KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[Traches]

That thing is just damn sexy! I dont want to think about how much that one cost. lol

Haha thanks!

It was purchased and assembled in stages over time, so I'm not exactly sure either. The watercooling bits didn't go in until I got my first big kid paycheck.

It's been running for about a year now so it's no longer the latest and greatest - 2x 4gb GTX 670s in SLI, Intel 2600k processor clocked at 4.6 ghz, 'bout 16 gigs of decent ram but I CBA to look up the speeds. Watercooling bits are kinda neat too, I'm using an aquero controller for automatic fan control; it sets fan speed based on the difference between the water temp and the ambient air temp.

[Galacticruler]

Anyone got any idea why my PC ignores the boot order from my BIOS?

I just set it to boot from CD(Zorin OS), but it skips that then moves to my HDD(Faildows Vista).

[briansun1]

so the new amd cards are out...

this

and

well this

and a semi tl;dr verion

here

Edited October 9, 2013 by briansun1

[Traches]

Anyone got any idea why my PC ignores the boot order from my BIOS?

I just set it to boot from CD(Zorin OS), but it skips that then moves to my HDD(Faildows Vista).

Is the CD properly set up as a boot disk?

[joppiesaus]

so the new amd cards are out...

this

and

well this

and a semi tl;dr verion

here

Wow, these cards seems awsome! Now I feel poor with my "old" cards...

[Galacticruler]

Is the CD properly set up as a boot disk?

Most likely not, how would I either check or do it?

[Traches]

Most likely not, how would I either check or do it?

Did you follow the install guide? http://zorin-os.com/installguide.html

Maybe use imgburn to verify the disk you've created, according to their website that's a feature they've implemented. It should also be able to indicate whether the DVD is bootable or not, but I don't know that it can for sure.

[philhalo66]

I built mine a few years ago its a bit aged but runs every game out there at fairly decent framerates at 1080P and some games at 1440P

CPU AMD Phenom X3 710 @ X4 3.12GHz 1.42V

Motherboard ASRock AOD 790GX/128M

RAM 6GB Corsair XMS2 800MHz

GPU EVGA GTX 285 1GB stock clocks

PSU Seasonic S12 620W bronze

HDD WD 4TB split in half

OS Windows 7 home premium 64-bit

Monitor ASUS PB Series PB278Q 27" 1440P

[Skipants]

Hey everyone,

This is a build still in early planing and my first crack at putting together my own PC. I have never had a strong desire to build one ether until KSP . So the main focus of this build is:

1) Get the most KSP performance per dollar. (I just want to play it without any issues whatsoever without breaking the bank)

2) Low cost (relatively speaking. I'm aiming for under $600)

3) be able to play other games @1080p relatively well.

I decided I don't want to do any over clocking.

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1NOOs

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($214.98 @ Outlet PC)

Motherboard: MSI B85-G41 PC Mate ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Newegg)

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Toshiba 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($47.50 @ Outlet PC)

Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7790 1GB Video Card ($98.98 @ Newegg)

Case: Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.99 @ Newegg)

Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($35.99 @ Newegg)

Optical Drive: LG GH24NS95 DVD/CD Writer ($15.00 @ Newegg)

Keyboard: Logitech MK120 Wired Slim Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($14.98 @ Outlet PC)

Total: $592.40

(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-10-12 11:24 EDT-0400)

Some of my reasoning(no real experience here) behind the selection

CPU: From what I have heard here on the forums the CPU is a big limiting factor with KSP. I'm not sure how this will play out with future optimizations but I think KSP will always be a "CPU intensive" game. So that's why I went with the i5-4670. I know that everyone says that for a gaming build you should put more money into the GPU but is KSP an exception to this?

MOB: seams like a good deal. I don't think I need a better chip set for what I'm doing.

RAM: it's a good deal with the rebate and it's blue....

HD: just something cheap to get me going. plan on upgrading to SSD in the future.

GPU: according to some benchmarks it's the pest performance per $. I feel that from what I've read it's a "good enough" card that would let me play a lot games just fine.

Case: good price, looks good (it has a window!) the only downside i can see the that there is no cable management behind the motherboard. would some extra work and some more zip ties compensate for this?

PSU: good deal for a corsair PSU. I wanted more than I needed to be able to upgrade graphics cards in the future if I wanted.

Please let me know what you think! Suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks

[jfx]

Looks good, two points I'd consider:

- Depending on what games you mean by "other games" the 7790 will be a little weaksauce. I'd spend at least the additional 50$ for a 7850 card. This also gets you 2gb of vram which will be pretty good for upcomming games (It will be no problem for your listed PSU).

- Go for a 1000gb harddrive. Even if you plan the switch to ssd. It's double the capacity for 10$ more and you will still need some space for big stuff once you have the ssd.

[Leonov]

-snip-

I really like all the research you have put into this build. Good Job.

Take a look at this, Some better parts a little cheaper than your original list.

I changed the ram form 1866 to 1600 Ram with a cooler, In the Bios settings you should be able to run that ram at 1866 if you really have to, and it is still blue.

Changed the mobo to an ASUS one of the same chipset, A little bit more for better piece of mind.

HDD is a very important part, Bumped it up to a Seagate Barracuda, They perform excellent and have very good build quality so it will last for quite some time.

The 7790 is a decent card for entry level gaming, Good Choice.

Cases are all Preference, If your patient and have enough zip ties Cable routing is manageable in most cases.

Excellent PSU Choice.

If you can wait a little bit, The AMD cards are going to come down in price to make room for the launch of new cards that are coming out so you may be able to snag a better card (Such as the 78XX series) for a little less.

jfx makes good points, Maybe wait a little longer save up some more and then reevaluate the list.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Leonov

[briansun1]

though amd card should come down in price a bit if you wait

[deskjetser]

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($214.98 @ Outlet PC)

Why not wait until the new API Mantle from AMD to come out... If what has been speculated and mentioned in a few places is true, even games that don't support multithreading will see a HUGE improvement in multi-core functionality. Thus, if this is the case your intel CPU will be a $200 flop at KSP, compared with a cheaper AMD CPU.

Although as I said, alot of this has not been confirmed yet, however if it's true, ill be laughing all day everyday.

If you can wait a little bit, The AMD cards are going to come down in price to make room for the launch of new cards that are coming out so you may be able to snag a better card (Such as the 78XX series) for a little less.

I don't know about the US, but the prices are already down from £330 to £200 for a 7970 GHz edition. Don't think they are gunna get any lower. I want them to though, i'll start using 7970s as my form of currency!

[jfx]

Yeah, because Unity will support mantle. That will totally happen.</sarcasm>

Also Mantle will lower cpu-demands for select parts of the render pipeline in games that will support mantle. Which at this point is: battlefield 4 (the next most possibler addition beeing the addition to cryengine 3). Games like KSP with zero graphical fidelity will barely profit at all. At no point you will have a "disadvantage" with a non-amd cpu. In contrary. The fx CPUs will continue to suck at games with mainly single threaded loads.

Edited October 12, 2013 by jfx

[deskjetser]

Yeah, because Unity will support mantle. That will totally happen.</sarcasm>

Also Mantle will lower cpu-demands for select parts of the render pipeline in games that will support mantle. Which at this point is: battlefield 4 (the next most possibler addition beeing the addition to cryengine 3). At no point you will have a "disadvantage" with a non-amd cpu. In contrary. The fx CPUs will continue to suck at games with mainly single threaded loads.

You completely fail to see, the next gen consoles will largely be using AMD hardware, the Mantle APU is primarily for the consoles... AMD is leading the way into multithreading by basically forcing it onto the scene. Its going to replace alot of the current APIs like DirectX, OpenCL and OpenGL simply because it is MUCH more attractive to developers.

Developers are going to want this, it allows them to do more with their games, and I very much believe it will come to Unity by possible popular demand once people see the potential of Mantle.

[deskjetser]

Games like KSP with zero graphical fidelity will barely profit at all.

Whoa whoa, what?

I believe you thinking of the consoles... Thats an APU, not a CPU.

On PCs with CPUs and seperate GPUs, you are going to see benefits to CPU performance, not GPU. *Edit* To clarify, that's specifically talking about KSP

*EDIT*

*Snip*

To clarify even further, as I do believe the point has been lost in a sea of confusion.

I am talking about specifically the use of the CPU in a PC, to run KSP physic calculations and whatnot. I was saying how Mantle will allow things like this to be spread over multiple cores, improving specifically the multithreaded performance of games. IE; it would not improve the graphics performance much in KSPs case, rather it would greatly improve the CPU intensive stuff.

Edited October 12, 2013 by deskjetser

[jfx]

Multithreading drawcalls to the GPU is great (And Mantle can increase Drawcall throughput by 900% in best case scenarios).

Superb eh? But wait there is more: The part they left out the marketing slide is that a typical console game with a 33.33ms frametime budget spends about 2ms on issuing draw calls. This means that with mantle the same Frame would render in ~31ms - giving you a 2 fps increase.

Also Guess what? DX11 (and 11.1 even more) can do the same thing - just the drivers were ****ty until recently because the Hardware vendors tried to reuse as much code as possible during the XP->Vista and later WDDM transition.

http://de.slideshare.net/DICEStudio/directx-11-rendering-in-battlefield-3

Don't get me wrong, I think mantle is interesting and I am excited to see what it really will bring to the table (Got my 7950 on friday). But you vastly overstate what it can do. And for legacy software like KSP it will do: Nothing.

Whoa whoa, what?

I believe you thinking of the consoles... Thats an APU, not a CPU.

On PCs with CPUs and seperate GPUs, you are going to see benefits to CPU performance, not GPU. *Edit* To clarify, that's specifically talking about KSP

KSP is being held back by its physics solver (PhysX@cpu). Switching rendering backends will achieve zilch, nothing, nada, niente, nichts. - See KSP under Linux/Mac (openGL).

Edited October 12, 2013 by jfx

[Leonov]

Your banking on mantle becoming the standard, chances are it wont. Time will tell.

Lets not get into an AMD vs. Intel argument, plenty of gross overstatements have been said lets leave it there.

Saying Intel chips will flop because Mantle will make AMD chips better at managing workloads is silly. Saying AMD chips suck at gaming and Single threaded programs is silly, Modern CPUs are so powerful form both sides that the performance difference inside price brackets is minimal. Modern Titles, excluding some Indie games, are really heavy into the GPU, That is why when you build a computer you try to put a little more money into your GPU than CPU.

Tl;Dr Version. Mantle is to young to say what it can/will do in the industry. Modern CPUs are stupid fast. GPUs are important.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Leonov

[deskjetser]

Your banking on mantle becoming the standard, chances are it wont. Time will tell.

When AMD is ruling the consoles for next gen, I don't need to bank. All the ports are going to use Mantle... And PC devs already want to get their hands on it.

[Leonov]

When AMD is ruling the consoles for next gen, I don't need to bank. All the ports are going to use Mantle... And PC devs already want to get their hands on it.

Remember friend, Not all games come out on Console.

[deskjetser]

Remember friend, Not all games come out on Console.

Yes but you can not deny that its at least 50% if not more of the gamer croud, I mean, all the casuals hang out on consoles...

Okay I may have hyped it up a bit, but my experience on BF4 beta @ 1080p maxed out everything includuing anti-aliasing getting 110-115FPS...

[jfx]

Fun fact:

Mantle is not yet in BF4, it will be patched in somewhen in December .

[deskjetser]

Fun fact:

Mantle is not yet in BF4, it will be patched in somewhen in December .

Err obviously. It's being developed for AMD hardware though...

*EDIT*

Your not getting the point that when things are developed for certain hardware, you get boosts.

If even a whiff of Mantle comes to KSP, there will be benefits, period.

Edited October 12, 2013 by deskjetser

[Skipants]

Thanks for the input!

I didn't really put to much thought into the hard drive; thanks for the advice.

I was debating whether to get a slightly better graphics card as well. I'll see what happens with the market and these new GPUs from AMD.

this whole mantle thing is defiantly something to look into. There are a lot of variables at play here and it's hard to know what exactly will happen. The "other games" I was referring to was specifically Dark Souls 2 which will not support mantle...at least I think...

(warning: speculation incoming!) From what I've read so far it doesn't look promising that Unity will support it, and if it does it would probably be in a few years once there are enough GPUs out on the market that support it. By then I may be looking to upgrade my GPU anyway. also who knows what Nvidia will have to say about this on the near future....

[3_bit]

I have a 64 GB 3 Gb/s SSD from my old build, and I plan on getting a 6 Gb/s 2 terabyte HDD for program storage. Anyone know if the SSD still wins for booting, seeing as how there's no spool-up?