs. I would choose the non-ti of GTX 1660 for me. 

Can you give me a list of your computer so I would know what would suit you. 

[Elthy]

The best price/performance would be a RX570 with 8GB VRAM. They are not that power efficient, but extremly cheap and able to play everything in Full-HD, although not with maximum settings for recent games. I think a better/more expensive GPU wouldnt make much sense in this PC, since it would be hindered by the old quadcore CPU.

[Arco123]

47 minutes ago, Elthy said:

The best price/performance would be a RX570 with 8GB VRAM. They are not that power efficient, but extremly cheap and able to play everything in Full-HD, although not with maximum settings for recent games. I think a better/more expensive GPU wouldnt make much sense in this PC, since it would be hindered by the old quadcore CPU.

That too. I would think a gtx 1660 or a rx 570-580 would be best for him. As long as the PSU is able to handle it. 

[Yeet_TheDinosaur]

Hi guys. I'm planning to build a new pc mainly to play KSP. 

My budget is ~1200 AUD and I want it to be able to run KSP with visual mods at at least 45fps.

Does anyone know or can recommend any builds?

[Harry Rhodan]

13 hours ago, Yeet_TheDinosaur said:

My budget is ~1200 AUD

https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/mbvfn7

1260 AUD without shipping costs. If you need to go lower I would take a cheaper video card. The RX 570 is comparatively cheap and strong but is most likely already out of production.

[Yeet_TheDinosaur]

@Harry Rhodan is Ryzen 5 a suitable cpu for KSP? I thought that intel cpus were better for single core gaming.

[Elthy]

It depends a bit on the price. Sure, the high priced unlocked Intels have the highest single core speed. But the R5 3600 competes with Intels lower clocked i5, which are just a tiny bit faster in single core speed while being completly obliterated in any other task...

Also im sure you want to play KSP2, which will surely use multiple cores to a better extent. The R5 is simply more futureproof.

Edited February 7, 2020 by Elthy

[Harry Rhodan]

11 hours ago, Yeet_TheDinosaur said:

I thought that intel cpus were better for single core gaming.

That's why I picked the 3000 series Ryzen because they come pretty close in single core performance to their Intel counterparts while being cheaper and offering more multi core performance which is important for most other games or any other task. You could also try something like this with Intel: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/8gvjBZ

But the current Intel i5s only have six threads. Considering that even the old consoles have eight threads to work with, this thing will be outdated very fast. And like Elthy said: to get the most out of an Intel build you would need a K model like the i5 9600K(F) or the i3 9350K(F) which are more expensive and definitely need a separate cooler which will be even more expensive. And if you want to overclock those you'd need a better mainboard which also costs more and so on.

[Norcalplanner]

So I'm thinking about upgrading my system, and I think it's time for a new CPU and mobo.  I think just about everything else can be reused.  Current system specs are:

i5-6600K w/mild OC (4.2) on a Z170 mobo

32 GB DDR4 3000

Evo 970 512 GB SSD (M.2, but SATA interface)

GTX 1660 Ti (still gaming at 1080p, but may upgrade to 1440p at some point)

Corsair 650W power supply

2TB data drive

Case, DVD drive, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.

Ryzen seems to be the new hotness, so I was considering something along the lines of a Ryzen 7 3700X.  Is this a good choice not only for KSP, but for other games as well?  Is the 3000 speed memory good enough for the Ryzen? Any advice on mobo?  I'm thinking a new CPU, mobo, and NVME drive for the OS and KSP would be the way to go, with reusing everything else.  Any thoughts are appreciated.

And fwiw, I tend to play heavily modded installs (RP-1, JNSQ with GEP and lots of mods, etc.)

Edited February 10, 2020 by Norcalplanner
Clarification

[Harry Rhodan]

23 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:

Ryzen seems to be the new hotness, so I was considering something along the lines of a Ryzen 7 3700X.  Is this a good choice not only for KSP, but for other games as well?  Is the 3000 speed memory good enough for the Ryzen? Any advice on mobo?  I'm thinking a new CPU, mobo, and NVME drive for the OS and KSP would be the way to go, with reusing everything else.  Any thoughts are appreciated.

It's a great CPU. As far as I know the sweet spot for memory for the 3000 series Ryzens is at 3600MHz. People tend to recommend the 3200MHz Crucial Ballistix Sport because you can apparently easily oc them to 3600. I'm cheapskate and don't look for the high-end stuff. From that perspective I can only tell you that the MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX is a great middle class board. Or the Mortar MAX if you want mATX. Depending on how old your PSU is, you should replace that as well. The Ryzen chips have a verry aggressive load changing scheme and if your PSU can't react fast enough your system might just freeze.

[TheAzurit123]

Hello.

I recently bought an older Alienware M14R2 laptop. 16GB RAM(DDR3), Intel core i7 3720QM(2,4 Ghz), Nvidia Ge force 650M(1 Gb). My question is: How will the game run and what details? 

Thanks all.

[AHHans]

Hi, welcome to the forums.

KSP should run fine on that machine. KSP is in general more CPU intensive and less GPU intensive than other games. And it really likes to have RAM, so the 16 GB RAM help a lot. You'll see some slow-down when you fly large craft with many parts, but a faster CPU will "only" push that limit up to somewhat higher part numbers. So it's IMHO really only a gradual difference. I can't say much about the GPU, but I think it should also be fine. You may not want to turn up the "Terrain Shader Quality" to ultra in the settings, though.

[Vanamonde]

@TheAzurit123, we have a thread for this kind of question and your post has been added to it. And you should be fine, since that's a better system than I've been using to run KSP.

[denniscm]

Hello!

I'm about to buy a new graphic card, a RTX 2070 Super or RX5700 XT to play everything, but especially KSP.
The difference of price between them is considerable, RX5700 XT it's 200 dollars cheaper.

Do you guys have an advice about this? Radeon will be good?

Thank you!

[Geonovast]

Hello, @denniscm, and welcome to the forum.

KSP isn't very graphically intense.  Just having a graphics card is really about as far as you need to go if KSP is the main concern.  If you plan on running a lot of graphical mods, then you may want to consider a larger card.

I've always had Nvidia cards, so I can't even guess with the Radeon.  However the 2070 Super is way overkill for KSP.  First card I bought was a 1050Ti and it was even way more than KSP needed.

Base your purchase on the other games you're playing, KSP won't really care which one you get!

[SUPERFY]

How will my new cpu and gpu work for ksp?

cpu- Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core 3.6 GHz (4.4 GHz Max Boost)

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by SUPERFY

[Vanamonde]

Welcome to the forum, @SUPERFY.

We have a dedicated thread for this kind of question and I have moved your post to it. 

[HH.Hello4r6]

So I am going to get an Acer Aspire 1, and I don’t know if it’s going to run Ksp...

link to computer: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Acer-Aspire-1-15-6-HD-Intel-Celeron-N4000-4GB-DDR4-RAM-64GB-eMMC-Windows-10-in-S-mode-A115-31-C23T/726338035 , 

Model: A115-31-C23T

specs of the computer:

Storage: 64gb eMMc (I’m getting a 128gb flash drive so it doesn’t matter)

Ram/Memory: 4gb

Processor: Intel Celeron N4000

processor speed: 1.1GHz

video ram: N/A

pixel shader: N/A

vortex shader: N/A

if you got the answer reply, Thanks

[RoninFrog]

It's gonna be rough.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

2 hours ago, HH.Hello4r6 said:

So I am going to get an Acer Aspire 1, and I don’t know if it’s going to run Ksp...

link to computer: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Acer-Aspire-1-15-6-HD-Intel-Celeron-N4000-4GB-DDR4-RAM-64GB-eMMC-Windows-10-in-S-mode-A115-31-C23T/726338035 , 

Model: A115-31-C23T

specs of the computer:

Storage: 64gb eMMc (I’m getting a 128gb flash drive so it doesn’t matter)

Ram/Memory: 4gb

Processor: Intel Celeron N4000

processor speed: 1.1GHz

video ram: N/A

pixel shader: N/A

vortex shader: N/A

if you got the answer reply, Thanks

This is basically a netbook, and while mobile parts have come some way since those things i don't think you're going to have much luck running games on it period.